Related to yesterday's post, a friend of mine, a Catholic, told me yesterday that even though he has been Catholic 7 years, he has been going to a Mormon/Church of Latter Day Saints church for 5 years. Say a prayer for him. The Mormons were set up in the 1800s by a chap called 'Prophet' Joseph Smith who 'realised' that the original Priesthood conferred on the Apostles by Christ had died out after they had died and been lost(????). The true Priesthood of Christ died with the Apostles.
It was re-discovered, (after 1800 years!) in himself and the establishment of a new church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints when an 'angel' appeared to him and got him to write a 'guide book,' written on 'golden plates' (???), to accompany the Bible, called the Book of Mormon, which appears to be a bizarre re-writing of the New Testament, with loads chucked out and weirdness chucked in. It's very much a 'born-again' religion and the service seems to involve using bread and water symbolically instead of bread and wine to be consecrated. This is because there are strict dietary laws which forbid tea, coffee, alcohol etc. Say a prayer for him. When I was asking him questions about it the article on the Inquisition was going through my mind. So obviously, I had him handed over to the civil authorities who...
The friend is very vulnerable, impressionable and suffers mental illness. Seriously though, he really now believes that 'prophet' Joseph was the real deal and when I asked him whether he wanted the Book of Mormon, or whether he wanted me to take it away, he said, "No, because I believe what Prophet Joseph says!" Prophet Joseph, I can assure you made a lot of money in Salt Lake City out of his new religion. Say a prayer for my friend. The point is that heretical sects do have a habit of attracting impressionable Catholics, the poor, the depressed, those seeking hope, and heresy destroys true Faith in the individual concerned. The clue is in the book title...The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ. Err...what was wrong with the Four Gospels? What was wrong with the Holy Church's position as Arbiter and Interpreter of Sacred Scripture? Nothing at all. Problem is, and the US, as we know, had a lot of these chaps, every now and then some fruitcake pops up and says, "No! I got it! Everything the other churches have been saying for years was not the truth. Now I got it! Oh yes! The Angel appeared to me and...so on and so forth."
Christ warned us about false prophets leading the lambs and sheep of the Church into destructive or inhumane heresies or ideologies at odds with Holy Church teaching. While the Inquisitions had their bad points, ultimately it was trying to combat heresy and maintain True Faith from the false prophets of the ages, because as I said in the last post, it can be very damaging to souls indeed.
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