MORMONISM, MARRIAGE, & FAMILY

By now, you've probably heard or seen an advertisement featuring pro-family sentiments sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Radio ads proclaim "Family: Isn't it about time?" while TV ads offer free Mormon videos like "Family First" and "Together Forever." Everywhere Mormonism is lauded as a lionhearted hero, promoting and defending "family values."

Promoting marriage & family is indeed laudable. The first is one of the seven God-given Catholic sacraments, the second is aptly called "the domestic church." Pope John Paul II has spent much of his pontificate teaching and promoting (on both theological and practical levels) an authentic Christian vision of marriage & family. If you're an adult and you've never read Fr. Karol Wojtyla's Love & Responsibility (published by Ignatius Press) or Pope John Paul II's Original Unity of Man & Woman, Familiaris Consortio, and his other marriage & family teachings collected in Theology of the Body (published by Pauline Books & Media), you should.

The problem with Mormon promotion of marriage & family in LDS advetisements is that the Mormon church's teaching and practice frequently compromise and undermine the very things it's claiming to promote. The teaching is, in reality, inconsistent with the pro-family image.

CONTRACEPTION

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) allows its membership to use immoral, contraceptive methods of family planning, even though moral, non-contraceptive methods of family planning can be every bit as effective.

Contraception undermines the very meaning of matrimony. In marriage, each spouse gives him or herself entirely to the other without reservation. The gift of self, and the resulting interpersonal communion, are specially signified and realized in the marital act. Contraception destroys this. Contraception contradicts the loving, communal meaning of the marital act by whispering:

"No, I don't really give myself to you, not entirely..."

Contraception, simply put, makes marriage a lie. Mother Teresa of Calcutta further noted that the contraceptive destruction of the life-giving power of love leads to other evils, like abortion and divorce (many others have made the same connection). In her words, "Once that living love is destroyed by contraception, abortion follows very easily" (1994 National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C.).

ABORTION

Procured abortion (as opposed to miscarriage) is the intentional killing of an innocent human being. Such an act is intrinsically disordered, and opens the way to many other kinds of exploitation, violence, and abuse against human dignity. Roe v. Wade was a tremendous victory for the "culture of death" in the United States.

Tradionally, the LDS church has opposed abortion as a "heinous crime," "greivous sin," and "damnable practice." The state of Utah should be commended for its low abortion rate (compared to the national rate). But now the LDS church is compromising its stance on abortion. The 1992 edition of Gospel Principles, a manual of faith & practice published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, allows abortions in certain circumstances:

There is seldom any excuse for abortion. The only exceptions are when:
  1. Pregnancy has resulted from incest or rape.
  2. The life or health of the woman is in jeopardy in the opinion of competent medical authority.
  3. The fetus is known, by competent medical authority, to have severe defects that will not allow the baby to survive beyond birth.
Is the child of rape, for example, any less human than the child of loving parents? Or is a child with "severe defects" not worth the protection and nurture we could give him? Contraception turns spouses against each other, abortion turns parents against their innocent, helpless children. The LDS allowance for procured abortion is morally reprehensible.

The LDS First Presidency's claim that "no definite statement has been made by the Lord one way or another regarding the crime of abortion" flies in the face of human dignity and rights (not to mention Ex. 20:13 & Deut. 5:17). Catholicism has opposed abortion for 2000 years, and millions of non-Catholics have done the same. We don't need the sketchy and changeable guidance of the LDS church to know that killing innocent human beings is wrong.

DIVORCE & REMARRIAGE

While Mormon ads and apologetics cheerfully promote the appealing belief that families can be together forever, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints permits divorce and remarriage, and in 1996-1997 the Utah divorce rate was higher than the national average.

Though Moses accomodated for divorce for a while (Deut. 24:1-4; the Lord called such accomodations "statutes that were not good and laws they could not live by," Ezek. 20:25), Jesus explicitly forbade divorce and remarriage in order to restore matrimony to the way God established it "in the beginning" (Matt. 5:31-32 & 19:3-9, Mk. 10:2-12, Lk. 16:18; see also Rom. 7:2-3, 1Cor. 7:10-16).

Restored to its original dignity, a real sacramental marriage cannot be broken. If spouses separate, one may not remarry while the other lives. Divorce and remarriage are degradations of the sacrament, harming both the spouses and the family. Like contraception, divorce and remarriage make a lie of self-giving love.

For more information on the question of porneia ("unchastity" in Matthew's Gospel), see "Brass Tacks: Did Jesus Say Adultery Is Grounds for Divorce?" by James Akin (July/August 2000 issue of This Rock magazine, published by Catholic Answers).

POLYGAMY (POLYGYNY)

Though the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has forbidden the practice of polygamy since 1890, and Mormons who practice polygamy will be excommunicated, they do not believe polygamy is morally problematic, nor do they believe it conflicts with their doctrines regarding matrimony. Many look forward to a day when it will be allowed again, perhaps at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Even today a Mormon man may be "sealed for eternity" to a woman and, when widowed, be "sealed" to another, so that when he attains the "celestial kingdom" he will have plural wives.

This doctrinal acceptance of polygamy, even when the practice is forbidden, reflects a shallow understanding of the marriage covenant. For Catholics, the meaning of the sacrament of matrimony is unreserved self-giving love and interpersonal communion. A human person simply cannot give him or herself entirely and unreservedly to more than one human person in this way. Polygamy destroys the authentic meaning of marriage. It reduces matrimony to something unworthy of the true dignity of human persons.

Even some Mormon writers have (presumably without the approval of the LDS hierarchy) noted this problem with polygamy. Melodie Moench Charles once wrote:

As long as Doctrine & Covenants 132 remains in our scriptural canon, heavenly polygamy is a part of Mormon theology. Heavenly polygamy more than anything else in our theology, reduces people to things.... The greater the number of wives and children a man has in heaven, the greater his power, kingdom, and eternal glory. In the worst materialistic sense rather than the best metaphorical sense, wives and children were a man's riches. Benjamin F. Johnson remembered that "the Prophet taught us that Dominion & power in the great Future would be Commensurate with the no[.] of 'Wives, Children & Friends' that we inherit here"...
(Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Autumn 1988)

(If any of your Mormon friends protest that some Old Testament patriarchs and kings were polygamists, remind them of Jesus' words "from the beginning it was not so.")

When polygamy takes the form of polygyny, as in Mormon theology, it is women especially who are degraded. More comments on this below. But remember, the degradation of women inevitably leads to the degradation of men, and children will also suffer needlessly.

TOGETHER FOREVER?

Mormons believe that spouses worthy of the highest "celestial" glory will eventually become gods of their own worlds, which they will "organize" and populate. This is what they mean when they say that families can be together forever.

This raises a perplexing question. How can families be together forever if both your parents and your children have their own worlds to organize and populate? Perhaps you may be able to visit their worlds (leaving your own world to who-knows-what chaos, since Mormons don't believe gods can be in more than one place at one time), but you will actually be separated.

Mormons present this belief as if no one else believes families can be reunited. This implication is nonsense. Catholics have always believed that families can be together forever. Perfectly united in love to the divine Family -the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit- the faithful will be united in perfect love for each other throughout eternity. In truth, we will all be one Family in exquisite harmony and interpersonal communion beyond all present imagining. As well as you think you know and love your parents, siblings, spouse, and children now, you can know and love them better in that all-embracing eternal moment of never-ending joy.

Even now you Christians are children of God the Father, and all the holy saints are your elder brothers and sisters in Christ, and the Spirit bids you "Come!"

WOMEN

Though contraception, abortion, divorce & remarriage, and polygamy harm all persons, they are especially degrading to women. Women are human persons made in the image of God, men and women equally so, and they may not be reduced to objects for use, abuse, exploitation, and violence. Sadly, contraception, abortion, divorce & remarriage, and polygamy all actively contribute to the depersonalization and objectification of women.

It is little wonder, in light of this, that Mormons have traditionally held a very low view of women. The second President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Brigham Young, who had dozens of wives, once said: "There are probably but few men in the world who care about the private society of women less than I do" (Journal of Discourses 5:99).
WOMEN IN THE BOOK OF MORMON
There are -apparently- only three Nephite, Lamanite, or Jaredite women named in the entire Book of Mormon (Sariah, Abish, and Isabel the harlot), and women rarely play any significant role in the book.
After hearing one of Brigham Young's sermons, Alice Johnson Read summarized it in her journal: "The Priciple is that a woman, be she ever so smart, cannot know more than her husband if he magnifies his priesthood... God never in any age of the world endowed woman with knowledge above the man" (quoted in Dr. Kimball Young's Isn't One Wife Enough? The Story of Mormon Polygamy [1954]). Mormon Apostle Wilford Woodruff recorded another of Brigham Young's statements in his own journal: "The man is the head & God of the woman" (Wilford Woodruff's Journal 3:131, emphasis added). When many Mormon women began to complain about the hardship of polygamy, Brigham Young callously told them (including his own wives) that they should either be subject to the "Gospel" and "dictates" of their husbands without "murmuring and whining.... [and] grunting" or they should leave the Utah territory altogether (Journal of Discourses 4:55-57). In other words, too bad, shape up or ship out. This is the same Brigham Young, by the way, who said "I have never yet preached a sermon and sent it out to the children of men that they may not call scripture" (Journal of Discourses 13:95).

IN CONCLUSION

Are there Catholics who contracept, abort, and divorce & remarry? Yes, there are, but they are violating the explicit moral teaching of the Catholic Church whenever they do so. By contrast, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints permits its members to engage in such anti-familial acts. The Catholic Church's morality actually supports, promotes, and defends its pro-family teaching.

FOR FURTHER READING

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