Weeping for the lost

My friend Jan from the Chapel lent me this series of tapes called "Inside Mormonism" by Thomas F. Smith. These tapes tell about the Mormon church from a Catholic perspective. The series of talks is given by an ex-Mormon Catholic convert, and apparently he's a seventh generation Mormon so he was really in it deep as a child.

I've read just about all of the facts that he's presented in the series so far, but to hear someone actually say them out loud (like how Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon by looking at a seerstone in a hat) makes me sad for my wasted religious childhood and just makes me want to weep for my father and brother, who both went to the grave believing in the truth of Joseph Smith's words. My father's gravestone even has an Angel Moroni on it. I hope that God understands that they meant no harm and that they did the best they could.

My father worked in a Benedictine hospital for 18 years, and yet he never felt the need to become Catholic. The man on the tapes said that he had read the New Testament numerous times as a Mormon, but he never saw Grace or the Trinity or other beauties of the true Gospel of Christ. It was like he had a veil over his eyes that prevented him from seeing the truth. I wonder if my Father had a veil over his eyes, too, shielding him from the true light of Christ.

My mother is still Mormon, although only partially active, only going to church maybe 2-3 times a month. The only callings she has right now are working in the library and doing geneology extraction. Extraction is when Salt Lake City sends her records, and she enters the information into a database and sends the information to Salt Lake City for use in their vast geneology library. She told me something last time I visited her that made me very sad. She said that she had some Catholic baptism records from the 1600's that were just illegible so she wasn't going to be able to get their names off of the records and into the database.

In case you didn't know, Mormons take all the names and information that is poured into this database, by extraction or personal geneology research, and does ordinances for the dead for them in Temple ceremonies. In other words, they vicariously baptize the dead and confirm them members of the LDS church. I'm pretty sure those Catholics from the 1600's don't want to be Mormon. The Mormon church got into a LOT of heat recently because they were extracting Jewish names from Holocaust records and other Jewish records and doing ordinances for them in the Temple. Yeah, the Jewish people didn't like that much at all when they heard about it.

Every time I go to Mass, and they get to the point where they pray for the deceased, I always pray for my brother and my dad. I hope that God has mercy on their souls, as they were blinded by forces beyond their control. I want so badly for my mother to have her veil lifted, so she can see the truth about the Mormon church, even if she doesn't convert to Catholicism. But she also desparately wants me to return to "the fold" of Mormonism, which I know at this point I will never do.

God grant me the courage to be able to someday show my mother the falseness of the Mormon church and to help her see the true light.