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Q u i c k Q u e s t i o n s
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This Rock
Volume 10, Number 1
 February 1999 
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What's in the Book of Mormon?
Q: Mormon missionaries have been bugging me to read their Book of Mormon. I don’t plan to do so since it is false scripture, but I would like to know what the book is about when I talk to them. Can you give me an overview?
A: The Book of Mormon comprises fifteen books, each allegedly written by an ancient American prophet. It professes to be a religious and secular history of Hebrews who fled Jerusalem and certain persecution in 600 B.C. Lehi, an alleged prophet and contemporary of Jeremiah, led his wife, children, and their spouses through the Arabian wilderness to the shores of "the large waters."
After much hardship and contention, the righteous son Nephi built a ship and the company sailed to a new "promised land," but not before having obtained a collection of brass plates on which was recorded not only the Pentateuch (or first five books of the Old Testament) but also a record of the Jews from the beginning down to that day. All the while, Nephi had been making metal plates of his own and engraving on them a record of his family’s labors.
Upon arriving in the Western Hemisphere, and after the death of Lehi, Nephi’s brothers Laman and Lemuel rebelled against Nephi, forcing him and his followers to separate from them. Because of their unbelief, the Lamanites (as the followers of Laman andLemuel were called) were cursed with a "skin of blackness"—which here means a darker, American Indian skin tone, not a Negro complexion—and became persecutors of the Nephites. At Nephi’s death in the mid-sixth century B.C., his younger brother Jacob took up the story and the plates. Several other alleged prophets followed Jacob, maintaining written records of the Nephites or "American Hebrews."
Throughout these centuries, and reflecting the same theme sketched for Israel by Old Testament authors, the Nephites enjoyed periods of material prosperity when they followed the Lord’s voice and languished in misery when they didn’t. Much of the book is a dull, repetitive recording of bloody battles waged between Nephites and Lamanites.
Evil kings, corrupt judges, "secret combinations" (or "gangs" of robbers), persecution of the righteous, their subsequent apostasy and restoration, massive genocide—this is the stuff of the Book of Mormon. There are occasional discourses on religion, most of which remind the reader of the words of Old Testament prophets, the Sermon on the Mount, or the teachings of St. Paul, despite the chronological problems this poses.
Towards the end of the Nephite-Lamanite record we find inserted, out of chronological sequence, the "Book of Ether." These fifteen chapters are said to be the record of yet another group of Hebrew émigrés, these dispersed at the Tower of Babel. Following the "brother of Jared," who had had a vision of the "spirit body" of Jesus Christ, these righteous ones built barges and sailed for the promised land of America.
The "Jaredites" soon split into factions, warring with one another throughout a succession of kings, prophets, murder, and intrigue. Some of their prophets predicted the coming forth of the Book of Mormon and the establishing in America of the New Jerusalem.
The forces of good and evil ultimately arrayed themselves in a final battle. Millions were killed; indeed, every single Jaredite but one was slain. The prophet Ether recorded the devastation on twenty-four metal plates that were later discovered by Nephites and appended to their own writings.
Without doubt, the high point of the Book of Mormon is recorded in Third Nephi. This book allegedly covers the period from A.D. 1–35. Raids, murders, government upheavals, tempests, earthquakes, and fires allegedly preceded the appearance of Jesus Christ on the American continent. According to Mormonism, Jesus Christ showed himself to the people of America in the year 34 and established a second church, paralleling the one in the Old World.
The Book of Mormon story ends early in the fifth century. By the fourth century war and carnage had consumed both the faithful Nephites and the reprobate Lamanites. After gathering hundreds of thousands of warriors to the Hill Cumorah (located in New York state), the Nephites were utterly massacred by the sword by an even greater army of "dark and filthy" Lamanites (Mormon 5:15; Mormons frequently identify contemporary Native Americans as descendants of these Lamanites).
The only survivor was Moroni, the son of the Nephite prophet Mormon, from whom the book takes its name. To him his father had entrusted the centuries-old records of God’s American prophets, to which Moroni himself added a few concluding chapters. Before dying in 421, Moroni allegedly placed the gold plates in a stone and cement box and buried it in a hillside near present-day Palmyra, east of Rochester, New York.
In Joseph Smith’s day, several burning theological issues occupied the attention of scholar and layman alike: the nature of religious authority and priesthood; the necessity of baptism; the validity of infant baptism; the administration of the Flesh and Blood of Christ. Smith found the thirteen pages of the book of Moroni that just "happened" to resolve the theological disputes of the day.
Isaiah Bennett
Q: To determine if a moral act is a sin, I was told that the intention of the person and the circumstances surrounding the moral act must be taken into consideration. Then, following our conscience, we each must decide for ourselves whether or not an act is sinful for us. So if I undergo sterilization with the intention of saving my marriage, or because I can’t afford another child then sterilization could be morally correct for me.
A: What you were told is wrong. Some acts are intrinsically evil and cannot be done, even in order to secure a good, such as saving a marriage or living within one’s means. Scripture is explicit on this point (Rom. 3:8). Only if an act is intrinsically permissible does the question of whether the circumstances warrant that action become relevant.
The proper procedure to follow is to first look to the Church and the sources of revelation to determine whether the act is ever permissible and, only if it is, then ask whether the circumstances warrant it in this case. One cannot pre-empt the former question by assuming that every action is potentially permitted.
While some theologians try to advance that way of thinking, it is far from what the Church teaches or has ever taught. The expression "The path to hell is paved with good intentions" works very well here. Good intentions or complex circumstances can never change an immoral act into something good.
If a person is ignorant of the sinfulness of a moral act he commits, however, and his ignorance is through no fault of his own, his culpability is less than someone who knew the sinfulness of the act or intentionally failed to investigate the moral value of the act. Forming a true conscience and then following it is essential if we are to live morally upright lives. A true conscience is based on objective moral truths—namely, the Ten Commandments.
In Matthew 19:16, the rich young man asks Jesus what he must do to have eternal life. Jesus responds, "If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments." The Ten Commandments require that we love and respect God and our neighbor.
We must never use others as a means to an end, for each person has dignity and is an end in himself. When we thwart the sex act through sterilization or contraception, we not only violate the natural law, we violate the commandments by using another as a means for selfish gratification instead of as an end, that is, someone to whom we give of ourselves entirely and selflessly.
Sterilization done in order to prevent childbirth is never permissible, and so no particular circumstances including your own warrant it.
Jan Wakelin
Q: When my priest is saying the words of consecration and he gets to the words "He broke the bread, gave it to his disciples, and said . . . " he breaks the host in two on the word "broke." Should he be doing this?
A: No, he should not. The breaking of the host is known as the "fraction," and there is a special place for it in the Mass—namely, in the Fraction Rite, which occurs after the Sign of Peace and immediately before the Communion Rite.
Since the Church has a specific place in the liturgy for the fraction, to perform it at another time subverts the role of the Fraction Rite and must not be done.
Further, the rubrics in the Sacramentary tie the meaning of the Fraction Rite to the commingling, where a piece of the host is placed in the chalice. The symbolism of this is commonly explained today as representing the resurrection of Christ, the reuniting of his Body and Blood.
The rubrics of the Mass link the meaning of the fraction to the commingling, stating: "Meanwhile, [the priest] takes the host and breaks it over the paten. He places a small piece in the chalice, saying inaudibly: ‘May this mingling of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ bring eternal life to us who receive it.’"
Since nothing else is said—either in the rubrics or the prayers—about the breaking of the host, its primary purpose in the current order of Mass seems to be to obtain a piece of the host for use in the commingling. Any other meaning attached to the fraction that precedes the commingling would be secondary.
If one breaks the host on the words "He broke the bread," it would have a different primary meaning—either a reference Jesus’ breaking the bread for his disciples to partake or to the breaking of his Body on the Cross or both. Thus it would amount to adding a new rite to the Mass, which cannot be done (see below).
Snapping a host in two on the word "broke" is also dangerous. It is done so quickly and carelessly that excessive particles are likely to result and possibly be scattered. Priests who do it may think that they are heightening the symbolism of the Mass, but they are actually detracting from it as well as giving scandal to many of the faithful.
As always, the dictum of Vatican II applies: "No person, even if he be a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the Liturgy on his own authority" (Sacrosanctum Concilium 22, cf. CIC 846 §1).
James Akin
Q: A Jehovah’s Witness asked me why God did not reveal himself as a Trinity in the Old Testament, and I could not reply. Any suggestions?
A: Just as Jesus did not stand up in the manger and announce his divinity, God did not stand on Mt. Sinai and give a theological exposition of the three distinct Persons who exist consubstantially and eternally. God is like a good teacher, who reveals his truth gradually, planting seeds, and evoking the truth of the conclusions from his students. We see Jesus doing this with his apostles in Matthew 16, when he asks them who he is.
A college professor of mine once said to be leery of someone who tells you everything about himself in the first five minutes you know him. Jesus did not do this, and neither has the Father.
In the Old Testament God needed to establish monotheism for the Jews to make them stand apart from all the polytheistic religions that abounded. Monotheism was almost unheard of, and if Yahweh had tried announcing that he is three Persons the people of the day might have misunderstood it as Tritheism, which is a heresy.
Today, we have enough trouble trying to get people to believe in the one true God, let alone many. Thus the New Testament was a better time for God to have revealed His true nature, now that the danger of a polytheistic misunderstanding had been eliminated.
Jason Evert
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