In this episode Trent reveals three Mormon doctrines that recently surprised him in spite of his lengthy study of Mormonism.

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3 Shocking Mormon Doctrines I Just Discovered

So, I’ve studied Mormonism for quite some time, but recently I came across three clarifications of Mormon doctrine I had not heard before. So I wanted to share those with you today.

And to make sure I’m not misrepresenting their faith, I asked a group of Mormon apologists to review today’s episode.

So, the first surprising thing I found was that there is no teaching prohibiting a Mormon from subscribing to the Counsel of Trent or supporting us for as little as $5 a month at TrentHornPodcast.com.

And if you aren’t Mormon, you should also consider subscribing and supporting us to help us keep creating all this great content.

Okay, actually, the first thing I discovered was that:

1. Mormonism Isn’t Completely Pro-Life

This one genuinely surprised me because I assumed that, despite our wide theological differences, Mormons always seemed really strong on social issues.

During the debate over so-called same-sex marriage in the 2000s, the LDS, or Mormon, Church and its members represented some of the strongest advocates for traditional marriage. LGBT activists even protested Mormon temples because of their opposition to so-called same-sex marriage.

And I had always known Mormons to be strongly against abortion, so I assumed their position on abortion was similar to the Catholic view, which is that basically all abortions are wrong.

However, after dialoguing with Mormon apologists, I’ve learned the Mormon Church allows exceptions for its members to obtain some abortions.

The Mormon General Handbook says that while it opposes “elective abortion for personal or social convenience,” it allows possible exceptions when the pregnancy results from rape or incest, a woman’s life or health is in danger, or the unborn child won’t survive after birth.

Now, this doesn’t mean Mormons have free license to pursue these exceptions for any reason.

Mormons are still supposed to seek revelation from God and discuss the issue with their spiritual leaders in order to approve their decision.

But the fact remains that Mormon theology allows the direct killing of some biological human beings in their mothers’ wombs.

And as I noted in my episode on when Protestants were pro-choice, it’s not uncommon to see this less-than-total pro-life position even among some Protestants.

I recently dialogued with Mormon apologist Luke Hansen on the issue of abortion, which is linked below, and we found a lot of common ground, including on the fact that the Mormon Church does not prohibit its members from completely outlawing abortion.

And so it would be good if Mormons supported total abortion bans.

I’d also note that while I appreciate that the Catholic Church has a strong teaching against abortion, I also give credit that the average person who calls himself a Mormon is more likely to be against legal abortion than the average person who calls himself a Catholic.

Though, given the conduct of some people who call themselves Catholic, you can see how that might happen.

But Luke and I also noted that there is a difficulty in assessing the Mormon position on abortion because the Mormon Church doesn’t say why abortion is forbidden even for stressful social reasons but is permitted in cases like pregnancies that result from rape and incest.

The Mormon Church just authoritatively teaches what is and isn’t allowed.

This has led Mormon apologists to speculate on the matter having something to do with the Church’s teaching that human souls existed prior to a person’s conception, and so not all unborn humans may have human souls.

But in talking with these Mormons, I surprised them—and I may surprise you as well—by pointing out that the Catholic Church does not teach when human ensoulment takes place.

In the Vatican’s 1974 Declaration on Procured Abortion, one of the footnotes says the text “leaves aside the question of the moment when the spiritual soul is infused.”

It says this doesn’t matter because, even if the soul were infused later:

“There is still nothing less than a human life, preparing for and calling for a soul in which the nature received from parents is completed.”

And the mere probable presence of the soul is enough to justify banning abortion, just as it would be wrong to demolish a building if there were probable evidence of someone still inside.

The Catholic Church doesn’t have an infallible teaching on ensoulment because we do not have confidence that God revealed the answer to this question.

However, there is an infallible teaching on the wrongness of abortion because even if there was disagreement on ensoulment, the Fathers, saints, and past Church teachers all agreed abortion was wrong.

This is why the Catechism of the Catholic Church says:

“Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law.”

So my problem with the Mormon position on abortion, which I discuss in my conversation with Luke, is that if it is wrong to kill a being because poverty is very stressful, then it is wrong to kill that same kind of being because conception due to rape is also stressful.

If it’s wrong to kill a child conceived in rape after he is born, then it should be wrong to kill that same child before he is born.

One might claim the aborted child did not have a soul yet while the child conceived outside of rape did.

But there’s no reason to believe that’s true beyond speculation.

And I firmly believe everyone I meet who was conceived in rape has a soul, and I see no reason to believe many other children aborted for being conceived in rape did not have souls.

Even if no soul were present, a unique human being still exists and should be protected in virtue of his or her humanity.

This is why in my dialogue with Luke I said one reason I love being Catholic is that even if I weren’t Catholic, I’d still be completely pro-life.

So it gives me confidence that an ethical position I arrive at by reason is also one boldly proclaimed in the deposit of faith.

So while I am grateful that Mormon doctrine opposes almost all abortions, and that the Mormon Church has spoken out against Idaho’s pro-abortion Proposition 1 that is on the ballot this fall, I’d be even happier if this teaching were changed to affirm the wrongness of all direct abortions.

And given that Mormon doctrine has changed on things like the wrongness of ordaining Blacks to the priesthood or the permissibility of plural marriage, it’s not impossible for this to happen in the future.

2. Mormonism Doesn’t Teach the Traditional Doctrine of Hell

I had always known that Mormon eschatology describes a three-tiered heaven along with a place I assumed to be hell that they call “outer darkness.”

Jesus uses this phrase when he says that while some Gentiles will be in the kingdom of heaven with the patriarchs, the sons of the kingdom—or some Jewish people—will be thrown into the outer darkness.

There men will weep and gnash their teeth.

The Mormon Church website quotes Revelation and the Doctrine and Covenants, saying that hell is, in one sense, a temporary underworld, but in another sense, for some creatures, it is permanent.

It says:

“Hell is permanent. It is for those who are found ‘filthy still.’ This is the place where Satan, his angels, and the sons of perdition—those who have denied the Son after the Father has revealed Him—will dwell eternally.”

Now, I always thought that Mormon outer darkness was similar to the Christian concept of hell, in that it was a place where a wide variety of sinners who culpably reject God would spend eternity.

At the very least, you would think extremely evil people like the unrepentant, sadistic serial killers I talked about in my last episode would end up there.

But that’s not the case with Mormonism’s outer darkness.

If you saw the musical The Book of Mormon, you might have thought Mormons are totally neurotic and worry that minor sins, like framing your brother for stealing a doughnut when you were a kid, could get you sent to hell, as described in the banger of a song “Spooky Mormon Hell Dream.”

And while the song is a delightful romp, it’s theologically inaccurate.

The song puts Hitler, Jeffrey Dahmer, Genghis Khan, and Johnnie Cochran in Mormon hell, but many Mormons would say those people won’t be in hell, or outer darkness.

They say this fate is reserved for a tiny group of humans called the “sons of perdition.”

Outer darkness is also related to the unforgivable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, or Holy Ghost.

Doctrine and Covenants says this about the outer darkness:

“Thus saith the Lord concerning all those who know my power, and have been made partakers thereof, and suffered themselves through the power of the devil to be overcome, and to deny the truth and defy my power—

“They are they who are the sons of perdition, of whom I say that it had been better for them never to have been born;

“For they are vessels of wrath, doomed to suffer the wrath of God, with the devil and his angels in eternity.”

So to be a “son of perdition,” one has to have not just a lot of knowledge about Mormonism and reject it.

You would have to have almost supernatural, immediate knowledge of the truth of Mormonism and still reject it.

This would mean extremely wicked sinners, like sadistic serial killers who knew the moral law but never knew the claims of Mormonism, would not go to outer darkness.

Instead, they would go to what Mormons call the telestial kingdom, which is the lowest part of heaven. It does not know God or Jesus but still surpasses all human understanding in the happiness and bliss one finds there.

This makes the Mormon doctrine of salvation much closer to universalism than the traditional Christian view of hell.

In fact, many Mormons share the universalist belief that some of the wicked will go to hell temporarily as a kind of purgatory before they enter into heaven.

The Mormon president Richard Kimbell said:

“The sin against the Holy Ghost requires such knowledge that it is manifestly impossible for the rank and file to commit such a sin.”

In contrast, the Catholic Church teaches that dying in a state of mortal sin is a very real possibility for many different kinds of people.

And so we must remain vigilant since, as St. Peter says, the devil is a prowling lion looking to devour souls.

Resist him, firm in your faith.

And finally, number three:

3. Mormons Revised Their Rules on Eternal Plural Marriage

In an October 1998 General Conference, former Mormon president Gordon Hinckley said:

“I wish to state categorically that this Church has nothing whatever to do with those practicing polygamy.”

However, in 1843, Joseph Smith announced that God had revealed to him that polygamy, or plural marriage, was morally acceptable.

This was recorded in Doctrine and Covenants 132, which says:

“If he have ten virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit adultery, for they belong to him, and they are given unto him; therefore is he justified.”

Todd Compton, a Mormon and professional historian, has shown that Joseph Smith had at least 33 wives who were unofficially “sealed” to him in marriage, some of whom were married to other men or were teenagers.

Now, in the late 1800s, the United States government outlawed polygamy and prosecuted Mormons who engaged in the practice.

But this conflict eased in 1890, when Mormon president Wilford Woodruff made a statement about the matter now called “Official Declaration 1.”

Woodruff said:

“We are not teaching polygamy or plural marriage, nor permitting any person to enter into its practice.”

This statement was made in the present tense without implying that plural marriage was wrong, contrary to divine law, or something the Church could never reinstitute.

Woodruff said the government had outlawed polygamy, or plural marriage, and so he intended to:

“Submit to those laws, and to use my influence with the members of the Church over which I preside to have them do likewise.”

However, Mormonism does not reject the concept of plural marriage itself because it still teaches that couples who are sealed in the Mormon temple will remain married forever in heaven, and they will have creative potential in the eternities.

The Mormon General Handbook says:

“If a husband and wife have been sealed and the wife dies, the man may be sealed to another woman if she is not already sealed to another man.”

This means that in heaven both women will be married to the same man for all eternity.

But this creates a problem for women whose husbands die and then remarry, because you end up with women who have two husbands.

While the early Mormon Church practiced polygyny—one man with several wives—it never practiced polyandry, or one woman with many husbands.

So the General Handbook says:

“If a husband and wife have been sealed and the husband dies, the woman may not be sealed to another man unless she receives a cancellation of the first sealing.”

Although, I admit, that kind of undercuts the whole promise of being together forever in heaven if your spouse can just unseal the sealing.

The issue also gets complicated because people can be sealed in marriage after death, such as if they become Mormon but were never sealed in the temple in this life.

Traditionally, the Mormon Church taught that if a deceased woman was sealed to a man, then she could not be sealed to anyone else after death.

The 1976 handbook said:

“A deceased woman having had more than one civil marriage, but having been sealed to one of her husbands during life, cannot be sealed to any other husband by proxy because she exercised her election to be so sealed during lifetime.”

However, the current Mormon handbook says:

“A deceased woman may be sealed to all men to whom she was legally married during her life.”

But the rule adds the caveat that if the woman was sealed to a man in this life:

“All her husbands must be deceased before she is sealed to other men to whom she was married.”

But to paraphrase the Sadducees: who will the woman be married to in the resurrection of the dead?

Jesus said:

“Is not this why you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.”

The Sadducees’ dilemma isn’t a dilemma because the woman, like everyone else in heaven, won’t be married to anyone.

Now, Mormon apologists typically say Jesus is talking about how no one will “get married” in heaven, not that no one will “be married” in heaven.

But that doesn’t answer the Sadducees’ question about someone who was married on earth to multiple men.

Another response is that the woman won’t be married to any of her earthly husbands because she wasn’t sealed to any of them in the temple.

But that’s not what Jesus says in his answer.

Many people naturally ask the Sadducees’ question in cases of women with multiple husbands, and the Mormon answer seems to be: “We don’t know who she will be married to. God will figure that out.”

But the fact that Jesus doesn’t give this kind of answer to the Sadducees is a troubling piece of data against Mormon theology, along with the many practical puzzles this doctrine creates.

This is why I’m grateful for the Catholic Church’s teaching that marriage is a sacrament—a sign that points us toward heavenly realities but is not itself the heavenly reality.

Once we get to heaven, the signs pointing us there won’t be there anymore.

No one will be baptized in heaven, confess sins, receive the Eucharist, be ordained, receive Anointing of the Sick or Confirmation, or be married.

Those realities point toward the glory of God in heaven, and so they won’t be needed anymore once we arrive in heaven.

So those are three facts about Mormonism I recently learned about.

And if you’d like more resources on how Catholics respond to Mormon claims, check out our articles at Catholic.com.

Thank you so much for watching, and I hope you have a very blessed day.