Heavenly joy is said to be joy beyond what we can imagine. Both Mormons and Catholics teach this, claiming that man’s ultimate end is happiness through a union with God. The nature of both union and happiness is interpreted radically differently in each religion. This stems from their disparate accounts of God and result in joy of completely different natures.
Unity With God
Mormons believe that god, specifically Heavenly Father, was once a man who, through the eternities, became exalted as the god of this world.
As man now is, God once was:
As God now is, man may be.
God and man, then, belong to the same category of being. The distinction between creator and creature is not one of nature, but one of time and knowledge; Heavenly Father is an exalted man, whereas man in his current state is not, but the latter can eventually become exalted. “In truth, every man is a potential god in embryo, in fulfillment of that eternal law that like begets like.”
Man’s ultimate end, then, is to progress through eternity and become a god himself. “Then shall they be gods, because they have all power, and the angels are subject unto them” (132:20). They do this through first having faith in Jesus Christ, repenting of their sins, being baptized and receiving other ordinances, and being obedient to god’s commands until the end (4). Although faith drives these actions, the primary purpose is active obedience to god; progression begins in this life and continues into the next. Mormonism holds that man’s end is driven by his own agency in the face of opposition and made possible through Christ’s sacrifice.
This is not the case in Catholicism. God in Catholicism is completely unique. He is the uncreated cause of all things and has always existed as he is. He is not supported or acted on by any outside force; he is ipsum esse subsistens, subsistent Being itself. This uniqueness means that man by nature can never become a god.
Instead, man’s ultimate end is to be united to God by grace, communing with him through a direct, supernatural knowledge given by God, becoming “participants of the divine nature” (see 2 Pet. 1:4). Although man remains a creature, God elevates man’s intellect to know him directly, and man’s will is perfectly happy in possessing the Divine Goodness. This is known as the Beatific Vision. Although man’s free will is important in attaining salvation, Catholicism does not teach that man simply chooses his way to heaven, but willingly cooperates with and freely subjects his will to God. Man’s end is not merely made possible through Christ. Union with Christ, with God, is man’s end.
This vast divide (which I’ve written more about here) also shifts how Mormons and Catholics pursue their end on earth. This is illustrated well through the fall of man.
The Fall
“I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself” (Gen. 3:10, NRSVCE).
Adam’s and Eve’s recognition of their nakedness shows their fall from innocence. Before the fall, Adam and Eve lacked the experience of evil, sin, and the disorder that follows from the separation from God. Their wills were free and elevated by original justice: their wills and reason were ordered toward God, and they were able to control their passions and emotions in a way properly ordered toward man’s ultimate end (see Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 95 a. 1). Original justice was the state in which God created prelapsarian man. However, when Adam directly disobeyed God, he rejected the supernatural gifts of original justice and brought sin and disorder into the world.
Man is now born into original sin. His passions and will are not easily ordered toward God. Ordering ourselves toward a union with God in this fallen world is possible only through the grace of Christ’s sacrifice. Through it, we are continually sanctified if we cooperate with God by living virtuously and participating in the sacraments. However, ordering ourselves correctly involves more than external practice; we must love God with charity: loving him purely for who he is. Without charity, we cannot be ordered toward God as our ultimate end.
Mormonism, on the other hand, has a unique interpretation of the fall. For Mormons, Adam’s and Eve’s innocence meant they did not know good or evil, because each depends on the other.
It must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my firstborn in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad (2 Nephi 2:11).
Without the opposition of the fallen world, our first parents “would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin” (2 Nephi 2:23). In other words, progression was impossible. Thus, when Eve ate the fruit, she did so with a mouthful of wisdom. She recognized a paradox: opposition is necessary for man’s progression, but a perfectly good god could not place that opposition into the world. Therefore, her and Adam’s fall was part of god’s plan, as it allowed man to begin pursuing his final end.
The arena of a fallen world is the only place man can learn to have faith and choose to obey god. By fighting opposition, man solidifies his goodness. This prepares him to become the god he was born to become, proving himself against evil in a triumph of the will, bolstered by faith, his failings forgiven through Christ’s sacrifice.
Interestingly, Catholics too believe that man must fight his way through this fallen world, letting his faith drive him to obey God. However, this is not the end of man, but the beginning. Man’s ultimate end is higher than simple obedience; it is a union of his will to God’s:
Idem velle atque idem nolle—to want the same thing, and to reject the same thing—was recognized by antiquity as the authentic content of love: the one becomes similar to the other, and this leads to a community of will and thought (Deus Caritas Est 17).
Thus, even if man is obedient and virtuous, he will not be able to cooperate with God’s grace to attain his ultimate end if he does not unite his will to God’s through charity.
Satisfying Human Desire
When the highest fulfillment of joy is progression in knowledge and acquisition of other divine attributes, the nature of this joy is greatly inferior to a joy fulfilled by the infinite God. This is perhaps the most sorrowful difference between the Catholicism’s and Mormonism’s ends. As St. Thomas Aquinas explains, man’s will is ordered to the universal good. His happiness cannot be fulfilled by anything finite or created (ST I-II q.2 a. 8).
This is a grand metaphysical distinction between Mormonism and Catholicism. Joy in an accumulation of created things could never become the uncreated Good, even if they continued forever. Infinite duration can never become an uncreated being. The nature of joy follows the nature of its object. If man’s joy consists in becoming like another created being, no matter how powerful, that being remains created, and ultimately finite. Nothing short of the uncreated Creator, the trinitarian God, can fulfill man’s deepest desires; the Beatific Vision is the only end that can fully satisfy man’s yearning for joy.