The disturbing thing about this article is the implication in this article that Mormons think that Non-Mormons do.

Tresa Edmunds in the Guardian explains why Mormons do not worship Mary:

In much of the Christian world, 8 September is recognised as the birthday of Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ. Which, as a Mormon, was news to me. Compared with many other Christian sects, Latter Day Saints don't appear to pay much attention to Mary. We revere her as the mother of Christ, celebrate her sacrifices, and honour her as we do Eve or Sarah or other heroines of the scriptures, but we don't worship her.


The Book of Mormonteaches of Mary's sacred calling as the mother of Christ, referring to her as "a virgin, most beautiful and fair above all other virgins" (1 Nephi 11:15) and "a precious and chosen vessel". (Alma 7:10) Around Christmas time, congregations around the world host nativity festivals as we celebrate the birth of Christ and her role in it. She is special to us, but we do not believe in much of the Mary worship of other Christian faiths, including the immaculate conception of Mary, her perpetual virginity, or the assumption.

The first Article of Faith reads: "We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost." Unlike many other Christian denominations, Mormons do not believe in the Trinity, but that God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are three distinct personages with their own roles in eternity. This difference in belief ripples out into many other areas of doctrine, but it has important ramifications for Mary. Much of her worship stems from being the mother of God, an intercessor in prayer to her son on our behalf. But Mormons believe that we pray to the heavenly father, with Christ being our only intercessor. Without using her in that role, Mary no longer has grounds for worship, although retaining our reverence and gratitude.

The highlighted phrases merit a hearty "Huh?"

Obviously orthodox Christians do not worship Mary, albeit the overwhelming majority of Christians throughout history have viewed Mary, and the saints, as powerful intercessors.

What may be going on here is revealed in the underlined sentence - Mormons are not supposed to pray to anyone but God the Father, who alone is the proper object of supplicatory prayer and alone is capable of answering prayers.  In point of fact, Mormons do not worship Jesus, according to the Bruce McConkie, a member of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles:

1. We worship the Father and him only and no one else.

We do not worship the Son, and we do not worship the Holy Ghost. I know perfectly well what the scriptures say about worshipping Christ and Jehovah, but they are speaking in an entirely different sense--the sense of standing in awe and being reverentially grateful to him who has redeemed us. Worship in the true and saving sense is reserved for God the first, the Creator.

Our revelations say that the Father "is infinite and eternal," that he created "man, male and female,"

And gave unto them commandments that they should love and serve him, the only living and true God, and that he should be the only being whom they should worship. [D&C 20:17–19]

Jesus said:

True worshippers shall [note that this is mandatory] worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to worship him.


For unto such hath God promised his Spirit. And they who worship him, must worship in spirit and in truth. [JST John 4:25–26]

There is no other way, no other approved system of worship.

The issue of prayer is wrapped into the issue of worship by McConkie as follows:

Another peril is that those so involved often begin to pray directly to Christ because of some special friendship they feel has been developed. In this connection a current and unwise book, which advocates gaining a special relationship with Jesus, contains this sentence:

Because the Savior is our mediator, our prayers go through Christ to the Father, and the Father answers our prayers through his Son.

This is plain sectarian nonsense. Our prayers are addressed to the Father, and to him only. They do not go through Christ, or the Blessed Virgin, or St. Genevieve or along the beads of a rosary. We are entitled to "come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:16).

This is an interesting working out of the Arianism at the heart of Mormonism.  For orthodox Christianity, Christ is of one substance with the Father and the Holy Spirity and always has been.  For Arians, including Mormons, Christ is of a lesser rank and substance than the Father, and is a creature himself.  As such, the logic of not praying to Christ is abundantly clear.

But look at the result - while Mormons falsely claim that "other Christians" have elevated Mary to the position of God, in truth, Mormons have lowered Christ to the position of Mary.  Christ is not truly God; he is simply the most elevated creature. This is explicit in McConkie's sermon:

Our relationship with the Son is one of brother or sister in the premortal life and one of being led to the Father by him while in this mortal sphere. He is the Lord Jehovah who championed our cause before the foundations of the earth were laid. He is the God of Israel, the promised Messiah, and the Redeemer of the world.

I'm not sure that all Mormons really understand the implications of this theology, or whether they understand that they do not pray to Christ.  The circumlocution of "praying to" and "praying through" provides sufficient ambiguity to take either position.

On the other hand, I think that there are Mormons who know exactly what their doctrines entail, and who fight the full disclosure of their doctrines out of fear that potential converts would be deterred if they understood that they were not permitted to have a "personal relationship with Jesus."  That at least was my experience in this thread from Theology for Dummies.  Likewise, McConkie acknowledges how difficult this doctrine is for the presumed target audience:

Now I know that some may be offended at the counsel that they should not strive for a special and personal relationship with Christ. It will seem to them as though I am speaking out against mother love, or Americanism, or the little red schoolhouse. But I am not. There is a fine line here over which true worshipers will not step.

From my interactions with a particular Mormon troll, I have become progressively more puzzled by the (apparent) Mormon insistence on - repulsion concerning - the false notion that Non-Mormons worship Mary.  It strikes me as odd that any Mormon would accuse Non-Mormons of adding Mary to the "godhead" when Mormon doctrine explicitly includes a fourth person, an un-named female goddess - to the Mormon "godhead" in the mysterious form of the "Heavenly Mother." Although this figure is seldom discussed, she lurks in the background, and is, in fact, found in Tresa Edmund's essay:

Personally, Mary has significance to me far beyond other women in our scriptures. She is the closest avatar we have to our heavenly mother, and proof of the love and care Christ had towards the women of his day. In stark contrast to how religions have treated women throughout time, her life shows that God knows women are powerful enough to bring forth his most mighty miracles.

Presumably, Mormons do not "worship" the Heavenly Mother for the same reason that they don't worship Jesus, but worship is the proper response to divinity, and insofar as the Heavenly Mother is divine in Mormon theology, the question remains, why not?

"Let's you and him fight."

Francis Beckwith responds to an essay in a January 2007 edition of the New Republic that tries to split orthodox Christians from Mormons over the issue of Natural Law.

Linker’s argument is flawed in several ways. It is, first, an uncharitable reading of Mormon thought. For it isolates the office of prophet and the exaltation and authority of God from the essential components of LDS metaphysics. Although the LDS prophet may offer new revelation, his authority is neither boundless nor under his absolute control. His pronouncements are limited by certain eternal principles – such as those articulated by Smith and other Mormon prophets – as well as the moral and religious requirements of the LDS canon of Scripture and the numerous teachings of the church’s General Authorities.


For, as we have seen, the LDS universe is shot through with teleology, moral and otherwise. The Mormon God is bound by an unchanging moral law outside himself that is part of the infrastructure of an eternally existing cosmos. This, of course, does not mean that one may not raise philosophical questions about the coherence of having a moral law without a moral lawgiver that is identical to the Good. Rather, it means that Linker locates the dispute between Mormons and traditional Christians in the wrong place. It is not a question of whether one can know a natural moral law that exists. It is over whether or not that natural moral law is merely part of the furniture of the universe or ultimately in the Being of God.

Mormons and traditional Christians differ in many ways; but the attempt to pick a fight between them over belief in a natural law is not one of them.

Here is the New Republic article that Beckwith is responding to.

It's adorable how liberals get interested in scholastic theology every four years.

Mrs. God.

Here is an article on the Mormon doctrine that God has a wife (or maybe wives) by a Mormon:

A programme on BBC2 has made news for presenting scholar Francesca Stavrakopoulou's theory that "God had a wife". The reactions from the religious and academic world were varied, but for Mormons, it can best be summed up as, "Yeah. We know."


The doctrine of Heavenly Mother was introduced by Joseph Smith in the early days of the church, and affirmed by prophet after prophet in the years since, but without much elaboration. Much of the discussion about Heavenly Mother consists of references to the logic of the relationship – if God is the father of our spirits, as Mormons believe, then there would need to be a mother. The best known of these arguments is found in a favourite Mormon hymn written by Eliza Snow. In "O My Father" she writes:

"In the heavens are parents single? No, the thought makes reason stare!
Truth is reason, truth eternal Tells me I've a mother there."

Heavenly Mother also fits into the unique and complicated Mormon cosmology, where the family unit is often referred to as the "building block of eternity". We have families here on Earth that we can carry on in the next life, in the same model as the God we worship.

Worshipping Heavenly Mother, though, has proven to be a dicey proposition. You can find mentions of her in the manuals we teach from at church, but they don't go far beyond "she exists", and efforts by noted scholars and writers to expound on that have, in several instances, resulted in excommunication for apostasy. At the 1991 October general conference, then apostle and future prophet Gordon B. Hinckley gave a talk that has since governed the approach members are to take toward Heavenly Mother.

He emphasised that we were not to offer prayers to her, citing the instructions of Christ to pray to " our father". In an obvious reference to those scholars and writers, he warned against "the activities of a few who evidently are seeking to lead others in the paths which they are following". He then explained that "none of us can add to or diminish the glory of her of whom we have no revealed knowledge".

That talk, combined with notable excommunications and other disciplinary action that would follow closely in the years to come contributed to an environment in which Heavenly Mother is largely left alone. As a mouthy youngster I would try to discover why we didn't know much about her and was offered well-meaning but problematic suggestions from fellow members. Some guessed that she was busy with other tasks, some that Heavenly Father wouldn't want her name profaned, rendering her too sacred to talk about.

Since, presumably, the wife of God is divine, it would seem that the Mormon faith recognizes a divine Quaternity.

Eternal Progression.

Mormons answer the question, was God a sinner in the past?



Man in the street interviews are usually unfair.  Most people who are ambushed with "big think" questions do their best, but they haven't practiced the vocabulary to articulate what they think they think.  Sometimes the answers represent poor understanding or subpar religious instruction, but in this case there it seems that the answers given are within the scope of permissible Mormon opinion.

Something to support every kind of prejudice.

Patheos is hosting a symposium, which this week turns on the question, "Can Christians Vote for a Mormon for President?"

Warren Cole Smith says "no" because of Mormonism's ahistorical and anti-historical beliefs and because it would be a major boost for Mormon missionaries:

What Weyrich understood was that you can't have it "both ways" when it comes to Romney's faith. You can't say that his religious beliefs don't matter, but his "values" do. The Christian worldview teaches that there is a short tether binding beliefs to the values and behaviors that flow from them. If the beliefs are false, then the behavior will eventually—but inevitably—be warped. Mormonism is particularly troubling on this point because Mormons believe in the idea of "continuing revelation." They may believe one thing today, and something else tomorrow. This is why Mormons have changed their views, for example, on marriage and race. Polygamy was once a key distinctive of the religion. Now, of course, it is not. Mormons once forbade blacks from leadership roles. Now they do not. What else will change?

J.E. Dyer says "why not?" because Mormon politicians look remarkably like every other politicians:

Mormons in politics run on party platforms, but while their voters tend to espouse socially conservative positions, the best-known LDS politicians don't always do so. Mitt Romney came late to favoring limits on abortion, for example, and Jon Huntsman is passionate about legalizing narcotics. Senators Bob Bennett, Orrin Hatch, Jake Garn, and Mike Crapo have been largely indistinguishable from centrist Republicans in terms of their voting records and stances on issues. The political "product" of Mormons, while variable, has been the opposite of radical and scary.


LDS politicians work within the limits of constitutional government. They have no history of failing to respect First Amendment protections, nor do they advocate applying religious principles inappropriately to the activities of the state. This, it seems to me, is what we need to know about Mormons when we are contemplating voting for one.

And Jeremy Lott offers his Catholic version of "Two Cheers for Mormonism" and a simple rule to guard against a bigotry that can all to easily be turned against everyone:

The exact question put to the symposium was "Should traditional Christians be comfortable supporting Mormon candidates for office?" Allow me to answer the question with another one: "Why should they not be comfortable supporting Mormon candidates?" So far as I am concerned, the only legitimate answer is not a sectarian one.


There may indeed be good grounds to oppose a Mormon candidate for office. Yet they ought to be the same grounds that you would use to oppose someone from your own religious tradition. Random traditional Christian voter X should not vote for Mormon candidate Y for the same reason that he would not for a Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish candidate—because you disagree with the candidate about political matters of great import.

If you care deeply about limiting abortion, as many traditional Christians do, then you probably ought not support former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, even if you both happen to be Catholic. Instead, you should consider supporting Jeff Flake, Rob Bishop, or Mike Crapo—Mormons legislators with solid pro-life voting records all.

When I put the case to evangelicals like that, they usually concede they can agree with most Mormons on, say, abortion, gay marriage, and the importance of family generally. But then they insist that Mormons believe "weird things" that make them suspect and probably members of a cult.

So: no sale.

The Sacred Feminine in Mormonism.

Religion Dispatches "Mormon" blogger, Joanna Brooks, pens a post that attempts to crack the door open for a Mormon "goddess":

Is Heavenly Mother Making a Comeback in Mormonism?

It’s a little-known fact: according to Mormon tradition, God is not an old man but rather a male-female couple: a Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother. Yet for most of the twentieth century you could go a month of Sundays in most Mormon congregations without hearing Heavenly Mother so much as mentioned—a taboo that may finally be waning.


The Mormon doctrine of a Heavenly Mother was articulated in 1845 by the Mormon author and thinker Eliza R. Snow, in the lyrics to a hymn:

In the heavens are parents single? No, the thought makes reason stare!
Truth is reason, truth eternal Tells me I’ve a mother there.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, at the height of Mormon speculative theology, Heavenly Mother was referenced frequently by both male and female LDS Church leaders. Since that time, an agglomeration of folk tradition and anti-feminist retrenchment made talking about Mother in Heaven virtually taboo. Growing up, I heard various unsatisfying explanations for the absence of Heavenly Mother from Mormon discourse, including the canard that Heavenly Father didn’t want us to talk about Her lest someone sully Her name.

In the early 1990s, Mormon feminists challenged the taboo with an outpouring of creative and theological works dedicated to Heavenly Mother. In 1991, LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley responded to the heightened visibility of Heavenly Mother by cautioning Church members against praying to Her. President Hinckley’s cautionary address, along with excommunications and firings of prominent Mormon feminists, renewed the perception among mainstream conservative Mormons that Heavenly Mother should not be talked about. In 1996, Brigham Young University Professor Gail Houston was fired for publicly describing her personal relationship with her Mother in Heaven, including her use of “meditation” and “visualization” to deepen that relationship. Houston’s case brought BYU under censure from the American Association of University Professors.

But new evidence suggests that the taboo might finally be easing. Research funded by the BYU Women’s Research Institute and published this year in the journal BYU Studies reviewed more than 600 references to Heavenly Mother in Mormon discourse since 1844. ”Most Mormons believe that discourse about Heavenly Mother is forbidden or inappropriate,” write study authors David Paulson and Martin Pulido, a misperception the authors soundly dispel by demonstrating that it has no basis in Mormon history or doctrine.

LDS women’s advocacy groups are also making notable efforts to heighten awareness of the female divine, and some Mormons are reporting an uptick in Mother-in-Heaven references over the pulpit last weekend—it being Mother’s Day, and all.

Is Heavenly Mother making a comeback in Mormonism? Here’s hoping.

I suspect that this post will have orthodox Mormons pulling their hair out, particularly the bit about "God is not an old man but rather a male-female couple: a Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother."

Will Brooks' prophecy turn out to be true?  Who knows?  Certainly, the Heavenly Mother figure is vouched for - mostly sotto voce -  in Mormon writings.  Why she isn't part of the Mormon Godhead hasn't - so far as I know - been explained. Perhaps some future Mormon Aquinas will synthesize an explanation for why there is a trinity that doesn't include this other mysterious figure that doesn't rely on buried assumptions from the 19th Century that gender roles divide up between "public" and "private" activity. Otherwise, human beings hate disorder in their intellectual systems, and there will be constant pressure to explain or assign a role to the Heavenly Mother.

Then, there is this quandary outlined by "The Attorney's Widow":

So I got asked to talk on Mothers Day and had to chuckle a little since getting to know my own Heavenly Mother has been an intense process and something very dear to me over this past year. And my first thought was to give a talk on her, but I worried that people would think it was weird, since in the LDS culture it seems to be very taboo to discuss our Heavenly Mother. Some how as women we are supposed to desire to be like her and become a Goddess as she is, but we are taught very little about her! I worried over it and tried to formulate other ideas for a good Mothers Day talk, but they just wouldn't come. I knew I had to talk about her, I knew that being asked to speak on this day was God's way of telling me to take that chance.


So I did, I hope it came off as well as I heard it in my mind while writing it. I hope it inspires and empowers other women to connect with the devine feminine-our Eternal Heavenly Mother, and allow her to have a role in their lives as I have felt her in mine.

Bill Maher manages to get under the skin of a liberal Mormon.

Liberal Mormon blogger Joanna Brooks is really offended about a "joke" by Bill Maher about Mitt Romney's "magic underwear."

This week, on David Letterman, Bill Maher got ugly about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his Mormonism.


“Don’t get me started on Mitt Romney,” Maher sneered to Letterman. ”Because Mitt Romney will teach America what’s really in Mormonism.”

“Mitt likes to gloss over... ‘well, we’re just different types of Christians.’ No. No, I was raised Catholic,” Maher leaned in and raised an eyebrow, setting up for his big punchline: ”And there was no magic underwear.”

Big laughs from the crowd at CBS studios. Right on cue.

Magic underwear?

It’s no secret that highly observant LDS people wear sacred undergarments as an expression of religious commitment.

But magic underwear? Please.

There is a historic Mormon folk belief that garments offer a kind of protection to their wearers. But for the vast majority of Mormons, garments first and foremost represent the daily wearing of a covenant to lives of modesty, chastity, and faith.

The same way an orthodox Jew would wear a kippah (for men) or modest clothing (for women), or a Muslim woman would wear a headscarf, highly observant Mormons wear garments.

Fair point and Mormons are as entitled to respect for their traditions as any other group.
 
It's nice to see that Maher can bring such diverse people together by being such a complete human toothache.

When you let liberals talk about religion...


...you usually get wince-making statements that make you go "Whisky Tango Foxtrot?"

Feminist Mormon religious columnist Joanna Brooks offers an example of this principle in action:

Big confession: I generally feel a sense of relief when the Christmas season comes to a close.

Except for the fact that the divine feminine will now disappear for another eleven months.

That means something to a Mormon feminist. Protestantism in general is starved of female divinity and iconography. Mormonism is an especially poignant case: our doctrine actually teaches us that God is a couple—a Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother—though Heavenly Mother is basically hidden in mainstream Mormon talk and practice.

Except during Christmas time. She comes out of our closets and cupboards and takes center stage in our creches. She gets long American Idol-style solos in our wardhouse nativity plays.

And sometimes, people even read the revolutionary 10-verse sermon Mary gives in Luke 1, celebrating a God that favors the poor and "puts down the mighty."

Our Catholic and High Church Protestant cousins call it the Magnificat. We Mormons (and lots of other folks) don't pay it much attention—the longest piece of recorded speech by a woman in our scriptures—except during Christmastime.

I have to wince when I read this kind of thing - and I'm not a Mormon.

Yes, the LDS does teach that there is a generally unmentioned Heavenly Mother responsible with the Heavenly Father for generating the "spirit children" that includes everyone who ever lived, or didn't quite make it to embodied existence, such you, I, Jesus and Satan.

But as far as I know the Blessed Virgin Mary has never been identified as that - or, a - Heavenly Mother.  Official Mormon theology tends to discourage much - actually all - speculation as to this Heavenly Mother, but it seems a stretch to think - even under Mormon theology - that the embodied Blessed Virgin Mary would herself be the Heavenly Mother who gave existence to the Blessed Virgin Mary as a "spirit child."

Yet, Ms. Brooks identifies Mary with the Heavenly Mother who comes out of the "cupboards and takes center stage in our creches."
Just goes to show what happens when burnishing your credential as an outsider critic of your faith tradition takes precedence over actually knowing what your tradition teaches.

*Gulp*

I'm posting this because it is better to have things out in the open, rather than get blind-sided at some inopportune time. Also, it ties into the ongoing "worship war" over at Thomisticguy's blog about whether Mormons "worship" Jesus and Catholics "worship" the saints.

Long story, short because of the etymology of the term "worship," which is kind of a catch-all that rusn from honoring our superiors to honoring God, the answer would appear to be "Yes" and "In different degrees."

According to the New Advent Dictionary:

The word worship (Saxon weorthscipe, "honour"; from worth, meaning "value", "dignity", "price", and the termination, ship; Latin cultus) in its most general sense is homage paid to a person or a thing. In this sense we may speak of hero-worship, worship of the emperor, of demons, of the angels, even of relics, and especially of the Cross. This article will deal with Christian worship according to the following definition: homage paid to God, to Jesus Christ, to His saints, to the beings or even to the objects which have a special relation to God.


There are several degrees of this worship:

* if it is addressed directly to God, it is superior, absolute, supreme worship, or worship of adoration, or, according to the consecrated theological term, a worship of latria. This sovereign worship is due to God alone; addressed to a creature it would become idolatry.

*  When worship is addressed only indirectly to God, that is, when its object is the veneration of martyrs, of angels, or of saints, it is a subordinate worship dependent on the first, and relative, in so far as it honours the creatures of God for their peculiar relations with Him; it is designated by theologians as the worship of dulia, a term denoting servitude, and implying, when used to signify our worship of distinguished servants of God, that their service to Him is their title to our veneration (cf. Chollet, loc. cit., col. 2407, and Bouquillon, Tractatus de virtute religionis, I, Bruges, 1880, 22 sq.).

*  As the Blessed Virgin has a separate and absolutely supereminent rank among the saints, the worship paid to her is called hyperdulia (for the meaning and history of these terms see Suicer, Thesaurus ecclesiasticus, 1728).

In accordance with these principles it will readily be understood that a certain worship may be offered even to inanimate objects, such as the relics of a martyr, the Cross of Christ, the Crown of Thorns, or even the statue or picture of a saint. There is here no confusion or danger of idolatry, for this worship is subordinate or dependent. The relic of the saint is venerated because of the link which unites it with the person who is adored or venerated; while the statue or picture is regarded as having a conventional relation to a person who has a right to our homage — as being a symbol which reminds us of that person.

 I'm not entirely sure that I'm happy with the idea of "worshipping" an inanimate object; it just sounds wrong and un-American.

This is interesting:

In virtue of the same principle and of the equality of the Divine Persons in the Trinity, the Holy Ghost also became the object of Christian worship. The formula of baptism was given, as has been seen, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. In the doxology the Holy Spirit also has a place with the Father and the Son. In the Mass the Holy Ghost is invoked at the Epiclesis and invited to prepare the sacrifice. The Montanists, who in the second century preached, and awaited, the coming of the Holy Ghost to take the place of the Son and announce a more perfect Gospel, made Him the object of an exclusive worship, which the Church had to repress. But it nevertheless vindicated the adoration of the Holy Ghost, and in 380 the anathemas pronounced by Pope Damasus, in the Fourth Council of Rome, condemned whosoever should deny that the Holy Ghost must be adored like the Father and the Son by every creature (Denzinger, Enchiridion, n. 80). These anathemas were renewed by Celestine I and Virgilius, and the ecumenical council of 381 in its symbol, which took its place in the liturgy, formulated its faith in the Holy Ghost, "Who together with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified." These expressions indicate the unity of the adoration of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; that is, that one or the other Person of the Trinity may be adored separately but not to the exclusion of the other two.

It's interesting because it contrasts nicely with the Mormon approach to worshipping the Son, which was  described by Bruce McConkie, on of the LDS Quorum of the 12 Apostles in 1982:

1. We worship the Father and him only and no one else.


We do not worship the Son, and we do not worship the Holy Ghost. I know perfectly well what the scriptures say about worshipping Christ and Jehovah, but they are speaking in an entirely different sense--the sense of standing in awe and being reverentially grateful to him who has redeemed us. Worship in the true and saving sense is reserved for God the first, the Creator.

Our revelations say that the Father "is infinite and eternal," that he created "man, male and female,"

And gave unto them commandments that they should love and serve him, the only living and true God, and that he should be the only being whom they should worship. [D&C 20:17–19]

Jesus said:

True worshippers shall [note that this is mandatory] worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to worship him. 

For unto such hath God promised his Spirit. And they who worship him, must worship in spirit and in truth. [JST John 4:25–26]

There is no other way, no other approved system of worship.

And then there is this:

Another peril is that those so involved often begin to pray directly to Christ because of some special friendship they feel has been developed. In this connection a current and unwise book, which advocates gaining a special relationship with Jesus, contains this sentence:


Because the Savior is our mediator, our prayers go through Christ to the Father, and the Father answers our prayers through his Son.

This is plain sectarian nonsense. Our prayers are addressed to the Father, and to him only. They do not go through Christ, or the Blessed Virgin, or St. Genevieve or along the beads of a rosary. We are entitled to "come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:16).

McConkie's statements are actually a nice working-out of the Arian implications of Mormonism, in contrast to the New Advent's Nicene Christianity.  In Nicene Christianity, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all God, they are all consubstantial, and so they are worshipped in the same, ultimate way.

In contrast, in Arianism and among the Mormons, the Son is a lesser, created being, and, so, the worship accorded to the Son is less than that accorded to the Father, so much less, in fact, that Mormons can say "we do not worship the Son" in the same way that Catholics say that that "we do not worship saints," although they are both wrong in a sense, and in a sense they are both right.

What is particularly interesting about McConkie's sermon is how he derides both Catholic prayers to the saints and Mormon prayers to Jesus for the same reason, namely they are not directed to God, i.e., to the Suprme Being aka "that than which nothing greater can be thought."  So, McConkie accurately observes that prayers are not answered by anything less than the Supreme Being, which according to the LDS' Arian presumptions is not Jesus.  Hence, praying to Jesus is essentially -  in the LDS scheme of things - wasted effort.

McConkie's conclusion is, thus, that Jesus is a kind of super-saint.  It seems that for McConkie, Jesus plays the same role in Mormon theology that Mary plays in Catholic theology, a really super-special, first class created being.  Consequently, where Catholics offer "hyperdulia" to Mary, Mormons offer "hyperdulia" to Jesus.

I just find that to be a fascinating comparison.