Many Catholics have encountered the well-dressed young missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormon Church) and maybe even are casually familiar with its reputation for strong family values.

Troublingly, some Catholics have even left the Church for the attraction of Mormon communal life. But most are unaware of the very checkered history of Mormonism’s polygamist founder, Joseph Smith, and some of his church’s strange, if not outright bizarre, core teachings.

In 1820 at the age of 14, it is said, Smith, disturbed by the divisions he saw in Protestantism, received a vision of “two personages.” One of them told him that all the different “sects” were “corrupt” and “that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight,” forbidding him “to join with any of them.”

In a second vision in 1823, Smith then claims, an angel (Moroni) appeared to him and told him where to find “gold plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent, and … that the fullness of the everlasting gospel was contained in it, as delivered by the Saviour (Jesus) to the ancient inhabitants. Also, that there were two stones … the Urim and Thummin … and that God had prepared them for the purpose of translating the book” The Pearl of Great Price, one of the church’s four scriptural texts.

The angel then reportedly told Smith he must restore the true church and fullness of the gospel to Earth. Smith translated the plates over the following years into the Book of Mormon and officially founded the Mormon church in 1830. He eventually based it in Jackson County, Mo., claiming this was the original site of the Garden of Eden, as revealed to him by God.

But Smith was then embroiled in legal trouble (a regular occurrence), this time over finances, and forcibly run out of town. The Mormon Church migrated to Illinois, founding the town of Nauvoo in 1839 and also establishing a Masonic lodge there in 1842. After more violence and accusations of treason, polygamy, and bank fraud, Smith was eventually arrested in 1844.

While he was awaiting trial, an angry mob of more than 200 men stormed the jail, and Smith was killed in a classic Wild West shootout, wounding three of his attackers in the process.

Let’s change historical gears and take a closer look at some of the problematic areas surrounding Joseph Smith’s supposedly divine revelations.

While there are many issues we could address, I’ll start by focusing on the Mormon “scriptures.” In 1835, Smith obtained some ancient Egyptian papyrus scrolls and translated them, again with the help of the Urim and Thummim. Concluding that these papyri were actually 4,000 years old and written by Abraham himself, Smith included them as part of his “divinely” inspired writings under the title Book of Abraham.

However, in the 1960s, portions of these papyri were examined and translated into English by several of the world’s foremost Egyptologists. Their unanimous conclusion? The supposed Book of Abraham was just a typical pagan Egyptian burial document dating from approximately 100 BC. The nail in the sarcophagus was that the actual Egyptian-to-English expert translations didn’t remotely resemble what Smith had “translated” – and the scrolls had nothing to do with Abraham, not even mentioning his name.

Additionally, accusations of plagiarism have swirled around the Book of Mormon from its beginning. 

The gold plates themselves, on which the Book of Mormon had apparently been engraved, are another concern as well.

Smith’s three closest friends and apparent plate witnesses (Oliver Cowdery, Smith’s scribe for writing down his “revelations” in the Book of Mormon, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris, who literally sold the farm to finance the printing of the Book of Mormon), after testifying to have seen not just the gold plates but the angel as well, stunningly all left the LDS Church.

Smith strongly condemned all three men, and Cowdery, perhaps Smith’s closest accomplice, was accused of trying to “destroy the character of President Joseph Smith” and was excommunicated.

Of the other eight people who claimed to have seen the gold plates (but no angels), three of these would also leave the Mormons. Not really the backdrop to a supposedly divinely appointed leader one might expect.

There are internal issues with the Book of Mormon as well. For example, it recounts the “history” of several ancient tribes, including Jews from Palestine, that supposedly migrated to the Americas. It contains highly detailed accounts of great civilizations established by these tribes, including extraordinary battles, great progress in architecture, textiles, agriculture, metalwork, and weaponry.

The problem is, archaeologists have not been able to find any evidence of these peoples whatsoever, some living as late as AD 400. Such an extensive and relatively recent civilization would undoubtedly have left at least some trace of written records – and in Hebrew, one would expect.

In addition, large sections of the Book of Mormon were copied directly from the King James Bible. The most unsettling thing about this is Smith included textual errors that scholars have found in the KJV translation. The Book of Mormon has gone through more than 2,000 textual changes since Smith originally wrote it – mostly spelling, grammar, and punctuation, but some significant doctrinal changes as well (for example in 1 Nephi 11:21, the original text identifies the “Lamb of God” as “the eternal Father,” but today’s version equates the “Lamb of God” with “the Son of the Eternal Father”). If a book was divinely inspired, as Smith claimed, why would it contain errors, or require any changes at all?

A final troubling detail is the Book of Mormon claims to contain “the fullness of the everlasting gospel.” However, many of the core doctrines of Mormonism are either refuted by it or are nowhere to be found in it!

For example, not a word is said about the key Mormon doctrine of “eternal progression”  – that men can eventually become gods themselves, complete with their own kingdom, and generate their own spirit children who will one day become their human subjects.

Or that God the Father was once a mortal man on another planet and is now an “exalted man with a body of flesh and bones” and dwells on a planet near the star Kolob (see Abraham 3:3-4, Pearl of Great Price).

In my next column, we will investigate these strange and conflicting Mormon doctrines further.