International School of Beijing April 2, 1991 Professor Andrew Greeley Department of Sociology Arizona State University Tucson, AZ Dear Father Greeley: The first of your books I read was one of your Ryan Clan novels -- I no longer remember which: probably The Cardinal Sins . Being an Irishman of the clan O'Temoin (Timmins) -- though a Mormon by religious persuasion, I was grabbed by your facility in weaving Celtic folkways into your writing. And over the years I've read virtually all you've written. During thirty-five years in the U.S. Foreign Service, I've only been able to make one brief visit to Ireland, and that was to Belfast in Ulster. But my sister spent three weeks in Dublin and the West Country last year and loved it. And my daughter Catherine, now expecting her first child, is married to a good Irish-American (of the Catholic persuasion) Patrick McGreevey by name. Now that I'm retired I'm looking forward to seeing the one part of Europe my career never got me to.* My wife, knowing how much I enjoy your books, gave me your Confessions of a Parish Priest for my birthday. I've loved it because of the rich insights it provides into the psyche of one of my favorite authors. I realize you're too much of a sociologist and experienced Catholic priest for it to be worthwhile trying to push Mormon doctrine onto you. And, indeed, as a sociologist of religion, I expect you already know more or less what Mormons believe. But I was particularly captured by your God Game , which I consider expands Catholic doctrine to fill some of the lacunae Mormons believe occurred when early Catholicism understood to reconcile still formative New Testament teachings with neo-Platonism. In short, The God Game pretty well reinvents Mormonism -- both with respect to the problem God (knowingly) accepted in extending Free Agency to humankind, and the dilemma with which he (deliberately and for his own wise purposes) confronted mankind in trying to figure out just what His Excellency wants when he determined not to talk to us very often, or very clearly, for the express purpose of not compromising our Agency during this period of earthly probation (or, as Mormons call it, our Second Estate). Moreover, as you may know, Mormonism teaches that the Shekanah of ancient Judaism was in fact a folk memory of the Mother in Heaven of which one of our early poets Eliza Snow (one of Joseph Smith's wives) wrote: "Then at length when I've completed, All you sent me forth to do, Father, Mother, may I meet you In your royal courts on high." Our early prophets also taught that there are three degrees of glory (so that very few need actually end up in hell -- though it exists for the truly recalcitrant -- a view I was surprised to find engagingly reflected in a painting by a visionary Catholic pre-renaissance priest for the altarpiece of San Pietro in Florence -- now on display in the British Portrait Gallery in Trafalgar Square. There are any number of similar parallels between your own "expanded version" of Catholicism and the doctrines of the Restoration which I'd love to have the opportunity to explore with you, including how Mormondom's priesthood, with the exception of the central hierarchy, combines a secular career with our * Father Greeley wrote back a kind letter inviting me to visit him in Chicago (if during the summer) or Tucson, (if during the winter). priestly functions in much the same manner you've rather independently worked out for yourself. I was especially taken by your notion of time-limited appointments for Bishops and Cardinals and your own success in maintaining yourself financially, apart from the money contributions of your parishioners. Mormon Bishops, Stake Presidents (Metropolitans), and the Seventy (our equivalent of your Cardinals), have always maintained themselves from their own resources, and are customarily released after they've given their best efforts for five or six years, enabling them to return to the real world and recoup their civil careers. Among the current Twelve Apostles are a world-renowned heart surgeon, a former Palo Alto lawyer/mayor, the former Chancellor of one of the largest private universities in the country, a candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court, a nuclear physicist who was assistant to Admiral Hyman Rickover, the former Editor of a major daily newspaper, a former Chief of Staff to a powerful U.S. Senator, and a former member of the Eisenhower Cabinet -- plus a couple more outstanding attorneys and a couple of businessmen who've held top positions in large national corporations. Regarding your views about the clergy not cutting itself off from the female side of nature, as you know, Mormons have never accepted the late Middle Ages resort to a celibate priesthood. I recognize, and accept, many of the arguments you make in favor of celibacy; but you yourself make equally strong ones in favor of getting to know the female side of humanity in a somewhat more intimate fashion that current Catholic practice permits. Not to mention the side effect of celibacy in depriving the next generation of some of its most intellectual and humanely inclined genes. A biologist friend once said that he thought that our Jewish cousins average fourteen points above the rest of us in IQ because during the centuries we Christians were damning off the best genes in a celibate priesthood, the Jews were insistent on marrying off their smartest rabbis to the daughters of the most successful merchants in the ghetto. Because of the LDS acceptance of "lay" priesthood and time-limited callings, there are today more LDS missionaries that the combined missionary force of Catholicism plus all Protestant sects combined. Indeed, our conversions rate has caused the Church to limit baptisms in some African countries to provide time to train lay leaders to direct Church affairs. There are more Mormons in the United States than Episcopalians, Presbyterians, or Methodists. They are outnumbered only by Baptists and Lutherans (and, of course, by Catholics). But it seems we'll never be accepted as a Main Line denomination because instead of relying on the traditional creeds which unite Catholicism and most Protestant churches (but the words of which are seldom believed as stated), Mormons insist on our own concepts of Man, Church structure, and Deity -- drawing on traditions older than the creeds, as clarified and expanded through modern revelation. And, while LDS church structure parallels in large measure that of Catholicism, this is not immediately apparent since we employ Hebrew or Anglo-Saxon titles rather than those of the Roman Empire: deacons, priests, elders, bishops, seventies, and lots of "presidents" instead of monsignors, metropolitans, and "arch's". This non-acceptance doesn't bother Mormons, but it makes it impossible for sociologists or other typologists to fit us into the Catholic/Protestant mold. So we'll probably never be mainstream no matter our size or the performance of our members ("by their fruits shall ye know them") in government, education, the sciences, or the professions. A Mormon, David Gardner, is Chancellor of the University of California, the largest university system in the world; Mormons are presently serving as the President's National Security Advisor and Counselor for Domestic Affairs. There are presently four LDS Senators and six Representatives -- twice our proportional share of the Congress; There are Mormons in the British and Australian Houses of Commons and a Mormon was until recently Minister for Foreign Affairs in Guatemala. When your God Game first appeared, I wrote an analytical review which I submitted to a couple of Mormon journals -- but as with your experience with the Catholic press, most seemed to feel I was overly sympathetic to a book written by a convinced Catholic. I believe I sent you a copy c/o your publisher. Don't know whether you received it because I never heard back. I'm writing again because your autobiography tells me more about your interest in the sociology of religion than I had discerned from reading your novels. It was fascinating to read of your growing up, education, and friends. I had any number of close friends during my own growing up years in Salt Lake City who were Catholic. While I was a Mormon Deacon, Monte Curraugh was an altar boy at the Cathedral of the Madeleine. And when I was a Boy Scout Camp Counselor at the Tracy Wigwam in the Wasatch mountains my closest friend, room mate, and fellow Counselor was Tim Quinn, a Catholic. I felt then, and time has confirmed, that the religious commitment and intense family relationships (not to mention doctrinal parallels) between Catholics and Mormons are closer than between Mormons and Protestants (of any variety), or than would be expected by those who casually classify Mormons among the Protestant sects. (Of course you'll recognize that Mormons reject this characterization, asserting that we never "protested" against anything: that, if anything, we are a "restoration" church. Anythehoo, your Parish Priest tells me that many of your seminal studies have had to do with the entry of Catholics into mainstream America -- educationally and professionally, and the effects of post-Conciliar teachings on Catholic self-image and practice (including birth control), as well as the continued distortion of reality in other Americans' view of Catholics. As you are again probably aware, we Mormons have experienced many of the same problems of rejection, misunderstanding, and quasi-isolation by reason of our cultural idiosyncracies. As a Mormon professional man a few years older than me (now a Federal Judge) once said to a Sunday evening study group of which I was a part, "All of us (speaking of Mormons and Protestants alike) have, after all, many more generations of Catholic ancestors than we have in any of the religions of which we are now a part. So we owe it to ourselves to understand what it was our Catholic forebears believed." He added, "And let's not forget, the Catholic Church had a monopoly of brains for a millennium and a half of European history. And one can't afford to neglect the thinking of these outstanding men throughout so much of history." As a young man serving in the First World War, my own father underwent one of the deepest spiritual experiences of his life while attending, in the absence of any nearby Mormon Church, the village Catholic chapel in Marche Noir near his bivouac south of Orleans. Wishing his children to grow up with a respect and appreciation of what Catholicism had contributed to the world -- and to his life -- he saw to it that we always attended Christmas even mass at the Cathedral of the Madeleine -- though all of us grew up with a strong faith in the Restoration and my brother and I and three of my own four children have served full-time missions for the LDS church. Which brings me, more or less, to the point of this letter. I guess you know by now that in Tucson you are neighbor to lots of Mormons. I suspect you have any number of Latter-day Saint students in your classes. For years I've been trying to get LDS Church leaders, with as little success as you've apparently had with the Catholic hierarchy, to undertake some serious sociological studies about how LDS doctrine has affected our adaptation to American life. We gave up polygamy (after the government escheated all church properties and threw half its leadership in jail for practicing what half the world was then practicing and without a single law on the books at the time to prohibit it at the time it was started -- all prosecutions being carried out under the only ex post facto law ever upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. And what, given today's morality, no one would even raise an eyebrow about nowadays. We also gave up the United Order, for much the same reasons your "non-commune" commune was abandoned -- just too idealistic for the world at this time. And we also yielded in our early insistence on running our own political system with Church schools and Church courts -- with much the same results you might imagine from your own studies of the Catholic school system As payback for giving up so much of what made our great grandparents so distinctive, Mormons have gained the reputation of being more able, more honest, and more patriotic than most. sort of super-Americans. And we're producing any number of Fortune 500 CEOs, Who's Who and American Men and Women of Science listings, number one football, basketball, wresting, and womens's volleyball teams, Heisemann trophy winners, and Olympic gold medalists -- of which LDS Church members are justly proud (though we're still a little uncomfortable at not being quite accepted on the religious side). Utah, with eighty percent Mormon population, serves as perhaps the best proxy there is for the Church at large (there are in fact, however, more Mormons in California than in Utah by a substantial margin). Looking at World Almanac statistics to compare LDS-Utah with the rest of the nation tells us a lot about the effect of the Mormon religion on the sociology of the state. Utah has the fifth highest high school graduation rate in the country (with five states closely bunched. Could it be that given statistical imprecision Utah could be closer to second or third?), one of the lowest dropout rates, the highest percentage of youth 18-24 engaged in higher education, the largest number of colleges and universities per capita , second highest birth rate (led only by Alaska), and second lowest death rate (again led only by Alaska). So Mormonism's doing some things right. But why, oh why, does Utah have (the apparently deserved) reputation of being the stock scam capital of the country? Why does it produce men like disgraced former Congressman Stringfellow who invented out of the whole cloth an entire heroic Korean war record to gain electoral sympathy; guys like Melvin Dumar, who faked the Howard Hughes will; the Mark Hoffman person, who over a period of years developed a reputation as a finder of rare documents (including some of the rarest missing documents of Mormon Church history, as well as a previously unknown copy of the first document printed in America, the so-called Will of a Freeman , only to have it discovered -- when he murdered by parcel bomb the wife of a Mormon bishop with whom he'd had an unfortunate business dealing -- that he'd forged over forty such documents in such authentic manner that he'd fooled some of the best experts in the document business? And, not so finally, what in their Mormon upbringing motivated the LeBaron clan to spit off to start their own sect in Mexico, murdering half a dozen competitors for ecclesiastical power in the name of God, as if they'd never heard of the Ten Commandments? There has to be something in the way Mormon youth are taught to account for this. I personally think it is the over-emphasis on achievement which results in such perversions. I suspect that LDS kids are reared with so many tales of the mighty works of their pioneer ancestors who tamed the desert and founded or were the first Anglo-Saxon settlers, of over two hundred towns and villages in the West ranging from Alberta, Canada, to Chihuahua, Mexico (and including San Bernardino, Las Vegas, Reno (first known as Mormon Station), and Mesa -- and others extending from Winter Quarters (now Omaha) to San Diego (where the first Anglo child was a Mormon). So unless one becomes a millionaire or CEO of a major corporation before one's thirty-five, one has failed the family's expectations and will be viewed among one's peers as a wimp. But this is the kind of empirical thinking you rightly condemn. I'd like to know the real reasons. Maybe someday something will be done to find out. You mention in your autobiography that you've collaborated in studying a bit of the sociology of Methodism and some other Protestant religions. What I'm thinking (hoping?) is that being near the heartland of Mormonism, one of the more interesting, or at least exceptional, varieties of modern Christianity, and with not a few of the priests you've studied with leaving the Catholic priesthood for the LDS Church, you might avail yourself of the opportunity to engage some of your brighter LDS students in undertaking a study of just what it is in Mormon teaching/thinking/upbringing which instills such attitudes at the perverse fringe of Mormonism. (And, perhaps, what it possesses in its central message which is so powerfully attractive to people seeking the meaning in life with you so rightly identify as central to being human). This would not only contribute to the professional development of a bunch of young LDS scholars, it would add to your reputation as being not only the "house sociologist of Catholicism", but the "sociologist of American religion". It is well enough that the LDS Church sets such high goals for its you as to stimulate the best to achieve -- even over-achieve. But what waste when the merely competent (or even the less-than-competent) find they are unable to maintain such super standards and either drop out of their religion (this happens to too many Mormons), or resort to chicanery -- if not outlawry There are any number of other studies I'd like to see done. How does the third highest level of educational achievement of LDS Utah accord with the second highest birthrate and among the lowest per capital incomes in the nation? And how does this last item square with Utah having the seventh highest number of millionaires per capita? How can Utah have so much stock market manipulation, yet be among the lowest in the nation in incarcerations and assaults? Why does Utah, which values chastity above almost all else, have the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in the nation? And what will happen to Mormon doctrine and practice as its New England origins, with the overlay of Northern European converts which has characterized this highly achievement oriented community, become diluted with a majority of Hispanic converts (as it is predicted will happen by the end of the present century), and as more and more congregations become predominantly Black (as has already happened in the older LDS Ward [parish] in the Washington, D.C. Stake [diocese])? I have ideas: but, again, these are only anecdotal, off-the-wall notions based on my own experiences, thinking, and common sense. A well carried out sociological study (in which Mormon sociologists have apparently as little interest as you have observed among your non-professional Catholic colleagues) may well have as many surprises for Mormon leadership as your studies have had for the Catholic hierarchy. Time to stop. I've said too much and taken too much of your time. My professional interests were different than yours, though I've developed somewhat the same (undeserved??) reputation for being a gadfly in my community as you have in yours. I yearn to see the results of the types of studies I've sketched above, but have neither the professional skills nor experience, nor -- living in China -- the access to sources, people, or materials your residence in Tucson provides. And my many letters to friends at Brigham Young University and my Alma Mater the University of Utah (before my PhD from Harvard) have fallen on deaf, or unwilling, ears. Hope I've aroused some interest on your part. Sincerely, D. B. Timmins P.S. Utah will be celebrating sort of a double jubilee in 1996/97. Ninety-six will be the centenary of statehood, and the next year the sesquicentennial of the arrival of the Pioneers in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. With some luck the state may be the site of the 1988 Winter Olympics, extending the celebration to three years. Either way there will be a lot of national and international attention centering on Utah and its people, making it an attractive time to bring out a new sociological look at what makes Mormons "a peculiar people".