Latter-day Saints temple near D.C. opening doors briefly for tours

KENSINGTON (CNS) — Remember the kids’ rhyme, “This is the church, and this is the steeple, open the doors and see all the people”?

When it came to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the opposite was true. You could go to their meeting houses all you wanted, but their temple? It was off limits.

But this spring, for the first time since 1974, the denomination will open those doors for about six weeks, as they will give guided tours of its temple in Kensington, a suburb of Washington, to show off the first major renovations since the temple was built.

Representatives of the Latter-day Saints — as church’s members now prefer to be called, rather than “Mormons” — said about 750,000 toured the temple in 1974. For this year’s tour, which will run April 28-June 11, they expect at least that many.

The temple had been closed since 2018 when renovation work began. The coronavirus pandemic further delayed its reopening.

Because the temple is sacred to members of the denomination, it is almost always off-limits to nonmembers, and photography inside is strictly forbidden. LDS members themselves don’t even go to the temple to worship on Sundays. The temple itself is generally reserved for such ceremonies as weddings, confirmations and baptisms by proxy.

Members of the church who have found a deceased relative who was not baptized a member of the Latter-day Saints may choose to be baptized on behalf of dead relatives in the hope that they, too, may gain entrance into heaven.

It is one of the tenets of the church, founded by Joseph Smith in 1830, that gives pause to the Catholic Church and many Protestant denominations that the Latter-day Saints are Christian.

The Catholic Church does not recognize the baptism conferred by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on any of its members to be a valid Christian baptism.

The Catholic position was issued formally in 2001 by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. It was issued in response to a “dubium,” or formal question, posed about a decade ago,

While the Mormon baptismal rite refers to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Mormon beliefs about the identity of the three persons is very different from Catholic and mainline Christian belief, said a Vatican explanation of the ruling.

“This just put us in the mainline,” Paulist Father Ronald Roberson, an associate director of the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, told Catholic News Service in an April 21 phone interview. “Most churches to not recognize Mormon baptism. One exception is the Episcopal Church.”

The secretariat does not have any ongoing dialogue with its LDS counterparts. Were the Vatican to conduct such a dialogue, the question would be whether such a dialogue would be treated as ecumenical dialogue or interfaith dialogue, as the Vatican has separate departments for each, Father Roberson said.

As a Paulist seminarian three years away from ordination — and not knowing that dialogue would take up the bulk of his priestly ministry — Father Roberson went on a Kensington temple tour in 1974. What struck him was that, given the size of the edifice, he expected to see a large worship space. Instead, he saw “a lot of small rooms on many floors.”

Rebecca Cohen, a program and research specialist for the secretariat, said she was advised before taking a sneak-preview tour April 20 not to look for a big church inside, so she was not surprised.

“I think possibly the thing that surprised me the most was the simplicity that you see,” Cohen said. While there are many artworks inside, “there’s not a lot of very ornate decorations around,” she added. One LDS member leading her tour said, “It’s not necessarily about that. We’re here to commune with God.”

“Being comfortable and being welcomed, that was their main goal,” Cohen said.

There are seven floors inside the temple. On one April 18 tour, tour leaders wanted participants to take note that the surroundings were getting lighter in color the higher up the tour was going.

In one room on an upper floor, Gerrit W. Gong, an elder and a member of the denomination’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles — one of its highest leadership bodies — said the combination of the white carpet, the pale furnishings and the light emanating from the crystal chandeliers and other fixtures made it appears as if “there are no shadows in this room.”

One room is the Celestial Room, where LDS members can sit in silent meditation. Sharon Eubank, director of Latter-day Saint Charities, said during the tour she’s “made some of the most important decisions in my life” after spending time in the Celestial Room.

Anthony Cirelli, another associate director at the secretariat, told CNS that the LDS theology and belief system, while not strictly so, most closely resembles Gnosticism, which emphasizes personal spiritual knowledge above the orthodox teachings, traditions and the authority of religious institutions.

Cirelli said “heterodoxy” may best be used to describe LDS theology, although some views about God and creation veer into heresy. Roman Catholicism considers heterodoxy as views that differ from strictly orthodox views, but retain sufficient faithfulness to the original doctrine to avoid heresy.

In March 2019, Pope Francis welcomed top officials of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to the Vatican the day before the officials inaugurated their first temple in the city of Rome.

The meeting drew great interest among Latter-day Saints especially in Utah, where the church has its headquarters and where Catholics and Latter-day Saints have a cordial relationship. Some saw the meeting as the beginning of a new chapter in the churches’ relationship.

Catholic and LDS leaders, especially in the United States, have increased their official contacts in recent years, working together on many social projects and joining forces to promote issues of common concern, particularly policies to support traditional families and religious freedom.

Since the 1980s, LDS Charities, the church’s humanitarian arm, has had on ongoing relationship with Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. bishops overseas relief and development agency.

Back in Maryland, many of those planning to visit the Washington D.C. Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will likely drive the outer loop of the Capital Beltway/Interstate 495. Near Kensington, they will see the temple’s spires rising up.

What else comes into view is a railroad bridge over the Interstate that for years boasted the work of an unknown graffiti artist who, even before the temple had officially opened in the ’70s, likened it to the great palace of Oz and spray-painted “SURRENDER DOROTHY” on the bridge.

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