Wisdom from Thomas Smith

Mormons had to change their doctrine. Polygamy was taught, even in the Doctrine and Covenants—the official Mormon Scripture—it’s still there today that it’s an eternal and everlasting principle that cannot be changed that you must be polygamist to enter Heaven. And yet in 1890, God said you don’t have to have polygamy anymore. Coincidentally, the Mormon church had just been disenfranchised of all its property and all Mormon officials put in prison, so the doctrine changed. The Pope can’t do that. A pope can never change the doctrines of our faith. He can never say anything is contrary to the teachings of the Church, the deposit of faith that we’ve had from the beginning. So that’s a distinction I want to make between a Mormon prophet and the Pope. But they’re both kind of the spiritual heads of their church.

—THOMAS SMITH from Inside Mormonism