S5E18 The Pope and Mary Magdalene

Summary

Standard of Truth Podcast - Episode S5E18: The Pope and Mary Magdalene

Release Date: April 24, 2025
Host: Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat
Guest: Dr. Richard Leduc
Description: This episode explores the historical portrayal of Mary Magdalene, particularly examining how Pope Gregory the Great influenced her reputation within Catholic tradition. Dr. Dirkmaat and Dr. Leduc dissect the origins of these characterizations and their implications for understanding church history.

---

Introduction

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat welcomes listeners to another insightful episode of the "Standard of Truth" podcast, where he is joined by Dr. Richard Leduc. The hosts set the stage for a deep dive into the portrayal of Mary Magdalene and the role of the papacy in shaping religious narratives.

---

Mary Magdalene: Historical Perspectives

The Origins of Mary Magdalene's Portrayal

Dr. Dirkmaat initiates the discussion by addressing a listener question about the conflicting portrayals of Mary Magdalene—as a prostitute or as Jesus's wife with children. He emphasizes the lack of scriptural evidence supporting these claims.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat [44:29]: "I don't believe either of those things, and I'm not a scriptorian of any kind, but I wonder where those ideas came from."

Pope Gregory the Great's Homilies

The conversation shifts to Pope Gregory the Great's homilies from 591 A.D., which are identified as the primary source for the traditional view of Mary Magdalene as a sinner.

Dr. John Gregory the Great [14:49]: "Whose heart is so stony that this sinful woman's tears wouldn't soften it with her example of repentance."

Dr. Leduc critiques this interpretation, highlighting that early Christian writings do not support Gregory's conflation of Mary Magdalene with other biblical figures.

Dr. Richard Leduc [39:53]: "Mary Magdalene is the same person that Gregory the Great identified her as, based on his homily, which was never explicitly stated in the early Christian writings."

Impact on Catholic Tradition and Popular Culture

The hosts explore how Gregory's portrayal has permeated Catholic tradition and influenced popular culture, referencing the movie Sister Act as an example.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat [57:57]: "If you're following along, it's Mark, chapter 16... she is actually the sinner woman that was apparently a woman of the night talked about in Luke."

Dr. Richard Leduc [65:31]: "This idea is perpetuated in Catholic sermons and has seeped into popular media, affecting how Mary Magdalene is perceived in general."

---

Listener Mailbag: Challenging Traditional Views

Addressing Misconceptions

A listener named Phoebe Draper Palmer Brown poses a question challenging the traditional views of Mary Magdalene. The hosts address the misconceptions, reiterating that there is no scriptural basis for Mary Magdalene being Jesus's wife or a prostitute.

Dr. Richard Leduc [36:54]: "Mary Magdalene was no stranger to sin... it's very offensive to me."

Historical Accuracy vs. Tradition

Dr. Dirkmaat emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between historical facts and evolved traditions, urging listeners to critically assess long-held beliefs.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat [81:44]: "Mary Magdalene's true biblical portrayal is as a devoted follower of Jesus, not a figure tainted by later traditional mischaracterizations."

---

The Role of the Papacy in Shaping Doctrine

Evolution of Papal Authority

The discussion broadens to examine the historical evolution of the papacy and its influence on Christian doctrine, including the perpetuation of certain characterizations of biblical figures.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat [47:57]: "The selection and authority of popes have shaped many traditions, some of which lack historical backing..."

Papal Succession and Influence

Dr. Leduc provides an overview of how papal succession has been established and its implications for maintaining doctrinal consistency or introducing new interpretations.

Dr. Richard Leduc [65:31]: "The role and authority of popes have influenced Christian doctrine and traditions, including those about Mary Magdalene."

---

Insights and Conclusions

Critical Examination of Traditions

The hosts conclude by stressing the necessity of scrutinizing historical sources and traditions to foster a more accurate understanding of church history and biblical figures.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat [82:00]: "Understanding the true historical context is essential for strengthening faith and knowledge."

Encouraging Informed Faith

Dr. Leduc echoes the sentiment, encouraging listeners to seek evidence-based understandings and remain faithful while being informed.

Dr. Richard Leduc [82:27]: "It's important to question long-held beliefs and seek evidence-based understandings of biblical figures."

---

Notable Quotes

• Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat [14:49]: "Mary had seven demons... seven indicating totality of vices."
• Dr. Richard Leduc [39:53]: "Mary Magdalene is the same person that Gregory the Great identified her as..."
• Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat [57:57]: "If you go to John, chapter 12... it's a different story of someone different anointing Jesus's feet."
• Dr. Richard Leduc [65:31]: "This idea is perpetuated in Catholic sermons and has seeped into popular media..."
• Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat [81:44]: "Mary Magdalene's true biblical portrayal is as a devoted follower of Jesus..."

---

Conclusion

In this episode, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat and Dr. Richard Leduc provide a critical examination of the historical narratives surrounding Mary Magdalene, highlighting the influence of papal teachings on her portrayal. By dissecting these traditions, the hosts aim to foster a more informed and faith-strengthening understanding among Latter-Day Saints listeners.

---

Transcript

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Welcome to the Standard of Truth podcast. In this podcast, Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat and Dr. Richard Leduc explore the early history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and the life and teachings of the prophet Joseph Smith. They examine the original historical sources and provide context for events of the past. They approach the history of the church with faith, expertise and humor.

Foreign Hi, welcome to another episode of the Standard of Truth podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Garrett Dirkmont and I am joined by my erstwhile friend, professor. No, no. Dr. Richard Leduc.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Hello, Garrett. I appreciate you calling me doctor because I assumed the University of Utah is just so close to terminating my professorship at any moment. So doctor that holds is that because.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

They found out you were a Latter Day Saint?

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

That's funny. And for all the University of Utah fans, I will feign to be hurt by that comment that are listening to the podcast. And so whoever those folks might be, I, I'm excited for today's episode. We did a little, a little show prep which we, which we never do.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

I mean, I feel like you're overstating that.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Well, yeah, we hopped on and you said, hey, you ready? And I said yep. And then, and then here we are.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Yeah. Yep, that was our show prep.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

There are a couple of things, a couple of matters of business to, to address at the, at the beginning here. First is a ridiculous thank you to all of the people that have donated to the Sweetwater Rescue Lithuania temple trip. Insanely, ridiculously kind littners. We have hundreds that have donated and just in the last week raised over $12,000, which is just insane.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

How many people does that represent getting to the temple, Richard?

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

So just under 12,000. So it's 250 per. So it's just about half of the number of people to get everybody to the temple. We have 85 that are committed. Our goal is 100. We wanted 10% of Lithuania to the temple and so we're pretty close. So I mean just that's in a week. And in fact, Garrett, you and I were talking before just how, how insanely kind the listeners are, especially to us who are idiots and don't know really what we're doing. So that is even more kind.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

It's the most stunning thing ever that A anyone listens to the podcast, B, that anyone would donate any money towards something that you run or. I mean, there's a lot of things that are surprising.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

It's very important that, that people like Karen and David have oversight. So as you know, I didn't know.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

That we wanted to pollute Karen's name by mentioning her on the podcast.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Well, she doesn't listen.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

She. She's okay.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

David does. David does. But anyway, it's insanely kind. And then. And then the other thing is, is that we mentioned that we were going to be releasing the dates for the 2026 standard of truth tour. We just mentioned that we were going to have them up. We didn't have any links. And the Kirtland tour is more than half sold out for 2026 in a week, which is pretty nuts. So we'll put the links up so that folks can click there and sign up for 2026. So that'll be exciting. So those will both be in June. I think it's June 14th through the 27th. I think you're going back to back, if I have that correct.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Yeah. Well, we even have one couple that signed up to do the first half and the second half.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Oh, my gosh.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Yeah.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

There you go.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

They are going to see us at our worst. They're gonna. You know, if fish and house guests stink after three days, what do you think a Garrett and a Richard do after 14? I'll tell you what. Yeah. Sometime around day five, you'll be like, I'm pretty sure I'm a Presbyterian. Calvinist hell. Calvinist hell is what I found.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

So. So Palmyra in Kirtland is June 14th through the 20th, and then Missouri Nauvoo is the 21st through the 27th. So those are the dates for 2026. And so, yeah, that. That Kirtland one half sold out in. In a week, which is exciting.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Oh, and also thank you to the people who subscribe to the Latter Day Saint Historical Studies Journal for the forthcoming special issue on the secret Nazi police files on Mormons from. From the Nazis. So there have been several people who signed up, and I think you're gonna enjoy it. We're still working on. It's not quite ready to be printed yet, but it's. It's gonna be a good one. Well, I don't think. I don't think I can really have the swastika on the COVID I feel like that might. That might be a bridge too far, but, boy, would it get people to. To turn some pages.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Right? You're not Kanye. So I think that I. I think that essentially, people who like history, they love them. Some World War II, they're latter day Saints, they love church history. It's. It seems like the perfect Venn diagram of what they'd be into. So, anyway, a lot of a lot of thank yous at the onset. Again, Garrett and I just continue to be stunned every single time. It's just. Anyway, just so incredible. So, Garrett, we do have a couple of questions from the Phoebe Draper Palmer Brown mailbag. But now that all of the excitement for General Conference has died down, that's when we want to kind of talk about General Conference, reinvigorate the saints. And I have a series of questions for you to try and see how well you listen to General Conference and see how well you do. So it's a game I like to call Fun with General Conference. It's sweeping the nation.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Okay. It's sweeping the nation. So you can find this anywhere, not.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Just this podcast, not just this podcast. Anywhere from Box Elder county all the way down to Weber County. Nice parts of Bingham. Anyway, so the. I mentioned this before. This, this was the tease of when you do qualitative research, you go in and you do. You do coding to try and find general themes for this. Okay.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Everyone's just turned off the podcast. You said qualitative and coding in the same sentence. Everyone's done.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

No, it's. Everyone's done. It's. Anyway, so I had to do this as part of some of the research for my dissertation, and I'm taking that and applying that to General Conference. And like I said, it's. It's sweeping Tremont and you know, North Ogden, so maybe Big Bear Lake. It's not. Hasn't gotten out there yet. It not quite sweeping that far. So there, there's kind of 10 general themes to all of the talks. Okay. And so I would love for you. So first of all, there's frequency of words said. So I run all the transcript through and be able to pull these things out. I'd love for you to try and guess a couple of words that you think might have been mentioned that aren't the obvious words. All right. Yeah. Right. Jesus. 426 times. Christ. 458 times. God. 277 times. Yeah, they're going to get mentioned a lot. So. So, so give me what you think might be a word or two that might isn't. Isn't as. I mean, obviously those are the top. They're mentioned quite a bit. Okay, so. So what do you think?

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

What, what about like, I mean like atonement? Does that count as Jesus? Are you looking for something less than that?

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Atonement was mentioned. So I have the top. Anyone could do a top 20. I have a top 19, obviously outside looking in or.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

No.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Yeah. So My guess is Oli is atonement at 20. I don't have it on my list.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

I see, I see. So that doesn't speak very well that I got the first one wrong.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Well, actually, I think it speaks very well. The way that this game is more fun is for you to blow it.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

I mean, look, I feel like that the, The. The story of the ten virgins was mentioned so many times that that probably made it in the top 40, even though it was only a few. It was only a few speeches.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

But. Yes. No, that didn't. But still.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Yeah, I was going to say, how about repentance?

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Show me repentance. So. Good answer, good answer. I will say this, though. So repentance was the ninth most referenced theme. And repent, or repentance was mentioned 32 times. Forgiveness or some version of that was 14 times. So that was 46 times for repentance.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

So.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

And forgiveness. So, okay, that's. That's. That's one of the nine major themes. I feel like that's going to be a theme almost of every general conference. Right, but. So that good.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

In. In like manner. Mercy.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Yes, in like manner. Mercy. Good answer. Good answer. I don't see. I don't see mercy. I don't see mercy.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

What about faith?

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Faith, number 12 on the board of the top 19, Garrett. 103 times faith is mentioned. So that's pretty good.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Okay. All right, how about. How about restoration?

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Restoration? Well, so, I mean, that kind of crosses into a couple. So you have. So what would you guess is the number one theme that was talked about the most? That is, like, glaringly obvious. That's almost every general conference ever.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Always the atonement.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Yeah. So Jesus Christ in the atonement. He's mentioned in every talk, surprisingly. Yeah. Over 900 mentions of Jesus or Christ and well over a thousand when you include things like Savior and Redeemer. So that was number one. Casey Kasem, number one. With a bullet. Yeah.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

With a cow down.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

So that is. That is an insane. Look, you and I are old. My back hurts when I sleep normally, like without, you know, on a nice soft bed. I wake up like I can't walk. But that's. That's a bit of a dated reference there.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

But some people will know Casey K. Some more. Yeah, sure.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

People older than usual. All right, so give me. So I. I could. I could spend quite a bit of time. I feel like I've run my course here. Give me. Give me one or two more themes that you could think of.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

I mean, Book of Mormon.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Didn'T come up.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Don't. So not one person mentioned the Book of Mormon the entire time.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

I don't know that the Book of Mormon maybe not the theme. The Book of Mormon was referenced where people are talking about these other things. Let me just give you a couple others that I thought were interesting. Okay, so covenant path or temple worship in some form or another was mentioned over 200 times, which I thought was interesting. Covenant path I think specifically was 16 times, 94 references to temples, which was interesting. Christlike love and charity. That. That was one that was also a common theme. Part of President Nelson's talk. Over 250 mentions to some variation of.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Love or charity and Elder Uchtdorf's talk as well. I mean, that was the whole point of the talk.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Christ life. Christ like love specifically 30 times. And following the living prophet. President Nelson specifically 65 times. Prophetic leadership. Over a hundred. Over 100 mentions, which I thought was great. And then service and compassionate outreach was a. Was a big one with over 100 references in some capacity and strengthening home and family. Over 86 mentions in some capacity. So anyway, that's. That's what we like to call fun with general.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

It seemed like there were a lot of references to the second coming, but I feel like those would have so many different variations of words used that it would be hard to collate that.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Yeah, that was the case because it's difficult in some of those when Jesus Christ is mentioned. So it is tough. I feel like that was second coming was Oli.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Yeah, it's just outside the. Which is exactly what everyone thought in the days of Noah.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Well, it's fitting. No one knows the, you know, the day, the hour. So it's. It's probably just, just always just. Just outside looking in.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

But anyway, you know. Yeah.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Anyway, so I've been doing this actually the last three years and it's. It's that. I think I've mentioned this before. It's that great quote from. From Hugh Nibley that I'll paraphrase. I don't know why anyone wants an angel to appear to him. They'll just quote scripture. It's like, hey, I wonder what they're going to talk about in general conference. You know what? They're probably going to talk about Jesus and being more like Jesus and the.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Atonement and acting like it and preparing and keeping your covenants. Yeah, there's no possible way that they'll talk about that.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

So I feel like I. Yeah, that's. That's on the nose. But anyway, on with the Countdown. Garrett, the. The Phoebe Draper Palmer male brag. Brag.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

The mail brag. You know, I feel like that's kind of what it is now. People are so excited to get there. It's a male brag now.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Yeah. The entire Cutler family. We did. Did you mention that we received another email from someone also in labor?

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

We did, but we haven't read it.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

So we have to, as per our.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

We will not do it this week. But we got it. And. And we'll read it and we will.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

And the thing that's important there is obviously we assume you're lying about that. So they sent a picture.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Yes, because we said we're going to assume you're lying. They sent a picture.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

They did. Anyway, this. This first email from the. From the mail brag comes from Matthew. What did Joseph Smith, Martin Harris, etc initially do with all the copies of the Book of Mormon if they initially didn't sell? Well, 3,000 copies is a lot. AI. I know, I know. Estimates.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Chat GPT Episode 2 He goes right to AI.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

My guess is that he's. He's using the free version of chat GPT3 too. Not even. Not even the good one.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Not even updated. No difference.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Estimate estimates the copies would have taken up to two modern pallets, each 5ft high or a small trailer. Where would they have stored? Where would they have been stored? How were they transported? Were they just sitting in a barn until they were. I love the idea of that. They're just hanging out, trying to move some copies of the Book of Mormon. They're just sitting at a barn. Everything must go.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Oh, go ahead. We've got all kinds of books here. It is a good question. One of the, I think misunderstandings about. About the publication of the Book of Mormon is. Well, look, when. When we, you know, are waiting for, you know, the next Harry Potter book to come out, we expect every single store to get hundreds of copies all at the same time. We have mass production of publication now, Right? Mass distribution. I will say something crazy happened when we were trying to get one of the first volumes of the Joseph Smith papers published. The press accidentally used the wrong paper. Okay, so we're printing thousands of copies of this volume and the press used the wrong type of paper. Instead of like the flat normal paper, they used the glossy paper that you use for like photos, but they used it for all of it. And so we got the initial copies of it and we were like, what the heck is this? And we weren't sure what we were going to do about it because this is not what we signed up for. This isn't what we paid for. I mean, it doesn't make the book unreadable, but it is kind of weird to have a glossy page, like almost like a magazine page. Every page that you turn. And none of the other volumes were going to have that. I mean, it had the same paper that are like revelations volumes had, you know, when they were just doing the images of the actual revelation. But all of our other documents volumes weren't going to have that paper. So we actually, like, hunkered down and there was a huge discussion of, like, what do we do? I mean, if we have them reprinted, it's going to be months of delays. And what do we do with all these books that we have? Do we just sell them? Right. So we were having this discussion, no joke. The truck carrying all of the books, a semi that had all of them that were being brought out to Utah to be then sent through the Deseret book distribution network. Okay. The truck was in a. An accident in which the trailer.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Get out of here.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Went into a lake.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

That's no way.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

So I, I, of course, was like, I'm pretty sure the printer hired someone to kill the driver as it was going across the lake because they were going to have to pay to reprint all of these. And now it was just an insurance claim.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Wow, that's hilarious.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Now, that's not really the question that he had. What. What insurance claim did Martin Harris file for the papers? That wasn't. That wasn't the. The question. I. I don't. I don't think. But the, the thing that a lot of people misunderstand is we think that all of the books were available for sale all at once, March 26, 1830. All of them. There they are. There's stacks of 5,000 books, and they're ready to rock and roll. If you've ever been to Palmyra or signed up to go on a tour with us and go through the Grandin print shop in Palmyra, you'll see that the process of both typesetting and then printing the book is. Is all one thing. You know, drying the pages, coating the pages, cutting the pages. But there's a whole other part of the binding of the pages. So the book can have all of these pages already done, the printing of it, and not yet have all of the binding done. And Luther Howard is the book binder who's actually going to go into business with Grandin over this. They are working on the binding of these books, but they're not done with the binding of them. So I don't know how many copies of the book were actually available. March, you know, 26, 1830, enough were available that Grandin was, was putting it in his paper. Hey, books are available for sale, but it was probably only Several hundred, not 5,000. And then over the course of the next year and a half, two years, the remaining copies are bound and then they're available to sell. So what does that mean? It means that long after the Book of Mormon is quote unquote printed, as books are being completed at Grandin's print shop, people have to go back to Palmyra, pick up a load of books in a wagon and bring them back. And we even have a letter from Joseph Smith to Martin Harris in February of 1831. Okay, so the book's ready. The, the Book of Mormon's finished in March of 1830. Churches organized in April of 1830, you know, January, December of 1830, and January of 1831. The church is commanded to move to Ohio. And Joseph moves in February to Ohio. Most of the members in New York have not yet moved. Most of them are going to arrive in April and May. Martin Harris is one of the people that's still back in Palmyra. Well, when Joseph writes to him, what does he say? He says that first of all, you will come here without delay if possible by this commandment, it is better that you come before the wrets of the brethren, that when they come, they may have places to go. You will also bring, or cause to be brought, all of the books. So I mean, as many of the books as they have, that as the work is breaking forth on the east, the west, the north, and the south. And you will inform also the elders which are there, all of them who can be spared to come here without delay. And then he goes on to say, you will not sell the books for less than 10 shillings. It's kind of interesting they're still using that kind of British terminology, but it's roughly $1.25 that, that's how much they're selling the books for, which is, I mean, the average day laborer is making, you know, 75 cents to a dollar a day. So the books are fairly expensive. I mean, they are made very expensively and they're covered in leather and they, you know, they have some gilding. They are, they are beautiful books, expensive books. They are not your average, you know, pass along blue copy of the Book of Mormon that your missionaries are handing out. It is, they are very expensively made. But Martin Harris is going to go back. We know that he goes back to Palmyra several times over the course of the next several years. We know this because he signs documents and he sells property in 1832 and then again in 1833. So we know that Martin Harris is going back to Palmyra. Now, you could just chalk that up to, he's going back to Palmyra because he still has family there, because he still has a few pieces of property there. But also, I think he's going there each time to get more books, to bring them to Ohio because more books are now bound, and then those books can then be sold and distributed to all the missionary work that's going on in Ohio and beyond. So that's the answer is that they were probably never all stacked together on a giant pallet like it's the overnight shift at Walmart and people are trying to fill the stock. The ships.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Yeah, yeah. Black Friday. Black Friday. Shopping in Lucy Harris's barn.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Pretty sure she would have disappeared those pages as well if they were there.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Good question, Matthew. Next question comes from Brandon. This is an excerpt from his email. I have a question. In the Mesa Temple, on the stairway in the Celestial Room, there is a mural on both sides of the stairwell. It is of Joseph Smith and I think Hyrum preaching to the Native Americans. On the other side, it shows Native Americans being baptized. My question is, is this based on a historical event or is this simply an artist's expression?

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Well, I haven't seen the image, so, you know, interestingly, I've been to the Mesa Temple, but I guess I wasn't paying attention. Or, you know, maybe. Maybe I. Maybe I was turned away at the door. I'm not exactly sure why I didn't notice. A lot of times, though, when I'm in another temple for, like, a wedding, I'm so terrified that I'm gonna go the wrong way.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Oh, my gosh.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Literally only paying attention to the person in front of me because I'm like, okay, does it to the right, to the left. And, you know, the next thing you know, you end up in the, like, the bridal preparation room because you.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

So it's a great point. First of all, my number one fear end up in the women's changing room. That's my number one fear by a lot. My number two fear is that that person thinks that I've never been to the temple before, and they judge my spirituality. That's. That's only slightly less. It's like, yeah, yeah, I'm going out of my way to tell People?

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Yeah. You want people to think you've always been to a temple, even that's not even where you live.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

It's a ridiculous thing. I know, but, like, I go out of my way to tell people I'm not from here. I've never been here before. I have a testimony. I just don't know where the chapel is.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Do you think maybe because you're wearing, like, a Bon Jovi T shirt and jeans that that's why, that they treat you as if maybe you haven't been there for a while?

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Yeah, but I'm wearing the Living on a Prayer shirt, which I feel is more appropriate for the temple.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Yeah, it makes sense. So I. I don't recall seeing it. So I. I hate to comment on artwork that I haven't seen, but having looked at a lot of artwork, especially artwork depicting scenes from church history, is the artist taking liberties? The answer with art is always yes, always. Because. Because it comes down to what is the artist's purpose? Did they create the image to be the same thing as a photograph? Which, even if they did, how would the artist know exactly how something looked? How would they know how many trees there were in the background? How would they know how high the river was that day? How would they know how many Indians were there? Or. You see, what I'm trying to get at is not being critical of the artist, is even under the best circumstances, an artist is forced to use some kind of creative license because he doesn't have a photograph. So if he's trying to recreate an image from the past, he's forced, you know, he or she is forced to insert at least something of artistic license. So let me just say that never look at an image depicting church history and expect that it's going to be 100% accurate, because it essentially can't be. But my guess is that you're not really asking, is this 100% accurate. It is. Were Joseph and Hyrum ever really preaching to groups of Indians? And did any Indians ever actually convert? Well, we actually have multiple places where Joseph especially meets with various Native American or American Indian groups. One in particular, though, that does mention Joseph and Hyrum together. So maybe this is what it is. This is from August 12th of 1841, Thursday. A considerable number of Sauk and Fawkes Indians have been for several days encamped in the neighborhood of Montrose. Now, Montrose is the Iowa side of the Mississippi river, right across from Nauvoo. Okay? So there's a whole bunch of these American Indians that are encamped on the other side of the river from Nauvoo in 1841. The Ferryman this morning brought over a great number on the ferryboat and two flatboats for the purposes of visiting me. So this is in Joseph's voice, the way the writing is. The military band and a detachment of invincibles were on the shore ready to receive and escort them to the grove. But they refused to come on the shore until I went down. I accordingly went down and met Keokuk, Kishkosh, apanous, and about 100 chiefs and braves of those tribes with their families at the landing, introduced my brother Hyrum to them, and after the usual salutations, conducted them to the meeting ground in the grove and instructed them in many things. So the interesting part, first of all, Keokuk is well known to anyone who visits Nauvoo because that's. Well, that's where life is. I mean, Nauvoo, you know, has a very limited amount of services, but there's a Walmart in Keokuk right across the river, I mean, so named for this chief Keokuk. But so he meets with them and their families, which. It sounds like that's what's being depicted in the. In the image that. That he saw, they revealed to me. So we taught them the things revealed unto me concerning their fathers and the promises that were made concerning them in the Book of Mormon, and advised them to cease killing each other and warring with other tribes and to keep the peace with the whites, which was interpreted to them. Keokuk replied that he had a Book of Mormon at his Wikiup, which I had given him some years before. I believe, said he, you are a great and good man. I look rough, but I also am a son of the Great Spirit. I heard your advice. We intend to quit fighting and follow your good talk that you've given us. After the conversation, they were feasted on the green with good foods, dainties, melons by the brethren, and they entertained spectators with a specimen of their dancing. So it's really this kind of large festival here in. In 1841, where. Where they are having this large meeting with these Native Americans. And, you know, there are multiple other times where Indians come to Nauvoo to meet with Joseph Smith. And in a lot of way makes sense because they're coming to who's the principal person of the furthest western part of Illinois, which is a state, whereas Iowa is at first still a territory, it will later eventually become a state, but during this whole period is simply Just a territory. And in fact, in some of the last. Some of the last days of Joseph's life, there are groups of Indians coming to visit him. In August of 1843, there's Joseph is meeting with the Potawatomi Indians and in fact, asked a brother Dunham to come and interpret for him because he's converted Native American. And that's in 1843. In 1844, just before Joseph is martyred, you have in William Clayton's journal, he talks about that there's 38 of the Sauk and foxes that are over in the city today and that he even met Black Hawk's brother, the celebrated Indian chief. And then they also. May 23rd of 1844, they do another one of these ritualistic dances in Nauvoo and attend a council meeting with Joseph Smith. We don't know a ton about that council meeting. So Joseph has multiple Indian delegations that will come visit him when he's in Nauvoo. The one that I think is being depicted is the one that's August 12th of 1841, because specifically Hiram is there. Specifically they're talking about the Book of Mormon, and specifically it's this large group. So I don't know what the inspiration was for that artist. I'm hoping that it's that, but that's the answer. And the next time I go to the Mesa Temple, I will be sure to keep my eyes peeled.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Very good. To Brandon for the question. Good answer, Garrett. This next one. Listeners to the podcast, enjoy when your dander is up, partially because you have the ability to articulate and to show how ridiculous arguments are that get people irritated or frustrated. I will say this next listener email gets my dander up because the question is one that is just so offensive to me, it's very, very frustrating. So I will do my best to do my duty to God, my country, and obey the Scout law.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

As I read this always certain people know that anymore.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Yeah, I know. I know. Hello, Dr. Dirk Mott and Dr. Leduc. I'm an avid fan of yours and have been for a couple of years now. I find your Piedcast boy. Oh, the podcast and the bragging highly entertaining.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

And find myself brag and a podcast.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

You know what? I feel like we could do a good podcast, the Pied Piper podcast.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Well, what's your favorite pie? So I like. I like berry pies. So I like cherry and I like strawberry cherries.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

A winner. Are you a fan of rhubarb?

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

So I used to not be willing to even consider it like. And I mean, like, it approached onion level for me.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Carrots for me. Sure.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

But, yeah, very carroty. Very carroty. If, if it's like a raspberry strawberry rhubarb and you put enough sugar in it.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Yeah.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

To cause anyone to go into an insulin shock.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Yeah.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Then I, I, I can. I. But I'll never say I want rhubarb. I'll never say it. I'll never say, don't give it to me.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

I mean, essentially, it's what I am with carrots. I'll eat carrots in a roast because they taste like meat. You'll eat a rhubarb pie if it tastes like sugar and strawberries.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

I'll eat a lot of things if they taste like sugar.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Well, for sure.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

I believe it was Jim Gaffigan who once said that you could deep fry rubber hose and it would taste good. So depending on how things are prepared.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

So my wife makes. She. She's quite an excellent baker. Pumpkin pie is my favorite that she makes. Although I do like a good pecan pie. Having never spent a lot of time in the South, I still like a good pecan pie.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Why don't you tell everyone how many pies per Thanksgiving that, that your wife makes?

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

We've mentioned this before, too. It's the scene in the Simpsons when Homer goes to jail, and Marge still continues to make meals with the same quantity of food as though Homer was still there. My wife grew up on a farm with a family of eight siblings or eight total children, and so she only knows how to make insane quantities. So she'll wake up. Thanksgiving is her super bowl, by the way. She will wake up at four, four in the morning, and she will be baking pies all day, and we will have.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Well, so here's the thing. Like, everyone listening right now is thinking, so she made, like, six or seven pies. That's a ridiculous number of pies.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

That's an insane number of pies. Yeah.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

You aren't. You aren't even in the same zip code.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

No.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

As the number of pies she makes. Richard is closer to pronouncing the Phoebe Draper mailbag properly than you are with your estimate of the number of pies she makes.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Tell us how many on a given Thanksgiving. So our family, much like the Jews after the destruction of the temple, are spread throughout the land. And so our Thanksgiving are primarily just our immediate family. Half of our kids are on missions all the time. So it's like five of us, six this last year because the son came home. It depends on the year 24 to 32 pies.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

I believe last year, she said she had made 31 pies or something like that.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

It's an insane amount of pies.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

What do you guys do with the other 29 pies after you've eaten two of them?

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

So the first thing is, is that normally a person to eat a piece, would have a slice of pie, maybe put some Cool Whip on that or something along those lines and have a slice of pie. We're sitting down with a full pie. Like, people are eating full pies. They're eating them from the middle, like barbarians.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Wait, wait, wait. So everyone gets served a pie at your house?

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Well, we can slice them up, but there's just so many pies now. We give lots of them away. What's that?

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Well, how come I don't ever get any of them?

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Well, you live so far away. You're, you know, you're in.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

This is ridiculous.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

We're in Layton. I mean, I have to book a flight to get down to you, but I think essentially, yeah, we probably. We probably on. On. On Christmas Day on Thanksgiving and. And that Friday and that Saturday, there's a lot of great football, and it's literally just us trying to pack away 12 to 15 pies. I think 15 is the most we can eat. And then everybody is just like, you know, we have to go get our stomachs pumped. It's just so many pies and. But then we give out a tremendous amount of pie. But, yeah, she doesn't know how to make fewer than 24 pies. She doesn't know how to do it.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

She can't divide the recipe into 12 pies.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Yeah, people think that I'm a prepper when I go to purchase the ingredients for Thanksgiving. It's like, hey, save some flour, say, some Lehigh roller mills flour for us.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

So it's kind of like you have like, a list like the pioneers did leaving Nauvoo. Like, we need 74 bags of flour. We need 18 pounds of sugar.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Yeah, I've got to go rent a U haul to get it back or I'm making multiple trips. Yeah, it's. It's. It's great. Yeah. Anyway, what were we talking about?

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

I think we were reading an email. I think so. Yeah. I think I was trying to lighten it up a little bit because you. You started off by saying you were about to get angry, so I'm trying to make you happy.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

I am insanely irritated by this. Not the question. The question's a reasonable question. Anyway, let me get to the question because. Because I've wasted so much time talking about rhubarb pie. Essentially, the question is about Mary Magdalene. And so he was listening to. Or. No, she was. It's. Marie is the. Is the littner she was listening to. I have a sister who's a Julie Rowe fan and now a brother. And now a brother has left the church after reading the CES letter. I admit I haven't listened to all the podcasts because I'm a mom of four and I'm. You know, we should. Marie, we should send you four or five pies for Thanksgiving to help lighten that load. I'm working on catching up. I have a question that I heard recently from a friend on social media that I never heard before. She said that some say that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute or a woman of the evening, as it were, and others who are saying that she was Christ's wife and that they had children. I don't believe either of those things, and I'm not a scriptorian of any kind, but I wonder where those ideas came from. I've heard a few people mention Mary as possibly being Christ's wife, but knew there was no evidence of it in the scriptures. The idea of calling Mary Magdalene a prostitute is one that is offensive to me. It is irritating. And so, Garrett, where does that come from? And. And why am I so angry?

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Well, let me start with the other one before you're angry. I mean, maybe you're angry about this, but the idea that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene really caught that, caught a fire in a. In popular culture because of. Of Dan Brown and the Da Vinci Code. Okay, that was one of the claims, one of the major claims about that quasi historical, not historical at all book that was so popular. And that was one of the aha. Moments of the book. Sorry if I've ruined it for everyone who was waiting 25 years to read it. But.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Well, I will say, so far, I'm not saying that Dan Brown is happy that Pope Francis passed away, but I am saying, my guess is that his books will skyrocket during the conclave periods, as there is quite a bit of a stir about that.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

All of the intrigue that surrounds a Pope. I mean, some people have even asked, how does a Pope become a pope? I mean, we'll talk about that. Well, let's answer the question first. In a complete departure from what we normally do on the Standard Truth podcast, we're going to try to answer the question as opposed to simply talking about pie, which reminds Me of when Homer on the Simpsons became the Pie man. Remember when he was a. Oh, yeah.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

When he'd throw pies.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Yeah, you throw pies at people and at one point he throws a pie at someone who's doing something. And his friends Lenny and Carl say, we all know PI r squared, but today we know PI r justice. It was a great line. But you know who didn't do any justice to Mary Magdalene was Pope Gregory the Great. Now, Richard will probably challenge the terminology of the great. There's only been a few popes that have had the terminology the great. And Pope Gregory, who was later sainted, is the origin, at least the earliest origin that we can tell for this tradition.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

So is this the same that makes adjustments to the calendar then? Is that a different.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

It's not actually the same Gregory. The problem is, of course, there's like a billion Gregory's that have been popes. I mean, that's a little bit of an overstatement.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

No, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a Pope Gregory.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Yeah, yeah. There's a pretty good chance that the next pope is going to be a Gregory. Just because they're all Gregory. I mean, they're not all. But Pope Gregory VIII in 1582. Right. Is where you get that.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

The Gregorian calendar, I would assume. It's like. I thought it was the same. Just because it's like, all right, so you're knocking things out of the park with the calendar, so now you can just trash Mary Magdalene. Okay, whatever.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

That's not his point. So Gregory the Great gave a series of sermons surrounding the New Testament unfolding. They're called homilies. And in these homilies, he is expounding upon aspects of the New Testament. He does some of the Old Testament too, but this one is on the New Testament and specifically the story of the woman when Jesus is asked to go eat at the Pharisee's house and they sit down and the next thing you know, a woman comes in and begins to anoint his feet. So everyone's aware of that story from Luke chapter seven. And this is what Gregory taught in this homily. Now, it was then, of course, printed and sent by letter. There's not a printing press. I mean, it was block, you know, re. Rewritten and sent to the various churches throughout. Throughout the Christian world. So this is how he begins his homily. When I think of Mary's repentance, I am more disposed to weep than to speak. Whose heart is so stony that this sinful woman's Tears wouldn't soften it with her example of repentance. So, so he's just read, he's just read the story from Luke. I mean, maybe, maybe. As you know, obviously I'm not Pope Garrett the Great, so I, I, I probably should have started with that. Maybe we'll read it just so everyone's aware of the story. I know, I know it's a very popular story from Jesus's life, from the Gospels, but let's read it just so everyone is on board. One of the Pharisees. This is verse 36 of Luke, chapter 7. One of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee's house and sat down to meat, and behold a woman in the city which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment and stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. Now, when the Pharisees which had bidden him saw it, he spake within himself, saying, this man, if he were a prophet, would know who and what manner this woman is that touches him, for she is a sinner. So clearly the implication from the text is it is widely known that she is a sinful woman, right? That she is not a righteous person. And so he thinks this to himself. He doesn't actually say anything. And Jesus answering unto him, said, simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee. And he saith, master, say on. There was a certain creditor who had two debtors, the one owed 500 pence and the other 50. When they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which will love him the most? Simon answered and said, I suppose that he to whom he forgave most. The interesting thing, I don't have it in front of me, but I remember James E. Talmadge commenting on verse 43 in Jesus the Christ that caught. In his essentially evil thinking about this woman, Simon isn't even willing to give the obvious answer of the question without hedging it. I suppose he to whom he forgave most. You suppose that one person is owed 50 days worth of wages, the other person is owed 500 days worth of wages. But you suppose that the one who was owed 500 days worth of wages would be a little bit more excited about having that debt forgiven. I Mean, it just shows where Simon's at. And I think that's what Elder Talmage was getting at in Jesus for Christ. But Jesus says to him, thou hast rightly judged. And he turned to the woman and said unto Simon, seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house, and thou gavest me no water for my feet. Which was customary, right? If you're. If you have a guest, especially an exalted guest, an important guest, you're going to give them somewhere to wash their feet as they come inside. So it kind of shows that Simon had not even extended the traditional hospitality of having a guest, Which, I mean, it kind of suggests an ulterior motive on Simon's part, right, that I'm having Jesus over to my house so that I can try to entrap him, not so that I can learn from him. And you get a little bit of that from him when he sees this woman come into his house, crying at Jesus feet and touching him. Because, remember, ceremonial cleanliness was a very important part of Judaism at the time of Christ, that. That you were not supposed to even be touching people that were profligate sinners. And so Simon is saying in his mind, some prophet this guy is. He doesn't even know that this person touching him is this ridiculously sinful person. He should know that. But Jesus turns it back on Simon, you gave me no water for my feet. But she has washed my feet with her tears and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Thou gavest me no kiss. But this woman, since I came in, hath not ceased to kiss my feet, my head with oil thou didst not anoint. But this woman hath anointed my feet with ointments. Wherefore I say unto thee, her sins, which are many, are forgiven. For she loved much. But unto whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little. And he said unto her, thy sins are forgiven. And the interesting thing is, immediately what do they do? They turn again to themselves. They won't say it out loud to Jesus after just being, you know, rhetorically beaten down by Jesus's beautiful teaching and logic. And they that sat with meat with him began to say within themselves, who is this that forgiveth sins also? So they're not even listening to the beauty of the teaching. They're saying to themselves, who does this guy think he is that he has the ability to tell her she's forgiven? He doesn't. That has to come from someone else. That has to come from the priest and the high priest that can't come from him. And he said unto the woman, thy faith has saved thee. Go in peace. So that's the story. But back to the homily of Gregory the Great. He says, whose heart would is so stony that this sinful woman's tears wouldn't soften it with her example of repentance. I mean, that. That is a beautiful opening, talking about this woman's repentance. Out of consideration for what she had done, she refused to moderate what she was doing. She came in while people were dining. She came in uninvited. She poured out her tears while a feast was going on. Tell me, what was the grief that consumed her, that she was not ashamed to weep even during a feast? This woman whom Luke calls a sinner, John names Mary. I believe that she is the same Mary of whom Mark says seven demons had been cast out. So what he's doing is he's taking the story of Mary Magdalene, who. Whom the person is that seven demons were cast out of, and he's merging it with this, what is sometimes called Mary of Bethany. So if we go to. If we go to John, is this more boring than discussing pies? Is that. Is that where we're at or.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Well, I mean, yeah, PI discussion is kind of the height of podcast entertainment.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

But standard of truth, you know, gold. If you. If you go to John, chapter 12, then it is. It tells a story of Martha and Mary, you know, in Lazarus's household. And this is, you know, just before Jesus's crucifixion, then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. This seems odd to me that Gregory is conflating the story of Simon the Pharisee and Jesus eating in his house with Jesus eating at Mary of Bethany's house. Martha and Mary, you know, Martha of cumbered about with much serving Martha, right. And he. He. So he takes that story and says that John tells us this woman is Mary. But I don't think that's what John's telling us. It seems to be a different story of someone different anointing Jesus's feet. But I'll go on with the homily. I believe that she is the same Mary of whom Mark says seven demons were cast out. So let. Let's jump over to Mark real quick. If you're following along, It's Mark, chapter 16, verse. Now, when Jesus had risen early in the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven Devils. Okay, so Mary Magdalene. And it's also in Luke 8, chapter 2, where he says that certain women which have been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils. Right? So you have this statement that Mary Magdalene has these devils cast out of her. That's what the Gospels affirm. But Gregory is merging the story of Mary Magdalene and her seven devils that were cast out of her with the story of this unnamed woman who comes into Simon's house, who's clearly a profligate sinner, who is then bathing Jesus feet with her tears and anointing his feet with oil. And he's conflating the two, I think, because John talks about Mary Magdalene later in a later setting, anointing Jesus feet with oil. So he says that how should we interpret the seven demons, except as the totality of vices? So essentially, Gregory saying the seven demons that were cast out of her is because there's seven deadly sins, right? And she is clearly guilty of them all. And that's why there's seven demons. The totality of vices. Since all time is comprehended in seven days, we correctly take the number seven to signify totality. So he's seeing symbolism in that. It's not that she had seven devils, it's that seven means total, because a week is seven days. That's what it means. We correctly take the number seven to signify totality. Mary had seven demons since she was filled with a totality of vices. But you see that because she was aware of the stains of her disgrace, she ran to the fountain of Mercy to be washed clean. She was not ashamed before those who were dining, since she felt such great shame inwardly, she did not believe that there was anything to be bashful about. Outwardly. What astonishes us, my friends? Mary's coming or the Lord receiving her? Should I say that he received her or that he drew her to Himself? I had better say that he drew her and received her. Surely he drew her inwardly by his mercy and received her outwardly with his gentleness. But as we've already run through the text of the Gospel, let us see the manner of her healing. Then he recites the fact that she gave the alabaster ointment. It is evident, my friends, that a woman who had earlier been eager for actions which were not allowed had used the ointment as a scent for her own body. So now he's claiming that the ointment was a way of making her more alluring to the gentleman callers. I Believe, if we're using Richard's non dander up terminology, what earlier she had used disgracefully for herself, she now laudably offered for the Lord. Her eyes had sought earthly things. Now chastising them through repentance, she wept. She had used her hair to beautify her face. Now she used it to wipe away her tears. She had spoken proudly with her mouth, but in kissing the Lord's feet, she fixed it to the footsteps of her Redeemer. She found as many things to sacrifice as she had ways of offering pleasure. She converted the number of her faults into the number of virtues so that she could serve God in complete repentance as she had rejected him in sin. So if you're wondering why did it come down that way? It came down that way because Gregory the Great, The Pope in 591 A.D. gave one of the most famous homilies he gave. And that tradition was such that it was accepted through all Catholicism, and that tradition carried over even into Protestantism. Now, I'm not saying all Protestants believe that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, but it is certainly the tradition in the Catholic faith. In fact, at one point, I'm going to go very deep into my bag of cultural references here, Richard. You should, you should saddle up and be ready for this.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

All right?

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

It is, it's going to be, it's going to be big. Do you remember watching the movie Sister act with Whoopi Goldberg?

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

No, I haven't seen that movie in 25 years. So if I'm wrong about this, you know, cut me a little bit of grace. But, you know, the whole idea is you have this woman who's trying to hide. And so she goes in and she pretends that she's a nun. And she, of course, is not a nun. And, you know, hilarities ensue, as you might imagine. But there's a point where the, the monsignor, you know, the, the, the priest or bishop of, of the, the place where these nuns live, he is giving a sermon and he, he references Mary Magdalene. He says, mary Magdalene. Again, I, I literally haven't seen the movie in like 25 years. So I. There's no possible way I'm quoting it even kind of close, but he says Mary Magdalene was no stranger to sin. And then comically, you know, for laugh, says, in fact, she was no stranger to just about anybody. And, you know, it's a nice little joke. It's a good way to start a sermon, I guess. But it is following along this claim that Mary Magdalene wasn't Just someone who had been possessed by seven devils, but that she was actually the sinner woman that was apparently a woman of the night that was talked about in Luke. And so when you see that talked about in tradition, it is almost always coming out of Catholic tradition. It's still what's believed in Catholic tradition today because it was a pope that taught it, and that's where it was taught. You know this. If we were to go, I'm not going to read the whole homily because I don't want everyone to convert to Catholicism just yet. But, you know, in part of it, he says, what, my friends do. We think love is if not fire, what is sin if not rust? Hence it is said that many sins are forgiven her because she has loved much. This means she has completely burned away the rust of sin because she is mightily aflame with the fire of love. The more heart of a sinner is consumed by the fire of love, the more fully is the rust of sin consumed. Dearly beloved, I've completed my literal explanation of this story. Now let me give you the mystical interpretation of what has been said. If it seems good, whom does the Pharisee who relies on his spurious righteousness represent but the Jewish people? And whom the sinful woman coming to the Lord's feet and weeping, except the Gentiles who have been converted. She came with an alabaster flask. She poured out the ointment. She stood behind him at his feet. She wet his feet with her tears. She wiped with her hair the feet she had moistened, and she did not cease to kiss the feet that she had wiped. The woman represented us. If we return to the Lord wholeheartedly after we have sinned, if we imitate the distress of her repentance. So, you know, something a little, you know, at least kind of. I mean, I guess it depends on your range of anti Semitism, if you decide whether that's sort of anti Semitic or if it's like really anti Semitic. I mean, in the 600s, you know, at this point, the church had gained the ascendancy over the Mediterranean world. In the early days of the church, some of the biggest opponents to Paul and to other preachers was the various Jewish communities where they were claiming that Jesus was the Messiah. So it is a little late, you know, 591, to still be coming at them that hard. But this is how he interprets this. The Pharisees saw this and was envious because when the Jews saw the Gentiles preaching the God, they were consumed by their own malice. Our Redeemer recounted this woman's actions as if they were the good deeds of the Gentiles so the Jews might be. Might recognize their evil state. The Pharisee was rebuked so that the faithless people might be exposed through him. I entered your house and you gave me no water for my feet. But she has wiped my feet with her tears. Wet my feet with her tears. Water is outside of us, but our tears are within us. The unfaithful people never bestowed the things outside themselves for the Lord's sake. But the Gentiles, when they had been converted, poured out for him not only their possessions, but even their blood. I mean, you can tell that Gregory is a. I mean, well, he's the Pope. I mean, he's the leader of all Christendom. He's sort of a good speaker, right? He. I'm sure if he had a podcast, it would have many, many, many more followers than we do. So he does speak with some beautiful illusions. But in essence, he's making the connection. And the connection is never made before that. All of the connections made after that are made because he's the one who teaches it. But in none of our early Christian fathers, even those who give us commentary on the New Testament, none of them say that Mary Magdalene is the same person who anointed Jesus's feet and, you know, wiped her feet with her hair, was this sinful woman. It's a tradition that comes from Gregory the Great. Now, speaking of popes, I know we've already gone on a little bit long, but if we wait till our next episode, well, there won't be a Pope by the next episode. Some people have wondered, how exactly do we get to where there is a pope? And that'd be a very long episode in and of itself. The interesting aspect of it is in the Christian world, you have these diametric opposites. You have the Catholic Church, and to a lesser extent, lesser impact on us, the Orthodox Church, claiming that when Jesus was on the earth, that Jesus established a church and that that church was headed by the apostles and that there were offices in that church and there was authority in that church and there was a hierarchy in that church. And that, of course, is something that sounds pretty good to a Latter Day Saint, right? A Latter Day Saint's like, go on. Now, what's interesting is Protestants thoroughly reject that idea, and they have to out of necessity, right? If you're claiming that salvation has nothing to do with ordinances, it has nothing to do with baptism, it has nothing to do with whether or not you confess your sins to the priest. It has nothing to do with confirmation. Salvation is purely based on faith alone. If you have faith, then the grace of Christ is applied to you and the grace of Christ saves you. And that's it. So, so they of course, are going to argue that the New Testament doesn't demonstrate an organized church with a hierarchy. Sure, the apostles are who are listened to the same way that we listen to, you know, an amazing preacher or a pastor today. But there's not a structure that's created with authoritative offices and authoritative ordinances. And so you have this division in Christianity where you have one arguing that Jesus gave authority and Jesus created structure, and that structure existed forever even after the apostles were gone. And that authority still held, you know, with the Pope who's, you know, Peter's considered to be the first bishop of Rome. And then, you know, they name their, he names his three successors. That's how you get the next three popes. And that over the course of the next several hundred years, those popes become more powerful. They are intended by God to be the leader of the entire Christian world. And they are, you know, until the Great Schism where the, when the Eastern churches break away and then even more so when the Protestant churches, when the Protestant Reformation takes place in the early 1500s. For the. There, there are, I mean, there's a 2,000 year history of popes, right? So I can't, in what is now the five minutes of overtime in the podcast, go through all of them. But it's not up until, it's really not up until the latter part of the first Christian millennia that they even really set the way that popes are going to be called. And that's because by this latter part, you end up having these various different popes claiming to be pope at the same time. Well, what happens when one person says that they were voted in and they're pope and someone else is voted in and they're also pope? So you now have two people that are in charge of the entire Christian world, except that both of them obviously can't be both the, the pope at the same time. Sometimes these are called in history the anti popes. And in particular the anti pope, Constantine ii, is someone who claimed he was the Pope. Now this is 767 A.D. if you're wondering, you know, how long ago this is. And so they hold a council. And what comes out of that council is it's the first Lateran Council, or first Council of Rome, if you want to call it that what comes out of that is a decision that the only way the pope can be made, the pope, is no longer the way it's been in the past, because the pope before has been, you know, the King of the Lombards says that this guy's pope and I have an army, so guess he's Pope. You want to fight about it. I mean, that's exactly, you know, how that was done in some cases. There were popes that were elected, like, by proclamation of the people. Right. The people of Rome were like, oh, you know, Bill is the Pope. No one was, you know, named Bill, but this person's now the pope. And so what comes out of that is at least the method. Now, they're not always going to follow it, but at least the argument that the method of choosing a pope is going to be through the cardinals of the church. Only the cardinals could be elected pope. So you can't just be anybody and become pope. And there are several hundred cardinals in the Catholic Church, interestingly, the only ones who have the right to vote in the papal conclave. So after the pope dies, they moan the. They moan. They mourn the pope for a series of weeks and then they hold a papal conclave in the Sistine Chapel where these cardinals get together and they vote on who should be the next pope. Interestingly, there's an age limit to which cardinals can vote. You have to be under the age of 80 as a cardinal to have the right to vote. So, like, if you were to juxtapose that against a Latter Day Saint apostleship right now, it's like, well, we got a lot of people that have a pretty big vote coming on the other side of that. But of course, it's not a vote in the Latter Day Saint church, and that's how the pope is selected. And then famously, they put different smoke up the chimney so that you know when the pope is selected. Also, interestingly, you're going to see a lot of this over the next coming several weeks. How could it be otherwise since this is all you ever get anymore? And that is a claim that the death of Francis is heralding the second coming of Jesus. That because Francis died. And this isn't just your random, average, everyday guy with a YouTube channel that's arguing this. It's because there was a early Catholic archbishop in the 1100s named Saint Malachy who had like visions and predictions, and he claimed that you'd get to the end of the popes, that there'd be only 109 popes. And St. Francis was that and so that after that there'd be a couple of years period of, you know, all kinds of anarchy, and then the second coming would be ushered in. So what's funny is you're thinking, no, no one's ever going to bring that up. My son Riker, who's on a mission in Tucson in America, had a member of the church actually bring this up to him about whether or not there was going to even be another Pope, because that would be a fulfillment of prophecy that there were no more popes. And the second coming. It's such a weird thing, I think, to be a Latter Day Saint and to think the way that we're going to know that the end times come is because of a Catholic archbishop in the 1100s, that that's how God decided to tell us. He didn't want to tell us with, I don't know, the prophets who actually hold the keys. He decided to tell us through an obscure Catholic bishop that if we just so happen to know about, then we'll be ready. So, I mean, you can take that for what it's worth, but thank you so much for listening. Sorry, this was a little disjointed. I apologize that maybe people didn't want to know that much about Mary Magdalene, or at least Richard didn't want to talk that much about how much he despises Pope Gregory.

[Dr. Richard Leduc]

I. I will say after you, after you read that, I. My dander is down a bit because it doesn't feel like he's focusing on the disparaging of character and more on the grace and mercy of Jesus. So, you know, yeah, the point, the.

[Dr. Garrett Dirkmaat]

Point of the sermon is you can repent. And also Jews didn't accept Jesus. I mean, there's another part of the sermon that is very anti Jewish, which is kind of par for the course for the time for the Christian church, but that's where it comes from. And so thank you so much for joining us and I hope everybody has a great week.

Thank you for listening to the Standard of Church Truth podcast, hosted by historian Dr. Garrett Dirkmot and Dr. Richard Leduc. If you know of anybody that could benefit from the material in this episode, please share it with them. Until next time.