Orson Pratt proclaimed: "Both Catholics and Protestants are nothing less than the 'whore of Babylon' whom the Lord denounces by the mouth of John the Revelator...
With the understanding Orson Pratt had at the time I understanding why he said this, a more enlightened understanding would be:
Warring against the Saints of God By Stephen E. Robinson
"Some Latter-day Saints have erred in believing that some specific denomination, to the exclusion of all others, has since the beginning of time been the great and abominable church. This is dangerous, for many will then want to know which it is, and an antagonistic relationship with that denomination will inevitably follow."
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"Actually, no single known historical church, denomination, or set of believers meets all the requirements for the great and abominable church:"
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"Can we, then, identify the historical agency that acted as the great and abominable church in earliest Christianity? Such an agent would have had its origins in the second half of the first century and would have done much of its work by the middle of the second century."
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"This period might be called the blind spot in Christian history, for it is here that the fewest primary historical sources have been preserved. We have good sources for New Testament Christianity; then the lights go out, so to speak, and we hear the muffled sounds of a great struggle. When the lights come on again a hundred or so years later, we find that someone has rearranged all the furniture and Christianity has become something very different from what it was in the beginning. That different entity can accurately be described as hellenized Christianity."
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"The historical abominable church of the devil is that apostate church that replaced true Christianity in the first and second centuries, teaching the philosophies of men mingled with scriptures. It dethroned God in the church and replaced him with man by denying the principle of revelation and turning instead to human intellect. As the product of human agency, its creeds were an abomination to the Lord, for they were idolatry: men worshipping the creations, not of their own hands, but of their own minds."
With the understanding Orson Pratt had at the time I understanding why he said this, a more enlightened understanding would be:
Keep going; you've still gotta spin what THESE fellas have said; too.
Joseph Smith,
Brigham Young,
President John Taylor,
James Talmage,
President Joseph Fielding Smith,
Apostle Bruce McConkie,
President George Q. Cannon,
President Wilford Woodruff