Mr. Hofmann has admitted selling, trading or arranging for the donation of many forged documents to the church. He confessed in January that on Oct. 15, 1985, in Salt Lake City, he set off pipe bombs that killed Steven F. Christensen, a Mormon bishop, and Kathleen W. Sheets, the wife of a bishop. He said he killed them to cover up his forgery schemes, the authorities said.

In interviews with the authorities made public July 31, Mr. Hofmann said he fabricated hundreds of documents, including those pertaining to the Mormon Church. Some Hofmann documents tended to support Mormon doctrinal claims of divine origin for the church, including one saying that Joseph Smith Jr., the founder, received gold plates from an angel in 1830 that he translated into the Book of Mormon. Doctrines Seem Undermined

But other Hofmann documents appeared to undermine key doctrines of the six-million-member church and portrayed Mr. Smith as a superstitious dabbler in folk magic who used ''seer stones'' to search for buried treasure and received the gold plates from a ''white salamander,'' not an angel.

On the Hofmann episode, Mr. Oaks accused the press of falsely accusing the church of suppressing documents it found embarrassing or not in accord with doctrine, and of inaccuracies, distortions, bias, refusing to print letters of reply and other attempts to cover up journalistic failings.

He cited two New York Times articles, one last Feb. 11 and the other in the Jan. 12, 1986, Sunday Magazine. He cited a passage in the Feb. 11 article that said: ''According to investigators, the church leaders purchased from Mr. Hofmann and then hid in a vault a number of 19th-century letters and other documents that cast doubt on the church's official version of its history.'' 'Character Assassination'