Bye bye temple cafeterias

It’s several hours to our temple from our ward, and several hours back. We leave first thing in the morning and are back last thing at night. The cafeteria is one of the few things I look forward to. Otherwise the place would be completely boring while you’re waiting around.

I am temple ambivalent these days and I don’t particularly believe in the whole concept of proxy work for the dead or even the live ordinances. I get little out of the temple. I recently saw a news piece regarding the drought in Madagascar. Madagascar is on the brink of famine and people are starving. Some collect mere drops of water to survive. Millions are affected. But we’re going to build a multi-million dollar temple there. Let them eat cake.

If they are building a temple in Madgascar, I hope local people are being paid, then at least that brings money into the economy which can be used to pay for imported food and which will go into local businesses to improve their situation. This helps grow permanent infrastructure.

But I take your point, the money could be better spent on wells etc. I have always favored the idea of missionaries being used on service projects, but that should include things that can be used long term.

I think charity has to be well thought out. I heard recent that a large sector of the African economy has been devasted by some forms of charity… e.g. clothing manufacturers can’t sell anything because other Africans in some places are getting free clothes. Those people are thus not making the money they could to support their families and build up an industry which could eventually bring in international sales, which would be better than the onerous bank loans these countries get. The LDS has the right idea when it comes to building self-reliance. Any charity has to try and build long term results as well as bridging short term gains.

Actually, why don’t we turn the temple cafeterias into soup kitchens to provide free meals to the needy? That would be an interesting twist, and then temples could serve the living as well as the dead. You’d get a lot more visitors too.

:angel:

I put this in the same file as painting over temple murals and firing the janitors.

I too see this as similar to no longer employing janitors but I do not see that as a bad thing necessarily. I have always felt that no longer employing janitors makes sense from a business perspective. They are covered under OSHA and the FLSA and potential for violating these rules in the far flung and poorly supervised church building locations is high. I also assume that there could be some ability to falsify hours worked and thereby cheat the church. (I further assume that the church would care even more about providing a temptation for dishonesty than the relatively small amounts of money that might be lost in this fashion)

Where I took issue with the decision to no longer employ janitors was that the decision was explained purely from a “we want the membership to have the blessings of cleaning their own building” angle. To me, this seemed patronizing – or less than fully honest and transparent.

The decision to discontinue the cafeterias seems very transparent by comparison. The announcement states that the change was made “with a desire to simplify temple operations.”

To me, this is a brief, honest, and forthright assessment of the situation and I respect that.

I wish there was a like button for the part in bold. I guess the church has to be careful it doesn’t make decisions be all about money. Or people like me get their back up. But it also hurts the church’s reputation not to be honest with us about the “why” behind some of these decisions.

I am fine with this one. From an operational standpoint, particularly with the focus on more and more small, local temples, this makes perfect sense.