When the Temporal and the Spiritual Collide

You’ve touched on part of what my issue is with the church right now. I agree 100% that the church is much more concerned with it’s own interests than it is with the welfare, physical or spiritual, of people.

So, I have a question — is it too much to hold the church to a higher standard when it comes to the inevitable tradeoffs between the temporal and the spiritual? Or should the church be held to a higher standard where they are expected to sacrifice temporal interests for spiritual ones, even when this can cause significant financial, reputational or other harm to the church?

I don’t think that’s too much to ask at all. One thing I’ve heard some people say is we should replace the name of the church by saying “Jesus” instead. Apply that to the recent headline of the Idaho abuse coverup. “Recordings show how [Jesus] protects [him]self from child sex abuse claims“, is not a good look. I’d say that practice of name swapping would better serve as a standard for church leaders and employees to say as a guide for their decisions.

Wow! Powerful substitution there PazamaManX. It is nice to know that someone else feels the church, if its going to make the claims it does about its divine commission, should be held to a higher standard.

This is very distressing, but a good article by the same guy who helped uncover the Catholic mess.

I wish the church would instead support Bishops who report such atrocities to law enforcement, but I suppose it’s less expensive to pay off victims than fight lawsuits.

I understand clergy privilege but I wish that just like with mental health professionals, there were some confessions that prompt reporting. I wish bishops were mandated reporters.

Bishops, good grief. Report child abuse! You can do it. You’d have public support and likely eventually church support. Maybe some laws need to be broken for the public good.

I realize that’s easier said than done.

A simple but important note about the Idaho case:

The actual law says an ecclesiastical leader cannot report a confessed crime unless the perpetrator gives their permission.

The law needs to change, but, in this case, the Bishop and the Church had no legal way to report it.

I am NOT saying anything in this comment about any other case or about these situations, generally, but it is important to understand the actual laws.

The church has deep pockets. That makes it a target of lawsuits.

From a faithful perspective (and even from my less than faithful perspective), I would not object to the church taking actions that are legal and not deceitful to protect church resources from lawsuits.

I am not suggesting that any particular lawsuits might be frivolous or without merit. That is a decision for the courts to decide. The church is perpetually a defendant or potential defendant in these cases. It only makes sense that they would act in ways that would protect church interests from a big picture. Therefore, they would be wary of doing things in one case that might come back to haunt the church on another case or future cases.

Question: Shouldn’t we expect the church to act according to a higher law and “do what is right, let the consequence follow?”

Answer from Roy: One principle that I have found helpful in my journey to StayLDS is to manage my expectations. The church (meaning church members and leadership) make lots of grandiose claims about itself. I find it helpful to not take these too seriously. If I were to “hold the church to a higher standard,” I would accomplish nothing but to be continually disappointed and frustrated.

The church is people. People are wonderful and helpful and inspiring. People are also frustrating and hurtful and disappointing. I find it helpful to understand the church from an anthropological or sociological or human dynamics perspective. Because businesses are organizations that are also full of people then, yes, there is significant overlap between what the church might do and what a business might do.

One piece of good news is that lawsuits are helping churches, businesses, and other organizations to “do the right thing” in terms of creating safeguards to prevent future abuse and future lawsuits. The addition of windows on church classroom doors and the requirement for primary teachers to be 2 deep are both examples of how the LDS church specifically is attempting to do this. I am positive that there are many, many more such examples.

A simple but important note about the Idaho case:

The actual law says an ecclesiastical leader cannot report a confessed crime unless the perpetrator gives their permission.

The law needs to change, but, in this case, the Bishop and the Church had no legal way to report it.

I am NOT saying anything in this comment about any other case or about these situations, generally, but it is important to understand the actual laws.

OT — I watched a John Dehlin Mormon Stories Podcast on this with a couple from the Ward in which the child abuse occurred. One of the members in the podcast who objected to the way the SP handled the situation was a former prosecuting attorney. He said that yes, the Bishop didn’t have to report the abuse when it was confessed to him. However, after it became public information, the SP could have discussed it openly with the membership. And the SP did just that in a 5-minute meeting when he read a prepared statement indicating and justifying why he, the SP, handled it properly.

The couple in the Mormon Stories podcast wanted the church to meet with the members and help them understand how to ask their own children who were youth at the time the former Bishop was working with youth, about whether such abuse had happened to them as well. This was to determine the scope of the abuse and to help former victims heal. This member from the ward in which the abuse occurred said that nothing was preventing the SP or any church leader from openly discussing it after it became public information. He also felt that the leadership didn’t WANT to hear about any further abuse cases, and that was one reason they didn’t want to probe the membership to see if any victims needed to come forward.

This to me is an example of the phenomenon I am referring to in the opening post. The church, when faced with a sex abuse problem from the ex-Bishop, acted in a very protective way, citing laws that no longer applied, and not wanting to unearth even more abuse that could potentially lead to lawsuits.

Speaking personally, when our adoption failed, the LDS Social Services people acted in the same way — legalistically, and without remorse. It was only when a new person took over that there was an apology. My stake president did the same thing when the local church was in debt for young people to go on missions. He would rather have me sit at home for 2 years, rotting away in a low-income job, and chastising me for seeking funding outside the stake rather than approaching the situation with a faithful, inspiring, miracle-expecting attitude. The money was all that mattered to him. Fortunately, members of the church rallied to help me by giving me a free place to live while I saved, etcetera, that’s why I posted the other thread about the church being imperfect, but the members being awe-inspiring at times. They are awful a lot too, but some can be truly inspiring.

In the AZ case, the perpetrator was excommunicated. The attorney for the children tried to get the the ward clerk (who was privvy to the details of the excommunication) to tell what he knew, and argued that after the man was no longer a member, local church leaders could have reported it. They did not. Lower courts said the clerk wasn’t subject to clergy privilege so should comply. Church attorneys appealed successfully, claiming the ward clerk was a bishopric member and under the same law.

It’s been a mess. This sexual abuse was sickening and went on for years, and included an infant. It took a person in New Zealand to make the report. Two bishops over the course of several years. I feel for them, as they did what they were told to do, which was encourage the man to turn himself in. One bishop also got the guy to confess to his wife and encouraged her to report. She did not. Meanwhile, at least one young girl and one infant were severely abused. I believe there were ways those bishops could have stopped it. One was actually a mandated reporter in his occupation.

There is obviously more to the story, but that’s the gist. And we don’t know the extent of the confessions to the bishop, but law enforcement knows how heinous the abuse was because he made videos. He was eventually excommunicated. And he killed himself before he could be prosecuted.

When does it become moral to break a law?

Question: Shouldn’t we expect the church to act according to a higher law and “do what is right, let the consequence follow?”

Answer from Roy: One principle that I have found helpful in my journey to StayLDS is to manage my expectations. The church (meaning church members and leadership) make lots of grandiose claims about itself. I find it helpful to not take these too seriously. If I were to “hold the church to a higher standard,” I would accomplish nothing but to be continually disappointed and frustrated.

I bolded the part above. The church requires a lot from its members. Tithing alone is a huge burden for many people. Why should some people pay it at gerat personal sacrifice if the church’s claims about itself aren’t true, and aren’t supported by its own behavior?

You said in another thread that the promise of assured protection for obedience set the foundation for your own faith crisis. For me, it was exactly the claims of the church about its grandiosity that laid the foundation for my own crisis. Only to be disappointed when the chips were down — and multiple times too.

If, to stay active, you have to take the church’s claims about itself with a grain of salt, then I would rather have little part of it. I would rather be part of an organization that makes no such claims, and manage my expectations that way.

It also really bugs me with all the church expects of us as members, and then doesn’t apply the same standards to itself.

Based on the claims the church makes for itself, I would think that miracles would be a feature. Based on the claims the church makes about itself, I would think that our church leadership would have special insight and preparedness for future events.

Instead, I observe that we have an organization that only has miracles if we stretch the word and squint at it sideways. Instead, we have an organization with leadership that seem to be doing their job about on par for other executives and CEO’s of similarly sized organizations. Far from being “visionary,” we seem to be many years behind most trends (one could argue that the church is upholding the correct standard while the world veers of course. However, I observe that the church usually does come around eventually – long after whatever trend has become mainstream).

(Your expectations of the church are different. Maybe the church leadership should be more honest and transparent given what it teaches about honesty. Or maybe the church should put its money where its mouth is and open its wallet at certain times as an exercise on faith. But still, I believe the path forward is the same.)

These are some examples where the reality of the church might not measure up to my expectations of the church. The next question becomes what do I do about it? I recognize that no matter what I decide, the church will continue being the church and will be largely unfazed by whatever outrage I direct towards it.

I, as an individual trying to “StayLDS,” do my very best to manage my expectations. This means that the church will say some pretty outlandish things about itself and I need to not take that too seriously. This is what churches do, they make grandiose claims. It’s almost like a sports team claiming that they are #1, it’s just what sports teams do.

Next, I try hard balance my pros and cons of church participation by setting boundaries. You mentioned tithing. I am VERY frugal and I know that paying 10% of my income would be an immanent train wreck of building resentment for me. For me, NOT paying tithing is important for my effort to StayLDS. I have experienced, as I have set these boundaries, that the church also reduces the “pros” of membership. For example, without paying tithing I do not have a TR. However, even with these reductions in positives associated with church membership, I believe that I am on a relatively sustainable path and have managed to balance out the pros and the cons.