We do have here a mini-Vatican with power struggles which are creating earthquakes.

Yes, there is a cone of silence, however, we can reverse-engineer what is happening by analyzing the actions of the Q15, TAKING INTO CONSIDERATION their own hubris and lack of connection with reality.

I am speaking of the "something off" that political pundits spoke of so often during Romney's campaign. People couldn't put their finger on it, but we did, recognizing immediately the patronizing attitude and even speech inflection of the elite Mormon Royal.

Karma is a bitch and I submit this explanation for the contradictory and baffling actons of the Q15. They know they need professional help because they don't understand their own members (temple changes, focus groups, stonewalling, lack of transparency, strange fascination for trivia like garments while gardening while Rome burns). AND YET

When they receive the advice, they cannot help but divide their votes between the group that believes the church must change to survive and the group that believes the church must punish and excommunicate nay-sayers, not LISTEN to them (for god's sake).

These are two completely diametrically opposed views and, as Dagny put it, we are seeing the conflict that occurs within every religion as society ALWAYS changes rapidly and religion MUST adjust itself or die.

Mormon elite-of-the-elite find it so difficult to accept the fact that glorious them could possibly become irrelevant and not be bowed to, obeyed, hailed and celebrated. They have always been able to manipulate the masses with revival calls to "pray and obey" or campaigns to "just do it."

Why isn't it working any more?

I believe this is the question being argued among the leaders and they are deadlocked. The only thing they have agreed upon is to take the names off the essays so they can control the message with no public accountability. That way, later, they can choose their own scapegoat if they need one. It's the same reason the Resignation Department no longer sends out letters signed by Greg Dodge. Every COB employee realizes that he/she may be the designated scapegoat.

They thought they would get plausible deniability when they sent out that disastrous edict saying that they were no longer going to answer questions regarding doctrine, that this was to be referred to local bishops and stake presidents. They figured they could just crucify individuals who said something that backfired (like accidentally telling the truth).

Instead they lost control of the message and ended up with a PR department that was doing nothing but damage control for errant local priesthood leaders. Resulting action: tighten up the correlated already-choked lesson manuals and pull the books with specifics like quotes from former prophets that the nature of god is known by them for certain....just dump the whole lot.

The current panic mode is an attempt by them to control the message which the PR department (in their view) failed to do. You can be sure there have been mass "layoffs" and firings as fear cascades through the COB and resumes are flying out the windows.

If I still prayed, I would pray that Mitt Romney runs again, because his handlers are disfunctional and frankly, I miss the entertainment value I personally enjoyed as his own party members commented on his gaff-a-day policy.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse for Mormonism:

The gays

The females

The blacks

The youth on twitter

It is the endgame and I am looking forward to seeing the day they change the name (again) to The Best Church of Jesus Christ and publish a disclaimer against all Mormon Doctrine, being willing only to publish and stand by The Articles of Faith.


Kathleen Waters

I love the horsemen--never thought of the Youth on Twitter as one. I might add the increased scientific literacy of our own people and the free access to info on the internet...

It is so obvious these guys don't know what they're doing. Try this, try that. They don't know what to do when challenged -- oblige, or punish. The problem is their product sucks, so, hey, church leaders, "Good luck with that. It's only going to get worse."

It seems a lot of posters think Romney has something to do with the timing and essays. As if the church is greasing the wheels for him.

I just don't see it. "Hubris" is the word, and the big boys in Salt Lake have a lot of it. I don't see them yielding and or sharing that power with a (gasp) more powerful politician. Do they actually think that a mormon president will listen to them and obey them? Do they think that having a mormon president won't bring mormonism under a more critical (negative) spotlight?

I can certainly understand how the average Joe and Jane mormon would want it, naively of course thinking that the president will make the country a better (mormon?) one. But the mormon board of directors? Too much hubris to allow somebody else to be carrying their flag.

In reading some of John Dehlin's research, I could not help but link his survey's findings with the content of the essays that have rolled out.

If you don't have time to read the whole document, pages 9 and 18 have lists of reasons people leave. Pages 24-25 have lists of what would make people consider returning.

The lists John produced are "eerily" parallel to the topics of the essays.

http://www.whymormonsquestion.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Survey-Results_Understanding-Mormon-Disbelief-Mar20121.pdf

Disclaimer: somewhere in John's materials I read a bullet point list of the main issues, and they, too, match the essay rollouts.

I recall from the DCP dustup that Dehlin has at least one bigname connection in the hierarchy. On at leat one of his podcasts he speaks of sharing the results of his survey (for his dissertation project) with suits.

Apologies if the Dehlin link has been posted on another recent thread. I delight in the words of Anagrammy, and, seeing her post, I though to add something topical to this thread.

Peace out.

I have had thoughts along the Amagrammy lines for some time now. I think that the Q15 are not so much deadlocked as they are check-mated. The old guard are hard-liners, but they are old and not as powerful as they used to be. Tommy is too demented to settle disputes among the factions. The hard-liners are determined to do the impossible, which is to stamp out dissent, and some of them (maybe Packer and Ballard and Nelson) are going behind the backs of the modernizers and sending word to SPs to ex people like Kate Kelley, but the modernizers are trying to stanch the flow of the well-educated and well-paid middle agers and the info-age young people, knowing that that is where the church's future lies.

The hard-liners would do even more, but they can't accomplish what they really want due to the requirement to act unanimously, and some of the modernizers are not willing to engage in a blood bath for principles that they know will one day have to be buried. So they hold out for a softer approach, check-mating the hard liners.

Add to this the fact that the middle managers in the bureaucracy are locked in turf wars over the same issues that the Q15 can't agree on. Correlation is the Old Guard, while the history department is doing its damnedest to put out "innoculating" information to remove the shock value of learning that all of that "anti" material out there is actually true. The historians would like to go farther, and some of the Q15 are on the side of the historians, but the correlators won't allow it. There are more correlator-allies in the Q15 than there are modernizers, but the modernizers have had enough clout to get some stuff out in the essays. The correlators have limited what the modernizers can do, but they haven't been able to stop it. They just manage to get their finger prints all over it, which leads to Lying for the Lord in the essays..

Several of the Old Guard will be dead in 5 years, some sooner. Who replaces them will determine whether we get more retrenchment or more modernizing. The hard-liners would like to pack more clones on the council, but with Monson out of it, they will have a hard time doing that because they can't get consensus from the modernizers without compromise.

It's a really interesting time to be a Mormon-watcher. Please pass the popcorn.

bumping for relevance

MoLeaders have painted themselves into a corner; they can't retreat to Christ-Like living, even if they were the premier/foremost church in that category!

-First, FIRE the PR machine.

Interesting that the Horsemen are every group the TSCC has oppressed.

They need to read more Orwell for guidelines and suggestions in running their society.

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1415537



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/27/2014 02:12AM by steve benson.