Since when did the morg stop placing the Angel Moroni on top of newly built temples?

Is it a sign it's shifting away from the BoM as the absolute inspired word of God?

http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/paris-france-temple-open-house-dedication-dates

According to this article, there are ten temples with no angel mugambo adorning them:

St. George Utah
Logan Utah
Manti Utah
Laie Hawaii
Cardston Alberta
Mesa, Arizona
Hamilton New Zealand
Oakland California
Kinshasa Democratic Republic of the Congo—still under construction

http://www.ldsliving.com/Why-the-Paris-France-Temple-Doesn-t-Have-an-Angel-Moroni/s/83646

Thanks. So it's an architectural decision solely.

The Afton, Wyoming temple that recently opened features a big gold Moroni standing on its globe. Wouldn't say that blends in with the local surroundings either much, if at all. It sticks out like a sore thumb, truth be told.

It's not nearly as pretty as the Paris, France one either.

Didn't know so many of the temples didn't have the angel on top.

I've been driving past Cardston my whole like and it never donned on me that temple was gold dudeless???

Missed your fiberglass friend, Ron?

Was surprised to read that France currently has 38,000 members, and 100 congregations across France.

Assuming that's correct, that's app 380 members per ward, branch, or mission. Wonder how many of those are actually active members?

Just per ward or branch. The church doesn't try to keep track of the membership within a mission, since mission territories are about missionaries, not members.

Well, 38,000 members on the books really is nothing when you realize that France has 66 MILLION people, or roughly double the population of California.

And like all other places, when the church says 38,000 that really means that around 25% (or less) are active.

When I was there on my mission in '79-'80, one of the branches I was in (Caen) "officially" had 96 members listed. We never, ever had a Sunday where more than 20 people showed up. Nothing's changed :)

Interesting that the article about why it doesn't have spires or angel mormonony statues didn't mention that such things would violate zoning regulations in Le Chesnay. No, it's not lacking those things because of local regulations, it's lacking them because the architects made "artistic" decisions.

Not.

ificouldhietokolob Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> And like all other places, when the church says
> 38,000 that really means that around 25% (or less)
> are active.

And outside the US, a portion of those members are Americans working abroad.

That's a lot of people for a little country. Hmm, California too sounds like it's overpopulated for its geographical size. But then people gotta live somewhere.

To put things in perspective, France has roughly the same population as the UK, but it is twice the size in terms of surface area.

Whatever, 38,000 is not a very large proportion after more than a hundred years trying...

Tom, could you contact me off-line sometime? Do you have my E-mail? I think you can get it from admin. I have an important question for you.

Will do, Mike.

Edited to add:

Done! I hope the admin address I used is the right one. I sent it to erickett@wingnet.net. If you hear nothing from Eric or the team, I'll try another one.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/10/2016 12:17PM by Soft Machine.

I have a question for Tom, but I'm not a-scared to ask it in front of ghawd and everyone: Tom, after one uncorks a fine bottle of wine, is one allowed or encouraged to sniff the cork, and if so, for how many seconds? Are women allowed to sniff the cork?

I don't know, elderolddog. Although I haven't drunk any wine (or any other alcoholic drink) since 2002, for alcoholic rather than mormony reasons, I drank much more than my share in the 20 years preceding that - and I have a surprisingly good memory, under the circumstances ;-)

I may be committing oenological sacrilege here, but I wouldn't know what to expect from a cork - except that it'll smell funny. I preferred smelling the WINE, preferably red in my case. Red wine and strong cheese are a marriage made in heaven! I still sniff my wife's glass of red from time to time, generally if someone's made a remark, good or bad, about it - because I still buy all the wine for the house.

Wine's smell gives you some idea of what you might get from tasting it, but a cork is just a cork.

Tom in Paris

no French people lining up to go snorkeling in the Mormon baptismal font.

Funny when you realize that Jerry Lewis has more devoted followers in France than the Mormon prophet.

When my brother served his mission in the Paris-Versailles mission, he didn't have a single convert. Those French Catholics weren't about to give up their wine and women for Mormonism.

Bro couldn't even drink the water there it was so bad. Because he also couldn't drink wine, instead he drank lots and lots of soda pop. That had to be bad for his health! That was in the days before bottled water was in vogue.

:(

Something along the lines of working as a sales rep for the Jimmy Dean Sausage company and being assigned to handle pork sausage sales in Saudi Arabia.

Mormons get so blinded by faith that they can't see what everyone else can see with perfect clarity.

"God called me to this mission for a purpose!"

Uhmmm, sorry to break it to you, faithful Mormon missionary person, but first of all it wasn't God who called you to that mission. It was a bureaucrat in SLC working under the general direction of some guys who are no more inspired than your average Dairy Queen manager (all their claims to the contrary notwithstanding). Secondly, all you're trying to do is sell a bunch of made-up restrictions that suck the joy out of life to a people who pride themselves on knowing how to enjoy life. You're only purpose therefore is to spread misery.

Moreover, the percentage of Muslims in France, still small back when Elder Mitt Romney was enjoying himself there, is on its way to being 10% of the population; while in metropolitan Paris it's about 15% already.

Good luck with successfully proselytizing any of THEM. I suspect that the missionaries are under orders not to even try.

True progress would be the addition of drive-up windows on the side of the temples.

That, and a big plastic Moroni next to the menu in the drive-up lane. You decide what to order--cheeseburger, tacos, whatever--and then yell your order into the speakerphone on Moroni's chest. The missionary working inside reads back your order, tells you the cost, and directs you to proceed to the drive-up window.

I think missionaries could probably handle this. Because they work for free, it would help keep costs down.

It looks spooky rather than religious. Reminds me of a mausoleum.

It really does resemble a mausoleum.

Ew, creepy!

You walk into the mausoleum and a flying spiked metal ball stabs you in the forehead.

I didn't require my morning cup of coffee after reading this..

This is funny as hell.

"Sorry, Moroni. You gotta blend."

The reason for the lack of angel Moroni is the locals opposed the building of the Temple and tried to stop it. The church gave in and have tried to make it fit in and have promised the Temple will be available for community events like music concerts etc! The activity rate in France is 20% so about 10,000 active! There is really no need for this Temple or the Rome or Lisbon temple just vanity projects!

Thank you for that info.

It's also in addition to the vanity aspect, a tremendous investment potential for church coffers.

Any Paris real estate, and this is a "commercial" property, will yield high returns.

That makes more sense to me why it would build there than to deflect attention away from how badly the church is doing in terms of numbers or activity.

It also won't be the locals who'll be using it as much as the tourists and foreigners who make Paris their travel destination.

Sometimes local building by-laws prevent the church from putting Moroni up.

I think there were a lot of local laws they unsuccessfully tried to get waived, and this went years over their plans. I used to have church employee friends in Europe who were into the property development side of things, and France was a constant thorn. I was hoping they'd never be able to build it, but the church has deep pockets for things like foreign lawyers and even baksheesh, if needed. I don't think they find moral problems with side-stepping the laws, codes, and ordinances if that's what it takes to please Mormon Jesus.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/10/2016 07:02AM by cludgie.

Yes,
This from the ldstemples website.

Due to a ruling by the local government, the Sydney Australia Temple was dedicated without a statue of the angel Moroni. After many prayers and fasting, the ruling was overruled a year later, and the statue was hoisted into place atop the spire the next day.

"Prayers and fasting" is code for, generous gifts to local officials combined with endless badgering.

Those "designing" Mormons. ;)

Yes and the good people of NW Sydney still have no idea who Moroni is or why there is a statue of him.

Casseroles, endless casseroles showing up on doorsteps of city officials from church members "Give us our Moroni, and give us peace."

ROFLOL

Soon the Swiss Temple will have no one left to use it!

Mountain goats?

I suggest it as a hostel for Syrian migrants. Or the Swiss military could use it for one of their many secret entrances to underground facilities.

The latter use seems the most pragmatic for the Swiss. I second that motion!

:o)

The second picture in the article shows the plans with an accomadation center, patron housing and missionary housing. This seems to be more about housing then temple.

As soon as my new company (Hornblower Spas & Resorts) finishes acquiring all of the Mormon temple properties, an ink drawing of this Paris temple will be featured on the labels of a new line of special Hornblower wines:

"Chateaux Moron"

It’s UGLY!! Each new temple seems worse even worse than the one before it. I wonder who’s designing these things. If I lived in France, I wouldn’t even be tempted to want to go inside it

For TSCC, it's a commercial real estate investment property. Think of the land value combined with the building value plus appreciation.

TSCC cannot hold onto its assets in plain cold cash due to tax laws for not-for-profits. Instead it invests into real estate holdings. That is where its vast wealth is tied up into. Paris, France is prime real estate property.

Scientology does this also. It strips its members of their assets so it can build and invest into real estate holdings to amass wealth. Despite their buildings go mostly unused and are empty throughout the day because it's the investment that matters to them, not the spiritual aspect. That's why they build. And I'm pretty sure that TSCC uses the same logic for their building expansion across the globe. It's gotta have somewhere to put its moolah since it cannot store it in the bank. And we know it doesn't give it to the poor.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/24/2019 04:14AM by Amyjo.

Interesting. What are the US tax laws preventing or limiting the Church holding cash?


Buying land for building temples might be sound in one sense, if they buy in the right place at the right time, but the extra revenue generated per temple would be pretty low if membership is static. And the improvements (buildings) would be worthless unless they could be easily re-purposed once the church was finished with them.

On that line of thought, are there any temples which have been shut down so that the land can be resold?

The temples themselves are the real estate holdings that appreciate in value whether they're being utilized to their fullest capacity or not.

Only LDS churches have been closed or sold. There isn't one temple I can think of that has been closed or sold in the history of TSCC, except for the Nauvoo temple.

The land holdings and the buildings are combined to increase in value as property values rise in their locales. Being commercial properties, all of them, and those such as the Paris, France temple as well as the Rome, Italy or Bern, Switzerland, Washington D.C., Tokyo, etc., that the property values have sky rocketed. And TSCC has already amassed a fortune on the books. Its net worth is through the roof. It doesn't need to sell any of those properties so long as TSCC exists. They're good for its image.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/24/2019 09:07AM by Amyjo.

I'll point out that out of the latest small round of temples, these have no moroni in the renderings:

the Congo
Haiti
Guam
Cabo Verde
Puerto Rico

It's also noteworthy that these are all solidly third world and perhaps it might not be in the best interests to bolt on a gold statue and be so in your face about it, so I don't think it really means too much to leave them off, there are dozens now without it I think. That makes it all the more annoying when they pleaded and begged to have the tall tower on the temple in Belmont, Mass. built taller than the zoning would allow. They tried to make it a spiritual thing, but clearly, they just wanted to show everybody how big their spiritual wiener is.

Yeah, the height of the spire was contentious. They wanted two spires, the compromise was to settle for one, and get the height (give or take) they wanted in the first place.

I like Route 2, except for the Fresh Pond rotaries at rush hour, and the (E*R&#(#$&*)Q@ temple.

You seem to know what you're taling about, Levi. Are you local? I'm loco, myself.

No, I'm not, just completely obsessed with mormon temples.

I was when I was a member and I am now. Funny that.

Strange how something we abhor can still fascinate us. I'm a half-century out of Christian Science, and happy to report that I have little interest in it. I drive by the CS "Mother Church" often enough, and pay more attention to traffic than anything else.

As I've posted a number of times, any RfM member who has reason to visit or pass through central New England, please look me up;* I'd be delighted to show you the sights and the sites.

*Admin is usually very accommodating on transmitting contact info.

Maybe they WERE put there, but that same angel that carted off the gold plates a’been roundin’ up the Moronae (what is the plural of Moroni anyway?)

I remember that the Paris temple ran into a lot of zoning issues, so perhaps the omission of Moroni was a part of the process of getting it approved.

Soft machine,

How is it there with the yellow vest riots???

If they ever build one in Brussels it should have Moroni peeing, like the famous "Brussels Boy"