Was Paul H. Dunn ex'ed and if so did he work his way back into the church?

I don't know that his specific punishment was ever published. I still have the old Sunstone that includes Lynn Packer's paper and Dunn's response. I found it odd that Dunn still lied and obfuscated in his response.

What I find interesting is all those (including me) who "felt the spirit" when Dunn spoke and told all his great tales. Just proves that it is easy to manipulate people.

An entertaining and folksy charlatan who personally and financially benefited by playing on the gullibility and faithfulness of hoodwinked followers by spinning a web of tall tales that he concocted and embellished for public performance purposes, as well as for sought-after adulation.

In other words, he had deep personal issues that somehow made it through the divinely-inspired GA selection filter without setting of the sensors.



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 06/14/2017 12:09AM by steve benson.

No, he wasn't ex'd.
He was removed from "active" GA status, made an "emeritus," and essentially put out to pasture where he couldn't get caught making stuff up again.
The excuse given was because of his health. But even TBMs knew that wasn't the case.

+1 - Your explanation is what I recall reading as well.

The "Scandal" section of the Wikipedia article on him covers the events that led up to his problems pretty well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_H._Dunn

This is the closing sentence from that article:

"The exact identity of the 'heavy penalty' that was imposed upon Dunn is unclear. It is clear that Dunn was not excommunicated from the church, though it is not known whether or not he was placed under some other form of church discipline, such as disfellowshipment or probation."

When it happened (in the 90s, I think) some friends of ours told us they were personal friends of his. Yes, they were ward member friends, by the way. They said he had to lay low. He had been making a lot of money from his books, etc. He said he never meant any harm, he just wanted to encourage belief and so he saw no problem embellishing his stories. Before the internet, it was easier get away with such things. He said he was a member of the Cardinals or something, but not the Saint Louis Cardinals, the Pocatello Cardinals.

. . . similar to what Jesus told.

Really?

Even Dunn had to admit that at least Jesus didn't tell parables about himself.

This was all about Dunn--pure and simple--who ended up having outdunned himself.

Cry me a river.

single handedly ... storming machine gun nests impervious to bullets and on and on and on and on.

The guy was a narcissistic liar.

I did part of my Mormon mission in Okinawa (Naha and Oroku).

We visited the beaches that were relentlessly pounded by U.S. naval bombardment in the last days of WW II and became the focal point for some of the fiercest fighting in the Pacific theatre.

Its surrounding battleground areas immediately off the beach heads are marked by walkways leading past huge monuments erected by the Japanese to their soldiers who, refusing to surrender, died by the thousands at the hands of American forces in ferocious,flame-throwing, bloody, hand-to-hand, cave-to-cave fighting.

Now that I think about it, I didn't see any towering monuments to the heroic exploits of private low-class Paul H. Dunn.

Clearly, an oversight.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 06/14/2017 03:06AM by steve benson.

Dunn came to the Futenma chapel when I was stationed at Kadena. It was a combined Japanese/military event, with a Japanese interpreter beside Dunn at the pulpit. He did the usual stories of storming Okinawa. The stories included taking care of a wounded Japanese soldier. Dunn and the soldier somehow communicated, and it turned out that the young soldier also loved baseball, something that gave them common ground. Dunn said, "And then the young soldier did a remarkable thing--he surrendered." It was one of those awkward cross-cultural moments; all the Japanese kind of bowed their heads and knowingly nodded, but the Americans laughed uproariously.

Afterward, there was the usual reception queue to meet the guy. We waited and waited, but each person was talking to Dunn, and it was taking too long. I saw his wife alone in a corner, so my wife and I went over to her to shake her hand and talk a bit. I said, "Well, I guess he's always got a story for you." She threw her head back and said, "Augh! He has a story for EVERYthing!"

newnameneeded Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> He said he
> was a member of the Cardinals or something, but
> not the Saint Louis Cardinals, the Pocatello
> Cardinals.

On numerous occasions, Dunn stated very clearly that he had played for the St. Louis Cardinals. They were the second-best team in Major League Baseball during the 1960s.

As I recall, it was only a random glance at a copy of the Baseball Encyclopedia that started unwinding his fake resume.

Yes, he always stated or alluded to the St Louis Cardinals, but when caught in the lie, he said he played for the Pocatello Cardinals, just a few shades different in his mind, I guess.

When Marie wanted to have her ears pierced Donny consulted with Paul H to find out if there were any theological objections.

I'm. Not. Making. This. Up.

From the article:

He denied it [the investigation] was connected to his retirement, which he insisted was for poor health that has since improved.

lol

Instead, he was put out to pasture under the protective cover-your-bared-backside exit sign of "due to age and health."



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/13/2017 06:04PM by steve benson.

This guy was a pathological or compulsive liar.

After knowing a few in my life, when reading the wiki article I was able to recognize the signs.

Compulsive liars lie about everything... all the time, and make stuff up on a whim to get attention. Little stuff, big stuff... it doesn't matter.

What matters is how does a person like this make GA?

Usually pathological/compulsive liars stick out like a sore thumb and nobody trusts them.

Lynn pulled back the veil on Dunn's war/baseball story fabrications, providing both the inside dope and, ulimately, the exclusive permission to publish his research on Dunn's lies to my newspaper, the Arizona Republic. Lynn's well-researched findings ran as part of a multi-segment series on the LDS Church in the Republic several years ago.

--Even the LDS Church-owned Deseret News couldn't ignore the meltdown and ran a wire story on it:

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/147438/ARIZONA-PAPER-ALLEGES-MANY-STORIES-WERE-EXAGGERATED.html


--Here's a story published in Sunstone magazine regarding Packer's expose' on Dunn's professional baseball and WWII combat whoppers:

https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/pdf/083-35-57.pdf.


--And a related RFM link on how Utah Mormon Senator Orrin Hatch unsuccessfully tried to get me to protect Paul H. Dunn from media scrutiny:

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1207254,1207254#msg-1207254



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 06/13/2017 06:10PM by steve benson.

If memory serves correctly, Dunn's excuse was that the bullshit was for for literary effect. Bullshit, when composted correctly, is best used for nurturing vegetables.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/13/2017 07:54PM by BYU Boner.

This may not be a popular position to take on this board but I actually think that Paul H. Dunn was, in some ways, misunderstood. I'm not excusing, at all, his life long habit of embellishing and telling falsehoods - that indeed was baffling and inexcusable; and he paid a heavy price for doing so, becoming a church pariah. In many respects, though, I believe that he was a reluctant Mormon. I knew Paul H Dunn. I was on a mission with him. He would often express himself in terms that indicated he was a reluctant Mormon. Nothing overt, but in ways that would indicate that he had chosen the wrong profession. I've often wondered if didn't suffer from cognitive dissonance, like the rest of us, and felt trapped.

That may be.

I'd wonder, though, why he didn't leave if that were the case.
And that doesn't seem to jive with his excuses for fabricating "inspiring" stories, which often included something like "...to teach gospel principles."

Yes, I know how hard it can be to leave mormonism. And the family pressure to stay. Etc.
But it seems to me that accepting a GA position means you've bought into it. Hook, line, and sinker. Either that or you're just flat-out dishonest...about more than just life anecdotes.

Only an anti-Mormon who doesn't believe that the Brethren have the gift of discernment could suppose that Paul H. Dunn told any false stories or even that he deceitfully embellished any stories for any purpose. In Church we learn that the Brethren have the gift of discernment. This is what inspires the youth and ward members to proactively go in to talk to the Bishop so that their notes and those of subsequent Bishops, Ward Councils, and other leaders can be full of the pertinent details in order that in follow up interviews and meetings these matters can be discussed in order to lovingly remind the person in the name of our wondrous Lord that they are lowly and needing the Gospel (and these glorious leaders) in order to have any hope of having any level of self-esteem.

So with this gift of discernment we can be clear that the higher ranking Brethren would know right away if Dunn were to embellish or lie. And they wouldn't keep this under wraps because that would be a sin itself and could cause people to lose faith and think the Church might not be true, i.e. its true because its supposed to be completely honest/transparent. Thus the only plausible possibility on Paul H. Dunn is that he was misunderstood because his stories must have been the truth and someone got an idea that they aren't the truth.

Well there is one other possibility. But that would mean questioning the foundations of the Church. And I couldn't possibly spend a second doing that as that would be a grave sin to allow a doubt to fester in my mind that the Church is anything but the most truthful, honest, and transparent organization ever whose members are constantly learning/growing in seeking to know all things.

It may be true that he was a doubter and wished he'd pursued a different path in life.

I don't think, though, that that would excuse his falsehoods. There are probably a number of GAs who don't believe the church mythology and who consequently choose to keep a low profile. They would neither publicly disavow the church, for various reasons, nor tout its virtues.

Dunn's choices seem to aligned quite closely with his interests. He opted for a very public role, one that helped the church while also increasing his stature and expanding his income stream. So if he was trapped, it was in a comfortable cell.

In part, TSCC set him up for a giant fall. They teach that members are great; the gospel is great. Therefore, we the members expected grandeur in our lives. We expected miracles for our perfected obedience so naturally we fell for this type of fairy tales. I don't condone Dunn's lying, but it is no different than every sappy faith-building story uttered during GC.

How many stories in the church magazines and propaganda films are even close to being true?

The leaders today are careful to make up stories that are unverifiable. Think of all the widow stories that Thomas Monson told. They were all long dead by the time he told them. There is no way to disprove them.

How many stories in the Bible are true?

I miss Paul Dunn. I mean, lets get real, his talks were the only ones worth listening to at General Conference. The fact that he lied about everything he said became an issue...? News flash: ALL of the brethren lie all the time. The whole conference is a lying festival of boredom.

Hearing the brethren drone on and on about irrelevant points and made-up stories puts me right to sleep. It is as if someone is emitting a fog-of-slumber over the entire congregation when trying to listen to the talks. Even as a TBM I hated general conference..and the only thing that made them bearable was Paul Dunn's crazy stories about barely surviving the invasion of Leyte.

All the Brethren lie...why not go big and make the lies interesting?

You can't really lie when The Baseball Encyclopedia can prove you to be a liar.

I would be more able to consider the possibility that he was a victim of his own cognitive dissonance in regard to the church or that he was in some way a victim of anything but his own aversion to the truth had his stories not been so incredibly self-serving and had he not made himself out to be the hero in all of his stories.

I also didn't like the way he used his position as a church authority and supposed success in sports to jockey himself into a place to be a mentor of sorts to the young professional athletes who were members of the church in the prime time of his celebrity. Wouldn't every middle-aged man in the church who is also a sports enthusiast enjoy being on a first-name basis with professional athletes?

Dunn passed away in 1998. He had a big funeral, fit for a GA, in the Tabernacle with most of the Brethren in attendance.

Here's the article the morg wrote announcing Dunn's death:

https://www.lds.org/ensign/1998/03/news-of-the-church/elder-paul-h-dunn-passes-away?lang=eng

Typical morg white wash and cover-up. If the Brethren had any integrity, they would had stripped Dunn of his GA status and ex'd him for conduct unbecoming of a member. But, I guess the rest of the peasant members don't get the royal GA treatment.