Posted by:
elderolddog
(
)
Date: January 09, 2020 02:02PM
The word on the street is that in the mid to late 1950s, financial wiz kid Henry Dinwoody Moyle spent the church into a very negative financial position.
1960's April Conference was the first time that no financial details were revealed.
https://archive.org/details/conferencereport1960a/page/n93Prior to 1960, the financial reports listed the church's expenditures in different areas. I don't see that they EVER gave any mention of the church's income, from any source. Here, in the 1959 Conference Report, is the way it had always been done
https://archive.org/details/conferencereport1959a/page/n93And here's the an explanation regarding the burden of financial failure was foisted onto Dinwoody:
"...Reflecting the optimism of his time, Henry D. Moyle (1889-1963), counselor in the First Presidency of the LDS church, approached every endeavor on a grand scale. He thought the Church Office Building should be twice its existing twenty-eight stories.
As overseer of the Church Building Committee, he spearheaded a bold spend-now, pay-later policy ("Build for the next ten years") on the assumption that larger chapels would attract more converts.
As head of the Missionary Committee, he encouraged youth baptisms, creating "concern among those who did not share his optimism," according to biographer Richard D. Poll, about whether "the tithes of new converts would replenish the diminishing church reserves." Ultimately these utopian views proved unfeasible. As the church neared bankruptcy, President David O. McKay found it necessary to relieve Moyle of all administrative responsibilities."
https://www.amazon.com/Working-Divine-Miracle-Apostle-Henry/dp/1560851295At its nadir, Moyle had the church heavily in debt; all the money they'd made 'lending' to the Vegas mob was gone and they owed millions.
Then along N. Eldon Tanner, elevated to the 12 in 1962. He was a financial genius if you equate genius with doing the right thing by not overextending yourself. One could wax as fulsome as possible about N. Eldon and still not give him his due.
As much as the church suffered under Moyle, they more than made up for it under Tanner. He took Moyle's "let's grow BIG" and applied sanity to it.
Tanner died in 1982. At which point, less-humanitarian financial wizards took charge and because of their lack of humility and humanity, the church is now in its current situation, richer than ghawd and determined to hang onto it, no matter who they hurt.
...well, that's how I see it...