For your interest and consideration, I offer you three short articles written by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that advocate positions rather unlike those that you typically hear in sacrament meeting or from the pulpit of the Conference Center:
“Drop in the Bucket: Changes to Temple Ordinances”
“Plea to President Nelson about Families”
“The Mormon Church still doesn’t accept same-sex couples – even if it no longer bars their children”
I note with fascination that the conviction that the free (and guilt-free) expression of one’s sexuality, sexual autonomy, ranks among the supreme human goods has become an unquestionable axiom outside the Church within a remarkably short time, and that it now appears to be making notable inroads within the Church, as well. It is coupled with the twin conviction that “judgment” — unless, of course, it be judgment passed against judgment — is among the ultimate and essentially unforgivable sins.
To “include” is the highest virtue, and to say anything that might be taken as “excluding” anyone, however lovingly it may be said, with whatever compassion it may be expressed, is to commit a kind of crime. Thus, President Nelson’s pleading reiteration of the Church’s doctrine that the ordinances of the temple are necessary in order to seal families together through the eternities is now seen as hurtful instead of hopeful, and as something to be backed away from.
Traditionally, mainstream Christian teaching on marriage as been that it is an earthly institution — a very good one, to be sure — that continues until death parts husband and wife, and that, thereafter, men and women live on as saved or damned individuals in the life to come. And, obviously, atheism offers no prospect of a continuation of family ties among persons who persist beyond the grave.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints comes into the world to affirm, among other things, that, in fact, we survive as conscious persons after death and that, through temple ordinances, our family relationships can be rendered permanent and eternal.
In recent years, though, I’ve watched as the Church has been attacked on the grounds that it hatefully seeks to separate nonmember spouses and to break up nonmember families, cruelly denying the continuation of eternal relationships to anybody who isn’t a committed Latter-day Saint. But this presumes that eternal families are the default understanding in Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Christianity, in Judaism, in Islam, and, for that matter, in naturalistic atheism — which is certainly not the case.
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Some interesting and relevant news items:
“Romantic greeting cards blasted as sexist: ‘When are we going to evolve?'”
“My Daughter Identified as Transgender. I Was Powerless to Stop Doctors From Harming Her.”
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I wonder, among all of this, whether there aren’t some lessons to be learned by Latter-day Saints from the terrible scandals through which our Roman Catholic friends have recently been passing. It’s important, however, that they be the right lessons. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has plainly been thinking about what those lessons might be:
Here’s an English translation of his actual essay:
“Pope Benedict Essay: The Church and the Scandal of Sexual Abuse”
Benedict XVI may have an ally in a very powerful cardinal, as well:
“Pope Benedict And Cardinal Sarah Provide Leadership In The Age Of Francis”
Posted from San Diego, California
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