{"id":37118,"date":"2016-10-03T10:19:07","date_gmt":"2016-10-03T16:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=37118"},"modified":"2016-10-04T00:31:15","modified_gmt":"2016-10-04T06:31:15","slug":"lds-church-responds-to-leaked-videos-of-briefings-for-mormon-apostles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2016\/10\/lds-church-responds-to-leaked-videos-of-briefings-for-mormon-apostles.html","title":{"rendered":"“LDS Church responds to leaked videos of briefings for Mormon apostles”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Where<\/a>
The meetings of which I\u2019m directly aware (and which, I suspect, are\u00a0the source of these recordings) are held\u00a0in the Church Administration Building in Salt Lake City. \u00a0(LDS.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Certain critics of the Church are absolutely giddy with excitement because, it seems, some anonymous disaffected former employee at Church headquarters (in the tradition of Julian Assange<\/a> and Edward Snowden<\/a>, though at considerably less risk and without much prospect of becoming the hero of a big-budget Hollywood film) has leaked several hours of in-house videos that record briefings or presentations to members of the Twelve and other General Authorities.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t watched them yet, and probably won\u2019t watch them (I have many\u00a0more pressing things\u00a0on my plate), but I\u2019ve seen what the critics have to say about what they plainly regard as the most devastating and damning\u00a0\u201crevelations\u201d contained in them.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thus far, I can\u2019t see that there\u2019s really very much there<\/em>. \u00a0(Besides, that is, the obviously questionable ethics of\u00a0the person who leaked them without authorization and, thus, violated his presumed obligation of confidentiality and discretion.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I also don\u2019t quite follow the claim that these meetings demonstrate the leaders of the Church to be \u201cout of touch.\u201d \u00a0The claim seems to me quite stupendously preposterous anyway<\/em>, because, after all, they\u2019re constantly traveling across the United States and Canada and around the globe, talking with local leaders and members on all inhabited continents. \u00a0But it\u2019s doubly absurd to make such a claim specifically in this context, since it should be clear beyond reasonable dispute \u2014 of course, that word reasonable<\/em> might be the issue here, given\u00a0the kinds of critics I have in mind\u00a0\u2014 that such presentations as those recorded here are obviously an effort to be very much in<\/em> touch.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I actually know something personally\u00a0about such \u201cbriefings.\u201d \u00a0For example, along with Dr. Gerrit Gong<\/a>\u00a0(now himself a General Authority who evidently\u00a0shows up multiple times as a presenter\u00a0in these leaked\u00a0videos)\u00a0and Dr. James Toronto<\/a> (currently serving as a mission president in Istanbul after having previously presided for three years over the Italy Catania Mission), I made such a presentation several years back on current trends in the Islamic world.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

They simply represent an attempt by the Brethren to keep up to speed on various topics that might be of interest to them in their callings (e.g., just as hypothetical illustrations, on epidemics in Africa, the economic prospects for China, European secularization, legal trends in France) but that are not directly germane to any particular day-to-day responsibility (such as keeping stake and mission presidencies staffed, overseeing Church welfare properties, and determining whether or not to build a temple in Winnemucca, Nevada). \u00a0They bring in people with solid credentials \u2014 if you doubt that, see the backgrounds of Elder Gong and Professor Toronto as given in the links that I supply above \u2014 to talk about issues that might impact the Church and its members.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

So far as I\u2019m aware \u2014 and also, I\u2019m entirely confident, where I\u2019m not<\/em> personally aware \u2014 there\u2019s nothing mysterious or nefarious about what goes on in such meetings. \u00a0For one thing, they\u2019re informational. \u00a0No decisions are made in them. \u00a0They include nothing that\u2019s especially dramatic, and certainly nothing that\u2019s shameful.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Anyway, here\u2019s the Church\u2019s response to the leak of the videos:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.deseretnews.com\/article\/865663842\/LDS-Church-responds-to-leaked-videos-of-private-meetings-with-Mormon-apostles.html<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is scarcely All the President\u2019s Men<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 Certain critics of the Church are absolutely giddy with excitement because, it seems, some anonymous disaffected former employee at Church headquarters (in the tradition of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, though at considerably less risk and without much prospect of becoming the hero of a big-budget Hollywood film) has leaked several hours of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n"LDS Church responds to leaked videos of briefings for Mormon apostles"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    Certain critics of the Church are absolutely giddy with excitement because, it seems, some anonymous disaffected former employee at Church\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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