LoudmouthMormon

The what now? I don't see it. But I don't want to run afoul of any board guidelines. So let me make it clear - please don't take any of my "go complain somewhere else" stuff as anything other than an expression of how little I'm impressed by your arguments. I don't want anyone to leave, I don't want to silence conversation. Just not impressed. Others' mileage may differ. Anything else you found objectionable in my post?

Heh. From where I'm standing, all your criticisms are simply bouncing off quite well. Call it a "poor deflection device" all you want, but my answers are basically "I don't buy your criticisms, they doesn't matter to me, they doesn't persuade me". Ever watch a bad boxing match between tragically unequal boxers? The smaller guy throws a series of his best and most powerful punches, and the other guy barely notices he's being hit, and you start complaining about deflection devices like the guy is doing something wrong by not getting as hurt as the little guy would like. (Although I also really like @MiserereNobis' "neener neener", and may adopt it in the future. Feel free to call that a deflection device too, if you like. ) As my uncle in real estate used to say, wanting is free. Suggest all you want. I have no issue with your suggestions, and I accept that you're applying them evenly. Just that the church, the vast majority of it's tithe paying members, including me, aren't going to take your suggestions. I get you're feeling betrayed because you donated thousands and now you learn stuff that if you had learned at the time, might have caused you to withhold those donations. I liken it to a breakup. Serious things that impact us in serious ways. But you can't get your tithing back, any more than someone can get years of effort back they put into an ended relationship. And you can't get the church to change their practice, any more than someone can get an ex to change their life. Go be suspicious then. We're mormoning over here. It's what we do. We're gonna do it our way, regardless of how it's interpreted, or how that interpretation is reacted to. Again, as I pay my monthly tithing, I think about the fact that I have no visibility into where it goes and what the church does with it. I'm fine with that state of affairs. I don't have suspicion, I have trust. Nothing I've learned from leaks and SEC deal has even put the slightest dent in that trust. Meh. And yet, here I stand, with no suspicion bred in me. Call it a deflection all you like, but as I sit here and give you and your opinion every ounce of respect and serious consideration I can, words fail me at how underwhelmingly unimpressive I find your opinions and suggestions. Go be suspicious over there. We're mormoning over here. Go have additional concern somewhere else. I know that I don't know what's happening behind the opaque policies. I know there's no third-party analysis. I'm glad that's the state of affairs. I don't care what any third party might say about how my church manages its finances. They can take a flying leap when they speculate. It's none of their damn business. Leave us alone, we're mormoning. Deflection. Heh. Church is experiencing an extended period of advantageous financial position. You jelly bro? Envious? A little green-eyed monster going on somewhere in the back of your mind? Or, like after any breakup, you just can't let it go? I see your "observation based on my professional experience and the facts", and I raise with "Don't make her get a restraining order on ya. It's over, let it go. Time to unfollow her on Insta, friend." You don't get to dictate church policy. And I'm just one of the vast, vast, vast majority of LDS tithe payers who are utterly unimpressed with your criticisms and suggestions. I mean, you don't have a testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel and the reality of the restored church being led by Christ, do you?

Done. In fact, I'll go one step further, and not devote a single brain-cell to thinking about what anyone is saying about the area, until that day. In related news, God gave most of us the capacity to understand this chart:

Meh. Go shake your fist at the various flavors of Catholic church if you're truly mad about such things. Several of them still appear bigger than us. At least, for now. If SLC pulled a Vatican City and became it's own country, would you be of the same mind?

I sort of, but not really, miss the good old days when every Christian bookstore had a section on "Mormonism" chock full of anti publications, with not a single BoM or positive publication to be seen. Back when a feller could make a decent living as an itinerant speaker, traveling from parish to congregation, speaking out on the evils of mormonism to eager audiences. Back when the church's successes in converting folks from other Christian faiths to the CoJCoLDS made mainstream media news. Then FARMS had their decade-plus-long run with their book review, critically evaluating the antimormon stuff to great effect. And then Owens and Mosser had to go publish their essay about the abysmal low quality of Christian apologetics on LDS matters. And then SLC hosted the 2002 winter olympics, and the world got to know Harry Reid and Mitt Romney, and the Joseph Smith Papers project published online, for free, every single document. And suddenly it got real hard to think of us as a weird cult in the mountains that kidnapped people's daughters into polygamy and hid our history from the world. And then the church got into the game, publishing it's essays on topics. Suddenly everyone stopped arguing our theology, and the only readily apparent backup criticisms were we hate the gays and the wimminfolk. Suddenly I couldn't find anyone to laugh at about nephite coinage. I couldn't find any claims of lying about our history which I could refute with a link to the source doc, published by us. I had no further use for my cut-and-paste apologetic document with handy phrases like "I've been an active member for X years, attended roughly Y church meetings, spent over Z hours listening to talks and council, in N wards in M states, and I've never, not once, ever hear anyone tell me [insert whatever stupid thing I'm being told I get taught]. Mormonleaks threatened to awaken the old passions, but 99% of the leaks just made us look better, our leaders more humble, our secret actions were mostly laudible. Honestly, if it weren't for the recent crop of SEC violations and financial leaks, probably half of the surviving critic podcasts (like, all four of them?) might have gone under. I was honestly sad to hear about Sandra Tanner closing her bookshop for good last year. It was like the final page of a fascinating book on "the golden age of church criticism".

Ah yes, the good old Law of Consecration days. Also I think at the time, Bishop was pretty much a full time job. I wouldn't expect to see us paying our bishops under our current model, which (in theory at least), the bishop is only engaged in calling-related activities two days a week, under 10 hours total. But yeah, if verse 30-39 stuff ever comes back, I wouldn't be surprised if 71-73 came back as well.

I'll never forget the bishop who made me Executive Secretary. The most in-tune with the spirit bishop I ever had. Partnering up with a tough-as-nails YW president, he worked genuine miracles with our young women. The Ward understood he was something special, and dozens of people would approach me for an appointment, asking for "his last appointment of the day". That was sort of understood that it might go long. I lost track of the number of late evenings where bishop and someone was meeting, and I was next door in the clerk's office, the other priesthood holder, killing time on the computer while the bishop did his thing. I'd finally hear his door open, and come out to see the retreating form of whoever he was meeting with, often hear the sniffles. The Bishop would gratefully thank me for staying late, saying "We managed to change a heart today brother LM!" I always had my list of people I was to re-schedule after a week or a month, until bishop told me differently. I eventually took a turn 'sitting in the hotseat' over unresolved sins from a decade ago, and went through a more loving disciplinary process than I ever thought was possible. The best parts about me came about as the result of the atonement that got applied in those meetings. When they released him, he all but broke down in tears when bearing his testimony. He said he was afraid of losing the special closeness to the Lord he'd experienced as bishop. They moved out of the ward shortly after, and years later I discovered he had been convicted in Nevada of some horrible crime against a child and did 5 years in prison. Apparently when the cops had come to arrest him, he failed at shooting himself in the head with a pistol. He looked so different in his mug shot. Like someone had taken the warm, wise, spiritual person I knew, and sucked the soul out of him. Then I got what he meant about losing his closeness to the spirit. Yeah, so they tell me that spiritual highs and lows are part of life for a lot of people. Myself included, but I've never seen such a great 5 year high, followed by low like that. May we be all protected from such downward swings, and those who have them.

Up until 2 years ago I was our stake clerk. I made sure to watch the financials of every ward, especially their fast offerings. The rules say that there has to be a permission document from the stake president if a bishop or his family get FO support. I second Stargazer's experience. Every 6 months I'm audited by the stake, and special attention is always paid, without exception, to any sort of dollars moving from the church to the Bishop or his family. A few bishops ago, his wife was in Young Women, and submitted reimbursement receipts for YW activities. It turned my routine 6 month audit, into a routine 6 month audit, but with 2-5 minutes of attention paid to every single YW reimbursement request submitted by the bishop's wife. Each line item of each receipt. I don't know if bishops siphoning FO funds are the most common method as The Nehor claims, but it's really hard to do. If a bishop wants to embezzle church funds, he needs the clerk to engage with fraud with him, but he'd also need one of his counselors. It's also church policy that you don't approve your own reimbursements. A bishop can't sign his own check to the roofing company that fixed his roof, etc. I suppose bishop and clerk could both lie about who was the recipient of the funds, but that would probably be caught in the 6 month audit. "Why did the YM president submit an expense to put a hot tub into the bishop's house?" To survive the extra scrutiny of the stake, the fraudulent expenses need to be basically buying crap at Costco that look like they could be used for a church activity. I've yet to meet the bishop willing to lose his salvation over a bunch of disposable tablecloths and 5 rotisserie chickens.

True. Reason: Comparing churches to US corporations is a problematic thing in itself.

Amazingly cool. Also, I've incorporated a new step into paying tithing. Every month after I click 'submit' on the church online tithing payment deal, I come here. I look for whatever current thread is full of critics and their critical criticisms about how the church does money wrong. I make sure I read the most recent page or two of griping (if I haven't already), to see if there's anything now there, or if it's just more of the same about how the church needs to be more transparent, or needs to do things more or differently, or how folks feel lied to because a guestimate says the church saves and invests a lot of it's income. If there's anything new, I see if it's anything that might impact my testimony, or my practice of paying tithing. If it ever does, I'll admit it. If it doesn't, I'll get my snark on and then mention I paid tithing. Here's LM's April Tithing report: Criticism evaluation: It's not new, but it's new to this board: @GoCeltics's complaint: "Constructing an extravagant temple within an impoverished community sends a negative message." LM's snarky response: Yeah. I detest the poors also. They should not get used to having access to nice things. Next thing you know they'll think they are as good as I am. Let 'em save up for 20 years for that muddy trip to the temple like those stories I was raised with. Anyway, I paid my tithing yesterday. In addition to helping forward the work of the Kingdom of the Lord, I also get to stay hydrated by drinking your critic tears.

Here's a light-hearted guide to evaluating news sources that all us humans (including me) would really benefit from, if we were to adopt the principles contained therein. https://i.imgur.com/mDNl2nm.mp4

I'll have to dig up my old print copies of Times and Seasons and try to find the article that spoke favorably of the Islamic faith (I think it's referred to either as 'mahometism' there, or some such other name of the period). If I remember correctly, there was some speculation in that article that Mahomet [sic] might have actually been a real prophet, as the faith shared a lot in common with LDS theology. I don't remember a single mention of Catholicism.

This link doesn't have any image of the thing at all. Your sources don't show what you say they show, or are a tad fringey for my taste, your image unsourcable. If the story were truly that fantastic, you'd be able to find a good source for that image. If there is ipse dixiting going on here, I'd also suggest there's a dearth of burden-of-proofery. As things stand now, without some decent links to reputable sources that show the image you're passing along, I'm filing this as untrustworthy and declining to believe it.

lol

And here I thought I was weird, because I always get excited about the auditing department report. Are you a bean-counter? I'm a bean-counter. Been a finance clerk for a long time, gotta love those 6 month audits! I think his following statement is also worthy of note: In all my years of financial clerking, I've experienced one case of fraud. People abusing the fast offerings system through lying and deceiving about their need. The bishop wanted so much to believe them, he extended his benefit of the doubt for a period of time longer than my suspicious and skeptical nature wished. One of the first things the new bishop did, was do a little investigating, call them out on an obvious lie, and cut them off. They howled about the injustice. They cried foul on the character assassination from the bishop. They appealed to the Stake President to overrule the new bishop. In the end, the dollars dried up from that particular scam, and they stopped spending effort. The next 6 month audit had extra questions for me, and probably other things too that I never saw. Like perhaps some increased bishop training on how to detect potential fraud, and how important it is to follow the process and not authorize exceptions based off of hope. Anyway, the phrase "all material aspects" is certainly important. One scammer family scammed a ward for a period of time, scamming the fast offerings funds. The ward's donations far eclipsed the amount scammed. It was not a material loss. Immaterial. All that said, I get the desire @Nofear. I've worked for corporations with external auditing departments that released quarterly audit results. They tended to use language so vague it was almost indecipherable, but if you knew where to look and how to interpret, you could see cases of racketeering and embezzlement being investigated and ruled on. Juicy stuff! I'm pretty sure the church does similar things and has similar metrics. I'm guessing they don't release them to the general membership, for the same reasons I'm guessing why my old workplace used such vague language: They don't want people thinking about the sins humans engage in while ostensibly engaged as a representative of the company/church. And because churches are different than companies or governments, they don't have to unless they want to for some reason.

Fixed it for you. I'm looking forward to spending the next few decades watching this unfold. I saw it inch forward a week ago, with the announcement of 15 temples. 8 of which to be built in nations poorer than the US. 4 of them in the soul-crushingly poor nations of Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela. I know the details will be different than @Analytics' back-of-a-napkin quick analysis, but I think you're on the right track. It's a thing of beauty:

Three seconds. That's how long it took me to figure out the government and churches are different things. In other words, get back to me when the govt allows me to just pay whatever taxes I feel is right, and accepts my answer. Conversely, get back to me when my church audits my tithing and sends authorized agents to seize my assets if they disagree.

It's your turn. lol 44 pages later, I'll always be grateful that Tim Ballard and his movie got people yelling at each other about child sex trafficking, which gave me opportunities to raise awareness about what it really looks like. (It looks like this, and you should read it if you haven't already. https://www.5280.com/girls-next-door/ ) That said, we Mormons are a generous and sharing people. We don't want to hog all the Tim Ballard church membership.

Sorry, not trying to be snarky or make any sort of point. I've caught the Temple Announcements data analysis bug, and I've discovered a surprising amount of energy on the topic.

2022 and still waiting? Almost as bad as Russia, and it's 2018 announcement.

Yay 15 temples announced! By per capita GDP: Uturoa, French Polynesia 20000 Chihuahua, Mexico 10000 Florianópolis, Brazil 9000 Rosario, Argentina 10000 Edinburgh, Scotland 45000 Brisbane Australia South Area 55000 Victoria, British Columbia 50000 Yuma, Arizona 63540 Houston Texas South Area 63540 Des Moines, Iowa 63540 Cincinnati, Ohio 63540 Honolulu, Hawaii 63540 West Jordan, Utah 63540 Lehi, Utah 63540 Maracaibo, Venezuela 2400 4, maybe 5 of those 15 announced temples happening in countries where the tithe-paying local members couldn't have possibly hoped to fund their own temple. Yay tithing! Yay church reserves! Holy crap is Venezuela poor. That's the place with historic hyperinflation and a never-seeming end of economic woes? Glad to see the church willing to invest.

Here's the direct link: https://www.facebook.com/LatterDaySaintsStandingUnited/posts/pfbid0iuoehCnzBVYqKq96azhRvhTuCNRpXapYYcuMYfijaxFvS7VswzYRuth6mCtMWsAzl

Does stuff like this count? (This is the General Relief Society president at the 2021 BYU Women's Conference)

Ya know, this statement can easily be expanded to general swaths of humanity. This is true for folks in general. Nothing specific to orientation or gender or even religion here. I'm in my '50's now, and every year, this notion is closer and nearer to my soul. I mean, I don't have an ounce of gay in me, but I have no small amount of baggage and crap I'm tasked with shouldering through my mortal probation. And now I'm thinking "He made it work for his whole life" is a new top contender for my epitaph. That's some "Well done thou good and faithful servant" stuff right there. I'm so glad for a church that's willing to take me despite my baggage. I've confessed it to no fewer than 3 bishops, and I can vouch for the healing and transformative power of the atonement. The thing that continues to startle me, is how many of "these folks" have zero involvement in the community. Out of the debate, zero things in common, zero interest in hearing more. There's more than I thought. (And again, my buddy is more than willing to offer physical combat to anyone wishing to insert themselves into his personal life with accusations of "closeted" or anything similar.) I mean, the church doesn't change to fit it's members. The church offers ways to change because we figure it'll bring the greatest amount of happiness in life and the eternities. There's a never-ending tsunami of scoffing retorts, yet we are undaunted. Because, after all, some manage to make it work for their whole lives.

Ya know, me too. Maybe to a lesser extent than you, but me too. I don't go looking specifically for scared teens (I'm assuming you don't either), but when we raised our kids and taught them art, we went online to see where the fresh undiscovered artistic talent hung out. Discord servers and DeviantArt and Bandcamp and YouTube and Twitter and Instagram and a dozen other sites and apps. And you can't swing a 10 page fanfic in those spaces without encountering half a dozen angsty teens going through the melodrama of youth. Now my kiddos are all grown up, and I'm still there following my favorites and watching the drama. Sometimes contributing to the conversation. I did it last decade to remain conversant with my GenY/GenZ kiddos, now I do it for the same reason people work to stay fluent in a foreign language. And because holy crap is GenZ chock full of artistic creativity and talent! Anyway, back to the thread. Yeah, those kids all exist, but also my buddy in his '40's exists, and my in-law relative in Utah exists. And that survey result leads me to believe there are a lot more of 'em than I thought. (And by "'em", I mean folks with different leanings/tendencies/desires/urges/proclivities, who don't let those aspects stop them from living full and fulfilling lives as just another random saint.) Somewhere in the mid '90's, the notion "You can't be gay and mormon and ok" sort of won majority approval. That survey result is probably the biggest blow to the notion I've seen in decades - especially with Caliboy's anecdotes of folks who were public and eventually fell away.