webbles

In the explanatory letter from the Vatican (https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2026/07/02/0568/01078.html), it says: Does that mean that any laypeople who get married by these excommunicated priests/bishops would have to get remarried by a non-excommunicated priest for the church to accept it? What does it mean that the sacrament of penance is invalid? Would a layperson have to redo it? What if they don't redo it? And what about other sacrements, like baptism and eucharist?

It is in Utah Not the Stake President. He is a man. There is a "Secretary to the Stake President" calling which is a woman.

This is why I think the church proposed building a temple in Fairview in the first place. They saw that a tall steeple had already been approved so felt like a tall temple would also be approved without issue. And I think this is why the city didn't file a lawsuit because this bell tower ruins their argument. It really looks like religious discrimination when one church's tower is approved and another is denied.

In section 18.3 it says Is the dad an inactive member? If he has the Melchezidek Priesthood, he can still participate in some manner.

The stake president is in his late 40s/early 50s and the woman is definitely not his wife. I'll have to ask around to figure out what her responsibilities are.

Today, I just learned that our stake has a "Secretary to Stake President" (that is the name of the calling per Church Tools) who is a woman. She isn't the Stake Executive Secretary (that is a man) or the Stake Clerk (also another man), nor assistants to those (also other men). I have no idea what she does and I can't find anything in the church handbook explaining this position. She is listed in the "Stake Presidency" organization in Church Tools, so she isn't in the Stake Relief Society, Stake Young Women, or Stake Primary. I found out about this calling because they released the previous woman and called a new woman. Is this a new thing? Old thing that I never new about? Unique to just my stake?

That's a standard initial page for Apache, which is a piece of software that hosts a website. It would seem that either someone misconfigured it or they upgraded the Apache and lost the original configuration or haven't yet restored the configuration to how it was.

If I'm reading the site correctly, it would be the defense. Here's the last set of lines from the case documents list: 05/12/2026 Motion COMM TO DISMISS INDICTMENTS 05/14/2026 Motion DEFEND TO SEAL MOTION TO DISMISS 05/26/2026 Other VICTIM STATEMENT OF POSITION 05/26/2026 Motion DEFEND TO DISMISS WITH PREJUDICE 05/26/2026 Exhibits D51-TRANSCRIBED RECORDINGS 05/26/2026 Exhibits D52-TRANSCRIBED RECORDINGS 05/26/2026 Exhibits D53-EMAIL TO COMM ATTY 05/26/2026 Order HBS GRANT MOTIONS TO DISMISS

I think the motion might be sealed. I found the case over at the Virginia's state court site (there are 4 case numbers CR24000020-00, CR24000021-00, CR24000022-00, CR24000023-00) and a few days before the motion to dismiss request is made, there is a motion to seal the motion to dismiss. To see it, go to https://eapps.courts.state.va.us/CJISWeb/circuit.jsp, select the Williamsburg Circuit Court, enter "Goodrich, John" and search by name.

Ok, I think you might have your history confused. It seems like you are thinking about the Mormon Battalion which was actually there at Sutter's Fort when gold was first found in California. But they weren't sent to get gold. They were sent to help out with the American-Mexican war and the wages for that were to help pay for things (this was right after they were kicked out of Nauvoo). When they reached California (going through New Mexico and Arizona), they were then disbanded (by the US government because the war was over) and they stayed in California to make some money before they headed back to find the other pioneers. That was when they were involved in the discover of gold. They did find some gold and did bring it back to Utah but it didn't really make the Mormons rich. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_Battalion for a decent rundown. Based on what you've written, I think you have a very superficial understanding of the history but have a bunch of things confused or mixed up. There's nuggets of truth in what you said but a lot of incorrect assumptions. For example, you just said "It is also the richest church on earth" which is wrong. The Catholic church wins by a landslide.

Gold made the mormons rich? I'd love to see a source for that. Because Utah never really had a gold rush or boom. Park City area had a mining boom but that was mostly silver, and those who mined there were usually at odds with the church.

Good question. He already got a response from Elder Bangerter which was apparently not acceptable.

While reading the articles, I came across https://fairviewspeaks.com/. It is an official site from the mayor who is asking for all residents to send a letter to the church headquarters. It also has a countup clock from the day he sent his letter to headquarters and it is counting up to indicate he has not yet received a letter from First Presidency or Quorum of 12 Apostles. Pretty nice website. Apparently the counter will continue until he gets a response.

https://churchofjesuschristtemples.org/fairview-texas-temple/photographs/ has a photograph of April 24 showing a decent amount of ground preparation. They've already started to put in pipes into the ground. I can't find a more recent picture.

The renderings do not show Moroni on top. As for religious or doctrinal importance, I would say it is only important in the sense that it draws your eyes to heaven. I think the focus on saying it is "religiously important" is related to the Boston Temple lawsuit. There was a fight over the steeple there and the temple was built without a steeple while the lawsuit continued. In the end, the Massachussets Supreme Court ruled in favor of the church. The ruling was basically about how the courts are not supposed to determine if a steeple really is important to a religious group or not. See https://www.thechurchnews.com/2001/5/19/23244290/high-court-rules-in-favor-of-steeple-for-boston-temple/ for some details, including quotes from the ruling. So, I think the church has just started to always say it so that if it ever goes to court, they can continue making that argument.

https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/apply/reviving-abandoned-application says that an abandoned application is no longer alive. So I guess that is what it means to be dead.

Go to https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/search/search-results and enter "Mormon" in the search bar and you'll see every trademark application (either successful or unsuccessful) with that word in it. I don't see "exmormon". Edited to add: I'd put a link to the search results if I could but the site doesn't have links like that.

The previous set of categories didn't mark faiths as "Christian". I can't find a page that lists them in text, but I found https://www.scribd.com/document/346253841/Faith-and-Belief-Codes-of-the-DOD which is an image of a memorandum with the updated list as of 2017. This new list now prepends "Christian" in front of a bunch of denominations but also contains other denominations. This is the new list: Agnostic (AN) Baha'i faith (BH) Buddhism (BU) Christian - Assemblies of God (AG) Christian - Baptist (BA) Christian - Brethren (BR) Christian - Catholic (CA) Christian - Church of Christ (CC) Christian - Church of God (CG) Christian - Church of the Nazarene (CN) Christian - Episcopal/Anglican (EA) Christian - Evangelical (EV) Christian - Jehovah's Witnesses (JW) Christian - Lutheran (LU) Christian - Methodist (ME) Christian - Non Denominational (ND) Christian - Orthodox (OX) Christian - Other (CO) Christian - Pentecostal (PE) Christian - Presbyterian (PR) Christian - Quaker (QU) Christian - Reformed (RE) Christian - Scientist (SC) Christian - Seventh Day Adventist (SA) Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (CJ) Hindu (HI) Islam (Muslim) (IS) Judaism (Jewish) (JU) No Religion (NR) Other Religions (OR) Sikh (SI)

I would think it is more elaborate than that. Something like Eastern Orthodox's Panikhida - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_service_in_the_Eastern_Orthodox_Church.

We don't really believe in glossolalia. It has happened in the early church but we generally say that "speaking in tongues" is for talking in a known foreign language. So, Benjamin Johnson's story fits great where he was able to speak in an existing language that he previously couldn't speak. Another, quasi-famous one (because of the movie) is Elder Groberg's account of learning Tongan really fast by reading the scriptures in both English and Tongan. I would say there is a pretty strong belief that many missionaries are given the gift of tongues so they can rapidly learn the foreign languages. Here's a recent (2024) article in the Liahona talking about how someone had the gift of tongues (he was able to learn English quickly) - https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/liahona/2024/12/afw-eng-local-pages/local-news-002?lang=eng

I think https://mormonfundamentalism.com/polygamous-groups/the-lebarons/ is a decent run down. That is from Brian Hales. Neither Benjamin Johnson nor his grandson (Alma Dayer LeBaron Sr.) ever stated publicly or in any writing that we have access to that they had any special power or privileges. It was the sons of Alma that first mention it.

If you are talking about who you personally know, then yeah, that makes sense. I only know of one person from my personal life who was excommunicated and it was because of an egregious sin. But if you are talking about if there has been excommunications somewhere in the world outside of the LDS church in the last 77 years, then it has definitely happened and even shows up in the news. For instance https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/vatican-news/archbishop-vigan-found-guilty-schism-excommunicated-vatican talks about an excommunication in 2024. I probably hear and read more about Catholic excommunications than I do about LDS excommunications.

I apparently am close to all positions. Ostler and Givens are both 85%, Roberts is 82%, Joseph Smith is 76%, Progressive Mormons is 70%, and McConkie is 62%. I have a few that have a 100% score and I'm pretty certain that I used the given choices for those questions. I bet if I had written something, even if it was close to the given choice, it would probably have been a lower percentage. The women's priesthood one is interesting because it puts "Temple priesthood" at 50%. So if you answer that women have the priesthood through the temple, then you start at 50% and move up or down from there.

Excommunication is pretty old idea and Catholic and Orthodox both do it. I don't think they do it that much in modern times but it definitely happened quite a few times through out history (as an example, Martin Luther was excommunicated). Quite a lot of other larger Christian organizations do a form of excommunication - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excommunication

I think this is the main difference. You seem to think that calling "all men are potential rapists" is not "reasonable caution". Why? Why isn't it reasonable? Because listening to the women here, it sounds like that is a very reasonable thing to do. Because they could be with a man who is very nice to them and then he changes instantly and now the woman is in real trouble. That is usually how most of the stories goes. The guy is a nice guy until he isn't. So, as a woman, when you know that the man you are interacting with could go from nice to angry really, really fast, and you have very little defense against it, that means "reasonable caution" is warranted in pretty much every situation when interacting with men.