Publishing The Temple Ceremony

[mercyngrace]

Even though my QUESTION (speaking of putting words into people's mouths) could be interpreted in a tense-neutral sense, let me accommodate your baffling need for hyper-precision of language, and rephrase my simple and striaghtforward question this way: "So, you think there existed an actual culture of disrespect rather than exceptional and isolated instances of desrespect by certain immature members?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Thank you for clarifying. If you'll revist my posts on this thread, I think you will find that question answered already.

There is a vast difference between what was and what is. As the church has moved "out of obscurity", there have been many changes, both institutional and individual. I personally believe that we are increasing in light and knowledge as a people and as an institution. I think we do the best we can with what we have and I don't condemn an authority from half a decade century ago for saying the Catholic church was the whore of the earth anymore than I condemn another for badly trying to justify withholding the priestood from blacks. Like Elder Holland (speaking of his predecessors who tried to explain the priesthood ban), I just accept that people said things according to their own understanding and that sometimes they were simply wrong. Unfortunately, when a highly visible and influential person makes such statements, they can take root in our culture and have unforeseen consequences.

edited: Because I distractedly typed "decade" when I meant "century". Thanks, Scott.

Edited January 17, 2012 by mercyngrace

[LDSToronto]

Especially since there are no contemporary representations of him, and nobody now knows what he looked like, there is no way to produce an actual likeness anyway. (The Persian representations I alluded to earlier always show Muhammad with his face veiled.) So someone could caption a picture "Muhammad" but it would not be truthful to actually claim it to be his likeness.

Regards,

Pahoran

Do you feel the same about depictions of Jesus Christ?

H.

[bluebell]

How is one dishonest? If I recall, there is no temple recommend question that asks if you are divulging temple rituals.

H.

The questions do imply though a loyalty to the church and a sincere belief in the sacredness of the ordinances that will be received.

I mean no disrespect but the idea that because there is no recommend question specifically prohibiting divulging temple ritual, it cannot be dishonest to do so seems to be an incredibly childish definition of what honesty is.

And i use the term 'childish' not as an insult but because it reminds me of the type of conversations i often have with my two young children concerning their attempts to circumvent telling the truth by using a very literal yet flawed interpretation of what being honest requires.

Moving beyond the temple recommend questions though, a person would have to be developmentally disabled not to know, going into the temple and sitting through an endowment, that recording the ordinance, especially with the idea to show it to others, would be against the 'rules' and would also specifically entail lying during the session to accomplish.

[mfbukowski]

How is one dishonest? If I recall, there is no temple recommend question that asks if you are divulging temple rituals.

H.

Good point. Think I will go rob a bank. It's not in there either.

I guess the fact that it is a violation of a vow made to God doesn't matter either. After all, how can it be dishonest to violate a solemn vow?

So I guess it's ok for atheists to lie in court too, right because they don't believe in the bible?

I kinda like this kind of morality. Sounds like a lot of fun. Promise whatever you want and then ignore it.

Time to apply for some new credit cards. Oh I guess I should use someone else's name. By the way- what did you say your name was again?

[LDSToronto]

Let's see.

A person enters the Temple on the understanding that they are going to hold it and its ordinances sacred.

S/he affirms that s/he will keep the covenants entered therein.

S/he is admitted on a basis of trust.

S/he betrays that trust by smuggling recording equipment in.

S/he breaks solemn promises by divulging things s/he promised to hold sacred.

And Toronto doesn't see anything wrong with that.

All I can say to that is, "Oh."

We are about to enter sensitive territory here. Please be warned that I will report *any* and *all* insults directed my way - I am not an anti-mormon, I am not here to denigrate belief.

So far this discussion has been one-sided - those who publish the temple ceremonies must be immoral or unethical, or they must hate Latter-day Saints, or they must be doing this to make a mockery. Pahoran's response makes these assumptions concrete.

Let's flip the table. New members are told that the temple endowment is the summit of earthly Mormon experience, but they are never told before hand what they will be doing, what covenants they will make, what the experience will be like. No, simply, new members are expected to trust that all will be well.

So let's talk morals and ethics. Is it moral and ethical to:

1. Judge a person's moral cleanliness

2. Accept payment of 10% of a person's income

3. Bar close family members who are not members of the church

in exchange for....well, for what? A mystery behind Door #3? The simple fact is, with a culture of silence surrounding the temple, new members have no idea what they are trading their time and values for.

That, to me, smacks of unethical and immoral behaviour.

And that is why, to me, it is not unethical and immoral to expose the temple ceremony.

H.

But if someone says they are using such sacred things for purposes of (nudge, nudge) "study" (wink, wink) you'll unhesitatingly accept that without question.

Got it.

Not all research is scare-quoted and nudge-nudge-wink-winked, Pahoran.

H.

[LDSToronto]

Good point. Think I will go rob a bank. It's not in there either.

I guess the fact that it is a violation of a vow made to God doesn't matter either. After all, how can it be dishonest to violate a solemn vow?

So I guess it's ok for atheists to lie in court too, right because they don't believe in the bible?

I kinda like this kind of morality. Sounds like a lot of fun. Promise whatever you want and then ignore it.

Time to apply for some new credit cards. Oh I guess I should use someone else's name. By the way- what did you say your name was again?

You can drag this out to it's absurd edges but that will just get you tangled in the weeds. I've heard a lot of "that's dishonest" talk in this thread, yet no one wants to expand on *what* is dishonest and *how* it is dishonest.

Mr. Bukowski, I trust that you'll see that my question was used to provoke a response around what it means to be dishonest in the context of this thread. I also trust that you will be able to give me an answer.

H.

[Jeff K.]

How is one dishonest? If I recall, there is no temple recommend question that asks if you are divulging temple rituals.

H.

That is a contextual falsehood. The questions do ask if you support priesthood leaders. If you divulge sacred rites, then you are not supporting priesthood leaders, in fact you are undermining them by breaking the oaths and covenants you take with your priesthood. I really wish some of you could engage in honest dialogue rather than attempting to bypass what is wrong. Is there no denigration of the church you would not find an excuse for? It would make for a pitiful human being to follow that method of justification.

[bluebell]

We are about to enter sensitive territory here. Please be warned that I will report *any* and *all* insults directed my way - I am not an anti-mormon, I am not here to denigrate belief.

So far this discussion has been one-sided - those who publish the temple ceremonies must be immoral or unethical, or they must hate Latter-day Saints, or they must be doing this to make a mockery. Pahoran's response makes these assumptions concrete.

Let's flip the table. New members are told that the temple endowment is the summit of earthly Mormon experience, but they are never told before hand what they will be doing, what covenants they will make, what the experience will be like. No, simply, new members are expected to trust that all will be well.

So let's talk morals and ethics. Is it moral and ethical to:

1. Judge a person's moral cleanliness

2. Accept payment of 10% of a person's income

3. Bar close family members who are not members of the church

in exchange for....well, for what? A mystery behind Door #3? The simple fact is, with a culture of silence surrounding the temple, new members have no idea what they are trading their time and values for.

That, to me, smacks of unethical and immoral behaviour.

And that is why, to me, it is not unethical and immoral to expose the temple ceremony.

H.

Not all research is scare-quoted and nudge-nudge-wink-winked, Pahoran.

H.

So, it seems like you are saying, two wrongs make a right. If someone is unethical to you, then it is impossible to be unethical to them.

[Jeff K.]

You can drag this out to it's absurd edges but that will just get you tangled in the weeds. I've heard a lot of "that's dishonest" talk in this thread, yet no one wants to expand on *what* is dishonest and *how* it is dishonest.

Mr. Bukowski, I trust that you'll see that my question was used to provoke a response around what it means to be dishonest in the context of this thread. I also trust that you will be able to give me an answer.

H.

The only abusrdity here is how you attempt to justify lying and breaking of oaths, and just about anything else. One wonders at the convenient morality you espouse. To us it is absurd, we however are forced to believe you are serious when engaging in that "convenient morality, how easily you shed your word when it suits you.

[LDSToronto]

The questions do imply though a loyalty to the church and a sincere belief in the sacredness of the ordinances that will be received.

I mean no disrespect but the idea that because there is no recommend question specifically prohibiting divulging temple ritual, it cannot be dishonest to do so seems to be an incredibly childish definition of what honesty is.

And i use the term 'childish' not as an insult but because it reminds me of the type of conversations i often have with my two young children concerning their attempts to circumvent telling the truth by using a very literal yet flawed interpretation of what being honest requires.

Moving beyond the temple recommend questions though, a person would have to be developmentally disabled not to know, going into the temple and sitting through an endowment, that recording the ordinance, especially with the idea to show it to others, would be against the 'rules' and would also specifically entail lying during the session to accomplish.

Excellent. Thank you for this, because it really helps to get complex around the question of honesty, and I think we can only explore honesty and morality and the ethical implications of publishing the temple ceremony if we explore both the publishers intentions and the church's intentions, along with the behaviours surrounding temple worthiness.

H.

[LDSToronto]

That is a contextual falsehood. The questions do ask if you support priesthood leaders. If you divulge sacred rites, then you are not supporting priesthood leaders, in fact you are undermining them by breaking the oaths and covenants you take with your priesthood. I really wish some of you could engage in honest dialogue rather than attempting to bypass what is wrong. Is there no denigration of the church you would not find an excuse for? It would make for a pitiful human being to follow that method of justification.

Guys, let me throw you a bone - it's question #8.

H.

[LDSToronto]

The only abusrdity here is how you attempt to justify lying and breaking of oaths, and just about anything else. One wonders at the convenient morality you espouse. To us it is absurd, we however are forced to believe you are serious when engaging in that "convenient morality, how easily you shed your word when it suits you.

I'm not forcing anyone to believe anything.

H.

[mfbukowski]

Are you saying that Bernard's example is also a red herring? I'm fine to continue without the use of analogies - I get the feeling that you still aren't understanding the purpose of the analogy, but no matter.

If that is the case, the interesting question is whether it is legal, ethical, and moral to publish the ceremony for any purpose, including valid scholarly research.

I say it is.

H.

You don't seem to understand that the issue is more how the text of the ceremony is obtained.

There is no way for an "honest" scholar to obtain the ceremony

[LDSToronto]

So, it seems like you are saying, two wrongs make a right. If someone is unethical to you, then it is impossible to be unethical to them.

I'm saying that it is appropriate to understand what one is getting in return for what one is giving up.

H.

[mercyngrace]

I'm not Bernard but I will play him for this post...

if a significant portion of those beliefs were still practiced and held by contemporaries I would think it very bad form to publish old versions of their sacred and private writings. It fits very well with Christ's admonition to do unto others...

The same applies to actions. I don't have a problem seeing the remains of Amerinds in a museum, but if a local tribe of living Indians is offended then repatriate the remains and don't go digging for more!!

Up through the mid 1900s, many Ethiopian Jews practiced temple rituals. Even after they were taught that the rituals were forbidden outside the temple, some continued to do so as late as the 1970s. As their sacred practices had already been written about for centuries, I doubt they were consulted about depictions of their rites and rituals.

[LDSToronto]

You don't seem to understand that the issue is more how the text of the ceremony is obtained.

There is no way for an "honest" scholar to obtain the ceremony

No, I understand that the way it's obtained is at issue. I posit that it is not illegal, immoral, or unethical to obtain the ceremony by subversive means given it is unavailable by other means.

I'd also point out that the temple ceremony is not secret. There are only 5 things that one specifically covenants not to reveal except at a very specific time and place. All other parts of the temple ceremony are not bound by secrecy or privacy.

H.

[Jeff K.]

LDSToronto, on 16 January 2012 - 06:21 PM, said:

So far this discussion has been one-sided - those who publish the temple ceremonies must be immoral or unethical, or they must hate Latter-day Saints, or they must be doing this to make a mockery. Pahoran's response makes these assumptions concrete.

Let's flip the table. New members are told that the temple endowment is the summit of earthly Mormon experience, but they are never told before hand what they will be doing, what covenants they will make, what the experience will be like. No, simply, new members are expected to trust that all will be well.

So let's talk morals and ethics. Is it moral and ethical to:

1. Judge a person's moral cleanliness

2. Accept payment of 10% of a person's income

3. Bar close family members who are not members of the church

in exchange for....well, for what? A mystery behind Door #3? The simple fact is, with a culture of silence surrounding the temple, new members have no idea what they are trading their time and values for.

That, to me, smacks of unethical and immoral behaviour.

And that is why, to me, it is not unethical and immoral to expose the temple ceremony.

H.

Not all research is scare-quoted and nudge-nudge-wink-winked, Pahoran.

H.

So, it seems like you are saying, two wrongs make a right. If someone is unethical to you, then it is impossible to be unethical to them.

Bluebell it is worse than that.... It is the fact that somehow the individuals he disagrees with are due less respect than he, that they are somehow less in some fundamental way,( perhaps even less human?). So the constraints he would place with his interaction with others (ie condemning dishonesty or breaking an oath, or justifying the same) are not necessary for when he deals with members of the church. A lie for such a person, after all, is a greater good, and if not, it only hurts someone who is somehow "less" than he is. It requires a certain almost sociopathic lack of empathy to be so careless with what may hurt others. As such it is informative of the nature of the person speaking.

A person going through the temple ceremony, and who later does not believe in it, is free to walk away, there is no real harm done. I wonder how one undesecrates something sacred after they have exposed it for people's mockery? And those who support such action, who claim they would not do it, but find justification for it, are they really different? Perhaps they are simply less honest? They will allow others to do the dirty work so that they may say their hands are clean.

My how history repeats itself. Christ really was the archtype and of course we have gallaries full of Pontius Pilates who blithely claim they are not responsible, and simply allow and justify the actions.

As a post edit... My family is both Jewish and German and so perhaps for some historical reason I am much more sensitive to the moral convenience that I sometimes see bandied about by those who justify what is wrong.

Edited January 17, 2012 by Jeff K.

[LDSToronto]

Bluebell it is worse than that.... It is the fact that somehow the individuals he disagrees with are due less respect than he, that they are somehow less in some fundamental way,( perhaps even less human?). So the constraints he would place with his interaction with others (ie condemning dishonesty or breaking an oath, or justifying the same) are not necessary for when he deals with members of the church. A lie for such a person, after all, is a greater good, and if not, it only hurts someone who is somehow "less" than he is. It requires a certain almost sociopathic lack of empathy to be so careless with what may hurt others. As such it is informative of the nature of the person speaking.

I am none of these things that you claim I am. I told you I would report this type of posting, and I have.

H.

[Jeff K.]

You have gleefully danced around breaking oaths, exposing temple ceremonies to ridicule. Suggesting that any lie or breaking of oaths or exposure is fine and justified. That the desecration of what so many hold sacred here, to you is a minor thing, and again, justified (though you add somehow you would never do it yourself), which while morally inconsistent (let others do the dirty work) fits the nature of your posts.

I sometimes wonder why people do that. Even people I most dislike, those people I would never treat in such a manner. If I knew something was sacred and important to them, even when they were of the worst sort, I would respect that aspect of them that at least understands the meaning of sacredness. I would never justify demeaning them by desecrating what they hold to such an important point. I am gratefule that such is a key difference between the two of us exists. And in a way, sad that you would so easily let others do such a thing or justify such an action. It means you have no empathy for the sacred, you cannot understand it, and you don't mind desecrating or justify the desecration of what you don't understand.

Edited January 17, 2012 by Jeff K.

[mfbukowski]

I posit that it is not illegal, immoral, or unethical to obtain the ceremony by subversive means given it is unavailable by other means.

That says enough right there. The fact that you would willingly "subvert" the intentions of the publisher is dishonest. It puts your intentions above their intentions, for YOUR purposes, not theirs.

Their intentions for their own work are irrelevant to YOUR purposes, because clearly YOUR intentions for their work are superior to their intentions.

Typical liberal elitist stuff. You know better than the dummy who's work it is. It is up to YOU to judge what is important, not them, even though it is their intellectual property.

An analogy would be to take someone else's software, say shareware, and charge for it.

Edited January 17, 2012 by mfbukowski

[LDSToronto]

You have gleefully danced around breaking oaths, exposing temple ceremonies to ridicule. Suggesting that any lie or breaking of oaths or exposure is fine and justified. That the desecration of what so many hold sacred here, to you is a minor thing, and again, justified (though you add somehow you would never do it yourself), which while morally inconsistent (let others do the dirty work) fits the nature of your posts.

I sometimes wonder why people do that. Even people I most dislike, those people I would never treat in such a manner. If I knew something was sacred and important to them, even when they were of the worst sort, I would respect that aspect of them that at least understands the meaning of sacredness. I would never justify demeaning them by desecrating what they hold to such an important point. I am gratefule that such is a key difference between the two of us exists. And in a way, sad that you would so easily let others do such a thing or justify such an action. It means you have no empathy for the sacred, you cannot understand it, and you don't mind desecrating or justify the desecration of what you don't understand.

No, it means I can see more than one side of the story. Empathy is required for that type of viewpoint. I've never said, not once, that I support desecrating the sacred.

Now, please, for the last time, STOP judging my character and focus on the discussion.

H.

[mfbukowski]

What about posting pictures stolen from someone's bedroom, as porn?

How is that different?

[bluebell]

I'm saying that it is appropriate to understand what one is getting in return for what one is giving up.

H.

What is one giving up? Not being able to speak about or record ordinances which they would not even know about otherwise?

[Scott Lloyd]

There is a vast difference between what was and what is. As the church has moved "out of obscurity", there have been many changes, both institutional and individual. I personally believe that we are increasing in light and knowledge as a people and as an institution. I think we do the best we can with what we have and I don't condemn an authority from half a decade ago for saying the Catholic church was the whore of the earth anymore than I condemn another for badly trying to justify withholding the priestood from blacks.

Half a decade? That's five years. What Church general authority was making anti-Catholic remarks five years ago? If it's that recent, you should at least be able to come up with a link or at least a cite. If not, I think a retraction is due.

Did you mean to say half a century? Because I doubt you could come up with anything substantial even in that period.

Edited January 17, 2012 by Scott Lloyd

[mfbukowski]

No, it means I can see more than one side of the story. Empathy is required for that type of viewpoint. I've never said, not once, that I support desecrating the sacred.

Now, please, for the last time, STOP judging my character and focus on the discussion.

H.

You are the one who has put up your interpretations of what is moral and thereby made the issue a personal one. In effect, it is you who are representing your own position and then attacking those who attack the position as making it "personal"

That's not going to work. You are trying to manipulate the board rules in your favor

In effect the discussion IS about your morals, because you have made it so.

I posit that it is not illegal, immoral, or unethical to obtain the ceremony by subversive means given it is unavailable by other means.

The only way to answer this is to posit that YOU personally, are wrong because of the way you have stated it.

Edited January 17, 2012 by mfbukowski