interview with ex mormon bishop in Australia

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It made the Sydney paper, too.

smh.com.au/articles/2005/07/20/1121539033179.html?oneclick=true

He is planning on going, to point out how wierd it is that they are trying to get him on one instance of adultery, when the real issue is the book.

His reason for not resigning is that the LDS church has no authority over him, therefore, why does he even have to acknowlege that claimed authority by the act of resigning.

He is getting plenty of publicity mileage out of this. They are just hurting themselves by taking this action.
 
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Jerusha:
He is getting plenty of publicity mileage out of this. They are just hurting themselves by taking this action.
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They knew all the right buttons to push to get the publicity they needed to sell their book. Their book is filled with all the rhetoric and misinformation disguised as scholarship, which one would need to delighted the critics of the Church. By your comments it appears to have worked.

These attacks are tiresome, and all for monetary gain. I don’t believe it is worth commenting about. Believe what you will
 
I don’t see the church doing anything wrong or inconsistent here. “One instance of adultery” as Jerusha puts it will usually get you excommunicated in our church, especially an ex-bishop. And so will publishing a book that goes against church teachings for that matter. So what’s the problem here? If the man is an apostate and/or adulterer the church certainly has a right to excommunicate him.
 
They have the right, and he doesn’t care. He knows he has already exed himself.
 
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Jerusha:
They have the right, and he doesn’t care. He knows he has already exed himself.
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True, and I think he will milk it for all the publicity he can get.
 
He is doing exactly that!! 🙂 That’s why LDS is making a mistake about pursuing it.
 
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Jerusha:
He is doing exactly that!! 🙂 That’s why LDS is making a mistake about pursuing it.
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It may be a mistake from a church PR standpoint but they should treat him like the would any other adulterer/apostate.
 
:confused: A difference between LDS and RCC, then. If he has not participated in the church for 8 (?) years, published a book against church doctrine, and “made a mistake” while going throgh serious marital difficuties, calls himself an agnostic, then there is no point to it. He’s out, he says he’s out, why go to the trouble?

It appears to me that there are some serious problems with forgiveness of sin in LDS church theology and practice.
 
Jerusha said:
:confused: A difference between LDS and RCC, then. If he has not participated in the church for 8 (?) years, published a book against church doctrine, and “made a mistake” while going throgh serious marital difficuties, calls himself an agnostic, then there is no point to it. He’s out, he says he’s out, why go to the trouble?
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Yes, there is a difference. In our church, once baptized, you will always remain a member unless you are excommunicated or ask to have your name removed from the records of the church.
 
On the one hand I can understand his point that there are thousands of “jack-mormons” (as we call them in Utah) that commit all manner of sins without any sort of action taken by the LDS church. On the other hand I can see the LDS Church’s position that they don’t want an adulterer, apostate and outright critic being able to claim church membership. His notoriety has forced the Church’s hand. He wants to make a point to criticize the Church for taking action against his standing as a member, yet the actions would have never been taken if he would not have publicy condemned the Church. It seems to me he wants to have his cake and eat it too.
 
who can call him an adulterer?

watch it, for if the heirarchy can swear to it that blacks are evil and dark skin is evil and that there will never be black or dark skinned(cursed) people as elders, then they reversed it after the us government got involved in the 1960s civil rights movement, then adultery, one day too might also be seen as okay by the government and the pressure applied, and the “church” might change that doctrine also, and it will no longer be a sin or even an evil of sorts.

in mormonism, nothing is permanent, nothing, according to their own history of doctrines which are ever changing, or at least able to be changed when “god” decides to change them conveniently when humans pressure his church to do so.
 
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papist1:
who can call him an adulterer?

watch it, for if the heirarchy can swear to it that blacks are evil and dark skin is evil and that there will never be black or dark skinned(cursed) people as elders, then they reversed it after the us government got involved in the 1960s civil rights movement, then adultery, one day too might also be seen as okay by the government and the pressure applied, and the “church” might change that doctrine also, and it will no longer be a sin or even an evil of sorts.

in mormonism, nothing is permanent, nothing, according to their own history of doctrines which are ever changing, or at least able to be changed when “god” decides to change them conveniently when humans pressure his church to do so.
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Yes, this is puzzling. I’ve never understood churches that change their theology or knowledge of God based on changes in secualr government law. It is not a particular Christian thing to do, unless they want to claim the old render unto ceasar claim.
 
Paul G:
They knew all the right buttons to push to get the publicity they needed to sell their book. Their book is filled with all the rhetoric and misinformation disguised as scholarship, which one would need to delighted the critics of the Church. By your comments it appears to have worked.

These attacks are tiresome, and all for monetary gain. I don’t believe it is worth commenting about. Believe what you will
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Simon is a personal friend who I promise you is not doing this for money. I recently left the mormon church, for different reasons to Simon. He makes a pittance from each book sold and I can assure you he is not doing this to publicise his book or for money. He only wants to further debate on an issue he feels is kept from most LDS.

The LDS church should be ashamed of the way it snuck around digging dirt on Simon in the most insideous of ways. Simon is apostate, he admits that. Unfortunately the LDS church doesn’t have the guts to face him on this. Rather they are digging up old “sins” and bringing skeletons out of closets that are damaging a number of families. They don’t care about the damage they are doing. If the LDS church really cared about families more than it’s precious reputation it would excommunicate Simon for apostacy and let it go at that.

Unfortunately your comments are more a reflection of your ignorance of the facts than on the character of a very good man. If you have ever heard him speak or read his book you would know that he has been nothing but gracious about the church and has shown nothing but respect for those who believe it.

Regards,
Garry.
 
I sent a letter to the stake president requesting name removal from the LDS church. After about three days the bishop in my ward called me and wanted to know if I wanted to confess any serious sins. They would not allow me to have my name removed as a means to escape a trial.

The problem was (for them), that I had not commited fornication or anything else that would give them the option to excommunicate me. For several months I waited, while hearing rumors about friends being questioned about me. They were trying to dig up some dirt they could use against me.

Finally, after several months had passed, I called the stake president and told him that I wanted a written confirmation that my name had been removed from the membership rolls. I also told him that he would not be able to find any “dirt” on me, enabling him to excommunicate me, but that I was prepared to file a law suit against him if he didn’t comply with my request. I further demanded that he’d explicitly write in the letter that I freely chose to leave the LDS church, and that I was **not **excommunicated on account of sin.

A week after that conversation I finally got my confirmation of name removal, which does state that I left of my own free will and that I was not excommunicated because of sin.

Not that it has helped much. I have been accused, over and over again, by mormons, of having commited some serious “sin” while in the LDS church and that my disbelief in this religion is a result of the sin. Some have claimed that I am demon posessed because I dare to speak against the church I was brought up in. A mormon relative told me “Satan is speaking through you. He lives in your heart now”.

Since the word has spread that I may become a Catholic priest, many now suspect that I am a homosexual (which I am not).

It seems impossible for most mormons to believe that someone can actually leave mormonism simply because they are convinced it is a false religion based on a sincere study of its history and theology. Nooo! There has to be something more… there has to be some hidden sin, or “the devil” would not have got the best of them. Pathetic…

Vidar
 
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Vidar:
It seems impossible for most mormons to believe that someone can actually leave mormonism simply because they are convinced it is a false religion based on a sincere study of its history and theology. Nooo! There has to be something more… there has to be some hidden sin, or “the devil” would not have got the best of them. Pathetic…

Vidar
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This is not unique to LDS. I once heard Karl Keating comment on the radio that Catholics who leave the faith almost always are in the midst of serious sin. And, the fact is, it’s a true statement. Most people leave their faith when they leave God in general. When they come back they may choose their original faith or a different one but the fact remains they wouldn’t have left at all had they not been engaged in sin of one sort or another.

Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule(as in your case) but in general I agree with KK.
 
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Tmaque:
This is not unique to LDS. I once heard Karl Keating comment on the radio that Catholics who leave the faith almost always are in the midst of serious sin. And, the fact is, it’s a true statement. Most people leave their faith when they leave God in general. When they come back they may choose their original faith or a different one but the fact remains they wouldn’t have left at all had they not been engaged in sin of one sort or another.

Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule(as in your case) but in general I agree with KK.
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So you believe that most converts to the LDS church (who were active in other churches at the time of their conversion) are in the midst of serious sin?

That doesn’t sound like any of the LDS folks that I have known. Most of them felt that they were good people trying their best to serve the Lord and that they felt the LDS church was “the next level” for them in their spiritual journey. They thought all that were missing in their existing church was the “fullness of the Gospel”.

Now I don’t believe that myself as I am Catholic But I have known quite a few LDS converts in my time and this certainly describes how most of them felt about their leaving existing churches to join the LDS.
 
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majick275:
So you believe that most converts to the LDS church (who were active in other churches at the time of their conversion) are in the midst of serious sin?

That doesn’t sound like any of the LDS folks that I have known. Most of them felt that they were good people trying their best to serve the Lord and that they felt the LDS church was “the next level” for them in their spiritual journey. They thought all that were missing in their existing church was the “fullness of the Gospel”.

Now I don’t believe that myself as I am Catholic But I have known quite a few LDS converts in my time and this certainly describes how most of them felt about their leaving existing churches to join the LDS.
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This is simply my opinion based on my own observations of people I have known. I could be wrong.
 
Fair Enough… My experience has been otherwise but I certainly don’t claim to be the expert here on this subject.
 
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Tmaque:
This is not unique to LDS. I once heard Karl Keating comment on the radio that Catholics who leave the faith almost always are in the midst of serious sin. And, the fact is, it’s a true statement. Most people leave their faith when they leave God in general. When they come back they may choose their original faith or a different one but the fact remains they wouldn’t have left at all had they not been engaged in sin of one sort or another.

Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule(as in your case) but in general I agree with KK.
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I’ve no idea what KK has said. I believe many Catholics who leave the Church are simply ignorant (often due to poor cathechesis). But your statements prove my point. Your view is the typical LDS view. Many accusations have been thrown at me for leaving mormonism. None of them are true. I first started doubting when I was about 13 years old. I had already read my fathers entire bookshelf on mormonism because I was deeply interested in knowing my faith.

The first problem I encountered was biblical errors being corrected in Joseph Smiths translation of the Bible, present in the BOM. In the Bible, Jesus says to the damned “I never knew you”. This, I was told in seminary is erroneous. It should say “You have never known me”, since God knows everyone. The JST says “You have never known me”.

Why then does the BOM say “I never knew you”?

You may choose to believe that I left due to some serious sin, like many mormons do. It is difficult to prove one’s innocence, and I certainly do not intend to try. If you think I am a liar, so be it. I do understand the way you think. Why on earth would someone leave mormonism unless the spirit had left him? The real answer is impossible to accept for someone who is convinced that mormonism is true.

Vidar
 
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