Final truth.
The book was in the Deseret store. I was unable to go back and recheck the title because it was pulled…so the authorities got rid of it. Good.
But it hurt. I never went on a Mormon thread before…so the first thing that came up was what I read…
Final truth:
According to your own words,when you went back to the store you didn’t find it and the clerks didn’t recognise the name of the book.
…the book you claimed was “the Pearl of Great Price.”
“The Pearl of Great Price” has NOT been pulled, and since it is one of the four Standard Works of the church, is absolutely a title that the clerks would have known.
The possibilities are:
- You read this language in a book somewhere, and mistakenly remember it as coming from a book you looked at in the Deseret Bookstore–and for some reason do not now want to admit to a very understandable and human error that happens to everybody.
- You read this language in a publication you picked up at the Deseret Bookstore, but that was not actually being sold by them; in fact, it was placed there by some critic. (This happens…not frequently, but it happens). In that case, the clerks would not recognize the book, and since it didn’t belong to the store in the first place, the store could not have ‘pulled’ it.
- Some portion of what you say is true, but you have exagerated some parts of it to make the story sound better and now can’t admit the truth because doing so would be embarrassing.
- You are repeating something you read third hand, and, having trusted that source, presented it as something that happened to you personally. Since your third hand source of information has been proven incorrect, you are between a rock and hard place…you can’t admit that you changed POV now, can you?
- Some combination of the above.
What has been absolutely proven to be NOT true, however, is that you read that language in “The Pearl of Great Price,” (or even any commentary about “The Pearl of Great Price”), and that you went back in two weeks to find that the clerks didn’t recognize the name of the book, and had ‘pulled’ it. (a contradictory statement all by itself, if you think about it; if they had “pulled” it, they would have remembered the title.)–or that the SLC church general headquarters didn’t recognise “The Pearl of Great Price.”
After doing some research into the specific language that you were upset about, and looking into LDS authored publications that might have equivalent language in it, here are two theories I’ve come up with—because I simply can’t imagine that you are simply lying. You don’t seem the sort who would. I think you are honestly convinced of this…you are simply incorrect.
I think you got hold of some anti-Catholic rhetoric somewhere else, along with anti-Mormon rhetoric, and, primed by what you read, saw what you expected to see in some publication somewhere. When you went back two weeks later, of course the clerks didn’t remember the publication and didn’t recognise the name of the book, because it never actually existed the way you remember it. Nobody can “pull” that which never existed in the first place, Kathleen.
Now, here, you remember it as being “The Pearl of Great Price,” because that’s a name that ‘sticks.’ It’s not the name of the publication you actually read OR asked about.
I distinctly remember being not quite three years old, sitting in the back seat of a car, jumping up and saying “BOO!” to my mother and my aunt Bonnie just as they were about to drive into a tunnel under rail road tracks. I REMEMBER that. For years I would tell that story as my 'earliest childhood memory." Many, many years later, when I was in my twenties, my mother heard me tell that story–and she pulled me aside and told me that the story was true—except that it was my little sister who yelled ‘boo,’ not me. Aunt Bonnie confirmed this–and my sister doesn’t remember it at all. Mom and Aunt Bonnie told the story often when I was little, because it almost made them lose control of the car; my sister wasn’t yet one. The story made such an impression on me that I internalized it. Even though I know I wasn’t the ‘boo-er,’ I still REMEMBER it that way.
This is what I think has happened to you, in a way.
But you are incorrect. The Pearl of Great Price has no such language in it. The Deseret Book store has not pulled ANY books with that sort of langauge in it. The only quotes with equivalent language in it are still availiable, as a part of church history…and the specific terminology you remember is only used by some extremely anti-Catholic fundamentalist evangilistic groups—and not Mormons.
…no Mormon has written or said anything remotely like it in over a 100 years, and most of 'em knew better THEN.
And THAT, Katheen, is the final truth.
If my theory about what happened to you is not accurate, the only other possibility I can think of is not flattering.
Did I miss part of the conversation?