Mormon Church Trying to Keep the Wheels On

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Chris-Wa1

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For those of you who keep up with developments in the Mormon church, there have been a large number of changes over the last couple of years to make the religion more palatable to the membership and keep the wheels from falling off. Naturally, the LDS leadership spins theses changes as new revelation (usually in stark contrast to previous revelation, which is never talked about), but the truth is so many Mormons are leaving and so many who stay are not putting in the effort to keep the machine running that the leadership is making one change after another to stem the tide.

Here are some of the changes:
  1. The required age for missionaries was lowered from 19 to 18 for males and from 21 to 19 for females. Why the two are still not the same seems weird, but the lowering was due to ever-decreasing numbers of young Mormons willing or qualified to go on missions and the ever-increasing number of missionaries coming home early for all kinds of reasons. They needed to get the numbers up.
  2. It was just announced today that missionaries will now be allowed to contact family members once per week (during their planning day on Monday) via phone, video chat, etc. Up until today, missionaries could only call home TWICE PER YEAR (Christmas and Mother’s Day for one hour each.) So many missionaries are coming home early they had to do something. Leadership used to say how important it was for missionaries to focus on their missions and not be distracted by family contact, so much so that even when missionaries who took ill or had serious accidents while away in foreign lands were not allowed to speak with their family (unless they were lucky enough to be hospitalized on Christmas or Mother’s Day of course).
  3. Church time was just reduced starting in January from 3 hours to 2 hours. Members were really getting burned out on spending so much time in church on Sunday at the expense of family. Sunday was more like a work day than a day of rest. In its place the church has started a home education program that the parents are responsible for. Somehow I think the stress level will still be high for those parents that actually follow through.
  4. Considered taboo in the Mormon Church until just recently, caffeinated drinks are now being sold at BYU and are no longer considered sinful to consume. For decades, consuming caffeinated drinks was highly discouraged and you would never find them in most Mormons’ homes and certainly not at their institutions.
  5. Female missionaries are now allowed to wear pants (except on Sundays). Still have to wear dresses to church on Sunday though.
The main point is that just prior to these changes the leadership and faithful members would have argued till the cows came home that the current policies were not only correct but inspired by revelation. Then when the leadership changes things they will pretend as if the old policy/practice/belief never existed and the new way is inspired and correct. Bottom line—in Mormonism the correct thing is whatever the current prophet says it is.
 
  1. Why do you think this is anything other than prudent. As it was there was an unnatural break between a mission and college. The lowering of age could simply be for practical purposes for youth between college and highschool.
  2. My cousin completed her two year mission in central America on Christmas. She called home at least once a week a few times a week and even I, her cousin stayed in contact via social media.
  3. This is still more than our Catholic practice. Mass is around an hour and I prefer to home educate my kids. You know, so they are Catholic…
  4. You do have a valid point here as I believe this is caving to societal pressure to use an addicting drug. But then again I believe we used to have some sort of dietary rules that are relaxed now.
  5. Noooooo not pants! This is proof the wheels are coming off. Now I need to go get my daughters veils…oh wait…
As someone who grew up with mormons, knows mormons, lives around mormons, and absolutely disagrees with their theology, these points are indeed baseless. And people who live in glass houses shouldnt throw Vatican 2 stones.
 
Chris-Wa1 said:
  1. It was just announced today that missionaries will now be allowed to contact family members once per week (during their planning day on Monday) via phone, video chat, etc. Up until today, missionaries could only call home TWICE PER YEAR (Christmas and Mother’s Day for one hour each.)
  2. Female missionaries are now allowed to wear pants (except on Sundays). Still have to wear dresses to church on Sunday though.
…Then when the leadership changes things they will pretend as if the old policy/practice/belief never existed and the new way is inspired and correct.
Click to expand...
I, for one, will be doing my part to pretend that the old policies never existed. I’ll photoshop all of my mission pictures so that it appears the sister missionaries are wearing pants - except when it’s oh so obvious that they’re at church.

And, of course, I’ll doctor some of my old mission pictures showing me with a cell phone and skyping so that I can pretend there never was a time it cost $1 per minute for an international call and there was no internet.
 
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I agree.
There are points of difference that are worth discussing. These are not. I don’t see any of it as doctrinal. Just cultural.

The Catholic church certainly has these kinds of shifts in Her practice as well
 
If they had the full truth, there would be no need to change. Mormons have more or less thrown Brigham Young under the bus (probably because he was a racist).
 
The Catholic Church does have the fullness truth. And yet these Changes are small in comparison to what Catholics have changed in just the last 50 years.
 
Nice try. The Church has been changing since it was born.
 
That’s not really helpful and hardly has anything to do with my question.
 
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Women don’t have to veil anymore, etc.

There is the Ordinary Form, which is a change from the Tridentine Mass. A great deal of change within that alone. My grandmother had a really hard time with this change.

Really hard.

Again, these are not doctrinal, but they are indeed, changes.
 
I find it incredibly hard to believe you dont know of any changes. So I’m wondering what your point is. But I’ll play along for a minute. The Mass has changed many times over the history of the Church. The EF was itself a change and the OF is changing constantly. Fasting disciplines have changed quite extensively. As have dress and obligations. Reception of Our Lord, as well as changes that are currently new. The very idea of adultey and reception of the eucharist is changing as well as the limited use of barrier contraception. Take your pick between the liturgical, cultural, or political. The Catholic Church is in the middle of change that is taking place rapidly.
 
Hoosier-Daddy said:
The very idea of adultey and reception of the eucharist is changing as well as the limited use of barrier contraception.
Click to expand...
To be fair, many of the bishops are troubled by many of the “off the cuff” comments by His Holiness. And, unlike the Mormon hierarchy, the bishops are more equal to the pontiff than the members of Q12 are equal to the president of the LDS church.

So, our bishops can, and do, run their arch/dioceses independently. It’s still considered a mortal sin to artificially contraception, and to partake of the Eucharist if one is in an irregular marriage.
Francis has not changed that. The laity may lived that way, the the Church’s doctrine has not
 
No. The vicar of Chtist is the supreme pontiff. No bishop, cardinal, or group of bishops etc have power over him. It has always been this way. The Church is not a democracy with a balance of powers.
 
That is not what I said, and you missed the point.

I was comparing the Catholic hierarchy to the LDS one. Our bishops have much more power over their dioceses than the Q12 do.

There have been many of our bishops who have been clear about their concerns about the Holy Father, have been very open about it, and they won’t and don’t get into trouble.

Truly, the pope has primacy over EQUALS, his brother, the bishops.

Francis has not changed, and cannot, the doctrine of mortal sin over conception and irregular marriages
 
I can’t speak to the decrease in stake closings in the Mormon church, but I know in the my diocese and others all over the country, there is many closings, or mergings, of parishes.

And Catholic schools? Oh yea, tons of closings there, too.

Yes, many faiths are experiencing a fall off of faithful. Not unique to either Catholicism or Mormonism

Raymond Arroyo had a great interview with then Cardinal Ratzinger, about the shrinkage of the Catholic church and what he expects as things continue to decline. Ratzinger does address this in several interviews that are book form with Peter Seewald
 
Yes, we know that there will be great tribulation before the end. The current decline in Catholicism might just be a prelude.

I hope you realize that the decline in Catholicism due to people falling away from Truth.

The decline in Mormonism is due to discovery of facts and history, thanks to the Internet.
 
Yes, I know. I am a former Mormon.

Just trying to point out that that we shouldn’t be so quick to point out the flaws so quickly in other faiths and be blind to our own.

That is hypocrisy and that drove our Lord crazy. He hated hypocrisy.
 
I think I know more about Mormonism at this point than most Mormons. Can they drink coffee yet?
 
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