It was Oaks who said it. I heard the comments when it first aired. I haven’t paid attention to anything that has been said in subsequent airings.
I found the Oaks
interview at lds org. The correct quote is “Not everything that’s true is useful.” The context he puts it in is creepy, to me, but mormons seem to be ok with it.
Here is the section that you refer to:
HW: You used an interesting phrase, “Not everything that’s true is useful.” Could you develop that as someone who’s a scholar and trying to encourage deep searching?
DHO: The talk where I gave that was a talk on “Reading Church History” — that was the title of the talk. And in the course of the talk I said many things about being skeptical in your reading and looking for bias and looking for context and a lot of things that were in that perspective. But I said two things in it and the newspapers and anybody who ever referred to the talk only referred to [those] two things: one is the one you cite, “Not everything that’s true is useful,” and that [meant] “was useful to say or to publish.” And you tell newspapers any time (media people) [that] they can’t publish something, they’ll strap on their armor and come out to slay you! [Laughs.]
**…missing paragraph. **
But not everything that’s true is useful. I am a lawyer, and I hear something from a client. It’s true, but I’ll be disciplined professionally if I share it because it’s part of the attorney-client privilege. There’s a husband-wife privilege, there’s a priest-penitent privilege, and so on. That’s an illustration of the fact that not everything that’s true is useful to be shared.
In relation to history, I was speaking in that talk for the benefit of those that write history. In the course of writing history, I said that people ought to be careful in what they publish because not everything that’s true is useful. See a person in context; don’t depreciate their effectiveness in one area because they have some misbehavior in another area — especially from their youth. I think that’s the spirit of that. I think I’m not talking necessarily just about writing Mormon history; I’m talking about George Washington or any other case. If he had an affair with a girl when he was a teenager, I don’t need to read that when I’m trying to read a biography of the Founding Father of our nation.
Overall the interview was very good and Dallin Oaks gave good responses. I suppose to put it in a catholic context, not everything that is true is useful could also be applied to the catholic church. We all tend to stress faith importantance and the positive in history. The negatives in history imply human imperfections but not necessarilty falseness in doctrine. And yet, these imperfections can affect a person attitude toward the faith. I know of many catholic who were deeply affected by the priest scandals. And so, that which is true is not always useful, right?
I also have to say that he was giving his opinions. One can agree or disagree but they are still
his opinions.
