Well, when Joseph Smith asked God which church to join, God said to join none of them, and eventually to start a new church. I can't see the church backing down from that, although as an institution they haven't been militant about it for a very long time.

The church is drawing a stronger line between doctrine, principles, and traditions, and saying that traditions can change. They're even shaking up some core movements, like home teaching.

As to a white washed history, I don't think they're doing that.

Good topic, Deg.

I tend to agree with you on this one.  I think religions will eventually adjust to match cultural norms.  How long it takes is the question, I suppose.

That said, I know Heath said on several occasions in the past that it was simply impossible that the LDS church would ever change its position on homosexuality, so it may be that there will be enough people within the church resisting change that it won't change.  But in that case I'd expect it to have a harder and harder time attracting members, and eventually start to shrink (think of the Catholic church in Europe, for example).

The larger the institution the more difficult it is for it to adapt and change, but the primary reason for adaptation is to self preserve the institution.  If the narrative isn't serving its fundamental purpose which to attract and inspire its own members then the theology and doctrines will change.

Mormon history serves as a perfect example of this already with its abandonment of Polygamy and Blacks and the Priesthood. Nowadays they no longer beat the one and only true church that much,  and with the Internet as a game changer members of the church are realizing that the history isn't as straight forward as they once portrayed it (see gospel topic essays).

It will be interesting once the younger generations take over and what revelations the leadership will receive in the future.  That said, other religions are also making changes to be more in harmony with secular perspectives.

The Catholic Church has made it clear that on matters of revealed dogma, divine truth does not change. (It's not always clear what is revealed truth though and what is just tradition. But it many cases it is.)

If LDS takes a page from the RCC, they won't be changing on things like homosexual marriage. I don't recall if female priests was dogma or tradition. (Priests being married is tradition, and they could change it if they wanted.)

They've kept it for 2,000 years. I don't expect our generation to change that.

I think the LDS church is all about change where change is appropriate.  They just shook up local Elder's Quorums and High Priest groups, revamped home/visiting teaching to ministry, they're redoing the hymn book to combine it with the children's songbook (and will simultaneously publish the whole thing in every language, but the whole revamping process will take a few years), they're releasing a whole new church-wide male youth program over the next year, they're pushing a huge new self reliance program and getting everyone educated on how and why to budget and improve themselves -- there are fairly major changes going on.

I can't comment on what changes 'should' take place in LDS, because I'm not LDS. But I can respond to katisara's comments on the RCC.

Priests not being able to marry was a good idea in the middle ages, from the fear that churches would become family property, handed down from father to son. That isn't going to happen today (because few follow their parents' professions, and the church controls the assignments of priests to parishes). It really is time to remove that restriction and enlarge the priesthood.

There is a historical debate to be had over whether female leaders in the early church were priests or deacons. It doesn't help that the terminology has changed over time and it's hard to line up the old roles with modern roles. But either way, women should be allowed to be at least deacons.

There is also the point that was recommended to Francis soon after his election when he went to nominate new cardinals: cardinals don't have to be priests, so there is nothing stopping a pope from nominating female cardinals. It would have helped his position with respect to women's inclusion (which he was aimed for and has faltered) had he given some women seats at this highest level of the church.

I agree that the original cause no longer stands, but I'm not sure I think that alone justifies the change now. Priests, especially of orders, need to be fully committed to their work, with no competing commitments or fears to hold them back. The priesthood is a calling unlike others. You can become a tax accountant, stay in your same town, then change your mind and become a homemaker. A priest isn't like that. The priest gives himself wholly to the Church, to be sent where she pleases, to be put at risk, and to commit his time to those in need.

I expect, if we were to do a statistical analysis, between married and unmarried ministers, we would find the unmarried ones expose themselves to more risks, have less concerns about money and income, and have fewer issues keeping to their orders.

Of course, there are practical considerations. Marriage is one of the primary reasons young men avoid the priesthood. Given the RCC has a shortage of priests, we may find they have to change policies just to keep the doors open.




Absolutely agreed. Even the arguments that women shouldn't be priests because Jesus only chose men as his disciples (which have some holes on their own), deacons aren't equivalent to the disciples, they are carrying a burden of service. Even by the most conservative views, there's nothing inherently masculine about the role.



My research suggests that they not only have to be a priest, but a bishop. https://www.osv.com/OSVNewswee...-Qualifications.aspx

Do you have a different source?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lay_cardinal says that cardinals must be priests, as of a 1917 decision, but that they don't have to be bishops.

Apparently Jesuit priests who become a cardinal usually ask to not be made a bishop.  I'm not sure why.

Unfortunately, I don't have a source. Around the same time as the article you cited was written, I was seeing divergent opinions on the subject of whether it was possible or not. I don't recall the arguments on both sides, perhaps because I don't know enough to judge them. I really know nothing about canon law.

I was careful to phrase it the way I did in my earlier post. It was recommended that cardinals need not be priests. And not by me, ignorant of canon law.

Here's one such article from the time that I must have read:
https://www.ncronline.org/blog...eoretically-possible

Theologically and theoretically it is possible, as Father Federico Lombardi said, but current cannon law prohibits it.

It's like saying that it is possible that there could be another Boy Scouts organization -- there's nothing that inherently precludes such from being formed.  Current law, though, prohibits that: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/36/30905  I think Father Lombardi was careful in his phrasing as well.
This message was last edited by the player at 19:35, Wed 20 June 2018.

I don't believe it's an issue of dogma, in which case it could be changed (don't quote me on that though). But it would take a major push to do such. I'd start with just female deacons!

The thing is there hasn't been 2000 years of societal pressure to change this issue. It's largely been one where society has generally agreed with the church. It should be interesting to see what happens as more and more people grow up finding any kind of anti-LGBTQ viewpoint as completely contrary to how they see the world.

It's really interesting to see some more LGBTQ-friendly dialogue happening from the pope on the one hand (even using that term recently, which is an interesting step), while at the same time still being pretty clear that same sex couples are not real families (ouch).

I have no guesses on the timeline of it all, and if you look at something like how long it took for slavery to truly be eradicated from the church, it's likely a really long road ahead, but I just can't see progress being halted forever. It may just take very tiny steps with every new pope that comes along.

I believe the same thing will happen with the LDS church as well, but again, who knows what the timeline will be on it all. There will always be holdouts of course (the FLDS still exists) but cultural changes are like erosion.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:55, Mon 25 June 2018.

That's true. Moving the calendar to the year 4000, whose to say!

Given that Trump may be appointing another Supreme Court Justice and that Justice Kennedy was providing the swing vote for some issues, it will be interesting to see what happens. *shrug*

It certainly appears that the USA is living in "interesting" times.

You make an interesting point though.  All of us live in our own little bubbles of reality, and it can be hard to see that things are so very different in other places.

The last place I lived we were attending a very conservative Baptist church by Canadian standards. However, there was a pretty key family that eventually moved to Oklahoma because they felt that it was far too liberal to live in this particular area of Canada (northern BC) - this was shocking to me. Having lived other places in Canada, I felt like this was one of THE most conservative places they could be, aside from perhaps southern Alberta.

I now live in Edmonton, which votes more left wing than the rest of Alberta, and gay marriage is mostly such a non-issue among most of the population, until you get outside the city a bit anyways. It feels like any church that would want to survive long term up here would need to adapt to those changes in culture.

But in the USA there are obviously huge parts of the country where that isn't the case.  Sure, maybe the actual number of people in the USA leans more towards seeing gay marriage as a good thing, but geographically it's probably a lot more evenly split (feel free to correct me on this as I could be way off!).

So, if you live in Oklahoma it might seem like culture has not changed all that much and the more traditional/conservative viewpoints probably feel like they are going to stick around a lot longer.

Really, who knows what's going to happen. Even if the laws get changed back again in the US, I suspect social pressures will largely still exist and things could get nasty down there as time keeps marching on.

(As an aside, I know personally we cancelled two trips to the US that we had planned for this year  and next (Disneyworld and Hawaii) and replaced them with a trip to Ireland and a trip inside Canada. I'm certainly worried about the direction things are headed there and hoping things don't get a lot worse before they get better)

Well the Exchange rate doesn't help either, but things will get better... the best is always yet to come.

The thing is the Internet (Information Age) is the game changer. Before it was only 1 in 1000 who were free informed thinker avid readers, now with the internet people can identify like minded people and form groups on Facebook.

The internet is the game changer for religions, breaking apart the myth. LDS people would go to their grave believing wholeheartedly in their religion. There was no reason whatsoever to question the truth claims.  Now it's almost too easy to have doubts. This isn't just Mormon thing it's a world wide religion thing.

How religions work around this topic is 100% strategic and the issue of everything. Yet at least for Mormonism they are resorting to doing nothing or turn a blind eye (at least at the surface).

It seems the Mormon church wants to play out the following scenario.
Behind the scenes they are working to be as transparent as possible, releasing information in the form of gospel topic essays to answer many of the difficult questions one can easily find on the internet. But these issues are never found to be the subject of sermons, manuals, lessons, etc. To find these answers on your own you have to be somewhat clever and deliberately trying to find answers from the Church. You can be a member for decades and no one is going to burst your bubble for you.

When you enter a faith crisis or transition, then you are no longer part of the conservative believing crowd, you are now part of the doubters, skeptics, cynics... dare I say it apostates. The older members are almost like a dying breed, but over 70% of the youth of the church go inactive by the age of 21. The younger generation isn't as hardcore Mormon as the younger church.

Now the experience of the Mormon church may very well be tied to the fact that it acts like a fundamentalist religion trying to go mainstream. However, I think in order to have a thriving religion it will require a cultural change since culture eats strategy religion for breakfast.

I find the LDS church to be quite savvy when it comes to the use of social media and the internet.

For example, there was a 'Meet the Mormons' documentary that came out that followed a young man going out on his mission. I watched it and thought it was a fascinating glimpse into what goes on in that situation.

Of course, nearly right after that the LDS church put out a documenary called the exact same thing, with a much more polished and chipper look at the LDS church. If you google that phrase, what comes up?  The LDS version of the movie.

They clearly created the show with the exact same name in an attempt to drive social media and internet search traffic away from the original series and towards their own version. It was brilliant, if not fairly deceptive. I think the LDS church does a really good job at navigating the new media.

The Mormon church has certainly done it's best to be proactive about media and social media wise, but you can't fight against the tidal wave.

There's a new video talking about Believers from HBO. For example.
This movie talks about LGBT issues and suicide. Haven't seen it.

There also plenty of podcasters that interview well educated scholars, and book authors regarding there expert opinions on specific subject matters. Their informed opinions are not in line with the dominant narrative -- which according to them isn't true.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:54, Sun 08 July 2018.

I don't think the Internet bringing 'truth' is the faith-killer. Most people don't care to know anything if there isn't a specific, pressing need to know it.

My hypothesis is the killer is the social aspect. Back in the day, church was a recurring, community-wide social event. It was also the largest social venue (in most places, it still is!) People in rural communities are more likely to be religious than urbanites, and the more isolated, the more likely they are to go to church. But the Internet does bring interconnectedness (as has the rise of huge cities).

Fighting back requires rethinking how churches serve as communities. Better forums and online services. A feeling of relevance to the local community. Last I checked, most churches are still the 'sit down for an hour then brunch after' style.

Those are some good points!

Interesting times in the Catholic church with the pope's recent changes regarding the death penalty.

I have a question regarding the practical nature of this.

I know there has been discussion that individuals who support abortion should be refused communion, though I don't think it's actually happened in practice.  Would individuals who support the death penalty now fall under the same type of issues?

In reply to Doulos (msg # 23):

It's definitely the case that politicians have been denied communion for supporting abortion rights (one example here), so it's more than just discussed.

As to whether politicians who support the death penalty will be denied communion, I'm guessing it's less likely, as denying communion to an abortion-rights-supporter was a liberal vs conservative thing (ie, conservative priest trying to influence a (comparatively) liberal politician), whereas in supporters of the death penalty it will be conservative vs conservative (in which case I'm not sure the conservative priest will want to cause that rift) OR a liberal priest vs a conservative politician (and I haven't heard of liberal priests threatening to withhold communion in the past, so don't expect them to start now).

What I'd guess will happen is that pro-death-penalty politicians will do what pro-abortion-rights politicians have done: say that their position isn't dictated by the pope.

I could be wrong on that.  It'd be great (in my opinion) if this got more people to oppose the death penalty.  But I expect people's political loyalties will dictate their actions more than will the strictures of their religion.

Interesting, I had not realized that there were actual cases of communion being withheld from people over that particular issue.

To me it makes sense that if one is going to hold to a hard line stance when it comes to abortion and communion, then the same must be done for the death penalty, no matter what the political stances of the bishop/individual are.

However, you're probably right.

I was just curious if this particular issue was in some way different than the abortion issue in terms of how the church views it, in terms of it's severity.

I don't agree with withholding communion in either case. Jesus came to heal the sick, not the well. He chose to dine with sinners, and IMHO none should be turned away from his supper.

I agree with Tycho as well (unfortunately). But it's good the pro-life position is moving more towards embracing life!