LDS Church Bishops – the starting position for ALL other “higher” leadership positions in the LDS Church such as Stake President, etc. – are appointed ONLY based on being the highest tithing donor and being a church attending male in the congregation. NO OTHER CRITERIA are actually considered or used. There is NO screening or other process used to check the mental health status, check for anti-social personalities like sociopaths, psychopaths, etc, and thus a – for example – pedophile can easily gain private access to children based ONLY on the ability to literally purchase an LDS Bishop position by – again – being the one that donated the most tithing in the ward during the last period.
The LDS Church will predictably either ignore this information, or find out who is sharing it and retaliate like crazy using it’s massive financial resources and huge legal team to try to shame, humiliate, threaten, or if all else fails, ruin the person’s life or ever possibly try to induce a “suicide”, all to protect this apparently secret information from becoming more widely disseminated.
If the LDS Church is what is says it is, and actually does what it claims to do, and stands for what it’s many professionally written or edited messages claim it does, then WHY does it do what it actually does?
Why is there so much secret information to be withheld all the time?
Why is the much vaunted repentance system geared towards getting the wrong doers right again, at the expense of the victims who are very, very often told “Turn the other cheek”, or “It’s your own fault for letting it happen”, or some other victim shaming event that does NOTHING to help the victim and instead blames them for their own misfortune…while pardoning their abusers?
Why are Bishops not subjected to full background checks, comprehensive psychological testing, and bonded out so that if they’re predators the bounty hunters can go after them?
The “protect the church no matter what it takes” attitude that is so widely practiced in Utah is an oxymoron…why would anyone think a heavenly organization could be threatened by an Earthly person or organization?
Why are victims intentionally shamed, threatened, ignored, etc. as an official policy of the LDS Church? And, YES, it IS an official church policy.
Finally, as part of a list that could go on for so many more pages….
Why won’t the LDS Church Leadership open up all its records so that the truth of it’s centuries old actual conduct can be seen and reviewed by the world? If the LDS Church is actually favored by God…what concern could there ever genuinely be about letting the truth be known?
In my entire life spent living close to the LDS capital…I can look back and notice the long, long history of publicly announced LDS Church policies….and notice that the vast majority of them were/are clearly designed to benefit the LDS Church and it’s leadership financially. And the vast financial resources of the Mormon Church are NOT improving the lives of it’s members. There are poor people…many made so by the endemic and entirely normal discrimination and harassment, etc, perpetuated by local Mormon’s living in or near Salt Lake City, Utah, and the Mormon Church never has done anything effective to change this.
The rich run the Mormon organization…and it’s not for the benefit of the poor! I’ve lived in Utah, personally witnessed all of what I’ve written about in this post, and I’ve seen the awful and – frankly – officially directed by LDS Bishops things happen that if I could somehow download my mind…would put a significant number of local LDS Church members and leaders in the position of being appropriately labeled both human rights violators and also terrorists (domestic variety).