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Locked on 10/23/2007 9:08:44 AM PDT by Religion Moderator, reason:
Children pick at scabs |
Posted on 09/24/2007 8:16:13 AM PDT by colorcountry
Being excommunicated for apostasy by the Mormon church is one thing, but Lyndon Lamborn is livid that his stake president has ordered bishops in eight Mesa wards to take the rare step of announcing disciplinary action against him to church members today. "I thought if he could go public, so can I," said Lamborn, a lifelong member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who said his research into church history gave him "thousands of reasons the church can't be what it claims to be."
Stake President R. James Molina acknowledged Friday he intends to have Lamborn's excommunication announced to the wards at men's priesthood meetings and womens Relief Society gatherings, even with Lamborn now taking his case public. Molina, as well as officials at church headquarters in Salt Lake City, call such a public warning about an ousted member extremely rare. They say, however, church members must be protected from what discordant ex-followers may say to damage the church...................
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
~”...built on a foundation of fear and lies and deceit.”~
Acts 5:38-39:
38 And now I say unto you, Refrain from these men, and let them alone: for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought:
39 But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God.
The only question I have, is why do you continue to be obsessed with the evils of Mormonism? If the LDS Church is not exactly what it claims to be, it will flounder and fail with or without your help. If it is, then you are placing yourself in grave spiritual peril.
Obsess away, if you choose; it just grows my faith. But I cannot imagine what such a viewpoint must be like.
~”When I read the Bible I have peace, wonderment, joy, and am inspired.”~
Ah, excellent! Then you DO understand the fruits of the Spirit - the testimony to your soul that the Bible is the word of God. And to think I spent all that time on another thread trying to explain it to you, and you spent all that time trying to discredit the notion. I’m glad we’re finally on the same page. This peace, wonderment, and joy -is- the “burning of the bosom.”
You may not have had such an experience with what we consider to be modern scripture; but I have. So you understand exactly why we accept the Book of Mormon as the word of God, even if you disagree.
I’m glad we’re finally connecting.
You ignore the fact that there are two kinds of covenant with God.
1- is for time and eternal (earth and heaven)
2- is for eternal only (heaven only)
So Celestial marriage did take place but there is very little detail only assumptions by man.
You can imagine and assume, but those who engage in this kind of speculation are only casting aspersions!
When Gamaliel made that comment before the Sanhedrin, he was referring to the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ which the Jewish Sanhedrin sought to squelch because they were convinced the Rabbi Jesus was raised from the dead and that was what motivated Peter and the others to proclaim it so openly. He compared this new preaching to the zealot movements which had been squelched before by the Romans. Nearly two decades later these same Jews (well, many were still in the 70) killed James the 'brother' of Jesus for sticking to his claims of Jesus's resurrection and future return as Messiah. Would the poster have us believe that the advent of Joseph Smith was as significant as the resurrection of Jesus?
. . .
Come to think of it, perhaps he would, since Mormonism is based in a belief that without 'Christianity restored' through Joe Smith the believers in Christ for the previous 1700 years cannot enter into Heaven without Mormon proxy baptism for them!
This, after all, is a country led by a born-again Christian.... who characterizes international relations as a biblical clash between forces of good and evil. The highest officer in the land, Attorney General John Ashcroft, is a dyed-in-the-wool follower of a fundamentalist Christian sect- The Pentecostal Assemblies of God of America... and subscribes to a vividly apocalyptic worldview that has much in common with key millenarian beliefs held by the Lafferty brothers and the residents of Colorado City”.
What was untrue in that statement?
So the women and men who testify differently from your sanitized version of your peepstone prophet are all liars, eh? There is no room for truth in such a blind sycophancy. Have a nice evening.
And we're still hearing only Lamborn's side of it. I guess that is too fine a point for some to realize. The leaders will neither confirm nor deny this, like you said, the leaders in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints have an obligation to keep the information about excommunications private. Lamborn must really have been leading people astray, I've never heard of a letter being read in all the wards in a stake. In fact, I've never heard a letter read in Relief Society concerning excommunication.
Lamborn says his stake president has said he is going to have the letter read. The stake president wouldn't comment and the public area relations person didn't confirm what Lamborn said. I don't see why Lamborn is so upset, he was planning to leave anyway. If he is actively leading others astray, then he should be excommunicated. No church will allow people to remember members if they actively teach something against its doctrine.
~”I mean, if this poster overheard someone giving outright false characterizations about the BofM...”~
You make a valid point, MHG, but there’s a crucial distinction: I don’t go about trying to tear down your faith, and, generally speaking, my fellow Mormons don’t either. The closest you’ve ever seen me come is my saying things along the lines of “The LDS Church is the true Church of Christ, and yours isn’t.”
On the other hand, the LDS Church is regularly the target of some here, with the express objective of discrediting it. Our posture is defensive; the posture of the detractors of my faith is aggressive. You and CC are two examples of this.
Thank you, though, for pinging me when you spoke about me.
Given that his story has more holes than a sieve, there isn’t any justification to say he was excommunicated for having questions about the church’s history. You believe his lie because it fits your already warped views and in doing so you harm your own credibility.
Oh, and you never answered me about the early church being ‘cultish’ since they excommunicated people too. You condemned excommunicating someone for any reason.
So the women and men who testify differently from your sanitized version of your peepstone prophet are all liars, eh? There is no room for truth in such a blind sycophancy. Have a nice evening.
***
I continue to witness your natural man lips MHG continue to berated the LDS!
Most churches don’t fear criticism because they do not fear the truth. It appears that this guy learned some things about Mormonism that might cause other thinking individuals to question the truth of Mormonism.
He sure was not original in his discovery
Things I knew way before I join the Church!
And he being in Arizona I am sure in his life time the subject was brought up plenty of times.
I am from Michigan and I knew about it!:)
…that might cause other thinking individuals to question the truth of Mormonism.
And being a thinking person when I did peronally investigate the Church I was surprised at all the disinformation I receive over the years about the Mormons!
Most churches don’t fear criticism because they do not fear the truth. ~ SeaHawkFan
***
Auomatic excommunication (”latae sententiae excommunication”)
There are a few offenses for which Latin Rite Roman Catholics are automatically excommunicated:
Apostasy (canon 1364),
Heresy (canon 1364),
Schism (canon 1364),
Desecration of the Eucharist (canon 1367),
Physical violence against the Pope (canon 1370),
Attempted sacramental absolution of a partner in a sin against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue (”Thou shalt not commit adultery.”) (canon 1378 §1),
Ordination of a bishop without papal mandate (canon 1382),
Direct violation of the sacramental seal of confession by a confessor (canon 1388),
Procurement of a completed abortion (canon 1398), or
Being a conspiring or necessary accomplice in any of the above (canon 1329).
These excommunications are not incurred when certain mitigating circumstances apply (canons 1323 and 1324), e.g., if the person is of minor age, is ignorant of the penalty attached to the act, or has diminished culpability due to force or fear used against them. In short, a person must be old enough, knowledgeable enough, and free enough in his or her action to incur the full weight of such a penalty.
Unless the local ordinary or an ecclesiastical court finds that the offense in question occurred, the obligation to observe an automatic excommunication lies solely on the excommunicated (Can. 1331 §1). Thus, even though an automatic excommunicant is forbidden to exercise any ecclesiastical offices, the excommunicant still retains the offices and all such acts are still valid acts under the law unless there has been a trial and finding of fact. Once this occurs, all subsequent acts become void and all offices lost (Can. 1331 §2).
The removal of the excommunication incurred by offenses 4 through 8 is reserved to the Apostolic See, either personally by the Pope or through the Apostolic Penitentiary. Those who have incurred such a penalty normally go to a priest to confess, and the priest communicates anonymously and confidentially with the Penitentiary to receive delegation to lift the excommunication.
Additionally, local bishops and other ordinaries of the Catholic Church have limited authority to create other grounds for automatic excommunication. For example, from 1884 to 1977 in the United States, an automatic excommunication applied to divorced Catholics who remarried outside the Church without obtaining an annulment. (See Plenary Councils of Baltimore#Excommunications of the Third Council for details.) As another example, since 1996 in the diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, an automatic interdict (and, under certain conditions, automatic excommunication) applies to members of certain organizations, including Call to Action, the Society of St. Pius X, and DeMolay International.[3] As with latae sententiae penalties specified in church-wide law, penalties imposed by the local ordinary are invalidated by certain mitigating circumstances. For example, no one under the age of 16 can receive a penalty under canon law, including excommunication, so most members of DeMolay would be exempt from this sanction.
Some ecclesiastical offenses incur an automatic interdict, which for a lay person is virtually equivalent to excommunication.
Eastern Orthodox Communion
In the Orthodox Church, excommunication is the exclusion of a member from the Eucharist. It is not expulsion from the Church. This can happen for such reasons as not having confessed within that year; excommunication can also be imposed as part of a penitential period. It is generally done with the goal of restoring the member to full communion. The Orthodox Church does have a means of expulsion, by pronouncing anathema, but this is reserved only for acts of serious and unrepentant heresy. Even in that case, the individual is not “damned” by the Church but is instead left to his own devices.
Lutheranism
Although Lutheranism technically has an excommunication process, some denominations and congregations do not use it.
The Lutheran definition, in its earliest and most technical form, would be found in Martin Luther’s Small Catechism, defined beginning at Questions No. 277-283, in “The Office of Keys.” Luther endeavored to follow the process that Jesus laid out in the 18th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. According to Luther, excommunication requires:
1. The confrontation between the subject and the individual against whom he has sinned.
2. If this fails, the confrontation between the subject, the harmed individual, and two or three witnesses to such acts of sin.
3. The informing of the pastor of the subject’s congregation.
4. A confrontation between the pastor and the subject.
Beyond this, there is little agreement. Many Lutheran denominations operate under the premise that the entire congregation (as opposed to the pastor alone) must take appropriate steps for excommunication, and there are not always precise rules, to the point where individual congregations often set out rules for excommunicating laymen (as opposed to clergy). For example, churches may sometimes require that a vote must be taken at Sunday services; some congregations require that this vote be unanimous [1].
The Lutheran process, though rarely used, has created unusual situations in recent years due to its somewhat democratic excommunication process. One example was an effort to get serial killer Dennis Rader excommunicated from his denomination (the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) by individuals who tried to “lobby” Rader’s fellow church members into voting for his excommunication.[2]
Anglican Communion
Church of England
The Church of England does not have any specific canons regarding how or why a member can be excommunicated, though there are canons regarding how those who have been excommunicated are to be treated by the church. Excommunication is seen as an extreme measure and very rarely used. For example, a clergyman was excommunicated in 1909 for having murdered four parishioners.
Episcopal Church of the USA
The ECUSA is in the Anglican Communion, and shares many canons with the Church of England which would determine its policy on excommunication. No central records are kept regarding excommunications, since they happen so rarely. In May 2000, a man was excommunicated for “continued efforts to attack this parish and its members” who had been publishing highly critical remarks about the church and some of its members in a small local paper, many of them about the pro-homosexual stance the church had taken.
Calvin’s view on excommunication
In his Institutes of The Christian Religion, John Calvin wrote (4.12.10):
For when our Saviour promises that what his servants bound on earth should be bound in heaven, (Matthew 18: 18), he confines the power of binding to the censure of the Church, which does not consign those who are excommunicated to perpetual ruin and damnation, but assures them, when they hear their life and manners condemned, that perpetual damnation will follow if they do not repent.
[Excommunication] rebukes and animadverts upon his manners; and although it ... punishes, it is to bring him to salvation, by forewarning him of his future doom. If it succeeds, reconciliation and restoration to communion are ready to be given. ... Hence, though ecclesiastical discipline does not allow us to be on familiar and intimate terms with excommunicated persons, still we ought to strive by all possible means to bring them to a better mind, and recover them to the fellowship and unity of the Church: as the apostle also says, “Yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother” (2 Thessalonians 3: 15). If this humanity be not observed in private as well as public, the danger is, that our discipline shall degenerate into destruction.
Anabaptist tradition
When believers were baptized and taken into membership of the church by Anabaptists, it was not only done as symbol of cleansing of sin but was also done as a public commitment to identify with Jesus Christ and to conform one’s life to the teaching and example of Jesus as understood by the church. Practically, that meant membership in the church entailed a commitment to try to live according to norms of Christian behavior widely held by the Anabaptist tradition.
In the ideal, discipline in the Anabaptist tradition requires the church to confront a notoriously erring and unrepentant church member, first directly in a very small circle and, if no resolution is forthcoming, expanding the circle in steps eventually to include the entire church congregation. If the errant member persists without repentance and rejects even the admonition of the congregation, that person is excommunicated or excluded from church membership. Exclusion from the church is recognition by the congregation that this person has separated himself or herself from the church by way of his or her visible and unrepentant sin. This is done ostensibly as a final resort to protect the integrity of the church. When this occurs, the church is expected to continue to pray for the excluded member and to seek to restore him or her to its fellowship. There was originally no inherent expectation to shun (completely sever all ties with) an excluded member, however differences regarding this very issue led to early schisms between different Anabaptist leaders and those who followed them.
Amish
Jakob Ammann, founder of the Amish sect, believed that the shunning of those under the ban should be systematically practiced among the Swiss Anabaptists as it was in the north and as was outlined in the Dordrecht Confession. Ammann’s uncompromising zeal regarding this practice was one of the main disputes that led to the schism between the Anabaptist groups that became the Amish and those that eventually would be called Mennonite. Recently more moderate Amish groups have become less strict in their application of excommunication as a discipline. This has led to splits in several communities, an example of which is the Swartzedruber Amish who split from the main body of Old Order Amish because of the latter’s practice of lifting the ban from members who later join other churches. In general, the Amish will excommunicate baptized members for failure to abide by their Ordnung as it is interpreted by the local Bishop if certain repeat violations of the Ordnung occur.
Excommunication among the Old Order Amish results in shunning or the Meidung, the severity of which depends on many factors, such as the family, the local community as well as the type of Amish. Some Amish communities cease shunning after one year if the person joins another church later on, especially if it is another Mennonite church. At the most severe, other members of the congregation are prohibited almost all contact with an excommunicated member including social and business ties between the excommunicant and the congregation, sometimes even marital contact between the excommunicant and spouse remaining in the congregation or family contact between adult children and parents.
Mennonites
In the Mennonite Church excommunication is rare and is carried out only after many attempts at reconciliation and on someone who is flagrantly and repeatedly violating standards of behavior that the church expects. Occasionally excommunication is also carried against those who repeatedly question the church’s behavior and/or who genuinely differ with the church’s theology as well, although in almost all cases the dissenter will leave the church before any discipline need be invoked. In either case, the church will attempt reconciliation with the member in private, first one on one and then with a few church leaders. Only if the church’s reconciliation attempts are unsuccessful, the congregation formally revokes church membership. Members of the church generally pray for the excluded member.
Some regional conferences (the Mennonite counterpart to dioceses of other denominations) of the Mennonite Church have acted to expel member congregations that have openly welcomed non-celibate homosexuals as members. This internal conflict regarding homosexuality has also been an issue for other moderate denominations, such as the American Baptists and Methodists.
The practice among Old Order Mennonite congregations is more along the lines of Amish, but perhaps less severe typically. An Old Order member who disobeys the Ordnung (church regulations) must meet with the leaders of the church. If a church regulation is broken a second time there is a confession in the church. Those who refuse to confess are excommunicated. However upon later confession, the church member will be reinstated. An excommunicated member is placed under the ban. This person is not banned from eating with their own family. Excommunicated persons can still have business dealings with church members and can maintain marital relations with a marriage partner, who remains a church member
The other central theme of the book which is false (which is less related to the discussion here) is that faith and reason are polar oposites and that we can't trust faith but reason alone. It is a false dichotmoy in the first place and he of course chooses the wrong one anyway (were we forced to choose between his false dichotomy.) Faith is not opposite of reason. God gave us the oppurtunity to use Faith and Reason. When we seek to overrule faith with reason we err.
From the link post #77
>>>>“There is a dark side to religious devotion that is too often ignored or denied,” he posits in the prologue. “As a means of motivating people to be cruel and inhumane—as a means of motivating people to be evil, to borrow the vocabulary of the devout—there may in fact be nothing more effective than religion.” Referring to the “Islamic fundamentalism” that resulted in the killings of 11 September 2001, he goes on to say that “men have been committing heinous acts in the name of God ever since mankind began believing in deities, and extremists exist within all religions.” He finds that “history has not lacked” for Muslims, “Christians, Jews, Sikhs, and even Buddhists who have been motivated by scripture to butcher innocents. Faith-based violence was present long before Osama bin Laden, and it will be with us long after his demise”(xxii).
.....This glib assertion leads to the hypothesis for his book: “Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a crucial component of spiritual devotion. And when religious fanaticism supplants ratiocination, all bets are suddenly off. Anything can happen. Absolutely anything. Common sense is no match for the voice of God—as the actions of Dan Lafferty vividly attest” (xxiii). The Lafferty case, the purported subject of the book, becomes merely an illustration of this theory.
>>>Under the Banner of Heaven is not only a slap in the face of modern Latter-day Saints but also a misrepresentation of religion in general. It is an insult to those “unreasonable” beings out there who rely upon the “murky sectors of the heart and head that prompt most of us to believe in God — and compel an impassioned few, predictably, to carry that irrational belief to its logical end” (xxi). We should not be surprised that an author who begins his work with the statement that “faith is the very antithesis of reason” (xxiii) should thereafter proceed to grossly stereotype and thereby marginalize Mormonism. As Stephen Carter pointed out a decade ago, there is a worrisome trend in our culture “toward treating religious beliefs as arbitrary and unimportant, a trend supported by a rhetoric that implies there is something wrong with religious devotion. More and more, our culture seems to take the position that believing deeply in the tenets of one’s faith represents a kind of mystical irrationality, something that thoughtful, public-spirited American citizens would do better to avoid” (The Culture of Disbelief, New York, Basic Books, 1993, 6–7). In that sense, this book is an unfortunate endeavor, for it fosters unnecessary suspicion and exclusion in a world that desperately needs openness and understanding.
Maybe Pentecostals don't mind being called terrorists by Krakaeur but as a Mormon I take exception to it when he does it. He's full of it.
Why they leave
Scott Tracy
September 23, 2007
http://www.netxnews.net/vnews/display.v/ART/46f74daf6fa64
Recently on a former-Mormons website, a poll was taken asking the question “Why did you leave?” and the results might be somewhat shocking to most current members of the church.
Kevin Whitaker, in his recent article on postmormon.org expressed the view that most members who leave the church are sinners, offended, or weak in the faith. This, while may be true for some, fails to cover the reasons that most people leave the faith, and reflects the most common misunderstanding between members of the LDS faith and their former Mormon counterparts. In this article, I will try to cover the reasons that people who leave give, and hopefully increase understanding and acceptance for everyone. By way of warning, I will not go in depth into any faith-harming material, nor will I be unfairly critical of anyone. This is my faith community as well, and my intent is to help us understand.
The number one reason listed by people who participated in the poll was “I found out about Mormon history”. In fact, this was the number one response at 67 percent and might be shocking to most faithful LDS. What most faithful members are unaware of is that the history we are taught in church and seminary is termed by LDS historians as “faithful history.” The word former Mormons use is ‘Whitewashed.’ Until recently, there has been a policy for Mormon historians about only speaking or writing about faith promoting history, and violations of this policy were punished often with excommunication.
In an address to Mormon historians at BYU in 1981, Boyd K. Packer stated “There is a temptation for a writer or teacher of church history to want to tell everything, whether it is worthy or faith promoting or not. Some things that are true are not very useful”. The church, I think, is beginning to realize that this policy is very devastating to people who feel that covering up difficult history amounts to lies by omission, and is attempting to be more open about things, as evidenced by the recent article in the ENSIGN about the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
Tied for second place with “I never thought it was true” was “Mormon culture made me uncomfortable,” both of which garnered 10 percent. These two are mostly self explanatory with the first falling into the ‘lacked faith’ category (does not make them bad people) and the second covers anyone who has come into contact with the anti-homosexual, anti-intellectual and anti-feminist bias that the church culture breeds. Not to pick on Brother Packer, but he specifically named these three groups as the biggest enemies of the church. In fact, most leaders of the church feel the incessant need to insert the dismissive phrase ‘so-called’ before any mention of these three groups. Many people leave the church over the “one size fits all mentality.”
Finally I will be addressing ‘disagreed with leaders ethics’ at 8 percent. This I feel the need to cover in a very sensitive way, lest I risk offending either community. If you ask any life long member of the church if polygamy is doctrinal, the answer would be “Yes, but God disallows the practice at this time” or something very similar. When Gordon B. Hinckley was asked about polygamy on Larry King, he responded, “It’s not doctrinal.” Many in the former-Mormon community see this as a lie, and to them, this casts doubt on his prophetic calling. Even faithful Members are sometimes uncomfortable with this ‘milk before meat’ philosophy. This is one example and I will not go into further detail, but I will say that this has been an issue for the church since its founding and mostly (but not always) in relation to the practice of polygamy.
People leave the church for many reasons and when they do, they face a hostile community, broken families, destroyed marriages and even risk loss of employment. People do not leave the church lightly. When they leave, they feel they are doing the right thing for themselves, and feel they are making ethical decisions. By increasing understanding, I hope that when people do make the decision to leave they will leave with fond memories and a glad heart-not bitter memories and an enmity for the church and its members.
| Posted 09/25/2007 |
| I definitely fall into the 67% category and the 8% leader ethics category. Our journey out began with my husband's accidental discovery of the Book of Abraham "problem" while searching for Egyptian stuff on-line. He was devastated. It was EARTH-SHATTERING! At first I wouldn't listen to him. I was so trained to not "listen" to anti-Mormons or read "faith-harming" material. I even threatened him with divorce (an other-wise extremely happy 11 year long marriage). I made a tough decision and that was to at least read some excerpts from the Journal of Discourses. I read for at least 8 hours straight that day and what I read shook me to the core. It was awful! Blood Atonement??? What's that? Castration of young men because they wanted to marry a girl their age and the old Bishop wanted her?? What? This couldn't have really happened right?? After that there was an insatiable desire to get to the bottom of "all this" and find out the truth. I dug into Grant Palmer's and Southerland's DNA book. Then the Emma Smith-Mormon Enigma book (and I still read everyday to this day-2 years later-more about Mormonism). Two clinchers were the First Vision (there were how many DIFFERING versions of this FOUNDATIONAL story?????), and the DNA issue. What do you mean the Lamanites came from Mongolia? That can't be true. I remember the day I read some of the interviews of Gordon B. Hinckley on national television shows. He LIED! Polygamy is undoctrinal? As Man is God once was...as God is man may become? WHAT? That's only a "couplet?" I thought it was TRUE!! I was a life long member. Extremely active. Served as R.S. Pres. in large wards twice. Sat in on all those "priesthood" meetings (and was talked down to on more than one occasion-by the way). No one ever told me these things! I was a Seminary graduate! I could count the times I missed Sacrament on one hand. Why didn't I know Joseph Smith MARRIED other men's wives??? Leaving the only church and faith I ever knew was the most difficult decision of my life. I knew I would be ostracized by my Mormon family and friends(in fact both groups have nothing more to do with me anymore), but being honest with myself and FOR MY OWN FOUR BABIES, was so totally worth while. I urge anyone reading this to do the research for themselves! Think about your children, if not yourself. Would you really want them to believe Santa Clause is real forever? 'Joseph Smith lied' is PART of our family motto now. Find out the truth for yourselves. Only someone with something to hide tries to limit what you read/know. Emily Broyles Blanchard, Oklahoma |
Yet when we call them to the mat they call US liars, sinners, bitter and twisted. The sorriest thing is, they don’t realize that others see through their tactics...those tactics only work within a cultic belief system.
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