Boyd K. Packer says the end is NOT NEAR

[_Buffalo]

I don't think Peggy Stack as ever written any anti-anything.

I very much disagree. I think Stack writes anti-mormon stuff all the time. In fact, I think most of her articles have some kind of hostile intent towards the church. Not 100% of them. But a lot of them. Most of them, I think. She is obviously not a believing LDS. She might be some kind of NOM, or cultural Mormon. But from my viewpoint, she has an underlying agenda that it more or less anti-mormon. Whenever there is something controversial in the news, like the so-called gay "bishopric member" in San Francisco, I know that Stack is going to be coming out with an article that tends to paint the church in a bad light. She's very reliable in that respect.

Obviously anyone without their nose directly in TSM's buttcrack is an anti-Mormon.

[_Nomad]

Obviously anyone without their nose directly in TSM's buttcrack is an anti-Mormon.

You are a very vulgar and disgusting person.

[_Buffalo]

Obviously anyone without their nose directly in TSM's buttcrack is an anti-Mormon.

You are a very vulgar and disgusting person.

You've become quite prudish, Will. What happened to the vulgar scatologist we've all come to know and love?

[_madeleine]

I don't think Peggy Stack as ever written any anti-anything.

I very much disagree. I think Stack writes anti-mormon stuff all the time. In fact, I think most of her articles have some kind of hostile intent towards the church. Not 100% of them. But a lot of them. Most of them, I think. She is obviously not a believing LDS. She might be some kind of NOM, or cultural Mormon. But from my viewpoint, she has an underlying agenda that it more or less anti-mormon. Whenever there is something controversial in the news, like the so-called gay "bishopric member" in San Francisco, I know that Stack is going to be coming out with an article that tends to paint the church in a bad light. She's very reliable in that respect.

The world is more secular by the day, and the secular view is seriously held by people as the correct view that all people should have. It isn't anti-Mormon, though at times it can be ironic. :-) In the sense that, the secular view is viewed by many as religiously neutral, when many times, it is anything but. Especially when it comes to hot button topics like homosexuality or abortion.

So really, I think you are picking up on secularism, not anti-Mormonism.

[_madeleine]

Yeah, that's what the JWs have been doing for a long time. They even discourage people from going to college. It hasn't worked out well for them.

The LDS approach to an end-times belief matches to a lot of LDS belief, which is pragmatic in nature. JWs aren't pragmatic, at all.

[_Nomad]

The world is more secular by the day, and the secular view is seriously held by people as the correct view that all people should have. It isn't anti-Mormon, though at times it can be ironic. :-) In the sense that, the secular view is viewed by many as religiously neutral, when many times, it is anything but. Especially when it comes to hot button topics like homosexuality or abortion.

So really, I think you are picking up on secularism, not anti-Mormonism.

I would say that, for all intents and purposes, secularism is anti-mormonism.

At any rate, I don't think Peggy Fletcher Stack is consciously promoting secularism with her articles that are critical of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I think she is consciously promoting criticism of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Or, in other words, she's being anti-mormon. In fact, I don't think there is any question about it. The proof is how popular she is among the exmormon and disaffected Mormon set. Whenever they've got something that they think would reflect badly on the Church, they know they can get a hold of Stack and she'll write up a story and have it in the paper no later than the following Saturday.

[_jon]

The LDS approach to an end-times belief matches to a lot of LDS belief, which is pragmatic in nature...

pragmatic - definition of pragmatic by the Free Online Dictionary ...
www.thefreedictionary.com/pragmatic
Dealing or concerned with facts or actual occurrences;

I don't think pragmatic is the way to describe LDS beliefs.

[_madeleine]

Whenever they've got something that they think would reflect badly on the Church, they know they can get a hold of Stack and she'll write up a story and have it in the paper no later than the following Saturday.

Unless you have evidence for such an accusation, I think this might be on the paranoid side of things.

I read the SL Trib every day, and yeah, a lot of the comments are anti-Mormon. But those are comments of readers, not the journalists.

There are also a lot of racists who comment on immigration, as though illegal immigration is a problem of race. You'd have to view the Trib journalists as being racist if you took the view the readers who comment are steering what is published. Or, that stories on immigration are meant to cater to racist readers.

It is a skewed way of looking at things.

This particular article regarding Pres. Packer's talk isn't anti-Mormon. There is nothing in there derogatory about Mormons or Mormonism. It just reports on the talk. Peggy Stack could have gone down the path of analysis, and try to tell her readers what Pres. Packer really meant, but I think that would cause many more problems than just leaving it at what she reported. Mormons would be all over that with "who does she think she is".

Pres. Packer gave a talk where he said yes, times are tough, but it's not the end of the world. That is quite something to say in context of over 170 years of Mormon teaching. I do agree that there are plenty of anti-Mormon readers who will take it and run with it. But I don't agree that Peggy Stack has done that, or caused it.

[_madeleine]

The LDS approach to an end-times belief matches to a lot of LDS belief, which is pragmatic in nature...

pragmatic - definition of pragmatic by the Free Online Dictionary ...
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/pragmatic
Dealing or concerned with facts or actual occurrences;

I don't think pragmatic is the way to describe LDS beliefs.

Pragmatic ethics, which centers on how one's views of the world are put into practice, is what I had in mind....what is useful is what is good. What is useful changing depending on the facts or actual occurrences.

[_Jason Bourne]

Most Mormons I know have a hobby of looking for "signs of the times". My mother, who is very, very uber-TBM, said to me not more than a month ago, that Christ might come before I am as old as she is.

But I understand what Pres. Packer is getting at. Years ago, I had a friend who didn't buy anything, rented his house for something like 20 years, didn't even a have a bank account, didn't worry about saving for the future, because he was absolutely convinced that the world was going to end very soon. He has since died, but, if LDS kids are so inclined to believe what they have been taught, and are looking at the "signs of the times", I can see how some would be inclined to sit and wait it out, so to speak, and not make any plans for a future that doesn't include anything that resembles life as we know it.

Such a head trip.

No invalid points. I grew up in the 60s and 70s. I heard all my growing up years how we had been held back for the end times and that Jesus was coming soon. Signs of the times was favorite topic. I was convinced Jesus would come in my lifetime even probably up to my late 30s. And while the Church never really did say it would be in my life per say such things have been strongly implied. We still here such sayings.

I guess a last dispensation can be a long time but how long? How many saved to the end generations are there? Me, my kids, my grand kids, great grand kids, great great maybe according to Packer's comments. Obviously people have been thinking Jesus was coming soon for a long time. Even Jesus and Paul thought the end was in their generation.

It seems all a bunch of hype.

I am curious, what do Catholics teach about this now?