The Church's REAL Objection to the CHI Being Made Available

[_TrashcanMan79]

These points might have already been made and commented on elsewhere on this board, but I thought Sophocles summed it up really well in comments made only moments ago in the Watch Dog Web Site Goes After LDS Church thread on MAD:

I find it interesting that the church goes to greater lengths to keep its policy manuals out of the public eye than its sacred temple ceremonies.

It's pretty clear to me that the reason they don't want the CHI to get out is not because there is anything embarrassing in it. The endowment ceremony is far more embarrassing, and it's readily available on the web, along with all its historical revisions.

The church wants to keep the CHI out of the hands of rank-and-file church members, because they don't want to give them any perceived power to hold their leaders accountable to the manual.

In Mormonism, the bishop leads the ward and the SP leads the stake. And they are to be considered representatives of the Lord as they do so. The handbook is not the authority.

But if every member had a copy of the CHI, then the handbook would become the authority. All the power would shift to the SLC bureaucrats who wrote it, and the rank-and-file would be their enforcers. The CHI would become like the constitution, and the members would demand that their leaders be held accountable to it.

We've all encountered handbook Nazis in various callings, haven't we? Our ward's resident handbook Nazi is current[ly] serving in the YW presidency. The YW president is great, the girls love her and she tries to run a fun, spiritual program. But she can't turn around without this counselor of hers checking the handbook to see if her every decision is approved. I imagine it's exhausting for her. It's good to have policies in place, but it's also important for leaders to have some discretion, especially when they are expected to lead by inspiration.

Anyway, this happens from time to time in the various auxiliaries, and I suppose we just have to live with it. But it would not do to have handbook Nazis correcting every decision coming from the bishopric or the stake presidency or even further up the ladder. The church is not governed by a constitution, it is governed by leaders. The manuals are there to serve the leaders, not the other way around. If the manuals are publicized to every member, then it will upset the power structure, as every member will feel empowered to hold his or her leaders accountable to the manual.

This is what the church wants to avoid. It has nothing to do with PR.

[_Scottie]

I'm not sure I agree with that being the reason.

I'm no lawyer, and perhaps someone who is could help me here, but where the temple ceremony is available to anyone who chooses to live the covenants required to enter the temple it is considered public domain. The CHI is only given to those who are appointed to a certain position.

The temple ceremony would be much harder to stifle because of it's public domain status, so the church hasn't even tried.

Mabye?

[_TAK]

I'm not sure I agree with that being the reason.

I'm no lawyer, and perhaps someone who is could help me here, but where the temple ceremony is available to anyone who chooses to live the covenants required to enter the temple it is considered public domain. The CHI is only given to those who are appointed to a certain position.

The temple ceremony would be much harder to stifle because of it's public domain status, so the church hasn't even tried.

Mabye?

Maybe it’s not copyrighted?

If there is enough similarities to the Masonic oaths/ceremony etc.. How can the church claim it’s theirs?

[_Sethbag]

The temple ceremony is not public domain. The words "public domain" have very specific legal meanings, it's not just a vague notion. It would be in the public domain if nobody held copyright over it. In fact, not only is it not in the public domain, but the temple ceremony has never been published by the church, so it will never actually run out of copyright protection. In addition to the copyright for unpublished works being perpetual, you don't, for instance, have "fair use" rights to unpublished materials. This is the game that the Church of Scientology play in trying to keep the Xenu crap off the internet. So long as they can claim that the stuff is unpublished material, they have the right to exclusive duplication of the material and can be as secretive with it as they want.

I think the reason the LDS church hasn't gone after the people putting the temple ceremony on the web is that in order to assert their rights, they'd have to admit that the material up on the web, as is, is in fact accurate. They don't want to do that. So long as people who put up the temple ceremony can be called "anti-Mormon", with all the bias and assumption of dishonesty that that term entails to many members, people can just make claims such as "you can't trust everything you find on the Internet" and the temple ceremony stuff automatically becomes untrustworthy in a lot of peoples' eyes.

Of course, I think most non-members don't seem to have much of a problem believing that the temple ceremony stuff on the web is accurate, and getting a peak at the secret masonic Mormon temple cult ritual. I guess the church knows that at some level that's a fight they would lose, and pursuing that fight is just going to call more attention to it than they want there to be. That's my guess anyhow.

[_Gazelam]

that's pretty funny.

Handbook Nazis. That makes me think about how screwed up our country has become because of lawyers and lawsuits. When people live moral lives and are kind to others, they don't need to be told what to do all the time. Same goes with the church.

[_Mercury]

Its many reasons the CHI puiblication by wikileaks is problematic for LDS Inc. & IR Inc.

The concerns raised in the original post to this thread, i'm sure is among them.

[_Jason Bourne]

These points might have already been made and commented on elsewhere on this board, but I thought Sophocles summed it up really well in comments made only moments ago in the Watch Dog Web Site Goes After LDS Church thread on MAD:

I find it interesting that the church goes to greater lengths to keep its policy manuals out of the public eye than its sacred temple ceremonies.

It's pretty clear to me that the reason they don't want the CHI to get out is not because there is anything embarrassing in it. The endowment ceremony is far more embarrassing, and it's readily available on the web, along with all its historical revisions.

The church wants to keep the CHI out of the hands of rank-and-file church members, because they don't want to give them any perceived power to hold their leaders accountable to the manual.

In Mormonism, the bishop leads the ward and the SP leads the stake. And they are to be considered representatives of the Lord as they do so. The handbook is not the authority.

But if every member had a copy of the CHI, then the handbook would become the authority. All the power would shift to the SLC bureaucrats who wrote it, and the rank-and-file would be their enforcers. The CHI would become like the constitution, and the members would demand that their leaders be held accountable to it.

We've all encountered handbook Nazis in various callings, haven't we? Our ward's resident handbook Nazi is current[ly] serving in the YW presidency. The YW president is great, the girls love her and she tries to run a fun, spiritual program. But she can't turn around without this counselor of hers checking the handbook to see if her every decision is approved. I imagine it's exhausting for her. It's good to have policies in place, but it's also important for leaders to have some discretion, especially when they are expected to lead by inspiration.

Anyway, this happens from time to time in the various auxiliaries, and I suppose we just have to live with it. But it would not do to have handbook Nazis correcting every decision coming from the bishopric or the stake presidency or even further up the ladder. The church is not governed by a constitution, it is governed by leaders. The manuals are there to serve the leaders, not the other way around. If the manuals are publicized to every member, then it will upset the power structure, as every member will feel empowered to hold his or her leaders accountable to the manual.

This is what the church wants to avoid. It has nothing to do with PR.

In my experience as a leader this is frankly horsecrap. Many members know a lot about what is in the CHI and most reasonable leaders are happy to let any member look at it. As a leader I have had members bring up issues when they thought I was doing something outside the manual. I know my SP had members write SLC and complain about things he did that they thought was outside the manual. SLC just send the letters back and tells him to deal with it. This theory is hooey.

[_Mercury]

In my experience as a leader this is frankly horsecrap. Many members know a lot about what is in the CHI and most reasonable leaders are happy to let any member look at it. As a leader I have had members bring up issues when they thought I was doing something outside the manual. I know my SP had members write SLC and complain about things he did that they thought was outside the manual. SLC just send the letters back and tells him to deal with it. This theory is hooey.

that's not the point Jason. The point is that the CHI, regardless if members are aware of its contents still do not have access to it.

SLC just send the letters back and tells him to deal with it.

Your recollections of how your sp and subsequently the corporate headquarters handled members taking issue has nothing to do with the CHI discussions. All it does is illustrate that the "priesthood" are dicks.

My point is that Mormon Inc will do as they please regardless of the CHI. Your red herrings don't work on those who know the game.

[_Jason Bourne]

In my experience as a leader this is frankly horsecrap. Many members know a lot about what is in the CHI and most reasonable leaders are happy to let any member look at it. As a leader I have had members bring up issues when they thought I was doing something outside the manual. I know my SP had members write SLC and complain about things he did that they thought was outside the manual. SLC just send the letters back and tells him to deal with it. This theory is hooey.

that's not the point Jason. The point is that the CHI, regardless if members are aware of its contents still do not have access to it.

SLC just send the letters back and tells him to deal with it.

Your recollections of how your sp and subsequently the corporate headquarters handled members taking issue has nothing to do with the CHI discussions. All it does is illustrate that the "priesthood" are dicks.

My point is that Mormon Inc will do as they please regardless of the CHI. Your red herrings don't work on those who know the game.

Did you miss my point? Almost any reasonable bishop will let members read the CHI if they ask. I did of a prior bishop and he let me look it over for a couple weeks.

[_moksha]

But if every member had a copy of the CHI, then the handbook would become the authority. All the power would shift to the SLC bureaucrats who wrote it, and the rank-and-file would be their enforcers. The CHI would become like the constitution, and the members would demand that their leaders be held accountable to it.

We've all encountered handbook Nazis in various callings, haven't we?

This makes sense. Nobody wants Handbook Nazis and who could realistically say that there is not a tendency to be overly legalistic to the detriment of growth and development within the Church.