Hades wrote:The question is, what the hell do they have to hide?
Organizations like the LDS Church, the Roman Catholic Church, or your local Evangelical Church, are pretty complicated objects. There are a lot more to these organizations than just their finances. Why single out a financial report and leave out other things?
I have in the past few weeks been corresponding with an acquaintance of a friend of mine who I think is an Evangelical pastor, who happens to believe both that God has the power to cause souls to cease to exist, and also that God will not use that power to put the (large number of the) unsaved out of their misery, but will rather let them suffer unbearable agony every single moment for the rest of eternity. I have kept asking this pastor why I should believe a good God would do such a thing, to the point that this pastor has apparently chosen not to correspond with me any more.
Now nobody in her/his right mind would assert that this pastor is trying to hide anything, by failing to produce a report to the members of his congregation as to how many people have asked him questions he can't answer. And yet his belief that God will let the unsaved suffer unbearable agony endlessly is incredibly more relevant to the question of whether God has actually inspired his faith than how his congregation has chosen to spend its money. A finite amount of money spent over a finite space of time can only do a finite amount of damage, or, alternately, can only do a finite amount of good. On the other hand, we're talking about a God who is allowing an infinite amount of damage, that He has the power to stop, but won't.
A lot of smoke, a few mirrors and no answers. I'm not sure what the incoherent musings of an uber religious Evangelical pastor have to do with anything. Especially since you don't even believe what he says, because he hasn't had the spell of Mormon priesthood cast upon him.
The question still remains. What does the Church have to hide. Secrecy hides things and that is the reason it is used.
KevinSim wrote:
Hades wrote:Why would you give money to a church or charity that won't tell you where your money is going?
I'm not a Latter-day Saint because my charitable goals mesh with the charitable policies of the LDS Church; I'm a Latter-day Saint because I firmly believe that God directs the LDS Church. If it's God who's inspiring the financial decisions, then what does it matter what He spends it on? I happen to trust God; he can spend the money on whatever He wants to.
This is getting to the core of it. If you believe that God directs the LDS church in its financial affairs, then you must believe that God needed a shopping mall. What the hell does God need a shopping mall for? Maybe the mouthpiece of the Lord could enlighten us on the matter, but then again, secrecy hides things.
If the Mormon god gave two craps (or even half a crap) about urban blight, he would have inspired all those Mormons in Utah not to build fugly split-level homes with vinyl siding. And he would have made sure his people didn't build a damned steel mill on Utah Lake. Or a cement facility at the point of the mountain. Mormon god would have made sure his people had decent zoning laws to avoid the fugliness that is State Street--from Salt Lake right on down through Utah Valley. Oh, and I bet Mormon god being the infinitely wise and powerful idiot that he is would have been able to figure out how to turn one city block of "blight" into something pretty and useful to humanity without spending billions of dollars only to end up with a gauche monument to 20th-century American capitalism, which Mormon god's own scriptures call "Babylon" and condemn as being entirely antithetical to the Zion society Mormon god allegedly wants his people to establish.
"The Church is authoritarian, tribal, provincial, and founded on a loosely biblical racist frontier sex cult."--Juggler Vain "The LDS church is the Amway of religions. Even with all the soap they sell, they still manage to come away smelling dirty."--Some Schmo
KevinSim wrote:I'm not a Latter-day Saint because my charitable goals mesh with the charitable policies of the LDS Church; I'm a Latter-day Saint because I firmly believe that God directs the LDS Church. If it's God who's inspiring the financial decisions, then what does it matter what He spends it on? I happen to trust God; he can spend the money on whatever He wants to.
Just because you believe it does not make it so.
God and the Brethren are not interchangable.
Trust not the arm of man, especially when man has control of the bank account.
(Nevo, Jan 23) And the Melchizedek Priesthood may not have been restored until the summer of 1830, several months after the organization of the Church.
KevinSim wrote: And yet his belief that God will let the unsaved suffer unbearable agony endlessly is incredibly more relevant to the question of whether God has actually inspired his faith than how his congregation has chosen to spend its money.
Actions speak louder than words, what a congregation spends it's money on is more relevant than it's beliefs, you know, by their fruits and all. The church mall reminds me of PTL's amusement park.
Hades wrote:The question still remains. What does the Church have to hide.
Hades, what do you have to hide? Your own personal consumption report is woefully inadequate when it comes to quantity of liquids consumed on 1 May, and then again on 29 April and 22 April both it doesn't give the number of liters of liquids consumed on either of those days either! Is there some embarrassing reason you don't like to publish how many liters of water you drink on Tuesdays? Why are you trying to hide from us the number of liters of liquids you drink each Tuesday?
Of course absent some pressing need to file a personal consumption report it makes no sense to require anybody to publish one. Which is exactly what I'm saying about a financial report. So far nobody has given one single reason why the LDS Church should publish a financial report except that other churches do it, which is no reason at all. To say the LDS Church is hiding something because it doesn't publish its finances is as ridiculous as saying Hades is hiding something because he doesn't publish his consumption report.
Chap wrote:The CoJCoLDS used to reveal its financial statements. Then it stopped. Why?
I have no idea. Can you be more precise about when it stopped? Do you know who was president of the Church when it stopped?
I personally have no problem with a faith group generating a financial report. I just see no sense in people arguing that the LDS Church needs to generate one, when the only argument those people seem to give is that other faith groups generate financial reports.
Drifting wrote:It stopped the year after it became clear that the finances we're being mismanaged to the extent the Church was losing money hand over fist.
Please forgive me for being skeptical that the two events are corelated.
That is, of course, assuming that the LDS Church ever has been "losing money hand over fist," of which I am also skeptical. What exactly does it mean for the Church to be losing money like that? What are they doing, buying lottery tickets with tithing funds or something like that? What is the money that the LDS Church is losing getting spent on?
Chap wrote:The CoJCoLDS used to reveal its financial statements. Then it stopped. Why?
I have no idea. Can you be more precise about when it stopped? Do you know who was president of the Church when it stopped?
I personally have no problem with a faith group generating a financial report. I just see no sense in people arguing that the LDS Church needs to generate one, when the only argument those people seem to give is that other faith groups generate financial reports.
Okay... the LDS church needs to generate a yearly fiscal report that shows all income and expenses, because the Brethren have made such a MESS of spending the Lord's tithes in a judicious, open, and honest manner.
Clear enough?
(Nevo, Jan 23) And the Melchizedek Priesthood may not have been restored until the summer of 1830, several months after the organization of the Church.
Open financial records speak to accountability by flawed men. My church, and all that I have any knowledge of, are perfectly open about incomes and expenditure. I am always hearing complaints from Mormons that those outside the faith get things Mormon wrong. As the quote in the opening thread suggests, many Mormons haven't got a clue about other churches and how they operate.
harmony wrote:Okay... the LDS church needs to generate a yearly fiscal report that shows all income and expenses, because the Brethren have made such a MESS of spending the Lord's tithes in a judicious, open, and honest manner.
Clear enough?
Not really. Does God think that the "Brethren" have made a "MESS of spending" His tithes? Are you saying that you personally know that God hasn't inspired those LDS leaders to spend God's money on precisely the things God wants them to spend it on? If so, how do you know it?