sansfoy wrote:Because the prophet can never lead the church astray. A prophet suffering dementia or some other form of brain illness that affects cognitive or decision making ability seems to contradict that.
Why do you think so? That's the reason for presidencies in the LDS Church, so that if one man is incapacitated his counselors can shoulder the burden of the job. When God calls someone, He does so knowing what might happen to that someone, including the chance the someone will contract Alzheimer's, and if God chooses someone who has a high likelihood of getting Alzheimer's, then that means God knows ahead of time that contracting that disease won't significantly affect the message that presidency will get out to the general membership.
sansfoy wrote:Acknowledging the problem might raise questions in some people's minds about who is leading the church that a prophet with brain cancer wouldn't.
1981 to 1985 it was
abundantly clear that Gordon Hinckley and Gordon Hinckley alone was who was running the Church. Nobody had a big problem with that. Why should the First Presidency have any problem announcing that Thomas Monson was incapacitated due to Alzheimer's (assuming he actually
was incapacitated by that disease), and that therefore Eyring and Uchtdorf were going to run the church for the rest of Monson's life?
lol