I've Been Asked to Teach on a Very Strange Subject at Church

[_moksha]

Consiglieri, congratulations on presenting your talk. Glad you survived in good spirits. Wish I had been there at the moment you couldn't hear a pin drop because of the excitement.

What's with Will's persistent use of Italian? Is he using Italian to have a broader range of expression?

[_Chap]

Consiglieri, congratulations on presenting your talk. Glad you survived in good spirits. Wish I had been there at the moment you couldn't hear a pin drop because of the excitement.

What's with Will's persistent use of Italian? Is he using Italian to have a broader range of expression?

Let's put it this way. Schryver has to make his mark with some kind of language or other. He is needy that way. Let's not speculate about the possible reasons.

Now look what happened to him because he used the other kind of language. A promising career as a published LDS apologist down the drain. He feels safe with Italian. Sooner or later the mods will tire of it all, and push him into the Off-Topic Forum, I suppose. But until then he's happy for a while. Also, he is safer, since there are some people who can't understand what he is saying (though, I suspect fewer than he hopes), so they can't wound his feelings with criticism.

Don't grudge him that.

[_GR33N]

Great post Consig! I really enjoyed your report post. Good stuff.

[_jon]

Consig, I cannot help but wonder about the uniqueness of your ward.

Where you were allowed to teach something that actually went against the official (current) position of the Church. Where teachers are specifically instructed to teach only from the materials in the manual, where members are actively discouraged from reading anything other than official Church sponsored materials, where investigators are told to get there information only from the Church itself.

I guess there is a wider question in this; if the request for this type of lesson/discussion came from higher up was it a 'test run' to see if the members can handle the 'truth' without running and screaming from the building. Are the congregations robust enough to allow freer discussion of the more controversial, less consistent elements of the religion.

I see a strategic shift in the positioning of the Church. A subtle 'cuddling up' to the mainstream Catholic Church - I base this in the increasing number of joint initiatives, the positioning of new Temples, talks in Conference etc. Perhaps 'open discussion' is part of that strategy to make Mormonism 'fit for purpose' and arrest the reduction (proportionate to population) in the number of members.

Or it may have been a disenchanted Ward Leader having a bit of fun and putting the bullets in a gun and letting you fire it.

[_consiglieri]

Where you were allowed to teach something that actually went against the official (current) position of the Church. Where teachers are specifically instructed to teach only from the materials in the manual, where members are actively discouraged from reading anything other than official Church sponsored materials, where investigators are told to get there information only from the Church itself.

Thanks for your interesting speculations, Jon, and thanks for all the kind words from those who offered them . . . mostly in English.

While I am waiting for Will to explain why he thinks President George Albert Smith and Hugh B. Brown were on the verge of apostasy, I will say I don't know how unique my ward is, though it is in the hinterlands and it takes a long time for the "water to get to the end of the row."

The really subversive part of my lesson was that not only did I teach the opposite of what I was asked to speak on, which goes directly against the current position of the Church, I used Church authorities to do so. I did use an official Church publication in my lesson, The Improvement Era from 1945, but then I used "unofficial" (read: not correlated) Church materials by a president and a member of the First Presidency to rebut it.

I like to think maybe I planted a seed or two.

We are sowing, daily sowing . . .

All the Best!

--Consiglieri

[_Buffalo]

Gee, Will. I can use google translator too.

Quindi solamente facendoti analfabeta in due lingue.

yo labbra laser tua mamma era una snowblower