While not 100% confirmable simply because the LDS church does not reveal its finances except in countries where it is required by law (e.g. UK, Canada), the following article provides enough insight and extrapolation to give pause for thought:

How Much Does a Mormon Apostle Make?

The interesting part for me is where the church advises mission presidents not to discuss nor claim their funds receipt from the church as “income”.

Once more example of institutionalized “lying for the Lord”.

The Salt Lake Tribune had an interesting story this morning regarding married LDS couples and what happens when one of them “loses faith”.

We work with a few people in this situation, so I was interested in reading the article aloud to my partner as well and we discussed it in that context.

The gist seems to be that when one’s family, work, social and spiritual lives are centered on a single fulcrum and that fails, it seems to be difficult for the remaining “faithful” spouse to remain devoted to a relationship based solely on that same fulcrum.

However, when the relationship is founded on love, support, friendship and devotion to each other — and not just on common religious beliefs — there seems to be less inclination for separation and even more motivation to strengthen the bonds and move forward together.

I would guess that the aforementioned “crisis of faith” will only become more common in the future as the LDS church continues to lose formerly stalwart members to doubt, unanswered questions, historical research and publication, common sense and a general “wake up and smell the coffee” moment.

A little Outer Darkness is a good thing.

In my online travels this afternoon, I stumbled upon one of the best-written synopses of the current state of the LDS church from a non-believing, but very active member. It is called An Open Letter to the Church and can be found at this link.

I highly recommend it.

A few days before the recent U.S. Presidential elections, my LDS cousin’s married, adult daughter posted the following on Facebook as a “call to arms”:

Tomorrow is a day of fasting and prayer for our faith. Whoever you are and whatever your beliefs, I invite you to join with our family in spending the day remembering God and this great nation and asking for His blessings on us this Tuesday.

After the election — when Mitt Romney, the LDS candidate she fasted and prayed for — did not win, I posted this:

Wow this stuff really works. My prayers WERE answered on Tuesday.

She retorted with a somewhat typical Mormon response that blamed my supposed iniquity as the root cause of why I would disagree with her political beliefs (not to mention the whole “fast and pray so Romney wins” mantra):

You can have your own need for all things immoral and inane validated by the Democratic Party and turn your back on what you once professed to be true but that doesn’t give you props for being a schmuck on my status.

Her father pulled something similar several years ago when he sent out a blast email exhorting people to give a good rating to his son’s newly-launched music album on Amazon and iTunes. My older brother questioned the propriety and honesty of this request in an email response back and this man proceeded to call my brother “an apostate and embittered ex-member” [of the LDS church] as a way of showing who was on the right side of god.

Interesting tactic.

Two words: Lyndon Lamborn

Descriptive LINK and his BOOK

A good friend emailed me this week:

I heard something on the news about Mormons marching in the gay pride parade this year?  What’s that about?

And I responded:

A few Mormons who actually “support” equality are trying to make a statement, but this is not an officially-sanctioned activity, by any stretch of the imagination.

They still think that “god loves the sinner, not the sin” so think it’s okay to be a practicing (e.g. active) Mormon — as long as you also practice celibacy the rest of your life.

No thanks.

Here is a LINK to the Salt Lake Tribune article.

ABC-4 reported this:

“What we’re trying to do is say we welcome you.  We want you to be part of our congregation.  We want you to feel safe in our pews,” Munson said.

She is also sending a clear message to other Latter-day Saints.  “We want people in wards all over the world to see us and say these folks are just like me,” said Munson.

The temple going, tithing paying, faithful who say they believe President Thomas S. Monson is a prophet of God; want to share a message.  “We have been getting messages from our church leaders about reaching out with love, about never supporting bulling [sic], about being loving and kind to LGBT people,” said Munson.

Latter-day Saints only support marriage between a man and woman, but they also say they love those who support same sex marriage.  Jay Vann who is an active Latter-day Saint from Murray is thrilled about Latter-day Saints joining the gay pride parade.

“By marching in the parade it doesn’t mean that we have to move from our stance whether it’s right or wrong, but these are our brothers and sisters these are our friends our cousin [sic]. I think by marching with them I think what were saying is they deserve to be treated like human beings,” Vann said. [emphasis mine]

And of course, The Onion has an “American Voices” take, which is probably more accurate than is being reported in the mainstream media.

Easter — that largely Jewish holiday (aka “Passover”) that Christians pre-empted in the 2nd century A.D. as their own — is being celebrated today.

Here’s a nice little quote that sheds some light on its first origins:

Pagan origins of Easter:

Many, perhaps most, Pagan religions in the Mediterranean area had a major seasonal day of religious celebration at or following the Spring Equinox. Cybele, the Phrygian fertility goddess, had a consort, Attis, who was believed to have been born via a virgin birth. Attis was believed to have died and been resurrected each year during the period MAR-22 to MAR-25.

Gerald L. Berry, author of “Religions of the World,” wrote:

“About 200 B.C. mystery cults began to appear in Rome just as they had earlier in Greece. Most notable was the Cybele cult centered on Vatican hill …Associated with the Cybele cult was that of her lover, Attis (the older Tammuz, Osiris, Dionysus, or Orpheus under a new name). He was a god of ever-reviving vegetation. Born of a virgin, he died and was reborn annually. The festival began as a day of blood on Black Friday and culminated after three days in a day of rejoicing over the resurrection.”

Wherever Christian worship of Jesus and Pagan worship of Attis were active in the same geographical area in ancient times, Christians:

“… used to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus on the same date; and pagans and Christians used to quarrel bitterly about which of their gods was the true prototype and which the imitation.”

Many religious historians and liberal theologians believe that the death and resurrection legends were first associated with Attis, many centuries before the birth of Jesus. They were simply grafted onto stories of Jesus’ life in order to make Christian theology more acceptable to Pagans. Others suggest that many of the events in Jesus’ life that were recorded in the gospels were lifted from the life of Krishna, the second person of the Hindu Trinity. Ancient Christians had an alternative explanation; they claimed that Satan had created counterfeit deities in advance of the coming of Christ in order to confuse humanity.  Modern-day Christians generally regard the Attis legend as being a Pagan myth of little value with no connection to Jesus. They regard Jesus’ death and resurrection account as being true, and unrelated to the earlier tradition.

I’ve just been listening to President Boyd K. Packer, who gave three separate examples of starving and/or poverty-stricken children he has encountered during his worldly travels.

In all cases, he noted the poverty and hunger he saw in specific children at the time, but didn’t seem to be able to actually do anything about it, other than to note it for this (then) future conference talk.

In the first case, He saw a child in Japan holding a can and spoon (he knew this meant the child was an orphan) as his train sat in the station, but “unfortunately”, the train pulled away before he could give the child any money.

In the next case he bragged about being in Cuzco, Peru, and seeing a young boy attempting to sneak in and steal bread from the sacrament table. The boy was chased out of the chapel by one woman, but soon returned. Packer said that he (alone) called the boy over and then held the boy on his lap. He was very proud to have been so Christ-like and seemingly couldn’t wait to get home to tell then leader of the church – Spencer W. Kimball – what he had done.

Strangely enough, no mention about giving the kid any actual food, but he assured us that President Kimball said more than once that he had “touched a nation”.

In another example, he saw a group of young boys running around Salt Lake City, one of whom had no coat and who was “jumping up and down” to stay warm. He imagined this boy returning to a small apartment and sleeping in a bed with a lack of covers. His response to this situation? He still “prays every night” for people like this.

My notes:

From 2006-2012, they LDS church’s “investment arm” spent a minimum of $2 billion on the new City Creek Center (some estimates range upwards of $5-6 billion)

“From 1985-2009, $327.6 million in cash and $884.6 million in commodities of aid was given throughout 178 countries.” LINK

That comes to an average of $50.5 million per year for 24 years (or less than $4 per member) — and the majority if that in “commodities” (blankets, used clothing, etc.).

Flying from Chicago to Salt Lake yesterday, I had a nice conversation during the 4-hour heavy snow delay and subsequent 3-hour flight with my seat mate, who I later found out was Daniel Karslake, director of the Sundance-nominated documentary, For The Bible Tells Me So.

He was very unpretentious and simply mentioned that he was a filmmaker and that he lived in Newark, New Jersey, after having moved there a year ago from the city.

He had said early on that he was meeting a friend for dinner in Salt Lake last night and during the course of the conversation mentioned that his friend had a house in Orem, which he pondered aloud after I grimaced, “I wonder why he lives there…”. He then said that his friend was a philanthropist and I said, “Oh, Bruce Bastian?”.

He laughed and asked how I would know that and I said that there are only two philanthropists that I am aware of in Utah and only from Utah County. The other is Jon Huntsman, Sr.

Good guy and a nice conversation.