The LDS Church has issued an official response to the Cheney-BYU foofaraw.
They said:
Whatever the personal views of individual students or other members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the invitation is seen by the university's board of trustees as one extended to someone holding the high office of vice president of the United States rather than to a partisan political figure.To me, that's like asking a torturous dictator to speak and say: "We're not inviting him as someone who tortures people, we're inviting him as someone holding the high office of Ruler of a Sovereign Nation." It just seems obvious to me that Cheney doesn't represent anything even close to a Christian ideal.
And before all of you freak out about me comparing Cheney to some torturous, Cheney is one of the most outspoken defenders of the practice of it.
BLOGS: Mercury Rising, The Third Ave., By Common Consent (really interesting stuff about RFK's 1968 trip to BYU), Edgeing
And Joe Vogel has a few good posts at Free Speech 101. 1) A good round up of Cheney videos, 2) a recap of the situation and 3) some really interesting analysis.
3 comments:
One must wonder just how much President Hinkley really even controls the church any more. You have two renegade apostles who want to give BYU alumni data to Mitt Romney for his campaign, get caught at it and are forced to retract their actions and deny them.
Then, just when it appears the church is quietly but carefully confirming the fact that Iraq is a total and utter fiasco, the renegades have forced President Hinkley to make Dick Cheney the commencement speaker at BYU.
One has to wonder what is really going on in the upper echelons of the church...not that we'll ever get to know.
And for the record, personally I still believe Pres. Hinkley to be the prophet, but when I read in the church records about Brigham Young complaining about the attitudes of the apostles towards some of his teachings, and I look at the early days of the church and see dozens excommunicated left and right, you'll pardon me if I question the public face put up by the church that all 15 living apostles speak with one voice.
How much harm has been done by apostles who thought they were doing the right thing, but let their personal beliefs or ambitions mandate otherwise, and, much like how Joseph Smith lost the 116 pages of the Book of Mormon to Martin Harris, the Lord lets them get enough rope to hang themselves?
Again. We'll probably never know. Because the Leadership of the Church does not trust the saints. They don't trust them to be able to read the handbook of instructions to the Bishopricks. They don't trust them to understand what is in The Journal of Discourses, and they don't trust them to have enough time to take part in activities outside the church so they load of the slates of the saints with so many activities, programs and callings that they have no time for anything else.
That's their choice. Hopefully, its the Lord's.
Yeah, hopefully the it's the Great Sky God's choice also. I agree.
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