1. there are circumstances in which it is necessary for an LDS Church member to approach his or her local Church leader, seeking something that only the leader can provide;¹ and
2. the Church rules governing such circumstances are usually unclear or unknown to the Church member.²

Situations like this are the norm in the LDS Church. Non-leaders are not supposed to have much (if any) access to the Church’s rules and procedures. The Church publishes a rulebook for select local leaders called the “Church Handbook of Instructions” (the “CHI”).

The CHI sets forth the Church’s official rules regarding a variety of topics, as well as the official Church doctrines under which many of those rules arise. For example, the CHI explains why Church members are disciplined by the Church³ for committing serious transgressions. The purpose of discipline is three-fold: “1. to save the souls of transgressors, 2. to protect the innocent, and 3. to safeguard the purity, integrity, and good name of the Church.”⁴ The CHI provides that formal discipline is mandatory for murder, incest, child abuse, apostasy, serious transgression while holding a prominent church position, a transgressor who is a predator, a pattern of serious transgressions, or a transgression that is widely known.⁵ Formal discipline is sometimes necessary for “serious transgression”, an abortion, or a transsexual operation.⁶ The concept of “serious transgression” is defined to mean “a deliberate and major offense against morality”, including, but not limited to, “attempted murder, rape, sexual abuse, spouse abuse, intentional serious physical injury of others, adultery, fornication, homosexual relations, deliberate abandonment of family responsibilities, robbery, burglary, theft, embezzlement, sale of illegal drugs, fraud, perjury, and false swearing.”⁷

When I was a 19 year-old missionary standing outside of that MTC classroom/confessional, fretting over my fate, it would have been nice to have known that “masturbation and/or viewing pornography in years past” was not included on the “serious transgressions” list. In fact, that bit of information would have probably spared me a sizeable portion of the angst and personal torment that hobbled my spirituality, not to mention my social life, during my teenage years.

But keeping Church members informed is not how the LDS Church uses the CHI. In fact, the Church zealously enforces its copyright with respect to the CHI when anybody attempts to distribute it to unauthorized recipients.⁸

I don’t know exactly why the Church keeps its rules such a big secret, but the effect of the secrecy is clear: (1) It gives local Church leaders an informational advantage over the rest of the flock, which creates or augments an aura of authority and wisdom; (2) it makes local Church leaders almost wholly unaccountable to the members they serve for the decisions they make, and for the quality of their leadership; and (3) the combination of 1 and 2 above leaves members in a position of subservience and vulnerability in nearly every interaction they have with local leaders (the higher-up the leader, the greater his dominance). It is a formula for maximum control over members of the Church by local leaders.

If those are the Church’s reasons for secrecy, then I get it. I just strongly disagree, on ethical grounds.⁹ Basic fairness demands that people be allowed to know the rules for which they are to be held accountable. Even if the Church’s policy in this regard has been adopted with the best intentions, it has the real-world effect of being unfair, oppressive, and enabling ecclesiastical abuse of powerless members of the Church (the very people the Church should be trying its hardest to protect). 

-PWM

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1. When I met with a counselor in the branch presidency, I was seeking a way to be forgiven of my sins; when my mom met with her bishop, she was seeking cancellation of her temple marriage
2. Neither my mom nor I had a clear idea of what kind of process to expect, or what would be required of us by our Church leaders in connection with our respective request.
3. i.e., put on probation, disfellowshipped, or excommunicated; see CHI p. 109
4. CHI p. 105
5. see CHI pp. 110-11
6. see CHI p. 111
7. CHI p. 110
8. A full copy of the latest (2006) CHI has been made available on Wikileaks, but to avoid a cease-and-desist letter from LDS Church attorneys, I won’t directly link to it. Just google it.
9. As an aside, the Church’s expectation that it is inappropriate for Church members to ever criticize a Church leader (even if the criticism is true) makes its policy of withholding the CHI from the members (and therefore removing a key means of formulating criticism) understandable, though cynical, unethical and self-serving.

By “civilly divorced”, I don’t mean to say that the divorce process was completed in a civil manner, without petty bickering (though I believe that is true). I mean they were legally divorced. Free, in the eyes of the state, to remarry and move on with their lives.

This is an important point, because their divorce was not fully recognized by the LDS Church. Their marriage in the temple was both a civil marriage and a religious marriage–a ritual (or “ordinance“) in which my mom and dad had been “sealed” to each other, not just “till death do [them] part”, but “for time and all eternity.” From the perspective of the LDS Church, they continued to be sealed together for eternity as husband and wife, despite the civil divorce.

I think there is a similar dynamic at play in Catholic “sacramental” marriages that end in divorce–the divorce isn’t recognized by the Catholic Church, and any remarriages occur with that in mind. In the Catholic Church, if the marriage is sacramental, neither of the divorcees will be married in the Church again. In the LDS Church, it’s a bit different. My parents’ story continues:

For those of you keeping score, in the eyes (and the records) of the LDS Church, my dad was now simultaneously eternally married to two living women, and both of those women were eternally married to my dad, and nobody else.

Around the year 2000, decades after my parents’ civil divorce, my mom’s new husband realized that in the Mormon world, she had been living as my dad’s “spiritual” wife the whole time. He was thoroughly creeped out, and very dismayed that there had been no “temple divorce”. He asked my mom to make sure that the temple divorce was made official, so she looked into it.

Surprisingly (to me, at least), the polygamous union was not just a record-keeping anomaly, and dissolving it wasn’t a mere formality that the Church could take care of right away. No, here is what had to happen for the Church to acknowledge that she was no longer my dad’s wife:

1. She had to obtain, from her local LDS bishop, an application form asking the First Presidency to cancel her sealing to my dad;
2. The application form required a letter from her, addressed to the First Presidency, explaining why she wanted to have the sealing canceled;
3. The application form also required a letter from my dad, also addressed to the First Presidency, agreeing to cancellation of the sealing;
4. The completed application could only be submitted for First Presidency review by the senior local ecclesiastical authority, the stake president, who was required to interview her and attach his own written approval before sending off the application.
5. The First Presidency, in its sole discretion, would decide whether or not to cancel the sealing.
6. She would receive written confirmation of the First Presidency’s decision.

To dissolve the polygamous sealing, my mom had to get the permission of not only five different leaders of the Church, but also her already remarried ex-husband. And it wasn’t a quick process. Step 6 was completed a full nine months from the time that my mom initiated Step 1 (and it was on the desk of the First Presidency for six of those months).

If, as President Gordon B. Hinckley (whose signature, incidentally, is on my mom’s sealing cancellation letter) once asserted, in the LDS Church the practice of polygamy is “not doctrinal”,¹ then what do we call the doctrine supporting the LDS Church practice of sealing my dad to both my mom and my stepmom?

-PWM

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1. Larry King: You condemn it [polygamy].

   Gordon B. Hinckley: I condemn it, yes, as a practice, because I think it is not doctrinal. It is not legal. And this church takes the position that we will abide by the law. We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, magistrates in honoring, obeying and sustaining the law.

   –1998 Larry King interview of Gordon B. Hinckley, prophet and President of the LDS Church

As a new missionary, I was in the (common?) position of having never really leveled with my local bishop back home about grave sins like masturbation and/or looking at pornography. Before the MTC, I had convinced myself that looking at my dad’s erotic photography books (or Showtime: After Hours) in the privacy of my own bedroom (or mom’s TV room) and/or masturbating, was a victimless crime–if a crime at all, and certainly not something that required shouting from the rooftops, for goodness sake. After a couple of weeks in the MTC, however, I was convinced that I had to confess my adolescent sins to somebody with authority from God to make the sins go away. I tried to find an opportunity to discreetly meet with a member of my missionary branch presidency, and found that there was a line of male missionaries waiting, outside an empty classroom, for a meeting with him. I decided that I would just blend in with them and wait my turn.

While I stood there, my mind began racing. “What if I what I’ve done is actually really bad? Have I broken my temple covenants? What will happen to me? Can I be sent home from my mission for this? How will I face everybody back home? What will I do? Is confession worth it? I definitely won’t ever masturbate again–do I even need to confess? Should I just get up and leave?”

Too soon, it was my turn. I entered the classroom to find the first counselor in the branch presidency waiting for me. He was a tall skinny man with wire-rimmed glasses, completely bald on top. He seemed like a nice enough guy. He exuded confidence and wisdom. He seemed comfortable talking to me, but I was not comfortable. I was worried that my life was going to suddenly go sideways, spinning off in the wrong direction.

He made an attempt at small talk. He asked how I was doing, whether I was used to the schedule, learning a new language, getting along with my companion. I played along. After a minute, he asked me why I wanted to meet with him. Was there anything he could do for me?

I was brave. I didn’t cry or anything. I confessed to (most of the) bad stuff. He asked me how often I had masturbated. I told him. He asked me if the pornography and the masturbation had ever happened at the same time. I told him yes. I braced for the consequences of my awful deeds.

He smiled and told me that he was glad I had confessed. He told me that he generally considered habitual masturbation or pornography viewing to be sins requiring confession to a church leader. He told me that when masturbation happened while viewing pornography, that was a sin that must be confessed, even if it happened only once. He told me that my repentance was now underway, and that the next step was to never do it again. I told him I was already there.

I walked out of the meeting feeling light and happy. I wasn’t going to be sent home, humiliated. In fact, I was now actually worthy of the companionship of the Holy Ghost. It was now possible for me to be a decent missionary. I would never masturbate again.

(And I didn’t do it even once for the balance of my mission. Two+ years of perfect sexual “purity”. Been there, done that.)

-PWM