Damned Mormons

[zwanzig]

https://www.axios.com/2023/09/07/boy-sco...ocumentary

Driving the news: The whistleblower, Michael Johnson, was the BSA's former director of child protection. He said in the film that he wanted to implement "what I felt were very medium-level policies and content training upgrades for youth protection."

"I kept getting told that the Mormons may not like that, the Mormons don't like that," Johnson said.
A BSA executive told him: "You need to understand something … The Mormons are sacrosanct," Johnson said.

Wouldn't doubt it. For the longest time, they resisted doing background checks on members who were in callings that directly interacted with children. From my personal experience and my own theories, since all church callings(where the church authority figures(Bishops, Branch Presidents, Stake Presidents, etc.) pulls directly from members of the congregation to teach classes and operate different functions within the church building. Even Bishops and Stake Presidents are not formerly trained in any way by the church to handle social or psychological issues, nor are they trained theologically. They all have day jobs ON TOP of being a leader over a congregation and no one from Stake President down is paid for ANY of the work they do, it is ALL volunteer) people are selected for callings based on a spiritual gift called "discernment" where the Holy Ghost is supposed to nudge you by the heart or give you guidance based on feelings. If you are called to be a Bishop over a ward, the Stake President over you lays his hands on your head and gives you special "spiritual keys" of authority for you to operate this position. One of these is being able to get extra guidance and nudging from the Holy Ghost based on people's character and inner truths. As a Bishop, you are expected to have deeper insight into the members of your ward and to "see through" them based on information given by the Holy Ghost about them. And if you do nt receive these nudgings or if they turn out to be incorrect, it is because that Bishop must not have been praying correctly or he has unrepented sins himself that are blocking the HG's ability to communicate clearly to him. 

Anyway, point I'm trying to emphasize is that because the position of authority is trusted so much based on these spiritual keys of authority, it would create a bit of doubt in the hearts and minds of the members if they started resorting to secular methods of research and background checking. I mean, why would you need to check someone's criminal record if you have access to the greatest truth telling device in the world? Are you a bad Bishop? Are you too sinful to be able to access these keys of your position? 

It creates doubt like that. So, from an exmo's perspective, I definitely see this being plausible because of the culture within Mormonism and what the cult puts priority on.

And just in case we were any of us doubtful on whether the Mormons DO have access to the official keys of god and ARE specially selected to have the gift of discernment:

Catch up quick: Under a $2.4 billion bankruptcy plan, the BSA last month began processing claims for more than 80,000 people who said they were abused in connection with scouting.

BSA consultants say about 2,800 abuse claims filed in the bankruptcy have direct ties to the church. Another 4,900 are potentially linked to the church, according to a sex abuse claim valuation expert who testified in bankruptcy proceedings last year.

It sounds like a lot of heavy shoulders took on a lot of weight and pressure they didn't deserve and the cult refuses to take accountability for all the young lives who were affected by that faulty method of "truth seeking."