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Quo Warranto In the legal profession, there exists the remedy of a writ of quo warranto. Translated from the Latin, this means by what right, or by what authority? It is applied to public officials who are suspected of exceeding their legally constituted authority, or acting without authority as though they had it. It forms the basis for requiring accountability of powerful men to law. This question, summarized in the language of jurisprudence, defines (the problem) of the credibility of our leaders to preside over us and whether and to what degree they are recognized in their offices by God. As subjects to the rule of priesthood, we do not have the right to reject their leadership if God accepts it. The issue is: does God accept it? Some would say, in the absence of clear evidence (and what that evidence would be I don’t know) when in doubt, sustain nevertheless. Who are we, after all, to question those who bear the emblems that mark them before us as having superior attainments and competence to us? When there is an active, equally shared system of open justice, such as was in operation in Joseph Smith’s administration, these questions can be brought to the priesthood structure and in a process that has balance in maintaining the rights of the accused and presentation of evidence and testimony – they can be explored and laid against the standard of truth and error given in scripture and renewed and refined by past prophets of God. Truth and error are not matters of mystery, but are plain to all of God’s people who are living their part in a community in which such standards are taught and lived. Qui custode eus custodies? Who keeps the keepers? We have a veil set up between us and the workings of the leadership of this Work. It has developed naturally enough as the result of the necessity of concealing the sins of some from those who would rake up the fires of persecution for all. Now we have a precedent of long standing: to rely on the righteous judgment of one man and a camera (secret room) of his familiars, who have become, in effect, our justice system. Those who are sensitive to such things (and we all should be) feel an absence of the Spirit of the Lord among us when His word is given to us by these men, as it was sensible to us when Rulon presided here. In other words, “It ain’t the same.” When a state of war exists, men adopt a standard of right and wrong adapted to the need to preserve their side. This includes cover-up and excusing wrong-doing to preserve internal cohesion to the extent that self-preservation is given higher value than the will and way of God. Lies are introduced to maintain that unity and men become no longer stewards for God, but masters of their own kingdom, ruling in God’s name. One standard of right is substituted for another. It doesn’t take long for men to get out of the habit of consulting with God and trying to square their conduct with God’s voice. The next step is to deviate from God’s known standard of conduct, such that men have put a barrier to hearing God when they do ask, because they really don’t want to get back in track by obeying Him. Thus, their relationship with God with regard to receiving inspiration becomes like that of any good Methodist minister, to quote Joseph F. Smith before the Reed Smoot hearings. Disobedience does cause us to install a subtle barrier in the area in which we don’t want God’s way above our way. Another aspect of failing to obtain the power of prayer is neglecting to direct one’s concern to what will happen to those under one’s stewardship, subject to one’s authority. When we pray as servants of God, bearing authority, we also should be accepting the responsibility for the welfare of others that goes with it. We should love them, in that sense. As priesthood, we are not independent before God of those given in our charge. We are not complete in fulfilling the terms of our office without husbanding their welfare. The lack of love and consideration for others dilutes our ability to know the mind and will of God in doubtful and stressful cases. Social fear, expressed in the perceived necessity of preserving an image can restrict what we express to our peers when a decision is called for. Sociologists speak of “groupthink” to describe how men will adapt their thinking to the context of fitting in with the group and limit their outlook to that of the group. This is one reason why organizations do not reform from within. Of course, committing sins against stewardship and violating the sacredness of another’s body and personhood puts up far more than a token barrier. The more we sin and do not turn away therefrom, the more a path becomes a trail and the trail becomes a road. So the stone wall erected by our leaders will stand until the earthquake of the Lord’s judgment shakes the earth under our feet, as well as theirs. Looking at our history, just think on how two reputed out-and-out practicing disciples of Satan could influence the rest, who were not sensitive to their true natures. Why were Owen and the remaining members of his council not discerning? I’m sorry to tell you, you are going to have to do better in affiliation with your Heavenly Father and your Savior than they have done. “… except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (Mt 5:20) I am (pleased) to tell you that you can do this. You can do this if you will make the effort to go to the Lord and start the process. “Father, what would you have me do?” Joseph Smith tried to establish a social climate in which men of advanced ordination particularly, could reach their maximum potential in aligning themselves with the mind and spirit of God such that they could clearly know God’s way and let themselves be touched by His mind, and thus magnify their callings. Many were not at all equal to the task, firmly rooted in the baggage of the world’s ways of seeing and judging and committed to furthering their own self-importance, the way things are done among men in the world. Many had not mastered their own selfishness (being full of themselves), once the emotions of initially touching God through ordinances and insights had worn off. Et nos? A sense of love and from it gratitude would have given a man pause to go to the Lord and inquire about the new doctrines as they were revealed, but that love was lacking in the men who raised the heel against Joseph. They believed their ordinations were secure in themselves, not dependent upon their righteousness. As they let themselves be governed by the emotions of the natural man (and the mind of the Adversary), in time they came to longer believe in Joseph, or the revealed gospel or their ordinations. This history of the result of separating an ordinance from the spirit that empowers it should give us something to think about when we go to the Lord to inquire where we stand with him. Another thing that bears watching is expressed in the Savior’s comment, “By their fruits shall ye know them.” (Mt. 7:20) Heber J. Grant was reported to be quite personable and mild in his colloquy with others, but his demeanor entirely changed when the issue of Celestial Plural Marriage came up. We have it as a matter of record that some of Grant’s disciples railed against the Doctrine and Covenants and the Journal of Discourses in our lifetimes. Will our leaders take a similar path to diminish the application of scripture to their conduct and selection of what they teach and how they teach it? “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” (Mt. 5:48) If justice is denied to even one man, or woman, or any who have been divested of their wives in contravention of priesthood law and a trial based upon its due process, it is denied to all of us. The issue is not whether or not it is accepted in the eyes of God for men to make such decisions without a trial as past prophets have done; the issue is whether or not the decisions were done by the manifest will of God, and not just the desires of men. Has God given to the leaders of this Work the dispensation that authorizes the tail to wag the dog, or the rooster to call forth the sun? “Silence means consent,” is how some would view the exercise of God’s authority among us, as did Spencer W. Kimball of the LDS Mormon Church, but is that how God views it? Since they did not and will not have these matters explicated openly, we must take our concerns to God. Our state before God is not guaranteed by men, but by God. The authority to act in God’s name is like a credit card: it is God’s property, not ours. If men take refuge in the notion that they have been granted independence, let them look to the example of Lucifer/Satan. God is no respecter of persons or unequal in the running of his kingdom. See Acts 10:34 and Rom 2: 11. The reckoning will come. The issue of the righteousness and with it the authority to dissolve marriages and reassign would be considered by some to require privacy and for us to seek to publicly examine the justice of a dissolution and reassignment overreaching into the stewardship of the subject of such a judgment. What can be known about one of these in particular, as reported in (Blog 35. The Trial of Bro. Owen A. Allred) speaks to inconstancy in the basis for the judgment. Should it say to a disinterested judge that there is an undercurrent of righteousness that has not been reported that would explain all of this if a veil of privacy was completely lifted? Or does it point to reinterpreting the law by which Celestial Plural Marriage is ordained with a compensation prize for the relinquisher of a wife. Did he dislike his wife (and she, him) such that he was willing to allow that she not be maintained, the better to have her petition for release? Was the one he was subsequently given more to his liking? Was there a horse trade here? The report does contain the record of an attempt made to counsel these people in order to get to the bottom of their estrangement and overcome it, but it was not pursued diligently. All I know is that Rulon, despite feeling torn, resolutely defended the sanctity and inviolability of the covenant often to the distress of those so bound. Many of you have a testimony that Rulon was a practicing, key-holding prophet of God. How much of this transmigration of spouses is discretionary? Who respects God anymore, and how far? Rulon had a sensible (you could feel it) authority and did not turn away from the often painful duties of his office. You could rely on his word. He left a body of prophecy that we need -to prepare us for the times that are upon us. Rulon was the embodiment of the office he held, arcing the kingdom of heaven with all this earth, because he obeyed God. He did not put the passions and woes of people who had committed themselves to each other’s service and to the Lord’s ahead of the awesome duties and responsibilities of covenant marriage to nurture and raise a righteous seed, together with a community of like-minded individuals. Where has teaching the gospel to our own failed us? Is it for want of explaining doctrine, or is it in how we treat each other that makes the teaching tepid to the human spirit? It is my sad experience that all too often Mormons simply blame others for their failings and will not look to how they have contributed to those failures. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” When we cease to care, we cease to grow back into being the Father’s garden-sharing children. This sort of marriage is not undertaken for our comfort to the exclusion of God’s purpose for it. We should be making it a haven, even a heaven for each other, because that is a part of becoming as the gods, but failing that, duty remains. The blogs clearly show or intimate a spectrum of violation in obligation to one another, out of keeping with the spirit of Celestial Plural Marriage. Perhaps the greatest underlying failure is the failure to uphold the attitudes of love and respect and duty. Where these are strained or absent, trust is lost, and with it honest communication and healing. What replaces trust is estrangement. History records that Brigham granted releases for the asking, but I do not know of him remarrying those women thus separated, save it be for the apostasy or adultery of the man. What has been revealed concerning the administration of Celestial Plural Marriage among us says to me is -that which has been presented is of sufficient concern that it should be taken to the Lord, as we have other evidences of abdication of righteousness in blogs (3, 4, 28, 29,) concerning the (lamentable) conduct of Bro. Lynn. When you smell smoke or ozone and wire in your house, don’t you rush immediately to the site to see what the matter is? Where we are is God’s house. “. . . stand ye in holy places . . .” (D&C 87:8) (And make the places wherein ye stand holy.) Are we interfering with their stewardship? Think again. We are their stewardship and what they do and don’t do is affecting us. What they do and don’t do is affecting our ability to be sure in our ordinances and covenants. What they do and don’t do is affecting our ability to engage with the Lord in confidence through prayer. What they do and don’t do is affecting our will to prepare ourselves for the pre-millennial sea of the tribulation about to burst its bounds and over sweep the communities of this land. What they do and don’t do is affecting our ability to understand a pure gospel, as was taught and for a short time practiced with Joseph Smith. Men, who had a deep sense of Christian devotion to the Lord and to his people, even if they felt they had been imposed upon, (out of a sense of honor unto God for the duties of their office) would seek to relieve the concerns of a people, even if they were unjustified due to the unavailability of all the true facts. Is this concern expressed in addressing the issues, or is their response centered on psychological techniques to entrain the people to accept the enhancement of a cult of personality around the leaders? Look at the way Bro. Steve has been pilloried and tacitly declared to be contaminated and thus his case unworthy of discerning consideration or alarm, but not openly denounced as untruthful. It is not contamination they fear, but contagion. They don’t want the spirit of inquiry to be loosed among us, even as the popes denied scripture and any dissent from the people. If I were one of them and I knew I and my fellows were in the right, I would characterize Bro. Steve as being zealous, but misguided, not an iconoclast. And I would have some explanation derived from my prayerful consideration of each case to put the matter to rest. If I had the truth I would declare it. I would respect the concerns of my people as of a value to equal that of my own. No one of our calling has the right to forbid or to discourage anyone to pray to obtain the truth. Even camouflaging or avoiding so the people remain unaware that their duty to know for themselves of the Lord constitutes an offence against teaching a true gospel. The notion that we are incompetent to do so, speaks against all those charged with the responsibility to teach and raise this people from childhood on. The Joseph Smith church had as one of its elements the purpose to empower people to know all sorts of things for themselves in harmony with that which was revealed to authorities. Brigham Young has clarified that in admonishing people to pray and know for themselves lest their leaders take them to the brink of hell. (Discourses of Brigham Young, p. 99) How can we grow in the gospel and seal upon us each step we take in becoming more nearly perfect, if we do not make inquiring prayer an integral part of how we love and serve the Lord. Brigham told us that no man can drive us to heaven. (Discourses of Brigham Young, p.99) We have to win our own path by transforming our nature and understanding to that of our Savior, as near as we can. We have also been told we cannot depend on borrowed light. The issues are the same. One side would have it that we can't be trusted to get true answers to prayer and that if we doubt men, we being men ourselves, will begin to scatter having substituted our own opinions for God claiming to have received them from prayer. One side would have it we can't be saved in ignorance and we should apply our faith to acquiring truth through dialog prayer. If our leaders have strayed from the truth and their duty, we need to know it and call upon God to remedy the situation, since rebellion (by members or leaders) has no part in God’s kingdom. The pattern of the LDS Church is that the members are free to exercise their agency, but in order to remain in good standing (or remain at all) they need to end up in agreement with the First Presidency. Whose Work is it, anyway: theirs, ours collectively, or God’s? If God has a share in this Work, it had better be the Captain’s share, not just the portion that fallible men would give Him. “If any man preach any other gospel than we have preached, let him be accursed.” (Gal. 1:8) That scripture is a fair warning. Who is living and teaching a true gospel? One way to understand the gospel and its God will lead you back to His presence. The other way will keep you separated from God through disobedience and will-led alienation. Which is which? You have the testimony of the aggrieved, and many other voices added. You have the scriptures before you. You have your conscience and sensibilities to awaken in you the need to recognize a choice. You have the Holy Spirit to instruct you and confirm you in your righteousness. It’s up to you. * * * In order to understand a true gospel, you need to accept fundamental principles about God and your religious liberty in the Household of Faith. Once you have done this, everything you hear and read and see acted out in your world, as well as the way in which the Holy Spirit speaks to you will begin to fall into place. It is indispensible to your understanding of scripture and accepting God to your salvation that you get it right. There is only one gospel, just as there is only one God with which we have anything to do. You can’t be fuzzy, letting even one scripture cancel out your understanding of God. “And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” (Jn. 8:32) “Liberty is freedom from lies.”
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