April 2015 General Conference

Summaries of 2015 April General Conference, from Deseret News, 

with personal annotations.

All of the General Conference talks are available at the Church web site shortly after the session ends, either for online streaming, or for download, as video or audio media.  Talks are transcribed to text and available for reading or downloading shortly after the Conference. 

General Women's Session

I failed to take notes during the Women's Session, though my mom gave me permission to watch.

Sister Cheryl A. Esplin: "Filling our homes with light and truth"

Sister Carole M. Stephens: "The family is of God"

Sister Bonnie L. Oscarson: "Defenders of the proclamation"

President Henry B. Eyring: "The Comforter"

Saturday Morning Session

President Henry B. Eyring: "Is not this the fast that I have chosen?"

President Eyring recalled finding a donation slip inside of an old book of scripture, with one dollar indicated as the amounts for each donation category.  It was the equivalent of the widow's mite.

President Boyd K. Packer: "The Plan of Happiness"

 A cookie and a kiss.  Marriage and family within the bounds of gospel teaching are the Plan of Happiness.

Sister Linda K. Burton: "We'll ascend together"

Extraordinary ordinary.

Elder Dallin H. Oaks: "The Parable of the Sower"

The stony heart.  Beware of playing games during the Sacrament. Do things that make our harvest plentiful.

Elder L. Whitney Clayton: "Choose to believe"

God does not force us to believe, He invites us. 

Elder L. Tom Perry: "Why marriage and family matters"

Marriage is still the ideal.

Saturday Afternoon Session

During the beginning of this session, President Uchtdorf conducted the sustaining votes, and financial audit and statistical reports were given.  Interesting to note trends in growth of membership report.

President Uchtdorf responded calmly to dissidents shouting dissenting votes during the sustaining of General Authorities.  He was unperturbed, noted their objection, and at the end of the proceedings, instructed them to bring their objections to their local Stake President.

The disturbance indicates a basic misunderstanding of the principle of Common Consent.  Although it is intended to be a democratic process, it was not implemented to facilitate demonstrations or protests. The protocol is intended to help settle disputes peaceably and without rancor.

Most Church members recognize the sustaining vote as an opportunity to fulfil the obligations bound by sacred covenants.

Elder David A. Bednar: "Therefore they hushed their fears"

The peaceable things of the Kingdom.

Elder D. Todd Christofferson: "Why marriage, why family"

Quote from Bonhoeffer, "The Office of Marriage".

Elder Wilford Andersen: "The music of the gospel"

"I could teach you to dance, but you have to hear the music".

Elder Dale G. Renlund: "Latter-day Saints keep on trying"

"Twas I, but it's not I".   God is disappointed when we fail to recognize the struggles of others.

Elder Michael T. Ringwood: "Truly good and without guile"

Blessed is he that endures to the end.

Elder Quentin L. Cook: "The Lord is my light"

Sunflowers grow in inhospitable soil.  We flourish and become beautiful as we follow the sun.

 

Priesthood Session

Elder M. Russell Ballard: "The greatest generation of young adults"

RM doesn't mean "Retired Mormon".

Elder Ulisses Soares: "Yes, we can and will win!"

The adversary tries to deceive us with mists of darkness.  (Elder Soares delivered his counsel in Portugese, but English translation was broadcast simultaneously.)

Brother Larry M. Gibson: "Fatherhood — our eternal destiny" 

High time to examine our hearts, and make a course correction.

President Dieter F. Uchtdorf: "On being genuine"

The Potemkin Village.  We have left our first love.  God has power to breathe life into you.  It cannot happen if we hide behind a façade.

President Henry B. Eyring: "Priesthood and personal prayer"

Escape calamity through prayer.

President Thomas S. Monson: "The priesthood — a sacred gift"

Come, ye sons of God.  Determine our duty.  Military service priesthood interview.

Sunday Morning Session

My nephew went, with a group of young people from his ward, to the Conference Center this morning before the session, to attempt to counteract some of the dissident protests being staged around the Conference.  Rumored to be many gatherings planning to conduct noisy disruptive demonstrations.  The counter group plans to loudly sing LDS hymns together to overwhelm and bury the tumultuous noise of angry dissenters.

The Tabernacle Choir was accompanied by two ladies at the organ - something I have never seen before at General Conference.

President Thomas S. Monson: "Blessings of the temple"

New temples in Haiti, Ivory Coast, Thailand.  Though President Monson exhibits signs of age over the past several years, he gives no indication of serious infirmity, and his address was as enthusiastic and energetic as ever.  This has been an issue of some concern in certain venues.  I hope such doubts are pacified.

Sister Rosemary M. Wixom: "Returning to faith"

A constant quest to learn "Why?"  Church is not a place to put on a perfect face.

Elder Jose A. Teixeira: "Seeking the Lord"

Life is not confined to a four inch screen.

Bishop Gérald Caussé: "Is it still wonderful to you?"

Children, to Bishop Causse:  We have lived here all our life, and we have never been to the Eiffel Tower.

Elder Brent H. Nielson: "Waiting for the prodigal"

How to respond to those who have lost their way.  All of us are lost, and need to be found.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland: "Where Justice, Love and Mercy Meet"

A fictitious tree branch fails to distract. Brotherly hands helped me to safety.

President Dieter F. Uchtdorf: "The gift of grace"

On this day, our lives changed.  We grow from flawed and limited beings, by the Grace of God.

Sunday Afternoon Session

Elder Robert D. Hales: "Preserving Agency, Protecting Religious Freedom"

Jesus used His agency to choose Heavenly Father's plan.

Elder Kevin W. Pearson: "Stay by the Tree"

"Hang in there" is not a principle of the Gospel.

Elder Rafael E. Pino (Spanish): "The Eternal Perspective"

Unless we step back a little we cannot appreciate the forest.  Focus on a single jigsaw puzzle piece will not bring the entire picture into perspective.

Interjected by President Uctdorf:  Sorry, President Monson.  I made a switch to my native language!

Elder Neil L. Andersen: "Thy Kingdom Come"

If everything is going perfectly, just wait.  Can you see the hand of God in your life?  Our faith grows as we anticipate.  The skeptics will be silenced.

Elder Jorge F. Zeballos (Spanish): "If You Will Be Responsible"

Learn our duty.  How could we be content with anything less?

There was a musical interlude, with the Tabernacle Choir singing a Primary song, "Tell Me the Stories of Jesus, accompanied by two ladies at the organ!

Elder Joseph W. Sitati: "Be Fruitful, Multiply and Subdue the Earth"

Fundamental attributes of our Divine nature.

Elder Russell M. Nelson: "The Sabbath is a Delight"

How will I change?  How do we hallow the Sabbath?

Controversy

The newspaper headline reads, "LDS leader's '07 address still causing controversy".

Do you know who the controversy is with? Still the same ones who questioned the counsel originally. Controversy existed in such minds before they even heard the talk, it just provided an opportunity for them to complain and be heard.

There will always be complainers. Some have good cause. Some do not. No reason to derail the train just for them, in any case. But thats what they seem to want.

The original Deseret News article:


LDS leader's '07 address still causing controversy
By Carrie A. Moore
Deseret News
Published: August 8, 2008
An address last fall by the general president of the LDS Relief Society on motherhood continues to raise discussion and disagreement nearly a year after it was delivered.

Panelists addressing the topic "Mormon Motherhood: Choice or Destiny?" at the annual Sunstone Symposium on Thursday discussed why a talk by Sister Julie B. Beck during the October 2007 General Conference troubled them and hundreds of others enough to support a Web site — whatwomenknow.org — to counter many of Sister Beck's characterizations.

The Web site has garnered signatures from more than 500 women and several hundred men since it was put up in the weeks following the talk.

Five presenters spoke for more than an hour about their belief that Sister Beck's talk, and other recent messages by LDS leaders, narrow the role of women in the church by minimizing the contribution of those who don't have children and stay at home to raise them, whether by choice or through circumstances they can't control.

During the question and answer session that followed, one mother of five lamented that the remarks didn't reflect her experience, or that of many other LDS women, and asked that her choice to feel validated by staying at home with her children be respected. Several audience members approached her in the hallway at the Sheraton Hotel following the session and a heated discussion ensued.

Janice Allred, president of the Mormon Women's Forum, said as she listened initially to Sister Beck's remarks, she thought "there will be trouble, but the firestorm that followed surprised even me." She said she had seen some indications in recent years that the church "has become more accepting of women's roles and parenting in the wider society. But once again, women felt they were being handed a script for their lives that they couldn't follow."

Sister Beck's talk mirrored gender roles outlined in the church's "Proclamation to the World on the Family," Allred said. The document "gives a woman only one role. The single woman exists in the proclamation only as daughter of heavenly parents waiting to fulfill her destiny ... Being a mother is a good and a necessary role, but a good mother must first be a good person, with roles and needs outside that of mother."

Lori Winder quoted one secular author regarding motherhood, saying, "We are fed up with the myth that it's the most honorable and important thing we do ... and if you don't love every second of it, there is something wrong with you." She said "motherhood is prescribed essentially as the only role for women eternally." She said Sister Beck is "in many ways the only voice within the patriarchal structure of the church. The weight falls on her to illustrate our experience." Yet there is a "gap between Beck's rhetoric and (some LDS womens') experience, particularly as women's influence expands in the secular world."

Margaret Toscano, a professor of classics at the University of Utah, said she doesn't think LDS women "reacted strongly enough" regarding "women's roles and person-hood in the church structure." She said many "patriarchal systems use women as the primary tool for keeping other women in line" and "patriarchy gives women protection for playing by its rules."

She said she believes Sister Beck's talk created a flash point that focused on her as a person, "rather than critiquing the underlying system." She said the backlash "reflects the idea that it's more acceptable to question women's authority than men's in the church."

The address also elevated LDS women as "those who know the truth about motherhood versus secular women who are ruining the family," she said, adding "most women want to be good mothers and care deeply about their families."

Emily Benton, who holds a bachelor's degree from Brigham Young University, said she became less active in the LDS Church after marrying a returned missionary and then divorcing while he was in law school. "The Mormon map for women is limited and can sometimes leave you feeling lost." For her, "a lot of it came down to feeling that I didn't belong in a singles ward or a family ward, and my mother is worried because I haven't married and procreated like my sisters. My success isn't a grandchild."

She said that during the time she was away from the church, "I learned integrity ... After being away for a while I realized I missed the gospel," so she returned "with a new perspective ... Ultimately I'm at church to learn how to become a disciple of Christ." She said that while at church, she "would be better served if" the messages focused on love, compassion, service and personal worth rather than, as Sister Beck said, learning how to be the best homemakers in the world."

Janet Garrard-Willis, a Ph.D candidate and blogger for Feminist Mormon Housewives, said "motherhood really is meaningless unless there is a person being the mother in the first place." Her blog saw "an immediate firestorm following Beck's talk," and it was "not my liberal friends who were most upset — they just tend to disregard her.

"It was my deeply conservative friends who believe every word out of a church's leader's mouth came from Jesus Christ. They locked themselves in the bathroom and cried about it." Because she had great difficulty getting pregnant, Garrard-Willis said she had a "free pass to pursue a tenure track job. Once people in the church found out why I didn't have kids, they were very sympathetic and I was given a real place in every ward I've ever been in.

"I felt I was being incorporated into the structure with an identity apart from other women. That was fine, but I didn't realize that identity was contingent on my remaining childless." She said she experienced the "erasure of a significant portion of my identity when I became a mother."

She said the LDS Church does provide "a skeleton architecture for building an identity for women in the church, in part through its Young Women program, which emphasizes values such as faith, knowledge, good works and integrity. She suggested "a larger discussion about fatherhood" in the church, and "how traditionally female attributes are integrated into his role."

Following the presentations, Camille Aagard was the first to address the panelists.

"I wish I were on this panel. I'm the mother of five, I'm not a Ph.D candidate, and that's not in my future." She said she has "always had a very confident sense of self and I attribute that to being raised in the church. I feel powerful. I don't need anything more than what I do, but I want that mutual respect" that panelists had discussed for those outside traditional LDS roles.

"I want to know that if I were in the Toscano family, there wouldn't be little remarks about me behind closed doors. I feel so deeply respected when I hear motherhood is near to divinity. There are 96 pictures of me on my blog with my arms covered up to my elbows in vomit and (expletive deleted). I did have a five-year career, but this is a much harder game I'm in. I don't want to be in a forum where I'm with Latter-day Saints and feel under-valued. I heard words like 'confined' and 'mindlessness."' Aagard said she is raising four daughters "to emulate me, maybe, without letters after their name. It's not something small I'm teaching. I ask you to show the same respect for me."

Aagard was approached by several audience members in the hallway after the presentation, defending her right not to be offended by what church leaders say about her role. One man told her, "You're a slave and you don't even know it."

"I'm not a slave," she shot back. "That's pathetic that you would say that to me."

E-mail: carrie@desnews.com



'

Deseret News: Orson Scott Card on Ambition

An outstanding Orson Scott Card editorial, "Sorting out the right and wrong of ambition", Deseret News, Thursday, Jan. 17, 2008

RIGHTEOUS AMBITION is to be an active part of something greater than yourself, a community of good people doing good.

To be anxiously engaged in a good cause...

[T]he Lord honors the ambitious Stewards, the ones who take what they are given and magnify it, with the goal of returning it to the Lord with thanks.

Irreconcilable Differences: on Domestic Violence

Consider a feature series on Domestic Violence in the Deseret News...

The several stories aim to report on different aspects of this problem.

Family war zones: Research shows increasing physical and psychological impacts on kids
Silent victims: Kids who witness abuse face psychological woes
The abusers — They usually find blame hard to accept
Gaps in system put families in jeopardy
Domestic violence: Facts and resources

What kind of images characterize this concern about domestic violence?

The Deseret News articles provide a perfect icon.



Lots of other gratuitous hints let us know that domestic violence is always something done by men, husbands, fathers, boyfriends. Always "perpetrated" against females, wifes, girlfriends, women. And of course, children. "Compassion" and protective actions in behalf of children can justify almost anything.

• According to 2005 data, 5,891 Utahns made their way to local domestic violence shelters that year — 3,173 were children, 2,686 were women and 32 were men. There was no room for thousands of others who were turned away.

From another point of view, we find information of a different sort...

A quote from "The Politics of Family Destruction,"Stephen Baskerville, November 4 , 2002.

Domestic violence has now been federalized in a legislative agenda whose conscious aim is to promote easy divorce. Donna Laframboise of Canada’s National Post wrote that federally funded battered women’s shelters in the United States and Canada constituted "one-stop divorce shops" whose purpose was not to shelter women but to secure custody for divorcing mothers. The Violence Against Women Act, renewed by Congress in 2000, "offers abundant rewards" for making false accusations, writes Professor Susan Sarnoff of Ohio State University, "including the ‘rights’ to refuse custody and even visitation to accused fathers, with virtually no requirements of proof." The law’s definition of domestic violence is so broad that "it does not even require that the violence be physical."

Child Custody Statistics

"Ninety percent of divorced fathers have less than full custody of their children." Jonathan M. Honeycutt, Ph.D.(c), M.P.A., M.A., I.P.C. Director of Research, Clinical & Consulting Psychotherapist, National Institute for Divorce Research, Panama City, Florida.

37.9% of fathers have no access/visitation rights. (Source: p.6, col.II, para. 6, lines 4 & 5, Census Bureau P-60, #173, Sept 1991.)

"40% of mothers reported that they had interfered with the non-custodial father's visitation on at least one occasion, to punish the ex-spouse." (Source: p. 449, col. II, lines 3-6, (citing Fulton) Frequency of visitation by Divorced Fathers; Differences in Reports by Fathers and Mothers. Sanford Braver et al, Am. J. of Orthopsychiatry, 1991.)

"Very few of the children were satisfied with the amount of contact with their fathers, after divorce." (Source: Visitation and the Noncustodial Father, Koch & Lowery, Journal of Divorce and Remarriage, Vol. 8, No. 2, p. 50, Winter 1984.)

In a study: "Visitational Interference - A National Study" by Ms. J Annette Vanini, M.S.W. and Edward Nichols, M.S.W., it was found that 77% of non-custodial fathers are NOT able to "visit" their children, as ordered by the court, as a result of "visitation interference" perpetuated by the custodial parent. In other words, non-compliance with court ordered visitation is three times the problem of non-compliance with court ordered child support and impacts the children of divorce even more. Originally published Sept. 1992

Domestic violence: Not Always One Sided, Harvard Medical School

Mention of domestic violence immediately brings to mind an intimidating male batterer. But a 2007 article shows that the problem — also called intimate partner violence — is often more complicated and may involve both women and men as perpetrators.

Cheney at BYU: In the news, blogs

I seldom find anything to agree with in SLTrib editorials, but this one seems to hold the grasp of one essential idea...

...protests, boycotts, issues brought to the forefront - it's all good. It's all part of the participatory process.
So let Cheney speak. Be appalled, or enthralled. He may posture and prevaricate, but he will be speaking to a class of college graduates who presumably are capable of weighing his words against his record.

I don't find anything else of merit in the thoughts expressed, but at least they got one foundational idea right.

Then there's this article from one of the regular columnists, which hews close to the traditional SLTrib line of enthusiastically misrepresenting and slandering the church and anything related to it.

Actually, the SLTrib did better than DesNews on this. The DN article could only find controversy as the point of discussion.

LDS Blogs are more-or-less dominated by outrage that Cheney is not already caged up in chains. Few seem to recognize that the federal prosecutor labored for more than a year to convict Bush and Cheney and company on all kinds of charges, but failed to deliver. Anyway, sentiments in the Bloggernacle are strikingly similar to something from MoveOn.org these days. Typical fare at a couple of representative blogs: Times and Seasons author says Cheney deserves a fair trial, oblivious to the fact that it already happened. Guy Murray's Messenger and Advocate follows the crowd with a rather disappointing anti-war posture that pretty much obscures all reasonable considerations. Others are far less even-handed in their discussion and rhetoric.

More stories in the Deseret News

BYU OKs Cheney protest
LDS Church statement concerning Cheney visit to BYU
LDS Church fires back at criticism over Cheney
Readers on Cheney — with a 'Y'
Protests not new at Y.


And in the Salt Lake Tribune

BYU allows students' Cheney protest
LDS Church responds to Tribune columnist
BYU allows Cheney protest
Chilly for Cheney at BYU?

Vice President Cheney to speak at BYU

Media sources have announced that Dick Cheney will deliver a public address at the BYU Commencement ceremonies in April 2007. Here's a link to a Deseret News article.

Just below the radar is a muttering growl of outrage. Too many people personally project hatred and loathing for President George W. Bush. Cheney gets the benefit of some of the overflow that spills past the edges.

To me, this ferocious mounting antipathy that focuses on Bush and spills over to Cheney is beyond all reason. I cannot fathom why anyone would object to Cheney's speaking engagements. From my experience, Cheney is an accomplished public speaker. The speaking circuit is a common enough occupation for Vice Presidents, has-been and otherwise, honored or infamous.

As to the spewing of pejoratives and unsubstantiated accusations, let those who embrace such vile practices validate their claims in the court of justice. You need to progress somewhere beyond your mock impeachment proceedings and actually do something more than just slander and threaten in hysterical public demonstrations. Otherwise it is just more of the endless unsubstantiated "Bush lied" mantra that amounts to a public propaganda campaign.

Personally, I find far less reason to believe these than Bush and company. Sad to say that the general level of credibility is so compromised by the current tone of public discussion. The only sure premise is that when everyone lies, there is no source of public information that can be trusted.

In fine illustration of this point, a current Deseret News article quotes comments from BYU political science professor Darren Hawkins.

Hawkins believes Cheney has changed in the past four years from a moderate pragmatist to an extremist driven by the Iraq war and has appeared willing to do anything to create his version of a secure country.

Ironically, it is people like Hawkins that are the pivot of change. These fickle people started out as embracing the concept of opposing the sources of global terrorism, and have gradually transformed into caricatures of screaming anti-war protesters of the 60's.

Hawkins goes on to say of Cheney,

"He may be the most unpopular vice president in history and he may be the most unpopular person in America right now, so, yes, where else could he go?" Hawkins said. "It doesn't surprise me the White House called back and wondered if BYU would take him. I seriously doubt he'd be welcome at a lot of other universities."

What does popularity have to do with it? Are we now supposed to begin censoring speakers with unpopular causes?