Comments on: You Make The Call: Marriage Counseling

By: Portia

Portia — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:03:29 +0000

I (well, not *I*, since I doubt the Mormon church would let women be branch presidents in my lifetime), would refer them to a licensed psychological/marital counselor, stat, and get out of it.

By: lfitts

lfitts — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 06:40:38 +0000

“This incident is a true story. It is recorded in a copy I have of the handwritten notes of branch presidency meetings from the New Orleans branch in 1844.”

What an interesting post. To the author of this post I say, how did you come to across these notes? What else was in them. I am completely intrigued.

I am quite new to blogs and so of course new to this blog as well and perhaps this has been disclosed at some earlier date somewhere, if so bear with me please.

By: Seth R.

Seth R. — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 05:45:20 +0000

By the way, a Bishop playing Magnum PI and scoping out a house of prostitution is a waste of his valuable time, and probably ill-advised anyway. These kind of establishments tend to have problems with people snooping around, and they’re probably going to notice you snooping around. It’ll just be trouble.

By: Seth R.

Seth R. — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 05:41:25 +0000

My first thought would be what my role in this is and what I’m being asked to do.

The wife is either asking me to play the part of judge in Israel here and excommunicate the guy, or she is simply looking for someone to take her side in a domestic dispute.

If it’s the later, she can leave me out of it. She’s got friends and family for that. I’ll be happy to sit and hear her out and maybe even give some advice. But she shouldn’t expect me to be taking her side in this dispute. I don’t think that’s a proper use of a bishop’s time.

If she is asking me to excommunicate him – well, I’m going to need evidence for that. Barring that, I can’t in good conscience move forward with disciplinary proceedings. I also wonder what she hopes to get out of her husband being excommunicated.

My overall inclination is to stay out of it and let them sort it out themselves without using me as a club to beat the other spouse with.

By: Glenn Smith

Glenn Smith — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 04:02:16 +0000

When my wife was RS president, she accompanied the Bishop to visit a less active sister at her place of employment, a local bar. The sister worked as a bartender. Our ward covers six small towns in two countries. So, the likelyhood of another ward member seeing the Bishop and RS President going to the bar together was small…… The Bishop told me later he would be more careful.

Re Bishop as judge
In some areas , temporal disputes were taken to a Church authority for a decision. I suppose this was because civil courts were too distant in newly settled areas. Such an event occured in my family. The ruling was that if the relative (grandfather’s brother-in-law) was not being truthful with the “court”, his daughters would all suffer broken marriages. And they did.

By: Stephanie

Stephanie — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:54:36 +0000

Goldam, maybe because it’s a test of their integrity and not the Bishop’s. The Bishop is standing in for the Lord, so they aren’t just lying to him.

By: Goldarn

Goldarn — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 05:26:46 +0000

A former bishop of mine once told me that he occasionally interviewed people that he knew where lying, because the Spirit told him so, but he never had enough evidence to do anything about it, like deny a temple recommend or something.

I’ve never figured out why the Spirit wasn’t more specific with him.

By: britt

britt — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:11:02 +0000

This kind of thing is why one of my stake presidents asked to be in the nursery after he was released.

Interesting thoughts BobW

By: Stephen M (Ethesis)

Stephen M (Ethesis) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 12:40:02 +0000

FYI, my brother-in-law was part of getting the brothel next door to him in Salt Lake City closed. It was within walking distance of Temple Square (having walked it from his house). He testified at the pornography trial of the owner (who was passing out color catelogs of the workers in the brothel who he insisted he only rented space to).

He was annoyed at the prior owner of his house, an LDS realtor, who did not disclose the brothel, and the police, who made courtesy visits. That ended when he was able to get a television crew to make a courtesy visit.

Somehow that made more of an impression on law enforcement in the area than did the phone calls from the others in the neighborhood.

The University of Utah provided a professor to testify that the catalog was not pornographic because it was within the community standards of Salt Lake.

Since I understand it has remained closed, most probably no longer have a house of ill repute within walking distance if they live in downtown Salt Lake.

By: Johnna

Johnna — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:14:31 +0000

Wow. I was shocked when the 1844 date was named.

And glad my Mormon people were in Nauvoo and Cincinnati that year.

Sounds like sister x does not want to be married to brother x. Either for her stated reason or for some other reason.

So who was the branch president?