We are rapidly approaching the two-year anniversary of the announcement of the Vienna temple: the 4th of April 2021. I remember the day well. We were all watching conference from home during those pandemic times, so I wasn’t able to see the immediate reactions of my ward, but I’m sure audible gasps echoed around living rooms all around the country. The excitement was felt as far away as North America. People I hadn’t heard from in years—mostly former missionaries I had served with in the Austria Vienna mission in the mid-1990s but also family members and friends—reached out to share felicitations on an occasion that seemed to validate a lot of hard work by a lot of people over decades.
As a missionary, I recall members in a Vienna suburb showing us a map where they thought the temple was going to be built, even labeling it “temple square” (Tempelplatz). I don’t recall how they had determined that that would be the place. It was just an empty field in an unremarkable part of the country, far enough from Vienna that you could afford to build a house and raise a family but not so far that you couldn’t commute into the city for work. There were already a number of member families living there, so maybe someone had purchased the lot and intended to donate it to the church when the time was ripe. See below for details:
At any rate, a temple is something members have been working towards for a very long time.
As someone with a little skin in the game—besides my mission I have lived here and served in a variety of callings for nearly 20 years—I felt more bewildered than overjoyed. The announcement felt like it was coming out of nowhere. I’m certainly not privy to any inside information, but you can just tell by looking that the church has gotten smaller in the 25 years since I served as a missionary—fewer units, fewer missionaries, fewer baptisms, and lower attendance. In fact, just six months after the temple was announced, Vienna’s five wards were consolidated into four wards.
Still, the temple announcement gave the remaining members a shot in the arm, a tangible goal to work towards. And for a while, it did seem to rejuvenate testimonies. But since April 2021, I have not heard a single official announcement regarding progress of any kind.
On 18 September 2022, almost a year and an half after the announcement, our high councilor simply informed us that “We have not received any additional information about the location, design or construction start [of the temple].” And by “additional information” he actually just meant “information,” because what we know can be found here, and that’s not much.
Unofficially, however, there has been some news. Last December a ward member posted on social media that a relative, who is a temple architect, had been assigned to the Vienna temple project. So yay! Apparently part of the planning process is to figure out how people travel to church and whether sufficient parking was available, and so this recently-arrived member was asking what the local experience was like. But the post was quickly deleted, so I assume that the gun had been jumped and there was no intention to share any developments with the general membership. So much for that.
The next official announcement was an invitation by the stake presidency in February this year to join in a special fast “that our Father in Heaven will hasten this project and that a place for the construction of the temple can be found.” In other words, after two years we’re still looking for a location—so much for the “temple square” in Deutsch-Wagram.
Clearly God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform, because it makes no sense to me to announce a project that is no more tangible than a wish the heart makes. I mean, I’m sure that building a temple in some jurisdictions is no easy process, and delays are no doubt par for the course for such projects with lots of moving parts. And with all the temples President Nelson is announcing, I get that not all of them are going to be built right away. Indeed, I understand the value of being patient and exercising faith and doing things in the Lord’s time and all that, but members have already waited and worked patiently for decades to realize a temple in Austria—why announce one before figuring out basic things like locations? And then letting years go by without providing any updates?
I also get than the announcement itself can generate excitement and build momentum towards a goal. But how long do church leaders honestly expect that boost to last when it is followed up by nothing more than crickets serenading a lonely tumbleweed rolling through a ghost town under a full moon? And the Vienna temple’s announcement is still fresh compared to the Budapest temple—it will be celebrating its fourth anniversary of no apparent progress next week.
I’m open to the possibility that I am not the kind of person church leadership was trying to motivate by announcing a temple—I felt the announcement was premature when it was made, even before realizing that years would pass before anything else happened. Then again, I still show up more often than not, and who else is going to build the kingdom around here if not me? And if they were trying to motivate people like me, well, it’s not working.
Regular updates—such as at stake conference—would go along way to sustaining the desired motivation, however, even if there wasn’t much to report. I would rather hear that “In the past six months we have visited 12 potential properties, had six discussions with the zoning commission and made a presentation to the city council, and it was all for naught” than generic encouragements to just keep on keeping on.
Announcing a temple in an underserved area clearly raises expectations. If managed well, these expectations can surely be converted into many good works while planning and construction proceed. But following up with silence is not a helpful way to sustain those expectations. I hope church leaders will reconsider their news embargo in these hardscrabble corners of the Lord’s vineyard and give us something to nourish our hope in a temple of our own in addition to the prospect that one could be built.
By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog 
That reminds me of the announcement of a downtown building in Chicago. The announcement was made, wards were split, an elementary school was rented on Sundays and …
… well, seven years later, the building was finished. It took them a while to find land. (The original stake president looking at this—who lived in the suburbs—it turns out thought that “downtown” meant literally anywhere in Chicago.) Then they had to go through the bureaucracy of building a thing in Chicago. And eventually, after five or six years, they started building and, a year or two later, we had the building.
What I’m saying is, sometimes it seems like the church has a legitimate idea to do something but, it turns out, that’s just aspirational.
At least you’re not Russian. They’re going to have a much longer wait than you. But they also have somebody other than the Church to blame.
lastlemming, right—you don’t have be the director of the CIA to know this. Which is why I genuinely wonder what the point is of making aspirational announcements that are followed up by…years of silence. Surely there’s a third way between a surprise unveiling of a finished temple and an announcement that goes nowhere for years on end.
One of the big problems with temple announcements in the Nelson era is that often the temple department learns about the announcement at the same time as the rest of the members. So, rather than doing all the leg work before the announcement, they have to do it after. Not sure why President Nelson does things this way, but I assume he has good reasons.
I would also love to know the “good reasons” for doing things this way and I wonder why they couldn’t be given? Why do we get these decisions and announcement that don’t seem to make sense with no explanation or vision for what drives this?
How about the Bogota Colombia temple? It was announced 7 April 1984. The open house wasn’t until the spring of 1999! 15 years!
Wichita, KS, feels your pain.
I remember the day two years ago when the Vienna Temple was announced. It was an exciting day, as a Temple was announced for Elko, Nevada, which will be “our” Temple when it is finished. A Temple was also announced in Grand Junction, Colorado, where my parents currently live and where 6 generations of my family has lived. It felt like a day of our family being blessed with Temples, including you. Now, two years later, we see progress being made on two of these Temples, but nothing on Vienna. I also wonder why the announcements are made the way they are, but, I also know that when we look at Church history and see Temples that have been announced and even started (Far West) and then abandoned, we can see that the process is not perfect. I pray that your Temple will progress soon and that it will be an amazing blessing to Vienna and all of it’s members.
Just looked at my social media post and realized that the Richmond Temple was announced 5 years ago and now it will be dedicated next month. I pray that whatever obstacles are in the way are lifted and a property is founds, permits are granted and it comes to fruition. Meanwhile, I wait with you. The waiting is hard and I hold space with you. The delayed opening of the Washington DC temple renovation reinforced that challenge of hope and anxiousness of waiting for these sacred buildings.
Then there’s the Salt Lake temple that was dedicated 40 years after the fact, with three other temples being announced and opening in Utah well before it was dedicated.
The Winnipeg Temple was announced in 2011 and 5.5 years later it was approved. 18 months later construction started and then 3 ish years later it was finally dedicated in Oct. 2021. As hard as it was to wait for any morsel of information looking back the timing was right and the Lord had everything under control and we were in his timetable and not our own
Pete, any talk locally about it being a *bad* idea putting it somewhere so far out? I mean, I know owning car is a sign of membership in the kingdom, but surely somewhere in the inner city would be far better?
Deutsch Wagram is the Vienna equivalent of a Ryanair airport, like Frankfurt Hahn, which is really Luxemburg.
Same for Brussels temple. Word was that it will be a couple floors in a city center office building the church already owns. Now members being told not to talk or ask about it. One thousand members in attendance in Belgium on any given Sunday. Not all with temple recommends, including the children for whom the church has yet to figure out a way for them to attend.
I witnesses the excitement of the local members when the announcement was made. Heartbreaking to hear them ask “when” knowing from my home in Utah that it wouldn’t be any time soon.
RJH, except for that very brief and apparently unauthorized exchange on the ward social media page, there has been no discussion of location or transportation modalities at all. The question sounded like they were at least considering putting the temple out in a field somewhere, surrounded by a parking lot. That would be infinitely easier than an inner city location, but would have a whiff of Ikea about it. And spot on with the Ryanair naming conventions. And speaking of Frankfurt, see the Frankfurt temple—it’s way out of the city.
Bob, I know other temples have taken a long time to build. What I’m confounded over is the decision to follow an announcement with a years-long silence. It’s not like members had to wait 39 years to find out what was going on with the Salt Lake temple, for example.
Given how many people are likely to attend said temple, building it in the Böcklinstrasse basement would make sense, although I realise that temples are meant to be visual statements as much as anything.
It’s because we are looking in the wrong places.
Budapest is so close to Vienna that a temple in Salzburg/Munich would make so much more sense geographically, serving more stakes at the crossroads north of the alps.
I kind of view Nelson’s temple- announcing spree like the ‘Pals Battalions’ of World War One. Great for morale in the short term, but absolutely abysmal in the long term.
RMN would do better to under promise and over deliver. He seems to relish the excitement his end of conference announcements generate, it all those empty promises at some point turn sour.
When I heard the Russia and China announcements, this sort of thing was what I feared.
The church’s worldwide temple building program is truly astonishing–it’s a marvelous work and a wonder. We have every reason to rejoice in its progress even though there may be a few hitches here and there in the process.
Also, I wonder if the process would go more smoothly if women were allowed to participate on any level.
Jack, the “few hitches here and there” affect whole countries, even if there aren’t a lot of members living there. What’s the rush to make announcements before there’s anything to announce? No site, no building permit, no public plans. Why not wait until the decision to build a temple is actually the church’s to make?
Kevin Barney can speak to the time it took for the Chicago Temple which was built in Glenview IL. as we had not moved back to the midwest during that time.
From professional experience Glenview is one of the hardest to go through the approval process in the area. Special use permits, appearance reviews, sign reviews *and* the site backs up to a nature preserve. A little pre-site selection scouting and talks with before purchase and announcements helps.
Let’s give our leaders the benefit of the doubt. On the one hand, it could be that, in some instances, we didn’t know enough about the difficulties that lay ahead in getting approval to build a temple.
But on the other hand, it could be that some regions require a little more preparation than others in order to be entrusted (collectively) with the Lord’s House. And who knows but what–getting the word out early might be calculated to help folks work toward becoming prepared.
But however that may be, I find that keeping our eye on the big picture helps to keep us in a positive frame of mind in spite of whatever temporary setbacks there might be in the process of building the Kingdom.
Jack, I agree that there is no special virtue in getting bogged down in the details of constructing a particular building when plenty of other buildings are being constructed around the world. As they say in German, one should leave the church in the village, which basically means that things should be seen in context. But part of that context is that temples are extremely important buildings to which the covenant path leads. Obviously Mormons see the world differently to Romans—we have one path that leads to hundreds of destinations. But given the importance we all attach to the temple, I don’t believe it’s too much to ask for periodic updates about how things are going; and by periodic I don’t mean on a geological timescale. My suggestion is semiannually at stake conference. We can’t make a building the focus of religious life while insisting that it isn’t important enough to warrant the occasional update. Well, we could, and do, but I reckon it’s not a helpful practice.
As for the notion thar getting the word out early helps people people prepare for a temple, I cannot recall a time in the 25 years since I became involved in building the kingdom here that members have not been working toward and preparing for the day a temple would be built. An announcement should signal that something has changed, so why not communicate that too?
The LDS church temple plan is quite a curious thing. For a long time “Demand” was the explanation for a new temple. Growth in Las Vegas meant Vegas got a temple. Growth on the Wasatch Front meant more temples in Utah cities. Perfectly sensible.
Then we started seeing temples announced/built where there was not a high concentration of members. The explanation given was accessibility, the desire to make temples accessible to all members in a reasonable amount of travel. I’ve heard it said people in the continental US will live within 4 hours or less of a temple. Seems reasonable.
Now we are getting temples announced where there is already accessibility and there is no evidence of great demand. For example, on Sunday temples were announced for Harrisburg PA and Winchester VA. Google maps shows these two cities are 120 miles apart on a major interstate. In the same region there exists the Philadelphia temple and the Washington DC temple and the new Richmond VA temple.
There is an accessibility argument to add a temple in central PA, where Harrisburg is located. But why also announce a temple for rural Virginia, where Winchester is located? Why not split the difference between Harrisburg and Winchester and put a temple in Hagerstown, MD – Hagerstown is so centrally located between PA, MD, VA and WV it has become a major spot for distribution centers.
The Winchester temple announcement places a premium on making temples accessible to a very small number of saints who already have access to a temple if they just drive another hour. And adding the temple does not necessarily make the temple more convenient. For these small temples are not opened daily! And as more temples are built surrounding DC, the DC temple has a reduced schedule.
Adding more temples, but decreasing the hours temples are opened begs explanation. What does the First Presidency expect to see happen with all these new, small, limited schedule temples?
That’s a good point, A Disciple—the rationale for building a temple is hardly fixed. In my view, it would have made sense to build a temple in Austria 25 years ago when the church was still expanding here; I don’t know if a temple would have helped sustain growth, but at least there was a positive trajectory back then. If we weren’t meeting whatever thresholds back then, we certainly aren’t now.
Anyway, I noted with interest that a temple was announced yesterday in my old backyard, Bakersfield, CA, which is two hours from the Fresno temple in one direction and the LA temple in the other.
Most small temples I am aware of are open Tuesday through Saturday, though obviously there are some that are less. However, when President Hinckley announced the plan for the small temples in 1997, he said that he expected that some temples might be open only one or two days a week, according to need. So it doesn’t seem to me that there was ever any expectation that small temples would be used to their maximum theoretical capacity.
Some of the older temples have moved to the limited hours President Hinckley had in mind for the small temples. The Washington DC temple is closed most of Tuesday and Wednesday and conducts three endowment sessions in the evening on those days. The Los Angeles temple is open only on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. It’s a strange feeling for those monumental structures to be mostly still and empty.
Indeed. My parents were ordinance workers at the LA temple for years, and they always went down for a week at a time; well, Tuesday to Saturday, anyway. So that’s how I remember things.
Very important points, in the OP and comments. I’m not sure anymore what the thrust is for opening so many temples. Don’t get me wrong, members find value and importance (to put it mildly) in having access to a temple. And convenience is not an unimportant consideration. To the extent that the Church is attempting to address this desire, it is admirable. It just feels like there’s also something else going on. Overpromising and underdelivering is just bad optics. “Rewarding” Saints in certain areas (that may not even have a need for an additional temple) seems to be one thing that’s happening. Signaling a growing Church through announcing new temples may also be happening (temples are definitely growing at a rate that far surpasses growth in membership).
I have lived in multiple areas where a new temple opened. Much rejoicing at the event, followed by spikes in temple attendance. But then, after about 2 years, attendance begins to wane and immense pressure is placed upon members to attend – pressure through talks in Stake and Ward conferences, edicts to establish Ward and EQ/RS temple nights and couples “date nights” (and the accompanying babysitting arrangements), and even discussion of past temple attendance frequency in temple recommend and other interviews (and yes, it is now possible to actually determine how often a temple recommend is scanned at the front desk of the temple). I know one person who attends infrequently and has caught flack for it. So, as they routinely drive by the temple on their way to/from work, they pull in and park, get their recommend scanned on their way in, proceed to the changing room to use the restroom, and then walk back out. Doing that once every couple of weeks has kept Stake leadership off their back.
Still, most temples are cutting hours and spend a large amount of time virtually empty. Temples meet a need for a community of Saints. They also come with obligations and responsibilities that have nothing to do with what happens inside the temple.
Members in Bakersfield are currently part of the LA temple district, even though the Fresno temple is the same distance away and doesn’t require traveling over Tejon Pass and through the always bad traffic in west LA to get there. I always assumed they were assigned to LA to bolster its numbers.
As J Mansfield noted, the LA temple is only open 3 days a week. The number of endowment sessions each day has also been reduced compared to a few years ago and even those days it is open are relatively sparsely attended. I would guess that the LA temple district has an ever shrinking number of active LDS members. The LA temple looks more and more like a flagship without a crew.
Another temple that puzzles me is the recently dedicated Feather River temple in Yuba City CA. YC is hardly a metropolitan area and the Sacramento temple is only 50 miles away.
The San Jose temple is a bit of an odd one with Oakland an hour away (2 hours plus with traffic but who has time to go to the temple on work/school nights anyway). Many in the area can also get to Fresno in a bit over two hours. We locals are guessing the church will convert one of the multi-stake centers since most only host a single ward (and have multiple chapels) and there isn’t exactly a lot of empty land in the city of San Jose itself unless you knock older buildings down.
Another question is who will staff it? The moment most locals retire they move to get the money out of their houses. Very few people even make it that long, although that’s not as true of some of the smaller towns heading south and along the coast. Up the peninsula is even worse.
When we go to the temple, we make covenants with God and spouse. When we take the sacrament we essentially renew those covenants. I’ve heard it said that we renew covenants in the temple, but that seems to forget that the priesthood efficacy of the ordinance is entirely for someone else. Although obviously, we are reminded and ponder and have more potential for revelatory experiences from the visit.
That said, it’s interesting to see so many temples announced with no apparent timelines and some of these potentially taking a decade (or more?).
It brings to mind a problem all central planners face — how to allocate resources in the face of shifting demand, and no valid price signal.
When/if the church made temples based on tithing information, that would effectively be a price signal. A crude one, but no doubt a hard measure. Distance from temple, operating capacity of temples, etc are all reasonable measures, but it makes me wonder how difficult this is going to get to keep building so many in an age of mobility, sporadic growth, age demographics, etc. Not an enviable task for any central planner, and before someone tells me the central planner is God; that’s great. I’d assume there is some committee looking at numbers and not just the FP and Q12 dropping city names out of their mind in a weekly meeting.
The Chinese are regarded for their strong central planning and their ghost cities are an eerie reminder of what can happen with massive outgrowth without underlying market dynamics.
I don’t know how the church avoids this, but is it inevitable that some temples will one day sit mostly empty like the great cathedrals of Europe?
All this temple building really upsets me. We live in a stake with 7 units and 1 chapel. 3 wards meet in other chapels in 2 other stakes and 3 units and a branch meet in the old chapel. It is really hard to book anything at the chapel as all 7 units and stake use it. We have stake conference in a different chapel in another stake. When we asked our previous stake President what was happening he told us there was not the money to buy and build another chapel for us. It was suggested a recently empty building could be purchased and converted, but was told the church didn’t want to spend that kind of money, but we can spend millions on temples that may or may not get used. Was amazed last time we visited USA and drove from California to Salt Lake the number of temples and chapels we saw. So we plod on with a chapel we’re the air-conditioning breaks down , the kitchen is so old, the rec hall is tiny and the bathroom facilities leave a lot to be desired, but hey we are not Americans, so I guess that’s okay for us.
I can’t avoid the feeling that church leadership is building so many temples not because they’re needed or membership in the area can fill them, but for reasons entirely unrelated to facts, statistics, and logic.
What those reasons are I can only speculate. My best guesses are: 1) Temple building as an act of religious faith—“we are a temple-building people,” and “temples are to dot the earth,” we’ve been told, so perhaps church leaders feel it is their sacred duty to build as many temples as possible. And with the size of the church’s wealth, a lot of construction is possible. Consulting membership statistics, rather than simply making temple construction decisions based on inspiration, shows a lack of faith. 2) I don’t want to accuse Pr. Nelson of this, because I have no evidence of it, and I think we should exercise some faith in church leaders we sustain, but I suppose it’s at least possible this has something to do with legacy. Pr. Kimball was known for greatly accelerating the pace of temple construction, but by the time Pr. Hinckley passed away, he had far eclipsed Pr. Kimball in temple building and is often remembered as the great temple builder. Most church presidents have not emphasized building temples so much as attending the ones we already have; e.g., the pace slowed down considerably during the Benson, Hunter, and Monson years; but now it appears Pr. Nelson is set to outdo Pr. Hinckley.
Sute: “I don’t know how the church avoids this, but is it inevitable that some temples will one day sit mostly empty like the great cathedrals of Europe?”
It probably will happen to some degree–and I think the church is pragmatic enough to let a temple go if need be. It’d take far less effort and resources to demo a temple than to renovate one.
Even so, I suspect that you might agree with me–that the church’s temple building program is part and parcel of Nephi’s prophecy (1 Nephi chapter 14) about the church in the Latter-days:
“12 And it came to pass that I beheld the church of the Lamb of God, and its numbers were few, because of the wickedness and abominations of the whore who sat upon many waters; nevertheless, I beheld that the church of the Lamb, who were the saints of God, were also upon all the face of the earth; and their dominions upon the face of the earth were small, because of the wickedness of the great whore whom I saw.
“14 And it came to pass that I, Nephi, beheld the power of the Lamb of God, that it descended upon the saints of the church of the Lamb, and upon the covenant people of the Lord, who were scattered upon all the face of the earth; and they were armed with righteousness and with the power of God in great glory.”
There’s no question that the church is beginning to look like it does in Nephi’s prophecy. And it’s my opinion that greater focus and activity vis-a-vis temple work on the part of the saints will have a sanctifying effect on them collectively–to the point that the powers of heaven will be manifested among them as foretold by Nephi. And where else do we learn more about the properties of glory and how to access the powers heaven than in the temple?
Jack,
What value is a building if “wise and thoughtful” government officials can rule that building closed by totalitarian decree?
That’s a good question. Along those same lines we might ask what value the Kirtland temple had after a spin off group took it from the saints. Or what value the Nauvoo temple had when in the end it was destroyed by the saints’ enemies?
Maybe I’m not understanding your question–but it seems to me that even though those buildings ended up being lost there was much gained by the saints sticking with the program and building those temples and utilizing them while they could.
Jack,
I am being snarky, but with a point. Good LDS were going to the temple a lot before 2020. Then they joined the world in shutting down their temples and their chapels. If LDS religious activity is the key to building faith and courage it sure was not apparent when the pandemic hit.
President Nelson even called the members to fast and pray for the severity of the virus to be lessened. By all accounts the worldwide fast concerning the virus virulence was a success – see footnote below. Except the members did not believe it!!!! They did not have the faith to believe God had given each of us an immune system to protect us from germs. They did not trust the Lord would protect us. And so the LDS followed the hysterical crowd and embraced and even encouraged and enforced the most socially, emotionally and economically destructive polices in America’s history.
Now you don’t need to agree with my narrative. But hopefully you will consider this question because looking ahead is all we can do. The question is what will the LDS church teach and what will it provide to members so the members are better prepared for the trials of the last days? When the next global hysteria hits will the LDS do the same as in 2020? Or is there a better way and if so, who will teach it? And if temples are the key to LDS having greater confidence in God, what is going to change in the temple practice to build that confidence?
*Data shows Covid survival rate ranged from 99.9997% for those under age 20 to 99.5% for those age 60-70. See https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.11.22280963v1
Let’s not get carried away here. First of all, President Nelson invited everyone to fast and pray for “physical, spiritual and other healing,” which was necessary since COVID-19 killed like few other germs out there—life expectancy in the US fell off a cliff in 2020, and most of the decline was a result of the pandemic. Second, no one accuses people who pray over their food and still wash their hands and keep food preparation surfaces clean of having little faith, so why make an exception for those who take measures to mitigate the deadliest pandemic anyone alive today has ever seen? Third, American Mormons overall hardly “embraced and even encouraged and enforced the most socially, emotionally and economically destructive polices in America’s history.” In politically conservative parts of the country they were back playing sardines before President Nelson could even finish recommending that they wear masks and get vaccinated to avoid unnecessarily risking life and limb when they congregated.
I’m actually kind of glad that temples do not have the reputation of being death traps; imagine the chilling effect on attendance that would have.
“And so the LDS followed the hysterical crowd and embraced and even encouraged and enforced the most socially, emotionally and economically destructive polices in America’s history.” Like when the same President Nelson you just referenced encouraged members to get vaccinated? Way to implode your own good will and validity. Also, what a thread jack.
A disciple,
Not to be contrary–but you may be talking to the wrong guy. I happen to believe that the swift production of the vaccine was a direct answer to the prayers and fasting that we’re led by President Nelson.
But to answer your question more directly: it could very well be that the saints (collectively) learned to appreciate temple work “that much” more after being deprived of it for a time. And by the same token, maybe we needed to spend some being still and pondering the meaning of the temple. Sometimes we can get so busy doing the work that we forget what the work is really all about.
That said, I’m not suggesting that those might’ve been the reasons for the pandemic. Even so, the Lord has a way of making seasons of difficulty work out for our good–even if we don’t recognize it at the time.
Not so fast on the claim that Europe’s great cathedrals are sitting empty. It’s simply not true. A bunch of churches, including ancient and historical churches, have indeed sadly been deemed redundant with declining numbers of churchgoers and decommissioned. But the great cathedrals almost all still host active congregations with regular, vibrant services. A tourist might not see that. But you know it if you live in the parishes served by such cathedrals.
By the way, if you’re an American tourist who won’t remove your baseball hat as requested when entering St. Paul’s Cathedral in London because it’s an active sanctuary with religious rites being performed continuously, even while you’re looking around and scoffing at the “empty” cathedral, then you’re someone who has already decided what you’re seeing, and not seeing what’s actually there.
I disagree with President Nelson about many things. Looks like ‘A Disciple’ does too. President Nelson called the vaccine a ‘literal Godsend.’ A Disciple here to question President Nelson’s faith.
Geezo peezo! did this take a stupid turn. Not looking at this one again. Past time to shut it down.
“Jack, the development of the mRNA technology that produced the vaccine had been ongoing for nearly twenty years prior to the pandemic.”
However that may be, I don’t think it negates the miracle of timing.