This is a lovely story, but it just does not work out that way for everyone. I have a friend whose bishop held a disciplinary court for sexual transgression and refused to believe her when she said she had tried to stop the man but he insisted on their having sex. Her bishop told her she had not protested enough. After hearing her story, her LDS friends sent her to a rape counselor. The effect on the ward was profound. Everyone who knew the story would not tell the bishop anything. Another friend was told by her bishop she could be forgiven for her sexual sin. The sin was that she was molested as a small girl. I know these men mean well, but I think too many of them are simply not trained for the counseling and sometimes for the decision making they do. I have seen Church courts destroy marriages and families when the person should have seen a psychiatrist instead of a bishop. Can we look not just at the good outcomes, but at the bad and determine why they are bad? These are peoples' eternal lives and families. One size does not fit all. I hope the Church takes the time to interview those subject to its discipline who did not come back and find out why. And why there is so much venom in the anti-Mormon statements on the internet.
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TomJune 26, 2014
This is a lovely story, but it just does not work out that way for everyone. I have a friend whose bishop held a disciplinary court for sexual transgression and refused to believe her when she said she had tried to stop the man but he insisted on their having sex. Her bishop told her she had not protested enough. After hearing her story, her LDS friends sent her to a rape counselor. The effect on the ward was profound. Everyone who knew the story would not tell the bishop anything. Another friend was told by her bishop she could be forgiven for her sexual sin. The sin was that she was molested as a small girl. I know these men mean well, but I think too many of them are simply not trained for the counseling and sometimes for the decision making they do. I have seen Church courts destroy marriages and families when the person should have seen a psychiatrist instead of a bishop. Can we look not just at the good outcomes, but at the bad and determine why they are bad? These are peoples' eternal lives and families. One size does not fit all. I hope the Church takes the time to interview those subject to its discipline who did not come back and find out why. And why there is so much venom in the anti-Mormon statements on the internet.
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