Prescription is saying what should be. Description is illustrating what is. Prescription is the choice of strategic balances. Description is the analysis of the elements. Description works well with tactics. Prescription belongs to strategy.
I think we too often mistake the one for the other. I enjoy description. I am not good at prescription.
So I can tell you that there is a balance between Yes Men and Honest Advisors. I can point out the perils of Yes Men. I even did so last week.
I can also point out the perils of “Honest Advisors” (those who push back) when they go amuck (e.g. when President Kimball was in the hospital and the entire First Presidency was out, some “honest advisor” thought that it would be a good thing to send out a First Presidency Statement on Oral Sex.
Not surprisingly, when President Kimball got out of the hospital, a follow-up went out withdrawing the Statement and instructing leaders to destroy all copies and not implement any of it, as he did not appreciate the “honest advice” action in sending out prescriptive advice under his signature that he did not approve).
I also enjoy reading complaints of too much correlation and of too little correlation. As far as I can tell, we have both too much and too little. Obviously I can’t tell you what the proper balance is.
One reason I can’t tell the proper balance is because balance is not only the mainstream, it also reflects on the margins. Most complaints come because of problems at the margins.
Each balance creates its own edge cases (what happens when the general balance is pushed to the extreme). For example, I had a bishop who was a simple man. All he knew was how to love and minister to people.
He was very good at that, tireless. But, he confessed to me, he knew it wasn’t enough sometimes. But he did not know how to counsel people when love wasn’t enough (e.g. how to tell a woman being abused to flee her abuser).
More recently, there has been a lot on the Proposition 8 matters and their sequels. On the one hand, the Church has done better in Africa, has had its position retained as a Church that falls under the “people of the book” rule (so that members are not subject to a variety of losses of civil rights and are not fair game for slave taking), and has been able to build temples in Rome and Japan (where the Temple came only because of the Catholic Church). It was also not expelled from Russia as a result.
Or I was struck by how institutions that are seen as patriarchal and hostile to women in the United States are seen as liberating and positive for women in many third world countries.
On the other hand, we see problems on the other side (and if you are reading a blog in the bloggernacle, I need not detail those). What is the proper balance? How many African lives should be sacrificed for other concerns?
I can’t tell you.
I don’t have prescriptive skills. While my descriptive skills were good enough that Origins (a game company) cold called me to offer me a job once, my prescriptive skills are weak enough that Ensemble (who wanted a prescriptive designer) did not hire me in spite of my having friends who worked there.
One result is that I often have a little skepticism when I hear prescriptive suggestions by people who don’t display an understanding of the complete balance they are trying to change. I also know I’m weak in that area.
All of that said, I’m going to make a prescriptive suggestion. Of course it isn’t original to me (it came from someone else who is now a general authority), and of course I’m not sure if it works on the balance.
Proposed Sacrament Program Insert/Policy Statement
Because sexual predators only find repentance if they truly confess to the police and accept criminal conviction and punishment, out of concern for their souls, we are implementing the following policy and claim the religious right to this position as a matter of religious freedom.
Any credible report of sexual predation is to be immediately referred to the relevant state agencies and any sexual predator is to (a) be banned from any position or activity where they have access to potential victims and is to (b) be encouraged to confess to the civil authorities and accept criminal punishment for their actions.
To the extent that any victims are identified, they are to be referred to independent counseling services, to be paid for from the tithing funds of the Church.
They are also to be encouraged, to the extent they find it in themselves and in accordance with the counsel they receive from independent counseling, to help the offenders repent by engaging in the prosecution of the offenders.
To the extent that offenders wish to serve after they have served out their time, they are to be referred to community service programs where they will not encounter those they have harmed, and are to be encouraged to attend church services in areas where they will not encounter their past victims.
Now, will this result in the Church losing Church and/or clergy status due to not insisting on clergy-penitent privilege in some jurisdictions (a problem that was in the way when this was proposed earlier)?
I don’t know. Is it the right balance? I don’t know.
So, would I actually send this suggestion to anyone? No, given that someone else already has and they made him a general authority after he made the suggestion. It isn’t new, I don’t know all the details I would need to make a prescriptive suggestion and the only people it would go to already have it.
But, someone asked me if there was anything at all I could suggest in a prescriptive way, so here it is.
So:
- How often do you think people can tell the difference between description and prescription?
- How easy is it to really know the entire strategic picture?
- How would you balance difficult situations?
- What prescriptions would you make?
Wheat & Tares 
Guess no one else has answers either. 🙂
Stephen,
The 2nd question about “How easy is it to really know the entire strategic picture?” is at the heart of why for any good discussion there is so much back and forth. It hints at why at some basic level there has to be faith. It helps explain why there has to be humility and a belief that God knows more than we do. It gives some insight on how someone like Enos could wrestle with God for so long. It sheds some light on what that dialog with God might have looked like as he came to understand the difference between description and prescription.
Thanks for the post.
I like it. I thought it was real for a second and got excited. The prescription I would make is to teach chastity as a principle and not as a law. Remove the black and white element which perpetuates abuse and open the discussion so there is an understanding of rights and not a false sense of security. Sexual sins should be taught as correlating with sexual crimes and that chastity is not the same as abstinence.
Good thoughts. Mark–I really agree.
Miss Understood –it is a real proposal (by someone else) just not a real policy. (And I haven’t the slightest idea if there is any implementation planned or not –I’m just an audience member and we don’t get the same general authorities twice in a row).
I think that counseling often comes from fast offerings, rather than tithing funds.
MH–that is part of the proposed change–to make sure it happens.
What doesn’t happen now? And why do you care about the source?
I don’t think counseling happens enough. By financing it from the church level rather than the stake level, it would make counseling more likely. Using outside services makes it more likely as well –so that no one gives up if they can’t find an LDS counselor who is part of a church organization.
So that the system has sufficient finances and staffing to occur.
Sorry I wasn’t clearer.
BTW for a post by someone else on a different prescription vs description issue:
We should do nothing to endanger the clergy-penitent privilege, where it exists in law or practice. LDS bishops receive confessions and are not tattletales. However, bishops already have adequate instructions on when to provide notice to civil authorities for crimes they may hear about in non-confessional settings (for example, when hearing from an alleged victim instead of the penitent).
I think enough guidelines already exist to accomplish your aims.
I think the prescription as stated is pretty good. Personally, I’d make it even tougher, particularly to ensure that offenders *always* see the full force of the law and victims *always* get protection. In other words, pretty much the opposite of what happens at BYU.
The thing to keep in mind is that what’s “on the books” is one thing. LDS culture is another thing entirely, e.g. the ridiculous modesty and “licked cupcake” nonsense for little girls. There’s no getting around it. LDS culture is sexist to the core.
Finally, I’d like to see all “counseling” done by trained counsellors. As it is, any Joe Schmoe can be a bishop. Almost all have zero qualifications to counsel anybody about anything… much less act as “judges in Israel”. They should attend only to administrative matters and leave everything else to the professionals.
What is your source on the Kimball/oral sex letter incident? I’m aware of the incident, but had never heard that it was done behind Kimball’s back. And there is nothing “honest” about essentially forging a signature.
Last Lemming — Kimball was disabled at the time. I knew a prof at BYU that helped with drafting some things (absolutely no policy input, light editing is the easiest way to describe it) who was my source on the other details that were not public.
I agree, the move was more “steadying the ark” and was not honest — which is why the “honest”. And why I used it as an example of push run amuck.
Kat–the suggestion that it be a sacrament program insert was, I suspect (but do not know) was in part to make sure the message was unmistakable.
“How often do you think people can tell the difference between description and prescription?” It depends on the subject and whether they’re already biased one way or the other. Certain topics bring out strong emotions. If you lend credibility to an argument someone doesn’t like, people label your descriptive piece “prescription” in sheep’s clothing, as it were.
I also lean towards description rather than prescription. I feel it important to recognize the merits of competing arguments. Balancing difficult situations is hard. If you don’t come down hard on one side or the other, you get accused of being an enemy by both sides. I’m also not very skilled at solutions.
I have to mention that your preabmle almost reminds me of how way too many talks start, “I am really bad at giving talks, but here is my talk.” 🙂
I too very much feel that it can be easier, even instinctual, to be able to detect problems. I have also learned via trial and error (mainly error) the law of unintended consequences. Sometimes when you try and correct an error that you see, something occurs that you didn’t imagine that was related. Sometimes that is just what occurs when dealing with humans. But that gets back to your question about being able to understand all aspects of a situation. We feel that God gets the “whole picture”, but for some reason does not automatically fix everything.
The only prescriptive advice I feel I can give is that loving and caring for others is the most important thing. I know it is kind of vague and general, but that is about the only principle in my life that has not fallen away the last few years.
Mary Ann–good points.
Happy Hubby–there is a lot to be said for focusing on love and kindness. Everything else will eventually fail.
The law of unintended consequences is so powerful and so, so many people want to believe it does not exist and that any thoughts to the contrary are just evil. /sigh. You made a very good comment bringing that up. It is why prescription is so hard.
ji, You seem to be suggesting that clergy/penitent privilege should trump the rights of children not to be abused, and I strongly disagree with you. Sexual abuse affects a person in deep and lasting ways. How is such life-destroying harm outweighed by a person’s right to not be tattled on (as you put it)?
Is the worry that a person won’t go to his bishop if he knows that there will be consequences, and thus the right to the repentance process is somehow denied to him? Keep in mind that the repentance process requires that the offender pay the consequences of his sins, so if he is not willing to pay the consequences of those sins, he has halted the repentance process himself, and thus no right to repentance has been denied. Is it just that a man (or women) should feel safe in talking to his/her clergy? Shouldn’t children also feel safe around those who are tasked with protecting them? And doesn’t a child’s need for safety trump a grown man’s ‘need’ to not have to pay the consequences of his disgusting act?
Because of the gravity of child sexual abuse, and the fact that once begun, sexual abuse often continues or spreads to other children, so long as there is no outside interference, doctors, psychiatrists, and others are rightfully considered mandatory reporters. I honestly can’t see how clergy/penitent privileged trumps the protection of children in any moral cost/benefit analysis. I believe that if God were to choose between children undergoing continuing sexually violation or an untrained clergy member keeping some guy’s nasty little secret, he would choose the children every time.
The Church has said that they are the ‘gold standard’ for preventing child abuse and cited the fact that when a person confesses to sexual abuse an annotation will be put in their file, so that anyone with access to that file will know of the confessor’s sins. This is good because it shows that preventing sexual abuse is more important than confidentiality in this case, but it also shows inconsistency on the Church’s part. Either the potential consequences of child sexual abuse are so grievous that they justify overriding clergy/penitent privilege, or not. Since the church is already willing to violate clergy/ penitent privilege in order to protect children, I see no reason why a bishop should not be required to report abuse when a perpetrator confesses. (Other than that the church doesn’t want to be sued when their untrained clergy inevitably violate reporting requirements.)
All of what I have said is compounded by the fact that the Utah Supreme Court sided with the Church on the Church’s claims that a person doesn’t even need to be penitent for clergy/penitent privilege to hold (see Scott vs. Hammock). Thus, according to the Church’s argument, a man should be able to gleefully say to his neighbor, “I raped my daughter last night and can’t wait to rape her again tonight,” and if that neighbor happens to be the bishop, he would be justified in not telling authorities. I can see absolutely no reason to expand clergy/penitent privilege to include clergy/non-penitent privilege, other than for the Church to protect its financial bottom line. The church is so powerful in Utah that many lawyers have taken to only attempting to try cases involving non-reporting of sexual abuse outside of Utah. This is troubling, because it removes Church accountability and it motivates the same sort of clergy behavior we saw in the Catholic church, where abusers are institutionally protected at the cost of victims.
If you have good arguments as to why the moral harm of being tattled on by one’s clergy is greater than the moral harm of on-going sexual abuse, I would be interested to hear them.
My worry is the term “credible” in the wrong hands. Fifteen years ago I was accused of wrongdoing after a person observed something but then gossiping to her friends before going to the bishop. Every mother in her group ran to the bishop and stake president insisting on protection for their children. I was released from my calling, dis-fellowshipped, and had an annotation placed on my record. We eventually moved. More than once afterward, a new bishop wanted details of the situation so he can know how closely I have to be watched. I don’t mind my present calling, but anyone with an annotation on their record is not allowed to be a temple worker. I can only wait and see how this may impact my ability to serve a senior mission.
R–I understand your points, though you misunderstand the legal definition of “penitent ” in the clergy privilege.
BW–I’m sorry if you were wrongly accused and unable to be cleared. I have no solution for that.
I only wish I knew the right answers some times.
People in a position of privilege within a group nearly always mistake description for prescription. What is (what they already have) is the ideal they think everyone should strive for.
Stephen R. Marsh, I understand the legal use of the word ‘penitent,’ but it is precisely the current legal use of the word ‘penitent’ that I take issue with. I think if you take a historical look at clergy/penitent privileged, the whole thing was motivated by the feeling that people should be able to exercise their religious right to confess/repent privately (a right presupposed by the Catholic church and later disputed by protestant countries until it came to be re-enshrined in American law). When I was speaking about clergy/non-penitent privilege, I was using non-technical terms to make a tongue-in-cheek point. The fact that the law has expanded the notion to include any clergy/parishioner relationship, even one involving a person who manifestly intends to sexually abuse again with no remorse, is disturbing to me because it violates the original spirit of the law which was designed to protect a person’s religious right to confess/repent. While some courts have opted to expand this privilege, others are starting to limit it; the very fact that states are increasingly requiring clergy to be mandatory reporters when they learn of abuse from victims or others, shows that we are moving in the right direction.
BW, I am truly sorry that you were falsely accused. I recognize that false accusations can ruin lives, and I am sorry that you are bearing the consequences of someone else’s evil deed. As a repeat victim of sexual abuse I am also bearing the consequences of someone else’s evil deeds. Thankfully, false accusations are very rare, amounting to 4-8% of all sexual abuse allegations. This means that 9 times out of 10, sexual abuse allegations are true and those children need immediate protection.
The arguments you gave, that false accusations are damaging and that clergy should not have to decide what information is ‘credible,’ are concerns that relate to general mandatory reporting requirements. They are not really that problematic for my claim that we should do away with clergy/penitent privilege in cases of child abuse. This is because we don’t have to worry much about false accusations when the perpetrator is himself confessing to the crime. Nor, in any case, is it the job of the clergy to adjudicate whether abuse has actually happened, or what information qualifies as ‘credible.’ As with all mandatory reporting requirements, all that is required is that the mandatory reporter suspect or have reason to believe that abuse is taking place. (A self-confession is certainly a reason to suspect abuse, leaving concerns about whether such confession is ‘credible’ to authorities.)
By not tasking mandatory reporters with determining what information is, or is not, credible, we can leave that duty in the hands of the courts and other designated authorities who are trained to make such estimations. Thankfully, no man can be imprisoned for sexual abuse crimes without first being convicted in a court of law by a jury of his peers, so no, it does not and should not simply come down to one man’s flawed judgement about what sort of information is ‘credible.’ He should rest easy in reporting any concerning information, and then leave decisions of credibility to those who are tasked with determining those facts.
Given your arguments, perhaps you want to do away with mandatory reporting all together? But to do so would be a grave injustice to those who cannot speak for themselves. Child sexual abuse destroys lives. Child sexual abusers tend to re-offend, even as many of them continue to go unpunished (We know this from studies that ask convicted abusers to report anonymously how many children they have abused vs. how many times they have been convicted.) Utah has the highest rate of child sexual abuse in the nation. I believe that this is in large part due to the fact that even mandatory reporters are reluctant to report when they personally know and like the offender (e.g., bishops choosing to side with their fellow priesthood holders and sweeping things under the rug when women or children report abuse). Nationwide, sexual abuse has begun to decline, but those declines are intimately related to the implementation of mandatory reporting requirements
While false accusations are unfortunate, they are no more likely for this crime than for any other crime. The fact that someone may falsely accuse someone else of robbery doesn’t mean that we should allow known robbers to openly commit crimes, just so that we don’t run the risk of an occasional false accusation. Likewise, we should not allow sexual abusers free reign to continue abusing, just for the sake or protecting the reputation of a few innocents. If making sure no one was ever falsely accused was our primary and only goal, then it would be better to do away with laws altogether. But clearly, we must balance both considerations (protect children, minimize false accusations) together with considerations as to the frequency and severity of consequences should we fail to find balance, by either being too careful in protecting children or not careful enough. Society is doing the right thing with mandatory reporting requirements. And, if we expand those requirements to include reporting those who have voluntarily confessed to clergy about their role in abuse, false accusations become much less of a concern in such cases.
R–my apologies for not catching the nuance in your writing.