This installment of “You’re the Bishop” is a little different as there is only one obvious answer. Many times when I was bishop, people would come in and confess “sins” that they thought were serious, but really did not need the attention of the bishop. One time a Sister in the ward came in to ask if she was still temple worthy after she unknowingly had a drink that contained “green tea”
Below is what I posted 5 years ago, with several choices that are obvious very inappropriate.
An elderly widow in your ward asks to talk to you. You bring her in your office, and she nervously tells you that she has been reading Kimball’s “The Miracle of Forgiveness” She says she got to the part on sexual sins, and says there this something she needs to tell you. You can’t imagine what in the world this sister (in her 80’s) could need to tell you. She has held many callings in the church during her life, and her now departed husband held many very high level callings while alive.
She then precedes to tell you that before she and her husband was married over 60 years ago, that she and her then fiancée did ” inappropriate sexual things”. You can tell she is very embarrassed in having to tell this to somebody young enough to be her grandson. She said that after reading Kimball’s book, she realized how serious this sin was. She said it was never confessed before they got their temple recommends. She has been feeling guilty for weeks now, and needed to tell you about it. She adds that after marriage, she was completely faithful to her husband.
What do you do?
- Ask more questions to find out what “Inappropriate” means, so you can find out how far they went
- You tell her that with the passage of time, and the service that she and her husband gave in the church, that all has been forgiven years ago, and that she has nothing to feel guilty about, and never needs to think about these things again.
- You counsel her on the seriousness of sexual sins, that they are next in seriousness to murder (quoting from the Book Of Mormon). You tell her that she should not take the sacrament for 4 weeks, after which you’ll meet again.
- You tell her that the book she read should more appropriately have been named “It’s a Miracle Anybody is Forgiven”, and that she should go home and burn it.
I went with number 2. I guess there could be a few bishops somewhere in the world that would select numbers 1 or 3.
Much has been written about the Kimball’s book, and how harsh it was. Some of the more well known quotes from the book referred to masturbation “as too often [leading] to … homosexuality,” gay sex as a “crime against nature” that sometimes leads to sex with animals, and premarital sex as “the sin next to murder.” Even Kimball seems to realize late in his life that he was too harsh. In the 2005 biography “Lengthen Your Stride: The Presidency of Spencer W. Kimball.” written by his son Edward, he says of his father that he, “later seemed to wish he had adopted a gentler tone.”
Would you have done anything different than number 3? What are your thoughts on the book “Miracle of Forgiveness”?
Wheat & Tares 
It is a shame President Kimball handled some issues the way he did in that book because it taints the good information It contains.. He has two,chapters on forgiving others that I have read several times. Those particular admonitions have been key in helping me deal with a couple of family situations that could have resulted in permanent estrangement. Years later, when criticisms of MOF emerged in blogs and listservs, I was actually surprised as my memory of the book was so positive. For the record, I agree with your response to your elderly ward member.
I agree with Egee in that I recall there were a few good words towards the topic of forgiveness, but everyone (and I think just about everyone) that read it was so guilt ridden after reading it that they were more worried about how bad they were than the lessons on forgiveness. I think Bishop Bill’s alternative title is more how it was read. I feel bad for this sister, but the effect on her was a few weeks of guilt. For many the shame and self-loathing, especially those that read it early in life, sometime had a huge impact on the direction of their life and never gained any spiritual self-confidence and understanding of the love that is in the Atonement.
I recently watched the Ken Burns “Vietnam” (sorry I forgot the co-creator’s name). I was amazed at many things, but realized many of the mistakes made were fueled by the fear of communism. We have even had some of our church leaders captured by that fear. How much a threat that is/was is debatable. But it is what drove the decisions.
I look at SWK as being driven by the social events in the 60’s and into the 70’s and things like the “free love” movement was something I think he felt he had to address. And being fearful of it, I think he over did it a bit. I think I recall that he even told someone later in his life that he might have overdone it.
So I recently discovered that I suffer from Scrupulosity/OCD, essentially religious OCD, where the mind obsesses over some particular act as sin and then produces compulsion like overconfession or repeated prayer. It’s a Miracle I didn’t have a worse reaction to this book when I read it. As it was, I obsessed over it for a long time. It couldn’t have been more calculated to make someone like me feel terrible. I would have gone to my bishop or later mission president, but I had (have) a problem with mistrust of ecclesiastical authority due to some experiences with a bishop as a teenager. I’m glad to have figured out what the cause of it all was, and I have treatment, now. But it hasn’t been a good experience, and I wish more LDS people knew about it, because, like this book, there are a lot of talks and lessons written and given with a certain amount of harshness that makes a lot of sense for some people, but can be a door to hell for others.
I guess mostly I’m posting so that people know this sort of thing is a possibility. The Catholics have dealt with it for a long time, and it can come and go even in people that otherwise have no OCD symptoms (in my case, I do).
What has helped me most over the years (aside from knowing now that these feelings come from an illness) is reading the scriptures and about forgiveness and the atonement. I don’t really need a reminder that sin is death – I feel that myself. I need a reminder that life is still possible.
I agree with how you handled it. I loved President Kimball so much. It is so sad to me that his book has led to so much suffering for LGBT people and their families.. I think it’s humbling that someone who meant only to help could be so tragically mistaken.
It seems like SWK’s writing in TMF is a giant example of the paradox that is the very definition of ‘prophet’ as defined by the church.
None of the above. Because it’s not about what I want to say but about what will help her move forward.
First with respect to The Miracle of Forgiveness, if I were talking with someone born in the 1980s or later (say 35 or younger) I might well use some version of #4. TMF is out of print and that’s where it belongs. In a thoughtful, charitable mood I can pick out good parts and bad parts and misunderstood parts; but I’ve found the book too difficult, too painful, too much wrong, and the redeemable parts too easily misunderstood, and have concluded that the best answer for all of us is to simply dismiss the entire book. However, with someone older–and your 80 yo widow certainly qualifies — I think a “burn it” won’t be heard well. It will be resisted and won’t have the beneficial effect that I’m after. So I’d take a lower-key approach, something along the lines of “don’t take it too seriously” or “remember that the list of sins was all for the purpose of encouraging repentance and realizing forgiveness–focus on the latter.” Deflect rather than diss.
Second, the real problem with the scenario is that “inappropriate sexual things more than 60 years ago” is very likely a false flag. Maybe it really happened, but it’s probably not the reason she’s in the bishop’s office. Something is bothering her, and in order to help her I need to figure that out. So I’d ask some questions, extending the conversation, drawing her out.
For example, I can easily imagine that she’s having “inappropriate” sexual thoughts about other men (in the present). That would be pretty normal, but could be surprising and disturbing to an 80 yo widow after a 60-year faithful marriage. Maybe? Maybe not? But I’d press on a bit because I don’t believe her first story is the reason she’s sitting in that chair.
I have no idea how bishop confessions crept into Mormonism, as we are historically rooted in the reformation. We have none of the safe-guards the Catholics have in place for accepting confessions and aren’t trained enough and aren’t responsible enough to take confessions. Catholic Priests will die, be tortured, and/or go to jail before breaking the confidentiality of confession. I’ve known Mormon Bishops who have never heard of and couldn’t define the concept of pastor-penitent privledge. Mormons -the beehive people- don’t have any concept of confidentiality. Bishops tell their wives and counselors, church social services, and Ward council members as they deem fit. (They aren’t supposed to tell their wives, but I’ve had my ear to the RS gossip tree for decades and letmentell ya- it gets around.) Catholic priests take the mantle of confession with the utmost seriousness. Breaking confidentiality means damning their ETERNAL SOULS. Before they hear confessions, they make a covenantwith God to keep confidentiality. We have absolutely nothing of the sort. Sorry, “guidelines” in the CHI are not remotely the same.
If anything, we have a tradition of communal confession and public reprimand. Read the D&C or minutes from the School of the prophets. Leaders were constantly being called out in front of each other for their sins and given reprimands from God Almighty.
Catholic Priests dedicate their lives to pastoral care and have extensive training, Mormon bishops serve for short peiords with precious little training.
Catholic priests rely on a large body of doctrine and theology to conduct confessions-a millenia old system which is well known to both the priest and the catechism graduate. Mormon doctrine and cannon are silent on this issue and the construct of bishop-led confession-taking is merely policy and culture. Shaky territory for bishops wrangling questions like this.
We ought to teach people how to repent and manage their own relationship with God and leave Bishops out of the confessions game.
I have a friend who was bishop and SP. he told me that with women coming in to confess very old sin, or rather small sin, that 90% of them were childhood sexual abuse victims. He said that when they have that kind of stain on their soul, that on the one hand they know it was not their fault or their sin, but on the other hand, they still feel dirty, tainted, and feel a need to be forgiven by God. Our culture, and TMF was one of the WORST offenders, has too much of the licked cupcake lessons, the loss of virtue due to rape ideas, damaged goods, never worthy of temple marriage, and better to die defending virtue…and TMF says that it is better to die defending virtue. So, women feel guilty that they survived being raped at 5 or something.
This is WAY real for women. I worked as a rape victim counselor and I had three clients who had attempted suicide because they read that idiotic book after they survived being raped. They felt if God loved them, God would have made sure the rapist killed them. I also worked with victims of child sex abuse, and they felt the same way. They feel guilty, dirty, and like they would be better off dead than having lived through being sexually abused for years.
So, quite frankly, I would ask questions. I would not think like ChristianKimball, that she is shocked by looking at men. I think that is very very “young male” type thinking. Nope, an 80 y o has had plenty of time to learn not to feel guilty for thoughts, and women are not clobbered mentally for having normal thoughts like men are. So, he is thinking like a man and applying it to women. But he is right that probably something else is going on. So, I would ask questions, with the thought that she feels guilty that she survived rape, either as a child or as an adult, because that is right there in Kimballs book.
You might have thrown choice #4 as a joke but I would actually go with that one. That book has done more harm than good.
I’m 72. Growing up in the Church, it seems like the emphasis was that the sin was between the sinner and God. We were not like the Catholics who need a cleric to intervene. That was important difference between the LDS Church and Catholicism. Apparently, we have devolved into clerics being involved in the process. But as it has been pointed out, most LDS leaders don’t seem to have the necessary training to handle confessions. I will vote for #4.
I second what ScrupAnon has said about OCD, and Anna has said about sexual abuse. I was sexually abused at age 4 and then, at 6 I told a white lie to my school nurse. Even after confessing and apologizing to both my mother and the nurse, I continued to plead in every prayer for two years that I could be forgiven for that minor lie, feeling that that lie was evidence that I was essentially bad. I hoped that my baptism would take away the feelings of shame and guilt, but it didn’t, and I continued to repent daily for things I had long before repented of.
I was abused again at 7 or 8 and then raped at 16. It was because my bishop at 16 made me apologize to my rapist and read Miracle of Forgiveness that I attempted suicide at 16, being convinced that it would’ve been better to have died than let myself be raped. I had so much shame; I just felt like my very being was essentially antithetical to the Celestial Kingdom, and I took the fact that sexual abuse kept happening to me as proof that I must be the ‘sort of girl’ that this stuff happens to. Despite the fact that I was raped, I was not allowed to take the sacrament for 6 months. To someone who already lived with insane levels of shame, wearing that scarlet letter each week in front of my home ward was not exactly what I needed to feel like God was a merciful God, nor that I was loved by my Savior.
One wise bishop in college told me that there were two types of people, those who were proud and who had to be constantly called to repentance, and those who were broken-hearted and contrite who had to be helped to believe that the atonement could even apply to them. He said that I was in the latter camp and for that reason, should stop reading Miracle of Forgiveness.
So, given my experience, I vote for number 4 (IMO, the harm that that book can do to the vulnerable, who are more likely to be in the bishop’s office confessing every little thing in the first place, outweighs the good it can do toward the hard-hearted; especially since those who were truly prideful and unrepentant weren’t likely to read the book in the first place). I would also advocate for us to do away with nearly all confessions to bishops (or at the very least, do away with all minor bishop-confessions), unless Church-wide proper training can be implemented so that bishops can learn that they must be much softer and more merciful toward abuse victims and those with scrupulosity. My preference would be that the Church only require confession to a bishop if the sin involves the abuse of another, or some other criminal conduct.
(Indecently, my experience with shame, especially Church-generated shame, is one of the many reasons why I feel so much empathy toward LGBTQ+ teens within the Church. Doing away with confessions between minors and their bishops until a person is old enough to make some sense of the crushing weight of institutional shame, would be a great first start for the Church in improving their treatment of LGBTQ+ teens.)
You tell her God has forgiven her and the only question is what she needs to forgive herself.
People forget the real purpose of the Book was to remind everyone that they could be forgiven and I would focus on that.
I can’t cosign number 2: repentance is not a matter of time and doing good to make up for your sin; it’s putting your trust in the completed work of Jesus Christ on the cross. The grace he offers to even the worst of sinners is amazing enough to blot out anything she ever could have possibly done. And I would want to make it clear that the issue isn’t some particular sin she committed decades ago–we all have so many of those that counting them up would just completely drive us to despair. And it would be useless anyway, since our sinful nature is really where the deepest problem lies.
So, what I would really want to know is where this sister stands in relationship to Jesus today.
That’s not inconsistent with option 4, so I guess I would go with that.
My son and I had to go to a traumatised young married women who was raped by her father and her own children were abused….her guilt was terrible made worse by our Bishop giving her .’the miracle of forgiveness’….I asked Bishop ( who I might add is a very lovely person..a delight) if he had read the book.. he said no but as Pres. Kimball had written it he thought it must be fine.
We spoke to this young sister and her husband ( a non member) and I think unknotted some of her concerns after reading the book.
My recommendation to her and to our Bishop is to burn every copy they have……and never give it to anyone
One of my regrets is that I recommended this book to a person I had baptized who was gay. I honestly hadn’t really noticed all the anti-gay stuff in it when I read it myself (probably because I wasn’t gay), but I most definitely took it seriously when it said it would be better for me to die than be raped. I just hoped I’d be brave enough to let myself be killed if I was ever raped. I recommended it to him because it was the go-to book for sexual transgression, and he was struggling with that. At the time, gay or straight, sex outside of marriage was off the table, and I didn’t really see the difference. The book is very hateful toward gay people and full of wrong information. It is completely effed up.
I agree with the idea that there are people who need to be brought to a sense of guilt and those who are naturally overflowing with it who need to be brought to a sense of worthiness. Books like this are incredibly harmful to the latter and probably not that effective to the former.
For the people that need to be brought to a sense of guilt, raising your arm to oppose them at General Conference might be a good start. They also seem to hate it when people outside the church find out how cruel and hateful (or negligent) they are.
I don’t think they have consciences that can be moved, but publically shaming them seems to work wonders for getting them to change. So does threatening their revenue streams.