NOM

How can bishops help those who have committed serious sins (sins that are also against the law) without sending them and those whom they have hurt the message that spiritual crime pays? In some sort of twisted effort to help someone who has, say, committed a rape, bishops will have that person bless the sacrament. Or if someone has committed fraud, they will give the criminal a temple recommend. All of these are extended as support through the repentance process, not held out as a reward for after.

Meanwhile, the aggrieved party gets to see their tormentor rewarded and the only support the aggrieved party is to get counsel to forgive, not judge and invoke the atonement. In other words, the criminal gets spiritual rewarding from the bishop and the victim gets spiritual chores. The situation should actually be reversed.

So, how can a bishop extend support and healing to the victims and how can a bishop hold the sinner's feet to the fire in a loving manner that doesn't reward and doesn't shame?

I have seen this same thing over and over, and as the victim, I experienced it when my father's bishops showed him all kinds of love and patience and my bishops couldn't be bothered with what I needed to heal spiritually.

To answer your question, I don't think they can. They have to be sweet enough to the sinner to keep him working with them, and with abusers, that means coddling him. That means flattery and respect just to keep him involved in repentance, which is NOT repentance. So, they end up rewarding abusers.

I saw a situation once where a husband had beaten his wife, and it wasn't the first time. I have to assume the whole ward knew where she got the bruises all over her arms and face, because I was just on the ward fringes, and I knew. The bishop knew. So, when the abuser was blessing his HT family's baby, blessing sacrament, and so on, with his battered wife sitting in the congregation, I called the bishop on it. I told him that spouse abuse was grounds for disfellowshipping. The bishop hummed and hawed about not wanting to offend the abuser. So, he offended all the women in the ward by not holding him accountable.

I think this rewarding only or mostly happens with abuse, and not so much other sins. The victim is female, and the abuser is male, and the male bishop identifies with the man, not the victim. Most men are just too dense to put themselves in the victim's shoes and ask how the victim feels when the abuser "honors" his priesthood.

Now don't all you good NOM men get offended. You are not "most men".

Now, when the wife is the abuser, the bishop seems to know how to handle things, at least they sure did with the abused men I saw professionally. They were right there kicking the wife out of the house, demanding she get therapy NOW, and advising the man to divorce if the wife wasn't in therapy by tomorrow.

None of the "go home and tell him you are sorry for making him so angry he had to beat you." That was what more than one of my female victims got from bishops, but not one man had the bishop side with the abuser.

I've observed what you have.

I also think that if a man gets his priesthood "amened" for unrighteous dominion, then that is a man who now needs to be replaced in his calling. People now have to be shifted around. Suppose there are three men in the ward who are disfellowshipped for this, as they should be. It gets to be so it would be very difficult to run the ward.

So, I think a certain amount of it is the church is a boys' club and a certain amount of it is the church wouldn't run if the necessary discipline took place. IOW, the church is a boys' club.

I agree that the good NOM men are not like those other men.

I ask the question, because I'm tired of the excuse, "that's just some bishops". That statement actually allows the dysfunction to continue. Now, one thing I've gotten from the men at NOM who served as bishops is that they honestly did try, but the church didn't really have a good template in place.

I've just thought that if there were three, heck, even one actionable item for both the perpetrator and the victim that could be placed in the handbook, that would be a large step forward.

On NOM 1.0, I remember seeing a form for re-anxiously-engaging a member who had been rebaptized after excommunication. The form had steps with appropriate windows of time in which these steps should be completed.

Something like that.

Anyway, just kind of tired of criticizing the church on this, which so often takes the form of criticizing the poor bishop--who I don't mean to criticize, I am criticizing the church that sends these untrained volunteers into the trenches on these tough issues without so much as providing them with a form on the Lord's way of facilitating the healing. I want that very clear. My criticism on this has always been aimed at the church on this.

Know what my bishop had to deal with, today? First off, the building was too cold. Looks like the budget's been cut. Second of all, someone broke the glass over the fire extinguisher. The glass had to be vacuumed and everything made as right as possible. I thought, it's just always something, isn't it? The guy who has to deal with that kind of stuff on a volunteer basis shouldn't be left to twist in the wind on the more serious issues.

Looks to me like the church owes our bishops some gratitude and not let good men who are doing the best they can continue to take the fall on these issues.

Right cowardly of the church, if you ask me.

I think this problem stems from the church doctrine that forgiveness from god is the only thing that matters to get the promised rewards. Lip service is paid to restitution, but ultimately TBMs believe that if you are forgiven through the atonement then you are good. If you focus on the people instead of god and eternal rewards then it is clear that the restitution and being held accountable really do matter.

One of my friends (f1) growing up stole a girl in the ward's underwear and did some things to it and hung it from her fence. Then he blamed my other friend (f2) for it. f2 was already ostracized by many parents in the ward and this made that worse. Years later f1 fessed up to f2 about it, and f2 was pissed, and demanded f1 tell those affected so f2's name could be cleared. f1 responded that he had already resolved it with the bishop who told him he didn't need to tell anyone. So f1 had official forgiveness from god in the name of a judge of israel while the problems caused by his actions remained. That's just not fair. It's not a bishop's place to declare absolution when the problems still remain.

One of the big parts of it when it involves a male abuser is that the abuser learns to be really good at manipulating people. The lay clergy has no training to recognize what's going on and is really susceptible to being manipulated, without any idea of what's going on. The male abuser learns to play the other male power-holders. They know when to capitulate, sweet-talk, and cajole. They do that to everyone. But, the male priesthood leader is particularly susceptible to this manipulation. Even people who are highly trained and practiced in the patterns of abusers can be drawn in if they aren't really careful.

So, the church and its leaders end up focusing on the abusers and ignoring the victims. It's inevitable that you'd get that sort of response in the environment they've created. No matter how many times (or how few actually), the top leaders might decry abuse in speeches, nothing will change until they make major changes to the patterns and structures.

Repentance exists when and only when a church leader says it does. This has lots of potential for abuse and problems, in a variety of ways. Someone can feel confident in their repentance, or at least act like, when a leader has told them so. Leaders can continue to hound people for repentance when they feel like it.

Both of you address an important theme, incomplete repentance. I was just thinking about this today. I recently got an email that was my ex's talk that he gave in church. Apparently, it was some sort of marking of his rebaptism. He said that his SP had told him he was forgiven of ALL his sins. My ex stated a second time in his talk that ALLl his sins had been forgiven [emphasis his].

I was frustrated at this, because I was just making headway with my ward and chances are excellent he emailed that talk to people in the ward. So, all these things no longer matter. He's been forgiven. I thought, there's no way he could be forgiven of everything, he didn't tell the SP everything. Then I remembered. He's been rebaptized. The slate, according to our tradition, has been wiped clean. Even if he didn't tell the SP everything, it doesn't matter. He was rebaptized. That, dear reader, is precisely what spiritual abuse looks like. Textbook, perfect.

What's a little difficult is just a few days before the email had come, it had come to light that my son may have had his identity stolen by one of my ex's former (?) fraud associates. This could impact my sons and me for the rest of our lives. I know my ex didn't repent of it, because no restitution nor apology has been forthcoming to me or my sons. My ex probably never told his SP. But, you see. None of that matters. He's been rebaptized. All his sins are wiped clean and my sons and I can just pound sand.

It is true. The repentance in these cases is incomplete and leaves the aggrieved party having to clean up the mess. Jeffret makes a good point. Perhaps repentance shouldn't be declared accomplished by a fallible human.