It’s also insulting to the women who (wrongly imo) feel they need to be ordained.

Do you love God? Do you seek for his will on earth? Do you claim to want something that is not his will (ordination)? Or are you saying it is his will and the leaders are wrong?

I wish this fence sitting would stop. Pick which side to be on.

Faithful members should not love to see things happen that aren’t God’s will and they shouldn’t suggest that they know God’s will while the prophets don’t publicly.

Certainly that would add some zeal to our faith, and we’d have to grow in our faith in a variety of unexpected ways… But it would be the gay marriage loving, female ordaining church that spends all its revenue on the poor you desire.

I hope, though, Old Man, that you don’t always immediately assume that anyone who disagrees with you has delusions, as you have of me. It seems that would make it hard to keep an open mind about things.

Cameron, if I thought it would do any good, I would gladly contrast Brother Dallin’s talk on Priesthood Keys from with Brother Dieter’s about sleeping through the Restoration which was given in the same session, but I feel everyone here already has their mind made up on the matter. Suffice it to say, I much preferred Brother Dieter’s, and found many aspect’s of Brother Dallin’s talk on Priesthood problematic, presumptive, or inappropriate. But I believe we have a fundamental difference in our beliefs about the fallibility of apostles, their role in God’s church, and how we should approach their words.

Geoff, I can definitely see your point. I guess my biggest worry is that youth and vitality don’t necessarily equate to a willingness to follow God’s will, and I could easily see a young prophet leading the church in a direction I wouldn’t like to see it go if he or she didn’t have the willingness to ask God’s will.

And, while I agree it would be nice to see God’s hand more visibly active in prophetic succession, I don’t think having the apostles vote on the matter would lead to that. That’s how the Catholic church does it, and, while it occasionally results in a Pope Francis, I feel Benedicts are far more common with that kind of system. I think it tends to give entrenched bureaucracies of men more impact, not less.

But while I have those objections, I don’t really have any ideas for a better system than the one you’re suggesting, either. Inaction definitely isn’t intrinsically better than action, and age definitely tends to lead to the former.

Maybe the original apostles had it right—maybe casting random lots really was the best way to go. :)

The church might just be getting too big and too old to change quickly. Historically, apostasies have helped with that problem, but those cause complications of their own, so I’m not sure that’s any solution, either.

Honestly, the best way to see real change would be an influx of new members from a drastically different ideology, ideally converted en mass by a charismatic and opinionated young person. Then she starts speaking out, and we get ourselves a Jerusalem Council, and all sorts of things start to change. :)

I guess we’d all better start knocking doors.

The point is that if the present automatic succession continues we may get Oaks when he is 85 but not Uchtdorf until he’s close to 90, and both will be well past it by then.

I think the church would be better served by a Prophet who is vital enough and open to asking the Lord to guide the church, and be able to say “thus sayeth the Lord”, before answers to gay marriage or priesthood for women, or whatever else comes up.

Is there anyone running for President of the USA, who is over 80, would you vote for that person, why not? Over 90?

Both gave stern warnings to church members about negative behavior. If you want to compare individual talks you could also use Oaks’ recent discourse on the Priesthood and gender and get a completely different result, but that doesn’t fit your purpose in commenting here so you didn’t use it.

On the bright side, I love your return to ‘Brother Joseph’ era terminology, even if I understand the need for clear personal identification in the digital age. =)

I concur with ji. Since you asked, my take is that you are perceiving ideological differences and a spectrum which only exists in your mind, even imagining a “gentle rebuke” in the process.

I think the two talks fit well together, and that each man honestly said “amen” at the end of the other’s address. Your caricature of Elder Oak’s remarks as caring only about enforcing a no texting policy is error — no doubt, he asks young people to set aside texting during the sacrament for all the right reasons. It is good counsel, and I believe President Uchtdorf would wholly agree.

To see how far apart Brother Dieter and Brother Dallin are, you need only look at their two most recent conference talks. Brother Dallin’s remarks and Brother Dieter’s Priesthood Session comments addressed essentially the same subject: members of the church whose commitment to the actual gospel is shallow, but their solutions are almost night-and-day opposites. I would encourage you to read the two talks comparatively to see how strongly their messages conflict and contract.

Here is but one example.

This is a way Brother Dallin suggests we can deepen our commitment to Christ:

“In an age dominated by the Internet, which magnifies messages that menace faith, we must increase our exposure to spiritual truth in order to strengthen our faith and stay rooted in the gospel.

Young people, if that teaching seems too general, here is a specific example. If the emblems of the sacrament are being passed and you are texting or whispering or playing video games or doing anything else to deny yourself essential spiritual food, you are severing your spiritual roots and moving yourself toward stony ground. You are making yourself vulnerable to withering away when you encounter tribulation like isolation, intimidation, or ridicule. And that applies to adults also.”

Contrast this with what Brother Dieter says can improve our commitment:

“In some cases, we may simply have lost our focus on the essence of the gospel, mistaking the ‘form of godliness’ for the ‘power thereof.’ This is especially dangerous when we direct our outward expressions of discipleship to impress others for personal gain or influence. It is then that we are at risk of entering into Pharisee territory, and it is high time to examine our hearts to make immediate course corrections.

This temptation to appear better than we are is found not just in our personal lives but can be found in our Church assignments as well.

For example, I know of a stake where the leaders set some ambitious goals for the year. While the goals all looked worthwhile, they focused either on lofty and impressive declarations or on numbers and percentages.

After these goals had been discussed and agreed upon, something began to trouble the stake president. He thought about the members of his stake—like the young mother with small children who was recently widowed. He thought about the members who were struggling with doubts or loneliness or with severe health conditions and no insurance. He thought about the members who were grappling with broken marriages, addictions, unemployment, and mental illness. And the more he thought about them, the more he asked himself a humbling question: will our new goals make a difference in the lives of these members?

He began to wonder how their stake’s goals might have been different if they had first asked, ‘What is our ministry?’

So this stake president went back to his councils, and together they shifted their focus. They determined that they would not allow ‘the hungry, … the needy, …the naked, … the sick and the afflicted to pass by [them], and notice them not.’

They set new goals, recognizing that success with these new goals could not always be measured, at least not by man—for how does one measure personal testimony, love of God, or compassion for others?”

???

Brother Dallin’s practical advice to the youth, after reading Brother Dieter’s talk, seems to be the very sort of outward “form of godliness” behavior Brother Dieter was warning against, not taking into account the individual struggles, hardships, addictions, broken families, or loneliness the sacrament texter or whisperer might be going through. It seems a very outward, number-oriented goal: zero texts or whispers during sacrament meeting this month; instead of the immeasurable goal of personal testimony and love of God Brother Dieter encouraged.

Read one after the other, Brother Uchtdorf’s can even be seen as a gentle rebuke of Brother Dallin’s well-meaning but misdirected counsel.

At least that’s how I see it. Perhaps you view the two talks differently. If so, I would be interested in hearing your view on their seemingly-contrasting messages.

And I promise I didn’t cherry-pick this example. If you similarly contrast many of their other talks on similar messages, I suspect you would come to similar findings. They both are witnesses of Christ, and each has a powerful testimony of Him, but the particulars they share about the gospel are very, very different, and cannot, at least for me, be reconciled together.

In lessons where the succession after Joseph’s death is taught, the manuals always put great emphasis on the idea that Brigham was the only possible rightful choice, while in fact the scriptures were quite unclear on the matter, and Brigham became prophet because the saints in Nauvoo prayed about it and chose him. Joseph had thought he would be succeeded by either Hyrum or Joseph III, and it was years after Brigham was chosen as leader before he felt he could truly succeed Joseph.

It is also never taught in lessons that Brigham deliberately altered the seniority in the quorum near the end of his life to make sure neither of the Orsons would become prophet after he died, and the Utah saints and Quorum did it again to make sure Joseph F. Smith, and not Brigham Young, Jr., became the next prophet after Lorenzo Snow.

So, there’s certainly plenty of precedent for changes in the means of succession.

However, if any change is to happen, I think it would have to happen BEFORE the living prophet died. President Thomas or one of his successors would have to announce the change—I don’t see the Quorum of the Twelve doing it by themselves. The easiest way would be to re-institute the office of Assistant President of the Church, which was essentially a co-president who would succeed the prophet after his death.

This could happen at some point, but I think it’s more likely that, when prophets are suffering from age, the de facto successor will be one of the other members of the First Presidency, as it was for Gordon Hinckley for some of Spencer Kimball’s years and almost all of Ezra Benson’s. If that’s the case, then we will still very possibly see Brother Dieter Uchtdorf directing the course of the church, whether or not he actually becomes the prophet.

And honestly, I’m okay with that. I feel that system worked fine with Gordon Hinckley—he was an amazing, visionary leader, and by the time he actually became prophet himself, he had already had a decade or so of experience. And despite rumors about President Thomas’s help, he was able to to lower the missionary age for women, which I feel is one of the pivotal changes in the church of the last 50 or more years, and will be looked back on as one of the core steps in women receiving the priesthood.

There’s a scripture I love in the book of Acts where Peter and the apostles say that they’re ministers of the word of God, and it’s not fitting that they spend their time symbolically waiting tables, by worrying about the practical finances of the church. Today, I feel like a large part of what the Twelve do is wait tables, and if age or any other circumstance forces them to give that up, I think that’s a good thing.

I don’t know how healthy President Thomas is, but I can almost guarantee he doesn’t waste his time mandating new BYU religion curriculum, getting involved in politics, approving inflammatory anti-gay-and-anti-scouting-and-anti-feminist messages for the Public Affairs department to put out, or many of the other not-word-of-God things other apostles busy themselves with.

I just wish more members realized the prophet probably has nothing to do with any of these things.