When I get a viral email, everybody must be getting it.
President Packer’s refuted “A Great Catastrophe is Coming” talk has created quite the ruckus. Fortunately, FAIR was all over it and reported that while Church Public Affairs confirmed that President Packer did speak at his home ward, the transcript is inaccurate at best.
What I find odd is the understated response from the Church. While so many have seen the purported (and oddly very detailed) transcript of the talk, few seem to have heard of the Church’s response. And for something that has taken on a life of it’s own on the internet, there really isn’t an official response to be found online.
Strangely however, you can call a hotline at the Church Administration Building to hear a denial of the talk’s accuracy (1-800-453-3860, extension 2-2833 or 801-240-2833 [via FAIR comments]).
The recorded message says the transcript is not accurate, refers members to his most recent General Conference talk, and cites a 2004 First Presidency letter specifically requesting that members do not pass on statements attributed to church leaders unless they come from an official source.
Is this low key and low tech response intended to not draw further attention to the ersatz transcript?
The SL Trib covered the talk’s online popularity but waited until the fifth paragraph to mention that the Church denies the talk is accurate. Even if the Church does not have a greater response, Julie Smith from Times and Seasons speaks well on its behalf:
“People really gravitate toward the idea of ’secret teachings.’ It is a weakness, one that I’ve seen in myself and one that we need to be more aware of. There is some spiritual immaturity there” . . .
“The scariest thing is that people just don’t seem to realize how dangerous spreading this type of thing is,” Smith said, “not only is there the potential to spread false doctrine, but even if you have a 100 percent accurate transcript, you have taken away the right of a General Authority to speak specifically to a local group about their circumstances in a way that might not be applicable to other areas of the world.”
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Tags: Boyd K. Packer, mormon myth
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It would be nice if the church would say what they find inaccurate about the transcript. The current approach comes across like Leslie Nielson in front of the exploding fireworks factory “Move along folks, nothing to see here!”
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I’ve said it in a different forum, but part of it is that (in my observation) the membership of the church really is desperate for more specifics and less platitudes from those we sustain as revelators. If General Conferences were a bit less correlated (and therefore, let’s be honest, bland), the urge to pass stuff like this around might not be so strong.
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