The Salt Lake Tribune
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Church vs Internet
The LDS Church's legal assault on Wikileaks over the posting of its confidential Church Handbook of Instructions is earning the Mormon Church unfavorable comparisons to the Church of Scientology. Says Daily Tech:
The LDS, following in the questionable steps of the Church of Scientology, has now issued multiple copyright infringement notices in an effort to get the information taken down. As we know, this strategy is unlikely to do anything but win the Mormons a share of the online community's unsympathetic attention, a quantity that until now Scientology has been enjoying alone.

Tech Daily points out, alas, the LDS information is vastly more bland than Scientology's near-incomprehensible secrets, including this bit of gibberish:

This same pattern, but given in an amusement park with a single tunnel, a roller coaster and a Ferris wheel, was used between about 319 trillion years ago to about 256 trillion trillion years ago, a long span.

Who's got a decoder ring?

The LDS handbook covers disfellowshipment, excommunication and a lot of "humdrum procedural information," that few members would read if the church required it. Says Tech Daily:

Now that the Internet is getting better at sniffing out documents that people don't want public, we're getting a nice picture of how much of this secret information was secret for its own sake. In other words, you have to wonder if there's any reason for LDS to want to keep its boring bylaws in a vault other than, simply, because it has always done so.

4 Comments:

At May 15, 2008 5:06 PM , Blogger Linda said...

well, the cows have already left the barn. it's a little too late now. you snooze, you lose in this cyber age. can't even pass gas anymore without the whole world knowing.

 
At May 15, 2008 5:26 PM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Church's legal "assault" . . .? Come on Glen, your bias is showing.

 
At May 15, 2008 6:07 PM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

it would probably take a seer stone and hat to depher that gibberish anyway....

 
At May 16, 2008 10:18 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

and this is getting any attention Why? Come on people, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has structure, policy and principles for a reason...Consistency! If the Handbook is out there being dissected and over-examined under a cyber-microscope every second, then society loses themselves in the policy rather than the principle and the message.
Find a new story and move on!

 

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