CHURCH APPROVES ELECTRONIC METHOD TO TAKE SACRAMENT

Virtual Sacrament Now App

Salt Lake City, UT—Hot on the heels of Salt Lake’s announcement about online tithing and donation payment options comes word that the Church will soon be making the sacrament virtually available as well.

The Church posted on its website that “The Online Sacrament system will allow members in the United States an additional method of worship.” The website continues that “historically, the sacrament has only been available to those attending on Sunday, but for those who are sick or need additional time to set fantasy football lineups, they may participate through the online system developed by the Church.”

Additionally the Church announced that a new smartphone and tablet app will also be used to make the sacrament available to more saints. As the site explains, “The new app, Virtual Sacrament Now, will allow Aaronic priesthood members to bless and send the sacrament straight to smartphones or tablets, an option that is perfect for women in the mother’s lounge or parents wrestling with demonically-possessed children in the foyer.” The Church announced that gluten-free virtual options will also be available.

As an added precaution, the Church has beefed up security on the Online Sacrament system and the Virtual Sacrament Now app, concerned that “factions from OrdainWomen might try to hack the systems and bless and pass the sacrament themselves.”

Thanks for Chris Cobb's help with this important news item!

MORE MORMON TABERNACLE ENQUIRER HEADLINES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED

MINI MISSIONARY LESSON: WHY GIRLS CAN’T HAVE THE PRIESTHOOD

With the lowering of the mission age, the Mormon Tabernacle Enquirer is doing its part to help train young men for the rigors and blessings of doing God’s work. As part of this effort, Elder Kory Anton, who is hoping to clear things up and return to the mission field very soon, offers his insights to help others prepare.

Believe it or not, sometimes people ask missionaries questions that just seem so obvious that you might not know what to say. Never fear. Here are some tips for dealing with what some missionaries erroneously call “tough questions.” These are all pretty easy when you think about it. Today’s question is:

Why Can’t Girls Have the Priesthood?

Sincere investigators just know that God doesn’t want girls to have the priesthood or He would have given it to them by now. But sometimes descent investigators can seem mixed up about this issue, so here’s what you do: you remind them that men and women have different gender roles. Women get to have babies and are naturally kinder, more nurturing, more loving, and can tolerate being at home watching television while the kids nap before they make your dinner. Men are powerful fighters and warriors who are not as kind or nurturing and cannot stand kids for too long. Women are also naturally so close to God that they don’t need the priesthood, but warrior men need everything that they can get so that they don’t constantly kill everyone. These gender roles are as eternal and unchanging as the commandments and laws so that no matter what culture or time you are in they apply everywhere. Just like how Jesus actually drank grape juice because he was living the Word of Wisdom because it is an eternal law, so women have never had the priesthood, have never blessed or anointed the sick, have never laid hands on people or animals to heal them, and have never been called prophets. Never! 

Insincere investigators might say that the view that men and women have essential characteristics is sexism. They claim that gender roles depend on society and that using these roles causes one to pre-judge people and could even distort how you see a man or a woman. Remember that playing the sexism card is one of Satan’s many tricks to destroy the family and the Proclamation, and those investigators are just stony ground where the true gospel seeds will never grow.

Final Warning

Now some missionaries may reject the eternal truths given above. Such missionaries might believe that women getting the priesthood is like blacks getting the priesthood, but those issues are totally different. Totally! Missionaries who lose faith in the eternal truth about gender roles might be tempted to say that they don’t really know why girls don’t have the priesthood. Answers like that make missionaries seem weak, making you seem like you don’t have all of the answers. Investigators must trust that you know everything if you are going to actually convince them that the church is true. Don’t fall into the trap of saying things like “I don’t know” or “I encourage you to ask a variety of wonderful women at church,” since you don’t know what they will say. To be a trustworthy, confident man, you must answer clearly and absolutely.

Taking the above approach is sure to keep you on the solid, sturdy ground of the eternal truths of gender roles and that women have never and will never do any priesthood-like things.

Best of Luck,

Elder Cory Anton

PS: This is clearly written by Satan.

“NONPRODUCTIVE” GAY AREA MAN ONE OF WARD’S HARDEST WORKING MEMBERS

Meal provided by “nonproductive” Brother Weaver

Fort Wayne, IN—Gay area ward member Travis Weaver, in spite of never marrying or producing children, happens to be one of the hardest working members of his congregation.

Travis has been very active in the Fort Wayne South ward since returning from his mission to Brazil almost 11 years ago. Since that time Travis has served in the Elders Quorum and Young Men presidencies and also spent 3 years as the early morning seminary teacher. Travis did this while completing his engineering degree at Indiana Institute of Technology and securing a great job in his field.

“Travis has a really demanding job, and he travels quite a bit,” said David Madison, first counselor in the Elders Quorum, “but he is one of our most trustworthy and diligent home teachers.” Madison quickly added that “he does a lot for the ward, and it is just too bad that he can’t find the right woman and have children.”

Madison, like most members of Travis Weaver’s ward, doesn’t know that Travis does not find women sexually attractive. Though Weaver has dated women from time-to-time, he has never felt right, personally, about a mixed-orientation marriage.

“Since really no one knows I’m gay,” explained Weaver, “I have to hear some pretty ugly things from time-to-time.” Weaver noted that in a recent Sunday School class, the topic of “worldly standards and permissiveness” prompted comments like “homosexuality is a sin and affliction because it makes people nonproductive when it comes to what really matters—the family and having children.”  Other class members said things like “from the very beginning God made men and women to be creative and have children.” This comment made Weaver laugh inside, as he reflected on how every scriptural Creation story only includes men as the creators.

Weaver, in part because of comments like those, has never thought it wise to tell ward members about his sexual orientation. Instead he has spent his adult years serving the people of his ward with unmeasured compassion, finding that he is lifting and lifted by those around him. When asked about comments like how gay people are “nonproductive,” Weaver said, “oh, yah, that nice sister who said that, well, I just figure she just doesn’t know better. One thing I do know is this: when she had a baby a few years ago, her family loved the beef Wellington with a green peppercorn sauce that I took over.”  

PROVO REVEALED TO BE HUGE POTEMKIN VILLAGE

This may be little more than pasteboard and scotch tape!

Provo, UT—Tipped off by President Dieter F. Uchtdorf’s Priesthood session talk, officials looking into allegations have confirmed that Provo “is indeed one massive Potemkin village.” Officials said that “from the ‘mighty’ Provo river to the ‘majestic’ Utah lake, it is all one gigantic sham.”

Officials reported that they had heard rumors about Provo’s fundamental artificiality for years. “Sure,” said one unnamed source, “I had heard the first day I came to Utah that unless you are on heavy doses of anti-depressants it is physically impossible to have actual, real fun at Seven Peaks or to even happily shop at the mall, but I had no idea about the scope of the deception.”

In spite of persistent rumors, officials had never followed up on them until Uchtdorf mentioned a town specifically trying to deceive passersby. When those officials took a closer look, they found that the entire city of Provo “was as real and true as the health benefits of vitamins or aromatherapy or promises of making ‘good money’ selling Vivint security systems over the summer.”

Some of the artificiality seemed to be centered on Brigham Young University’s campus. Said one official, “we found that what were called ‘Religious Education’ classes were often little more than watered-down Sunday School lessons with a thin veneer of actual academic rigor.” Other officials noted that “while some seemed to get something like a real education at the school, the entire university seems to be little more than a massive Mormon singles meet-and-greet.” The university’s artificiality is even evident in its architecture. In the words of another official, “first, I don’t know how you call a 12 story building a ‘tower,’ second, that art building looks like a rejected Frank Lloyd Wright sham design for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and finally, that dull, boring, granite business building looks like the empty box that the Salt Lake Temple came in!”

Not all passersby were fooled by Provo’s façade. When asked about the town which many call a “city set on a hill” and a “light to the world,” Salt Lake City resident Preston Nielson said that “yah, Provo is as real as the profits generated by Nu Skin and that Noni company!” Nielson went on to allege that “the entire town seems built on the municipal equivalent of the idea that one’s obedience buys them salvation.” Nielson himself is proud to be from a “real” place and to have graduated from a “real university,” the University of Utah, famous home of Stanley Pons and cold fusion.