*Years ago I read was wandering around Borders Bookstore and picked up a copy of Fawn Brodie's biography of Joseph Smith, No Man Knows My History. It's beautifully written and is actually pretty kind to Smith. Brodie's theory was that Joseph Smith was just fooling around when he came up with the angel and golden plates story but then things got out of hand and he couldn't go back on the lie. Eventually because of his tremendous talents of persuasion and preaching Brodie guesses that Smith came to believe his own hype. Mrs. Brodie talks frankly about Smith's twenty plus, polygamous wives but good taste kept her from going into too much detail. Helen Mar Kimball, was one of the wives and she was just 14. Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner was 12 when Smith first spoke to her about marriage. She was a grown woman and legally married to another man who was out of town on business when Smith finally broke down her resistance and they were sealed. Most women married young in those days but it's the coercion and the callousness of the seductions that is so tragic. Smith doesn't seem to have supported a single wife other than his first one and his god apparently told him to marry either young girls who's fathers hero worshipped him or married women who's husbands would swallow their pride and pay the bills.
*We had a guest priest last week and it was weirdly fascinating. He ad libbed prayers, gave us commentary on the readings, chatted with the altar boys, and declared "Hugs and kisses and handshakes!" for the sign of peace. I didn't get upset. Father is elderly and came of age in the 60s. I'm guessing that nobody who lived through the Church's groovy era came out of it unscathed. I'll be glad when our pastor gets back from vacation.
*Envy is a sin, especially you're pretending to be righteous. I was reading a comment on a Catholic site by a woman who wrote with faux sweetness of the "rich" people in their luxury vehicles who come to her town every weekend. It doesn’t seem to occur to this lady that if those rich folks stop coming, her husband and many of her friends will be out of their jobs since the only industry in her town is tourism. I read another comment on the same blog by a woman who cleans houses for a living. Many of her clients attend the same parish she does. She wrote about their jewelry, their clothes, their children’s activities and their SUVs and then bragged about her own simple poor but happy life. I was tempted to write in and say, “Hey, ma’am. One way for your clients to simplify their lives would be to fire you.”
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