Incest allegations shatter image of church-going clan

[Louisiana1976]

Last June, 76-year-old Burrell E. Mohler Sr. seemed a perfectly reasonable choice to give the Father's Day sermon at his tiny Bates City Community of Christ Church.

After all, he was a family man. Proud of his four sons. Loved all those grandchildren.

A churchgoer who was present that day believes Mohler’s message followed the lectionary Scripture suggested by the mother church: the Gospel of Mark 4:35, the story of Jesus quieting the storm at sea.

Fortunate, perhaps, that he did not speak on Mark 10:14: “Suffer the little children to come unto me.”

Because months later, Mohler’s reputation as the strict but good patriarch would come crashing down.

snip

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/100/story/79363.html?storylink=omni_popular

[marshall]

1. I think the headline should focus on the pedophilia

The way it reads, it sounds like it's all sex between consenting adults who happen to be relatives. In my opinion that isn't as bad as what they describe here, which is primarily pedophilia.

[nc4bo]

2. Ugh.

I need to read this story again. First time was just a quick read/scan but now I have to read it again because it is just so unbelievably sick and twisted, especially if proven true and just as awful if it's not.

No words.

[patrice]

3. The mother of some of these children knew about it and went to her church instead of the law.

This is an example of the power of churches. The fact that a MOTHER would subvert her own instincts as a mother calls into question all of the other matters of conscience that churches are subverting.

Is it ANY wonder that Americans HATE one another and this country is going to HELL in a hand-basket?

[nc4bo]

4. Is it any wonder why there are so many sick and twisted people walking around

spreading their unchecked sickness and contaminating innocence.

All they do is create even more cycles of abuse.

[patrice]

6. There are a few individual exceptions, but on an average churches DO appear to be more about

Division
Judgement of others
Self aggrandizment
Pleasure
Social, Business, and Political networking
Material and other forms of Idolatry
EAGER Willingness to engage in Violence for what one believes
. . .

I really do think they are causing harm and the only reason I think we should ignore them (for the time being) is that we really do need to turn our lights on Big Business/TransNat Co, Wall Street, and the Banksters who have destroyed this country's economy - WITH the Blessings of the Churches.

[jberryhill]

12. Humans In Groups /nt

[Echo In Light]

14. "I'm glad to see more people finding god and leaving the church."

[mitchum]

18. "Jesus Christ and Lenny Bruce...

two no bullshit smart mouth Jews"
A wonderful rockandroll couplet written by Mrs mitchum years ago

[patrice]

19. To the extent that church is REAL community, I am joining it, one without walls.

I believe in true community, what I don't believe in is making money from it. What I don't believe in is Organized Religion.

[roguevalley]

20. you and me both, patrice. its sad, sad, sad.

EDIT: They are re-organized church of LDS. They are polygamous that sect and intensely patriarchal. No wonder the women can't think straight. Community of Christ is what they call their church. It is still that break off branch of the LDS.

[Hannah Bell]

9. is it any wonder when people believe every story that comes down the pike without proof?

[patrice]

10. The U.S. needs citizens who can critically evaluate information.

There's proof and then there's proof. We need there to be a general ongoing discourse, just like there is about American Idol and such, about what proof is and how facts either support or don't support conclusions. That SHOULD be as socially acceptable as talking about the weather.

[951-Riverside]

21. Visit your local nudist camp theres plenty of those sickos walking around n/t

[proud2BlibKansan]

8. And why isn't she being charged with crimes?

[proteus_lives]

23. So large fonts help you make your point?

[wicket]

5. Those poor kids

My heart breaks for them all.

And wish I didn't know so much about this subject. :cry:

[TwilightGardener]

7. You gotta love friends and acquaintances who insist that the allegations

against the men are false--because they're churchgoing, hold jobs, and even helped a family clean out their garage. Low collective intelligence among the defenders. The only guy who seems on the ball in this whole sick story is the unrelated father who alerted authorities and was awarded custody of his son.

[grace0418]

11. And notice how one of the women defending the Mohlers mentioned that

Mohler "once came to her house to pray for her after she accidentally super-glued shut an eye." Yeah, she sounds like a really bright individual.

[TwilightGardener]

13. Yeah--I had to LOL at that. One, supergluing your own eye shut...

Two, wanting to be prayed over, because you superglued your own eye shut.

[Generic Other]

15. The poor girls burying their notes in jars

What a terrible testament to the unspeakable shame, the awful emotional abuse they endured at the hands of adults they should have been able to trust all preserved in notes in Mason jars. The image of the poor kids doing this after suffering abuse at the hands of their own male family members is hard to erase from my mind. It sounds like even the mothers were ineffectual in stopping the abuse. Horrible. The women should have grabbed their kids and run the moment they got wind of the situation! The perpetrators deserve no less than life behind bars.

Hard to believe that CPS at the very least wasn't more involved. One wonders about school teachers also. The poor kids obviously had no adults in their lives they trusted enough to talk to.

What an awful story. Certainly a reminder that preaching about morality and living a moral life are two vastly different things.

[patrice]

16. That image struck me deeply too. And at the risk of appearing as an advocate of mumbo-jumbo,

I have been wondering about a poetic calculus that is, in some otherwise un-identifiable way, essentially female and that manifested itself in those girls burying their jars in the earth.

There is a convention for something called "poetic justice", but I am speculating about something less arbitrary here, something more of an instinctual "clock-work", that took this particular form that calls so very very clearly to women everywhere.

[mitchum]

17. Oh, I thought this was going to be about the Palin and Heath families

[Quantess]

22. Interesting to see whether any dead bodies are recovered.

If, as the girls say, murders took place.

[cowcommander]

24. Religious hypocrisy and extreme deviant behavior

What a cocktail.