Sorry, cadolphin. I forgot to inlude this part of your posting
in my comment about it being spot-on.
Nichol_storm’s Mississippi based family + Utah LDS church ceremony= Extreme Culture Clash! (Do the math) 
There is no way that the members of a large, extended southern family can be excluded from what they consider to be the most important part of a wedding without feeling like they have been slapped in the face. Trust me, no amount of explaining is going to change this. They may attend, and be pleasant, but there will be underlying hard feelings.
Then add Nichol’s aunt’s unpleasant experience with the LDS church and you have an unfortunate mix indeed. The important thing here is that whether or not the LDS church actually can or would do the things that caused the aunt to fear the church, she believes that such things were done and that threats to take her children were made. I doubt if any amount of reasoning or information will make the aunt see the LDS in a favorable light.
FWIW, I’d send the happy couple a card with some money in it and go fishin’ in the M’sipi River. But that’s just me.
You know, John Carter; I don’t think anybody, not even the aunt referred to in the OP, believes the Church threatened to take her children away. You’re also overlooking a bit of info there: at least one person concerned is not now LDS, but used to be–the aunt referred to in the OP.
And if there are underlying hard feelings because people don’t agree with the way two people express their eternal love for each other, then those people who have those feelings need to grow up.
**emarkp **:
Maybe Nichol_storm’s aunt came out in favor of the ERA?
I must say that while I’m at least as far from being a devout Mormon as Lucifer is, I think their notion that marriage should be for the folks getting married, and not for the hordes of relatives and whatnot, is a very good one. (I’d go them one better and leave the bloody church out of it too).
And maybe AHunter just pulled that comment out of his tush because that’s not at all what anyone asserted in the thread so far.
That wasn’t my intent. I was trying to suggest that the Eucharist issue is, at its heart, an argument about doctrine.
This wedding issue isn’t, IMO, as much about doctrine as it is about family dynamics, and how the OP’s cousin is perceived to be snubbing his mother and the out-of-town family, even though that’s almost certainly not his intent in the least. (That’s the unintended tacit message I referred to in my first post.)
In fact, in reviewing the OP, I believe that the wedding at the heart is almost incidental; cousin Tony could be eloping to Hawaii but coming back to Utah and throwing a party to celebrate the wedding, if his mother couldn’t be at the wedding because of geography instead of church rules, she would’ve called Nichol and telegraphed the same sorts of feelings – anger, sadness, rejection, resentment – that prompted this OP.
It would be hard for someone who clearly sympathizes with her reputedly-wronged aunt to have any other response.
All sarcasm equally aside, it’s silly to make an assertion here, then apparently regard it as bad manners for another poster to register his pro forma disagreement with that assertion.
There are two possibilities: either you raised the assertion intending to debate it, in which case this thread probably wasn’t the most appropriate place, and maybe you should start a GD thread, or you made your assertion pro forma, in which case you should not have been offended with a pro forma voicing of disagreement.
At any rate, my voicing of disagreement was pro forma. I don’t feel like debating it today, tomorrow, or next week. But if you say “X is true,” someone just might say, “No, I believe X is false.” And they may do it without intending to get all worked up about it.
[/soapbox]
Cool, RTF. Interesting tag at the end.
Monty:
By Nichol_storm: “The church leaders had her convinced that they would take her other children away from her because of her out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Fortunately, her lawyer explained to her that the church had no authority to take her children, but those church leaders had * terrified my aunt into a hysterical panic with their threats.”*
It appears that the aunt believed it for some period of time at least.
By Monty: “You’re also overlooking a bit of info there: at least one person concerned is not now LDS, but used to be–the aunt referred to in the OP.”
I’m not necessarily overlooking that fact. I don’t see its relevance to what I posted, though.
By Monty “And if there are underlying hard feelings because people don’t agree with the way two people express their eternal love for each other, then those people who have those feelings need to grow up.”
Yes, but: The two people involved could have the tact and diplomacy to not invite other people to a religous rite that those others will be prohibited from attending. They should know that there will be hurt feelings over this.
Well, John, they didn’t invite anyone to the religious rite who can’t attend. They invited them to the other stuff.
Also, I’m just calling “BS” on the aunt’s story.
p.s. RTF: you’re the one who brought it up. But perhaps you didn’t realize you did.
It sounds to me that it wasn’t the Church threatening ot take the kids away, it was a couple of busy-bodies, possibly from the Relief Society, gossiping and dropping hints. It happens.
You know what else happens, pepperlandgirl? People making up stories to make themselves look like they’re the wronged parties. So far everything about the excommunication is coming to the OP from one source.
If you say so. And that part of the family that can’t attend the wedding isn’t supposed to feel excluded by such a limited invitation?
By Monty: “Also, I’m just calling “BS” on the aunt’s story.”
Maybe so, maybe not. I’ve personally seen religious terrorism, delivered as described by pepperlandgirl, exhibited by the good members of the Catholic and Southern Baptist churches. There’s no reason for me to think the LDS is any better in that respect.
Monty, you’ve already pointed out the secrecy with which the LDS church conducts excommunication procedures; of course the story is only coming from one source, it’s the only source who is allowed to say ANYTHING.
You sound like you know a lot about this whole individual situation for someone who wasn’t there. How do you know the people responsible didn’t behave unfairly? It happens in all faiths, you know. No person or institution is perfect all the time, not even yours.
Right. In the United States, members of a large church go around telling people that the church can take their children away. Gotcha, John Carter.
There is a reason for you to think otherwise. To quote emarkp:
How many times do you have to read, hear, or otherwise have it brought to your attention? The marriage is between the bride and the groom. Period. The folks crying about not being allowed into the temple for that are the ones being selfish. How many times do you have to read, hear, or otherwise have it brought to your attention? There is not that much room in the sealing room. How many times do you have to read, hear, or otherwise have it brought to your attention? The LDS sealing ceremony is something extremely sacred to the LDS and it is conducted on what the LDS consider to be extremely sacred ground. How many times do you have to read, hear, or otherwise have it brought to your attention? The bride and the groom have seen fit to advise the people they care about of their decision to have a marriage sealed in the LDS temple and, as the temple is extremely sacred ground to them, they’ve going to invite those who have manifested in their lives the dictates of their faith and up to the number of people that can fit into the room. How many times do you have to read, hear, or otherwise have it brought to your attention? There is no filming of the event in the temple because the temple itself and what goes on inside it are extremely sacred to the LDS. How many times do you have to read, hear, or otherwise have it brought to your attention? The temples are not for the general public.
And thus that source apparently felt free to spout malarkey. As emarkp mentioned above, that story doesn’t pass a sanity check. As Diane mentioned:
I know about what my church says is its doctrine and what it says is the way those who stray are encouraged and, if needed, disciplined, to include disfellowshipping and excommunication, and also rebaptism for those who’ve been excommunicated and mended their ways.
Because excommunication is an extreme punishment and as such it is reviewed by the next levels of the church heirarchy. Nobody gets excommunicated from our church for what someone else did. It is a very big, very big indeed, tenet of our faith that people are responsible only for their own transgressions.
No kidding, sherlock. But malarkey is malarkey. And the story about the excommunication as it’s been related here is malarkey. It doesn’t pass the “trivial sanity check.”
All I’m saying Monty is if the OP’s aunt felt threatened in anyway, it was probably because of busy bodies blowing things out of proportion, not because of any official action by the Church, the Stake presidency, or the Bishopric. I mean, I don’t know if you grew up in the Church, but I did, and I know how these things go–a bit of gossip here or there, some politics behind the scenes, some old ladies who have nothing to do but watch their stories, and somebody with a vicious streak, would be enough to cast a pall on the Church.
Forgot to ask when I first read it, and now I can’t find the post to quote.
Anyway, someone posted that the bride & groom could have a civil marriage of some sort, and then the sealing afterwards, but they would have to wait for a year between the two.
I’m curious as to why that is so? Does having a civil marriage make the couple seem ‘tentative’, and so they have a mandatory waiting period to be sure they are serious?
pepperlandgirl: That’s not the way Nichols presented it. (S)he clearly said “the church leaders.” That’s not some busybody gossips.
StarvingButStrong: This is just IMHO; however, my feeling is that the church requires such a thing so as to not reward a rushing into marriage. To get the temple recommend, there is an interview which is kind of exacting (some of its questions mentioned earlier in the thread) and an evaluation of how long you’ve been living the Gospel as the LDS church teaches it. In other words: I think you’ve hit the nail on the head.