Paella, Polar Bears, and People Who Protect Predators

While visiting a Spanish mission once with some others, I met a Mission President who invited us for dinner. I had questions about the Church at this time, but I assumed they would work themselves out. I was still a thorough believer, although this visit didn’t help much.

The Mission President was wealthy. He had been a successful lawyer before being called¹ as President, so over the course of the dinner, stories of his “past life” in law began to emerge:

“I used to represent the firm that was excavating for oil up North,” he said. “It was a protected habitat for polar bears, so there was a lot of red tape to cut through. One day, my daughter learned about polar bears at school and how they are endangered. She figured out that the firm I was representing was taking away habitat and asked if I was helping them. I said I was and she was offended! ‘Daddy, you have to protect the polar bears!’ but I told her ‘Honey, I’m just doing my job. The polar bears didn’t hire me to represent them!’

Someone laughed. Maybe it was the Mission President, I don’t remember. I had been listening politely, not planning on saying much because I was not the guest of honor. But, at this reveal, I piped up.

“You mean,” I fumbled, “You mean you were or are…okay… with making the polar bears go extinct?”

The Mission President didn’t miss a beat, “Oh no no no, of course not.” He chuckled indulgently. Then, pacing his words slowly so that I could keep up, he said, “Of course, I don’t want them to go extinct! But like I said to my daughter–I had a job and I had to do my job and that job was to represent the company that hired me. It wasn’t up to me.”

I had at least seven follow-up questions. Maybe he saw me taking a breath because he abruptly turned and called to one of his Assistants. The Assistants (or APs) had been waiting on our table like servers at a restaurant. One of them was at his elbow in a moment. What time was it? the Mission President asked. Was the dessert ready in the kitchen? Why don’t they bring it out–we would need to finish eating soon since we had other plans for the evening.

Later that night, we walked through the city with him. He showed us an old cathedral with a large water basin in the basement. He dropped his voice. They don’t know what it was for, he said, but obviously, this was where earlier Christians had been doing Mormon-style baptisms for the dead. Didn’t we agree? The cathedral was crowded so we moved on. He showed us a full-size nativity installment in the city, much like the one from his apartment. Then, we walked along cobbled streets under the twinkle of holiday lights and the stars. The Mission President walked with my parents, but he dropped back to include the rest of us occasionally. He was a gracious host and it was a (mostly) lovely evening.

Despite his hospitality, I couldn’t stop thinking about the polar bears. The conversation had exposed the mechanics of logic so distorted that I could not stop replaying it in my head. How could someone so nice, so generous, and so seemingly ethical perpetuate such great harm in the background? What was he thinking? Did this actually make sense? Was I exaggerating something? I kept combing through his words, his gestures, his explanation, trying to understand.

Up until this conversation, I had assumed everyone was “doing their best with what they had.” It’s a squishy concept, sure. But I wanted to give people the benefit of the doubt, even though my shelf had broken. It helped me to think that everyone was trying to be honest and loving. I was optimistic that my Church Leaders were committed to doing the right thing. But I had a major blind spot: I was assuming others behaved that way because I was behaving that way. I had no comprehension of the duplicity that was being used to justify violence, callousness, and overt abuse by the people around me or maybe it would more accurate to say: the men above me.

In the subsequent two years, I deconstructed LDS doctrine. But I kept struggling with this question. Why would they lie? Why would they do this to people? Were Prophets just evil? How did this happen?

During my deconstruction, my vision slowly cleared. I saw the evidence on how the Church lied about history, smudged over evidence, protected child abusers, and justified systemic sexual predation. It wasn’t just an abstract distant historical thing, either–it was current, on video, in print, in Church meetings, in manuals, in Church magazines. I wasn’t seeing past patterns, I was seeing current ones. I was seeing clear, concentrated, intentional dishonesty.

For honest people, understanding fraudsters is challenging. But for me, after 30 years of heavy indoctrination training me to “doubt me doubts,” sit down, trust men whenever possible, and to trust Church Leaders above anyone or anything else, this was especially hard.

Following one of my anguished merry-go-rounds on this topic though, a friend reflected:

“Yeah, it’s painful. But at some point, you just have to believe people when they show you who they are.”

There are a lot of debatable points of doctrine and history in Mormonism. But there are a good number of undebatable facts too: Church Leaders lie. They legalize. They play dumb. They walk away from the conversation. They change the meanings of words to excuse themselves. They hide behind armies of lawyers. They use intermediaries to obscure their own responsibility. They pay hush money. They don’t apologize. They shame the victims. They give the perpetrators more access to victims. They protect money and power. They allow children to be casualties to preserving authority. They would rather preserve the reputation of a Church Leader than comfort a victim. They defend an institution built on sexual abuse. They expect you to bow your head to this system and say yes.

They have been doing all of this for 2 centuries.

This isn’t speculation. It’s not exaggeration. It’s not a mean Anti-Mormon claim.

It’s a fact.

Whether or not that Mission President in Spain admitted it to himself, he was eradicating polar bears. He protected and worked for the weapon of their demise. He was a willing tool in allowing extinction to happen.

Whether or not he identified as a polar bear assassin is irrelevant. His career was built on and paid for the destruction of their home–which is the same as saying that his career is built on their destruction. Maybe it wasn’t his idea to drill there but it may as well have been because he guarded the abuse instead of stopping it.

I don’t know all the details about the thousands of abuse cases that show up daily and weekly about Bishops, Stake Presidents, Mission Presidents, Scout Leaders, Young Men’s Leaders, and others from the LDS Church. I get sick to my stomach even reading the headlines. Since only about quarter of sexual abuse cases ever get reported and addressed in court, the means that mountain of abuse that we are not seeing is… immense.

But I do know this: when church members look away from those numbers, when they close their ears to the victims, when they choose to stay silent–they are complicit in the predation.

When church spokespeople or apologists or the Church’s lawyers or anyone justifies Church leaders regarding their catastrophically poor safeguarding of children, teenagers, women, and other vulnerable groups, it means just one thing:

They are part of the abuse.

They are harming the vulnerable.

They are guarding the wrong door.

It’s not just Mormons. This is true for any of the other “Christian churches” and corporations that sit on the bench beside the Mormons. (Looking at you, ultra-right Conservatives, Catholics and Baptists.)

What breaks my heart the most about all this is that I really don’t believe that Mission President in Spain was a “bad person.” He was not a monochrome monster cackling over sordid plans in a secret lab about how to cause suffering. He was just desperate to save face, desperate to be seen as the benevolent patriarchal father, desperate to feel good and smart and right. Because of that, he wasn’t willing to face the reality of his own actions. He showed that he was willing to sell anything in this world for money–even the existence of a whole species. Thus, polar bears, his daughter, northern Canada, and all of us in the great ecosystem of Earth were acceptable casualties.

This President’s apartment (just like every Mission President’s apartment that I have seen) was in the middle of the city. It was ranted by the Church, of course, and it was a flex. The layout sprawled over a huge connected living-dining area. Bay windows overlooked the Barcelona streets below. There was a full piano, 2-3 sitting areas, and a dining table for 20 or more people. And there was plenty of room leftover. A large chandelier hung over the dining table and there were pedestals with pottery. Sculptures posed on the side tables and original art mixed in with typical Church-fare adorned the walls. There was a huge kitchen too and they enjoyed hosting, they said. They would never host the members or poor people that lived in the city, of course. But Church Leaders from Salt Lake City liked to visit them and they had even hosted Apostles. Sometimes, they also invited all of the mission’s 80 missionaries over to their house for a special fireside.

Before the dinner and before the conversation about polar bears, he let us wander these huge living quarters. His wife helped my daughters open the piano while he dropped in to tell us about the art. I held my baby son on my shoulder and hovered over an elaborate miniature nativity. The figures had been carved and painted with precision and it was all nestled in a mossy fairy-garden-type set. The President saw me looking and came over. That set was unique, he said, one-of-a-kind. It was done by hand in the local style for nativities with a top-quality materials. It cost more than a thousand dollars, he said, and it had been so large that they had needed to buy a special table for display. I reacted appropriately with awe and admiration. Then he looked at me and transitioned to talking about his daughter. I was the same age as his daughter, he said, so I reminded him of her. His eyebrows knitted together, she had been “so good.”

“Where is she now?” I asked.

He sighed. Sadly, she had “gone crazy” a few years ago. She had decided she had been abused, her mind had been poisoned by liberals. She had become a “rabid feminist.” He mentioned bi-polar disorder.

What choice did he have? He had committed her to an asylum.

At that point, he looked away from me. He called to his wife across the room, motioned toward the table and turned his back on the fancy nativity. He walked briskly to the center of the well-laid spread. He waited with an outstretched arm as his wife obediently came to stand by his side. Then he motioned with great pride at the table, pointing out the delicacies he had chosen to delight us. We responded with surprise and thanks. We were gracious guests.

Then, with the consummate ease of someone who is far, far away from being named extinct or insane, he folded his arms, bowed his head, and asked God’s blessings to be poured upon our food.

Photo Credit with thanks to Annie Spratt and Unsplash.