I went to St Antoine, a French Catholic PreK-8 school as a child. This was a time of my life filled with interesting, eye-opening experiences for an Irish Mormon kid. I was glad for the opportunity to learn another language and religion -- I still remember when I was chosen to play Christ in the Easter production and the principal chewed out the rest of our class for a 'Mormon' being chosen over them, all Catholics except for one atheist.
We had music class, but I guess the Southern Ontario diocese (?) didn't have enough money for a real Quebecoise music teacher, because what we got instead was Madame My-Sole-Obsession-In-Life-Is-Celene-Dione. We studied where Celene Dione was born, where she first performed, her discography, with very few mentions of clefs or notes. When we were given our first 'music' test, the first question was 'How many brothers and sisters does Celene Dione have?'
Frustrated, 13-year old me voiced loudly that I would not take this test, as it was silly. Madame asked me if I wanted to see the Principal, and I replied that I did. Surely he would see reason.
I sat in M. LaFontaine's office and explained that I was taking private piano lessons and that I didn't think music lessons about Celene Dione were worth much. After a brief silence, he asked what I would do with my time if I was not in music class. I told him I would rather do more math, my favorite subject. And so, for the rest of the year when all the other kids went to music I sat in our homeroom and did extra math for fun, like a nerd.
They gave me an A in music.
And I realized my leaders aren't always right and they know this.
Don't get me wrong, I care very much about authority. In fact, I'm big on authority, one of the issues in which my Canadian side wins out. In my life I have always had plenty of authority figures and they have generally, but not always, done the job delegated to them. But no, as people with individual faults and problems and strengths and weaknesses, I have no more respect for any of them than I do for my colleagues, each of whom deserves respect and esteem equivalent to their experience and efforts.
Madame Can't-Remember-Her-Name was a poor music teacher, by my estimate. This doesn't mean the school is bad or the structure is bad. It just means that I think she was a poor music teacher. Heck, maybe she turned out to be a good one, I didn't stick around to find out.
It is so well-known at this point that Africans and African-Americans weren't allowed to hold the priesthood in the Mormon (LDS) Church until the late 70s that it seems silly to me when people act like it's a taboo topic, as sensitive as it is for many. On occasion people inside or outside of the Church will ask why it took so long for a Church I believe to be led by God to allow people of a certain race to hold the priesthood, or why it was ever disallowed. My answer is simple and short.
Racism. Racism in the leaders and in the people. Racism that continues today in us all.
I don't mean to equate racism to sexism, as I believe they are fundamentally different issues, but the similarity is enough for this example. The important thing is that ultimately any organization is lead by people, but we do not belong to the organization FOR those people.
When it comes to sexism and social issues, I believe that any leadership is sexist, just like organization's members are sexist, the nation is sexist, and it's not good. It's something we're doing poorly, and it's worth discussing and working on.
But before we start calling out authority, we need to check ourselves.
If the measure of whether a person is 'good' is the amount of their personal time that they devote to selfless, charitable acts, helping others, and self-improvement, while denying themselves the opulence of worldly gains, then you would be hard pressed to find people doing better on that chain than people like the Mormon Quorum of the Twelve, Pope Benedict, the Dhali Llama, and a long list of other virtuous leaders.
If your goal is a simple, progress-driven discussion of social justice, then speak on. But if your plan is to take one aspect of the preposterously complex task of leading groups of people, say someone is doing just as poorly as a large portion of our society in that single task, and use that one perspective to defame them and paint them as foolish, unqualified, or a 'bad' person, then the game has been rigged.
We're warned that some '...make a man an offender for a word, and lay a snare for him that reproveth in the gate, and turn aside the just for a thing of nought.'
The joke goes "Catholic doctrine says that the Pope is infallible but Catholics won't believe it. Mormon doctrine says that the Prophet is fallible but Mormons won't believe it."
In some measure I am sexist, racist, bigoted, and all other negative attributes.
The leadership of the Church is much less of all of these things than I am, but are still human and so will have them all to their own extent.
And ultimately, I'm not looking for leaders who don't have these things. My faith doesn't rest in my leaders, it rests in Christ. My leaders are other people whose faith rests in the same place, and I'm confident that with that in mind, we'll get where we're going together.
That is, so long as we all don't rip each other apart on the way.
