Re. Albert Carrington (former apostle; excommunicated for adultery):
Sexual sin,
while always serious, was not typically coupled with the unpardonable sin. In
fact, no one has ever been tired by an LDS ecclesiastical court for committing the
unpardonable sin. But JFS argued that Carrington’s “heinous crimes” coupled
with the high leadership posts that he had held met the bar for being cast into
“outer darkness,” the place prepared for the sons of perdition. In what was
becoming something of a trademark, JDS moved with alacrity between theological innovation
to ecclesiastical bureaucracy when he observed when he observed that the
question should not even have come up because it was not the business of the
Quorum of the Twelve to approve rebaptism: that was a cask for Carrington’s
local bishop.
JFS’s
charge against Carrington met with near-unanimous objections from the other
apostles. Even those who did not want to see Carrington rebaptized could not
accept JFS’s unusual reading of scripture. JFS replied that if this was not a
case of the unpardonable sin, he had no idea what would be. However, his
personal animus toward Carrington, something which he had always denied but clearly
held since the 1870s, probably fueled some of the vitriol he expressed. A more
important factor was JFS’s deep abhorrence of sexual misconduct. (Stephen C. Taysom,
Like a Fiery Meteor: The Life of Joseph F. Smith [Salt Lake City: The University
of Utah Press, 2023], 219)
On the question of determining seniority in the Quorum of the
Twelve Apostles:
At the time
[October 1868], church leaders had yet to completely resolve some of the problems
of seniority I the Quorum that had troubled them for years. The main unresolved
matter in 1868 was whether one’s seniority should be determine by the date of ordination
as an apostle or by the date of entry into the Quorum. By the former measure,
Brigham Young Jr. was JFS’s senior, but by the latter, JFS came out on top.
Eventually, the group decided that seniority would be calculated by date of
entry to the Quorum. Had the decision gone the other way, JFS may never have
become church president. (Stephen C. Taysom, Like a Fiery Meteor: The Life of
Joseph F. Smith [Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2023], 387
n. 11)
By this
point [1898], the precedent that the most senior of the apostles would become
church president was firmly set. There remained, however, disagreements about
how to determine seniority. Over the years, three different ways of measuring
seniority had held sway: age, time in the Quorum of the Twelve, and time as an
apostle. The first of these had been rejected decades before Snow took office,
but the other two remained in play. This was no trivial matter in 1898 because
Snow and Cannon, the two most senior apostles by all measures, were quite old.
After them came JFS and Brigham Young Jr. Young had been ordained an apostle earlier
than JFS, but he was not admitted into the quorum until after JFS. Everyone
knew that, in all likelihood, resolving the problem of seniority would need to
be addressed definitively in the near future. Snow made his position clear in a
private meeting with JDS and Cannon in late March 1900. JFS recorded in his
journal that Snow “favored and practically decided that Brigham ranked next to
me in the council of Apostles.” (JFS Journal, 31 March 1900)
Snow presented
the issue at a meeting of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve
just before the April 1900 general conference. Despite having already made up
his mind, he asked for input from each man present, and according to the
minutes of the meeting “all were agreed that the seniority should be based on
the time the brethren were admitted to the quorum and not from the date of ordination.”
(“Meeting of the First Presidency and the Twelve,” 5 April 1900, Historian’s
Office Journal History of the Church, vol. 374) JFS was circumspect in his
response, noting simply that “this important ruling settles a long unsettled
point, and is most timely.” (JFS Journal, 5 April 1900) Young, however, well he
hid it during the meeting, was crushed. In his personal journal, Young recorded
that his father had told him in no uncertain terms that seniority in the quorum
was to be based on date of ordination, that “my name had been given to him [to
be ordained an apostle] by revelation,” and that his “place in the quorum
[would be determined] by that ordination.” (Brigham Young Jr. Journal, 2 July
1899) This decision would prove life-changing for both men. (Ibid., 277-78)
Joseph F. Smith’s approach to vaccines in the early 1900s:
In early
1901, shortly after his seventy-fourth birthday, [George Q.] Cannon visited his
beloved Hawaiian Islands for what would be the last time. Although apparently healthy
during the trip, soon after returning home he started showing signs of failing
health. In mid-February, he stopped attending meetings of the First Presidency.
That month, one of his wives wrote to her son that, despite her best efforts,
she could no longer “hide from her heart” Cannon’s weakness. March brought a
case of influenza. In a move reminiscent of Wilford Woodruff’s last months,
Cannon decided to travel to California in the hope of rallying his spirits and
his health. Only a few weeks after he arrived there, Cannon went into a rapid
decline. JFS wrote to JFS Jr. describing Cannon as “very ill,” but that he
expressed hope that the “faith and prayers of the people [that] ascend daily in
his behalf” would save him. Perhaps because of Cannon’s recent battle with
influenza, JFS anxiously advised both JFS Jr. and Buddy to “be vaccinated . . .
in the most approved way.” He told them that such a vaccination “saved me from
the disease when I was in England.” (JFS to Joseph F. Smith Jr., 2 April, 1901)
JFS’
progressive stance on vaccination is somewhat curious given his aversion not doctors
and the hotly contested nature of vaccines in the early twentieth century. Many
members of the Quorum of the Twelve not only opposed vaccination, but saw it in
an evil conspiracy. Brigham Young Jr. believed that “Gentile doctors [are]
trying to force Babylon into the people and some of them are willing to disease
the blood of our children.” Besides, he confided in his journal, this was a
matter of faith since “God alone can avert the contagious diseases and calamities
. . . and we must make him our friend and protector.” (Brigham Young Jr.
Journal, 6-7 February 1901) Ordinarily, JFS would have been sympathetic to that
kind of thinking, but his personal experience in England had been sufficiently
powerful to move his thinking forward. (Stephen C. Taysom, Like a Fiery
Meteor: The Life of Joseph F. Smith [Salt Lake City: The University of Utah
Press, 2023], 282)
