An editorial memorializes the Priesthood change

This editorial was written in the Lethbridge Herald, a Canadian newspaper in Southern Alberta.  It is generally been at times both hostile and welcoming to the church for various reasons.  However, on June 17 the second editorial that day was I think an excellent response from a Newspaper which was not owned, published or written by members of the church.  Rather it was an observer that expressed an appreciation for what the Church did without going beyond that appreciation.

Here it is unedited.  As my memorial for this blessed day.

Change for the LDS

Lethbridge Herald
June 17, 1978
Page 4

The opening of the Mormon priesthood to men with black skins is momentous both for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and for the “gentiles” outside it.

Anything that tends to lessen the friction between people of different skin color is to be welcomed.

Racial antagonism is a major problem in the world today. It is in danger of engulfing a large part of Africa in a terrible bloodbath and is causing strife in societies as traditionally given to tolerance as Britain.

However much the Mormons may have disclaimed any feelings of antipathy toward blacks and however earnestly they may have undertaken to explain the basis of the exclusion of blacks from the priesthood, it was inevitable that blacks would feel a sense of rejection. Even those who hadn’t the slightest interest in the church were rankled by the existence of an ordinance that was discriminatory.

The scoffers — those “cultured despisers” of religion who are ever ready to find flaws in religious systems — can charge that the new development in the LDS church js the result of a “revelation of convenience.” They will say that it was necessary for the success of the church’s mission at home and abroad to remove the restrictions on black participation in the priesthood.

Whether the change will now open the door to mission work in Nigeria or make it easier to win converts in America is not the important thing. What is important is that a right understanding has been received or reached, an understanding increasingly shared in both religious and secular circles.

Without the appreciation of oneness and its demonstration in practice there can only be discord, even disaster.

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I think that says it all.