Gregory A. Prince > Quotes

“And so, he gently chided Apostle John A. Widtsoe, whose wife advocated such a rigid interpretation of the Word of Wisdom as to proscribe chocolate because of the stimulants it contained, saying, “John, do you want to take all the joy out of life?”85 But he didn’t stop there. At a reception McKay attended, the hostess served rum cake. “All the guests hesitated, watching to see what McKay would do. He smacked his lips and began to eat.” When one guest expostulated, “‘But President McKay, don’t you know that is rum cake?’ McKay smiled and reminded the guest that the Word of Wisdom forbade drinking alcohol, not eating”
― Gregory A. Prince, David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism

“In late 1905 a crisis occurred within the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles that soon impacted the remainder of McKay’s life. Two members of the quorum, Matthias F. Cowley and John W. Taylor, were obliged to resign because of their refusal to disavow the further practice of plural marriage. By the time of the April general conference of 1906, Apostle Marriner W. Merrill had died, resulting in three vacancies within the quorum. James E. Talmage, who later was sustained to the same quorum, wrote, “These were filled on nomination and vote by the following: Orson F. Whitney, George F. Richards (a son of the late Apostle Franklin D. Richards) and David O. McKay (a former student of mine). They are good men, and I verily believe selected by inspiration.”
― Gregory A. Prince, David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism

“Paul H. Dunn, of the First Council of Seventy, spoke of McKay’s attitude toward those who were outside the mainstream—not in action, but in thought. After spending a decade as a teacher in the Institutes of Religion, Dunn was called by McKay to be a General Authority at the unusually young age of thirty-nine:
Here I am a young buck coming into the system, and the circulation is, “Let’s excommunicate the Sterling McMurrins of the Church, and weed out the liberals.” That got thrown around a lot. Even poor Lowell Bennion got thrown into some of that. If it hadn’t been for President McKay, we’d have had a fiasco on Lowell Bennion. There’s one of the sweetest, great Christians of the world. I would be totally surprised if all of heaven isn’t a Lowell Bennion philosophy. There isn’t a kinder, more gentle Christian in the world. And yet there were those in the system who tried to weed him out, because he kept the President McKay kind of vision open…. The George Boyds and the Lowell Bennions kept people in the Church whom nobody else could have. Philosophically, they could go with you on the trip through your frustration in thinking, and bring you back. Not many people could do that. I worked with George for many years down at the University of Southern California. I watched him save kids that nobody else could. And yet there was that element in the Church that tried to get him bumped, because he didn’t teach what they taught. I’ve found in the Church, and this is what gave me great comfort with President McKay, that there is room for all of them, not just a few, not just those here or there, but the whole spectrum. President McKay would say, and two or three times I heard him say privately, and once or twice publicly in meetings where I sat, that “if you would have to take action on that kind of a person thinking that way, you’d better take action on me, too”
― Gregory A. Prince

“Hugh B. Brown, his counselor in the First Presidency, once told McKay of an incident that occurred when he was a young counselor in a bishopric, and a young woman in the congregation confessed to an indiscretion: The Bishop asked her to go in the other room while we talked it over, and when she left he said: “Brethren, what do you think we ought to do?” The first counselor said, “I move we cut her off the Church.” I said, “I second the motion.” The kind old Bishop said, “Brethren, there is one thing for which I am profoundly grateful and that is God is an old man. I am not going to cut her off the church.”… That young woman became the Stake President of the Relief Society up in Canada later on, to our chagrin, for if we had had our way, she would have been cast out of the Church. When I told that to President McKay, he said, “Brother Brown, let that lesson guide your judgment day by day. Remember that God our Father does not judge us until the end, and He gives us a chance to repent and come back.”
― Gregory A. Prince

“special committee of the Twelve appointed by President McKay in 1954 to study the issue concluded that there was no sound scriptural basis for the policy but that the church membership was not prepared for its reversal…. Personally, I knew something about the apostolic study because I heard Adam S. Bennion, who was a member of the committee, refer to the work in an informal talk he made to the Mormon Seminar in Salt Lake City on May 13, 1954. McKay, Bennion said, had pled with the Lord without result and finally concluded the time was not yet ripe.”
― Gregory A. Prince, David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism

“Almost six years after Moroni’s visit, angelic beings bestowed authority on Smith and his assistant Oliver Cowdery by the laying on of hands.”
― Gregory A. Prince, Power from on High: The Development of Mormon Priesthood

“By today’s standards, David O. McKay’s views on civil rights are jolting; yet in the context of his own time and place, his views were mainstream. He definitely was not “progressive” on the issue, even if measured by the low standards that would have earned such a label during his lifetime. On the one hand, he never advocated legislation or behavior that would worsen the status of blacks within the United States; indeed, his apparent desire was to preserve the legal status quo. Yet he also never advocated legal remedies to segregation and discrimination. He was, at best, a very conservative moderate. He”
― Gregory A. Prince, David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism

“if a man were an avowed communist, would our position be to excommunicate him or disqualify him for any position in the Church,”
― Gregory A. Prince, David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism

“McKay made no secret of his passion for free agency, speaking frequently on the subject in public settings.”
― Gregory A. Prince, David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism

“LaMar S. Williams, an employee in the Missionary Department, who began to send pamphlets and overruns of the church magazines each month, sometimes several hundred pounds per shipment.94 A short time later, in 1960, church leaders requested that Glen G. Fisher, who had just been released as president of the South African Mission, visit Nigeria on his way home”
― Gregory A. Prince, David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism

“Within weeks of Smith’s obtaining the plates in September 1827, neighbor Martin Harris “became convinced of the visions and gave [Smith] fifty Dollars to bare my expences and because of his faith and the righteous deed the Lord appeared unto him in a vision and showed unto him his marvilous work which he was about to do.”
― Gregory A. Prince, Power from on High: The Development of Mormon Priesthood