25 years ago today - 25 years ago - Feb 16, 1991

Arizona Republic' publishes an analysis of decades of talks by Seventy's president Paul H. Dunn who has misrepresented his military and baseball careers in order to tell "faith-promoting" stories to LDS youth and young adults. This is based on the research of investigative reporter Lynn Packer, whose teaching employment is terminated at BYU after the story's publication. In an interview Dunn defends himself by saying that parables of Jesus are not literally true either. On 23 Oct. Dunn writes an "Open Letter to the Members of the Church," confessing his "inaccurate" sermons and "other activities inconsistent with the high and sacred office which I have held." He acknowledges that general authorities "have censured me and placed a heavy penalty upon me." In addition to receiving emeritus status in 1989, five years before its normal implementation at age seventy, the unnamed "heavy penalty" allegedly now includes Dunn's loss of LDS privileges. Without formal disfellowshipment this would be similar to the 1911 decision concerning Matthias F. Cowley, who also had been previously released as a general authority before his added punishment.

[Source: The Mormon Hierarchy - Extensions of Power by D. Michael Quinn, [New Mormon History database (http://bit.ly/NMHdatabase)]]

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