Mormons I’ve encountered appeared to be as moral or more moral than the average person. And one doesn’t have to subscribe to their beliefs to come to that conclusion,
(If you were auditioning for godhood, you'd be on your best behavior, too!)
Farmington is one of those gritty backwaters where local recreation is limited. There are three major local diversions. You can drink, you can play softball and you can screw. The city has declared war on drinking, no one plays softball much anymore and that just leaves one thing left.
It’s a Salvador Dali world where nothing seems to be in the right proportion. The improbable Shiprock rises just thirty-something miles to the west. You can buy a Navajo girl for a six pack. Time is an alien concept. It’s a wild land unfettered by more calming influences. This is a land where you can create your own reality. You can do whatever you want to whenever and wherever you want to and you can always find someone to do it with you.
Ninety dusty miles south is Gallup. They’ve got a new Catholic Bishop. The last one “fell down 8 or 9 carpeted stairs”. Put him in a Phoenix ICU for I disremember how long. Massive bruising all over his body. Right eye swollen shut, scrapes, cuts and a lot of blood. Them stairs has a mean right hook. He was last seen moving east out of the city at a rather brisk pace. Somebody’s Papa was nursing his knuckles.
But he wasn’t the only one. There is a list of nearly a score of Priests and whatnot associated with the Gallup Catholic Church with credible accusations lodged against them within living memory. In a town that is south of twenty thousand.
It wasn’t that long ago (four or five years?) that the Farmington city government got a major shakeup over timeshares. With wives. Seems it was a perq for those leading the rabble. The Baptist Church took a hit as many of those involved headed for greener pastures. It was incredibly widespread and even more incredibly, accepted as normal. Must be something in the baptismal water. And then there was the Baptist preacher… well nevermind.
Further west is the massive Navajo Reservation. A huge expanse of pretty nothingness dotted with little towns, villages and clusters. The Lutherans moved in here and built schools and Churches before Geronimo and his Apaches were shipped east to Florida. They packed ‘em in railcars in Holbrook which is a nowhere, somewhere just on the southern horizon. The schools were a result of Grant’s Peace Policy. History for us but yesterday on the reservation. Under contract with the Government they brought in teachers from back East. Like everything else here they got the misfits, the losers who couldn’t get a job anywhere else. The ones who had an eye for a pretty bottom. The Navajo boys looked just fine. Those desert winds hold secrets that no one wants to know.
This is a pedophile’s paradise. Isolated with scores of curious and innocent and naïve young boys. Parents unguarding in a culture where children move easily from household to household, relative to relative. Sometimes it will explode. I can remember a half dozen instances where a predator was unmasked with the list of admitted victims stretching into three figures. The biggest news now is there is no news. It’s still going on, probably bigger than ever, but they have learned to conceal it better. Until next time.
Seems like they can use some of that Old Time Religion. A revival or two might turn the tide. Or not. Some of the Chapter Houses have banned Pentecostal meetings because they invariably spawned drunken orgies in their wake. The grounds outside would become a seething mass of bodies, two deep with a lot of speaking in tongues. The Spirit of the Lord and the spirits of Bacchus seemed to trip over each other. Now those inclined to spiritual enrichment have to travel for their religious fervor.
No, it is not Mormons or Catholics or Lutherans or Baptists. These are the civilizing influences in a brutal and uncivilized land where the veneer of civilization is often thin. The Mormons and the Lutherans and Catholics have done a passable job against impossible odds but the job will always be unfinished.