Excerpt:
.. . . The decisive episode in Benson's discontent with the church arose
not long after his grandfather ascended to the presidency in 1985.
Family and others of the inner circle noticed a decline in the elder
Benson's mental and physical state.
Benson said his grandfather would stumble through sermons and sometimes
lose track of his words, leading to long silences and discomfort of
audiences. A series of strokes led to impaired speech and invalid
status. Personal letters to family began to arrive signed by signature
machine, Benson said.
While his grandfather slipped into a "semisenile" condition, Benson
said, church leaders acted as if all was well, that the prophet was in
charge of church affairs. Benson said he soon began to see it as a hoax,
a giant cover-up from rank-and-file members. The church, he believed,
had boxed itself into a theological corner.
Benson said Mormons sell their church on the premise that "it is being
led today by a modern-day, living prophet . . . and his name is Ezra
Taft Benson. And he is the sole mouthpiece to whom God reveals his truth
to a troubled, searching world.
"As long as the prophet's alive, he's got to be functioning, he's got to
be leading, he's got to be revealing."
Fearing a loss of power and validation if they admitted that the prophet
was incapacitated, Mormon leaders went to great lengths to perpetuate an
illusion, Benson said.
"They'd take him out to a function where he's supposed to turn a spade
of earth," he said. "They'd put his foot on the shovel and take a
picture. Or he'd be seen waving to a crowd with a handler manipulating
his arm."
All photos were taken from his grandfather's left side to hide the
medical tube permanently affixed to the right nostril, Benson said.
"He's been treated like a dimestore mannequin in a window while the
business of the enterprise has been conducted behind closed doors, " he
said.
At the interview, Benson wore a cap with "Dave" written in front, an
allusion to the movie by that name in which the U.S. president is
incapacitated and a look-alike takes over.
Benson said he remained silent for a long time about his grandfather' s
condition. He at first thought that if the church was not open about it,
there must be a reason. He said his father urged him to remain silent,
saying the press couldn't be trusted.
"And here I was," Benson said, "a member of the press and the oldest
grandchild of Ezra Taft Benson. I found myself caught in this quagmire,
this dilemma."
Contacted about his grandfather's health by re****ters in Utah, Benson
said, he soon fell into a role as "deep throat," an anonymous guide.
"I felt," he said, "I had this obligation as a journalist not to hide
the truth, to go after the truth, to try to be honest and forthright and
deliberate in everything that I said. So rather than tell untruths, I
went off the record with re****ters and encouraged them through their own
investigative effort to come up with the story, and then I would confirm
it on conditions of anonymity."
A Sunday morning question from his son, Eric, provided the last straw,
Benson said. "He asked, 'Why do they call grandpa a prophet when he
can't do anything?' His great-grandchildren could see it; anyone could
see it. It was a dirty family secret."
A short time later, Benson said he called Vern Anderson, an Associated
Press re****ter in Salt Lake City, and told him that he would speak on
the record for the first time about his grandfather's condition should
he want to do a story.
"D-Day," as Benson called it, was July 10, 1993. With the Republic' s
blessing, Benson said, he first told his story to Anderson. The Republic
used Anderson's story as a basis for its own, he said.
The stories revealed a prophet too weak to run the church. An uproar
quickly followed.
Benson said he received more than 100 letters condemning him. One critic
wrote, "Quite a guy. He wins the Pulitzer and thinks he can run the
Mormon Church."
Benson's cartoons regularly home in on religious issues, including
Mormon ones. He rendered numerous unflattering cartoons in the mid-1980s
of then-Arizona Gov. Evan Mecham, a Mormon.
But this time, Benson refrained, a noticeable departure from his credo,
"I don't aim. I just shoot."
"It was determined," he said, "because I was a player in this story, I
was a source, I was a family member close to my grandfather, that it
might appear to be self-serving if I were to do an editorial cartoon on
it. . . . I think I made my stand unequivocably clear in the
observations I gave to the re****ters."
Those observations caught many by surprise, especially his parents and
siblings.
"My family was dumbstruck," Benson said. "They were aghast. They were
angry, disappointed. They could not understand why I would undermine the
family."
Benson said a family member told him that he would not be allowed to see
his grandfather again, that he couldn't be trusted. The threat later was
withdrawn, he said.
"The issue to me was the church as an institution, taking tithe-payers
at the rate of upwards of $15 million a day and doing it in the name of
sup****ting a prophet-led church," he said.
Though some church members sup****ted him, harassment continued on a
local and individual basis. He was criticized by his local bishop, and
fliers attacking his statements were disseminated. Then his alma mater's
Brigham Young Magazine decided to delay publication of a profile of him,
written in light of his Pulitzer.
The magazine's action stung. Benson has fond memories of his years at
BYU and "the glory days of the student newspaper," the Daily Universe.
"I still have my pica pole I was given when I left BYU, which says on
the back, 'Truth, energy and talent.'"
Benson said he received a review copy of the manuscript, "a pleasant
puff piece." The magazine's editor admitted that Benson's public
comments about the church were responsible for the delay in publication,
Benson said. He requested that the article be scrapped permanently, and
it was.
"I didn't want to be a part of any enterprise allegedly done in the name
of good journalism that was kowtowing to fear and pulling its punches .
.. . for fear of what the boys with the hands on the purse strings might
think.
"Ironically, the thrust of the article was 'Steve Benson made his
reputation at BYU by poking pontificating balloons of self-im****tance,
goring sacred cows and troubling the administration. . . ."
Benson's views seemingly were verified by an article in the Salt Lake
Tribune, Salt Lake City. A re****ter at the paper sifted some eye-popping
information from Utah's cor****ation records. The published re****t said
the cor****ation that manages the church effected in 1989 a transfer of
power from Ezra Taft Benson to his two counselors, Gordon Hinckley and
Thomas Monson. That was done the same year that his grandfather last was
seen in public, Benson said.
"This is what's so ironic," he said. "The church leaders and members are
saying, 'Steve, where's your faith? Don't you have faith God could raise
Ezra Taft Benson to speak and lead the church?' But in secret the
leaders of the church had amended the faith that God would do that. . .
.. They put their faith not in God but in the lawyers who transacted the
papers and who actually assured the transfer of power to them."
http://www.lds-mormon.com/benson1.shtml
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