Mike

What is likely lacking is you witnessing all this pretty first hand, like I did. What is obviously lacking in your knowledge of the Schoenheit Paper are the 14 punches after the simple doctrine. It is those 14 appendixes that torpedoed the ministry fatally in late 1986, as hey tried to suppress it all. Those 14 appendixes, reasons, rationalizations were PICK-UP LINES that oodles of ministry leaders and non-leaders, male and female used to get laid in the 1970s and 80s. It was the appendixes that were needed to squelch the TVTs that were running rampant through the ministry. Yeah, the doctrine part is pretty simple.

It that is the only logical alternative, then you implied it. So, I ask again in a different way, do you advocate doing the opposite of what VPW taught in PFAL on avoiding one's own private interpretation?

No. In VPW's last teaching the AC is conspicuously missing from the list he tells us to master. This list is in that teaching twice, and twice the AC is missing. By "collaterals" I mean the printed books and printed magazine articles of VPW. He called them the written materials that come with the class.

What's the alternative? We should read the scriptures willy nilly ?

I have also told the story here several times how Schoenheit TWICE implied to me on the phone that no such bad influence made it into the collaterals.

I've told the story here so many times that I abbreviated it here this time. I was a twig leader and the people NEEDED to get the subject looked into. I did not feel qualified, and would never have wanted to research it on my own. I had to do it for them.

It would help if you remembered WHICH tapes. I have heard similar things, but I can't remember where. The collaterals do not have any of these kinds of comments, though. The reason I ask for your sources is because I like to check the context on things like that. Someday we will have searchable transcripts for the SNT tapes, but that is a long process. I have friends working on it.

Earl Burton handles this some in the Festschrift book they did for VPW in 1982, but it is a little too boring to keep me awake. The way I handle this is I figure if the people who WROTE the scriptures were to divorce their own thinking from what God was telling them to write, then people who READ the scriptures are not to inject their private thoughts into it either. It's almost a tautology. It is also self evident. What good is it to read God's Word without getting HIS interpretation, and being side tracked by self generated ideas?

Thanks. I appreciate it when we can laugh a little at these things. */*/* With the “Schoenheit Paper on Adultery” I have somehow received (against my will) a long-suit in tracking the history of that document. But I have no stomach for tracking the sexual sins or bad character of any of my brothers and sisters in Christ. The former tracking is an official policy matter, how leadership in TWI-2 tried to suppress that paper, AND how leadership did not see a need for that paper years before it appeared in 1986. The latter tracking is just real serious, un-funny, acting-out what the SNL Church Lady is a parody of. */*/* I was raised in a religious cult that was seriously anti-sex. It was a rural Roman Catholic parish with a large school for grades 1-8. From the first grade on we were taught to confess our sins every Saturday. This was well before puberty. We were introduced to Mary the anti-sex goddess right away. We had no idea what “purity” really meant, but it gradually became obvious as the years went by. This was in the mid 1950s, but because it was rural, it was more like the mid 1940s. Dana Carvey got that Church Lady character just right to make her super funny, but in real life it was not funny at all. It was a daily grind to be super aware of all my sins of commission, omission, and mental intent, PLUS all the other kids’ sins, some of which looked super fun. Seeing posters here seriously caught in the Church Lady trap is a grind for me. I deal with it the way parents of new babies learn to handle the stink of changing diapers. What you perceive as a “shell,” to me is perceived as a gas mask. */*/* But the “Schoenheit Paper on Adultery” is different. Here we are not incompetently trying to sort out the details in a person’s private hidden life, but sorting out the official actions of a corporate board that affects many others’ lives for years following. Properly handling and correcting the mistakes of TWI-2 on the Schoenheit Paper is in the Top Ten items I currently discuss with TWI-4 leaders. I am insisting on TWI-4 issuing some kind of official written statement on this someday. Until they do, and make written apologies to all who were fired over it, the Schoenheit Paper will be a wedge between HQ and me. I hope they mature to the point of see the need for this correction. The other failing of TWI-2 in their behavior in 1986 was not seeing, in the years prior to 1986, a great need for someone to do research into “adultery” like Schoenheit did. That paper was needed many years prior to that date. This may possibly be related to VPW asking Vince and Ralph to research it in the early 1980s. I saw the need for that paper in 1980, when I was a twig leader. It was a raging problem in my twig, so for 2 weeks we worked Young’s concordance, and eventually came to some conclusions very similar to what Schoenheit came to 6 years later when he wrote his research up. We also wrote down all the rationalizations we could remember from the TVTs, and worked on about 10 of them. In Schoenheit’s later paper he called these rationalizations “reasons” and he worked 14 of them. So there was a need in the ministry to work that paper WAY before 1986, and even before 1980, and that has not changed. */*/* Neglecting the need in the mid-1980s for clarifications on sex was one evil that came from TWI-2 (and probably TWI-1 also), and then suppressing the paper when it finally came out in 1986 was an additional evil on top of the first. Those are the two points I am GENTLY pressing TWI-4 leaders on.

Here is Schoenheit's account of Sept 1986. Background of the paper (by Schoenheit date unknown but probably late 90s or early 2000s): */*/* My story (short version): In the spring of 1986 a girl came to me and said she had had sexual intercourse with Dr. Wierwille. I had no reason to doubt her as we were friends and she "had her head on her shoulders" in life. I started asking around to girls I knew always got to ride on the motor coach, fly on Ambassador 1, get "back room" duty instead of housekeeping or grounds, etc. Lo and behold, I talked to many women that were very candid about their sexual relations with leadership. Perhaps the most disturbing thing about those months was the developing picture was that this was not just practical sin based on lust but rather was sin based on wrong doctrine--many of the people involved thought it was okay with God. In fact, all of the "reasons" that I wrote about in my appendix came out of the mouths of women I talked to. I would ask them why they thought it was okay or why they were told it was okay and those were the reasons I got, so that is why I answered those specific questions. In the midst of interviewing the women I suspected might have had sexual relations with leadership, I had three different women tell me I would be killed if I tried to stop it. The first time I thought it was a totally stupid thing, but by the third one I really stopped and thought about it. David had Uriah killed for the same reason. To protect my work I sent it to about 7 people I knew and trusted (I do not remember the exact number or all the people now) sealed in an envelope inside an envelope with instructions to "go public" if I ended up dead. I told them that the paper was going to be sent up proper channels, and not to share the work with others. As you know, The Way had strict guidelines for handling research, and at that time I had been in the Research Dept. for six years, loved my job and believed in the system even though I was beginning to have doubts about the integrity of the leadership. I handed the paper in to Walter Cummins in late September. It just sat on his desk. One of the people I had given a copy to had been hurt by the sex stuff and really wanted it to "make an impact." She went to Ralph, who, of course, knew nothing of the paper (like I said, I had not gone public). Ralph talked with somebody (who?) and the next thing I knew there were all kinds of meetings about the paper and all kinds of untrue things being said about me. On October 23d I was "released" from The Way by order of Chris Geer. It was a Friday. I had a lot of friends at HQ still. On Monday at noon Walter got up in front of the staff and told some made-up lie about me violating department procedures and thus being let go. A friend snuck out of lunch and called me to let me know what was said (I did not ask for that but he did it anyway). I got right on the phone with Walter and told him what he did was wrong and that he should not lie about a brother to all those other Christians. I asked to meet with him face to face but he refused. After that there was a huge witch-hunt and more lies were told about me than you can possibly imagine. Even really weird stuff like I believed in the Trinity and the dead being alive. Because I still had friends around the country, I got some requests for my paper. Since I was no longer on staff, and since my "belief in the system" had really taken a blow, I mailed it to anyone who asked. By that time the Trustees and Corps Coordinators were starting a rumor that the paper personally attacked Dr. Wierwille and taught all kinds of false doctrine. Corps going home for "ho-ho relo" were told if they read my paper not to come back in residence. It was also stated that the paper had devil spirits and anyone who read it became possessed. Well, that all backfired because as people read it they could tell that what was said about it was lies. And so there was an escalation of people challenging the leadership and leaving The Way. In time I hooked up with Ralph Dubofsky, Tom Reheard, John Lynn, Mark Graeser, Robert Belt, and some others and CES was born. It took a while for the smoke to clear, but when it did all that was left of us was John Lynn, Mark Graeser and myself, and we have been together ever since. The Lord has been leading us, and now I think we are turning out some really first-class stuff.

No. Very wrong. Schoenheit was not at HQ in 1978. The paper was squashed in fall of 1986, sez Schoenheit himself, by Walter and the BOT. I can find where he says this. It is in a short summary. Vpw had been dead for some 18 months when the paper was squashed and the ministry meltdown started. Check your sources. You and they got it very wrong. Check Penworks.

My impression is that you never saw first hand how the hippie attitudes of casual sex invaded the suburbs and middle classes in the early 1970s. Cultural attitudes towards sex tend to swing like a pendulum from law to license and back to law again. The 1950s thru 1964 were extreme law. After the Pill and the Beatles that all changed and the pendulum swung to extreme license. Then AIDS put the big kabosh on that party and the pendulum swung again. I don't know where it is today. Just as there are big problems with extreme license, extreme law is rife with problems. Who knows, where you draw the line? It shifts around a lot. I have also noticed that rural areas can be 10 years behind the mega cities with these pendulums. All this figures in how the ministry melted down with the Schoenheit Paper, and was never the same. It sent LCM into a crazed ricochet trajectory for the next 14 years.

I have considered that. I have also considered that everyone looks for loopholes with sex. There is a strange silence here about this paper that I have noticed. I wonder how many of the 14 "pick-up lines" at the end of that paper have been used by LOTS of people in TWI, and even some here. I started hearing the pick-up lines in the 1970s in the early TVTs. I get the impression that paper somewhat quietly ended the party for some who were "having fun" on the side.

I agree that "real" research is not the way VPW defined it. BTW, he did re-define what he meant by research in writing at a fairly early date in the Jul/Aug 1979 Way Magazine. You are missing a large chunk of history revolving around that paper. It literally took down the ministry, no exaggeration. It was well hushed up WITHIN twi, but not on the outside; not at all. Instead of me telling you about it and you not believing a word, read up on it here. Ask people who were in the Corps at that time. I peeked into the later chapters in Penworks' "Undertow." She may have lots of the details there. Trust me: To not know about the Schoenheit paper, and exactly HOW it completely melted down TWI-2 in late 1986, is like not knowing about how Pearl Harbor started WW2. Ask around with the people who were there.