Why Is Figuring Out Mormon Beliefs So Hard?

The leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has spent far more time than it would like recently tamping down small pestilences of embarrassment spewed forth from its lay membership.  Recently in the Washington Post a professor of religion at Brigham Young University, which the church owns, uttered a series of remarkably garish and disturbingly convoluted theories in explanation of why his church did not ordain men of African descent to its priesthood until 1978.  Before the professor drew the glare of the spotlight, members of the church had spent much of February cringing each time Helen Radkey, a muckraker and professional embarrasser of Mormons, discovered another in the parade of deceased Holocaust victims some earnest, yet rogue, lay member appeared to have baptized by proxy.   The church leadership wishes none of these things had happened.