I stole the title from a line from the Dowager of Downton Abbey, Violet Grantham. She is played to perfection by Dame Maggie Smith. I am fairly certain the line is not original to her, but no one has ever said it more eloquently than she. It is an obvious play on the more famous idea that "nothing succeeds like success."
Mormon Incorporated announced 13 more temples in their autumnal general conference. General, as in "generally boring." How can a church that is indisputably shrinking need 13 more temples? There are already too many to begin with.
I finally came up with the following after discussing this with my wife. Both of us are former members of the Mormon church. Both of us were avid temple goers for a short season. Mercifully the Holy Spirit led us out of the charade of temple attendance, and away from the hypocrisy of the Mormon church.
The first reason for the latest baker's dozen of temples is to bamboozle the 3-4 million remaining active Mormons into thinking that the church is still growing.
The second reason is to keep their tax exempt status. I may have the reasons backwards, because the Mormon church loves nothing so much as money.
Why come out and give an honest accounting of the decreasing membership, when you can just count 12-13 million inactive people into your total "membership." I would not be surprised if I am still being counted under some ridiculous label like "born a member, and was a member for the majority of his life, so we are still counting him."
If you are the captain of religion's version of the Titanic, don't alert the passengers, just ask the band to play louder. Distraction is the hallmark of the con man and the magician. President Nelson is no magician, but he is one of the world's greatest con artists. Con artist, because I am not sure he is a con man, because that would presuppose he is an actual man.
Of course, Utah got another temple (Heber Valley). Apparently, schlepping it to Salt Lake or Draper was a heavy burden for these descendants of the pioneers. Santiago, Chile will now have 2 temples. I guess Chileans have a lot of free time as members of a third world country. Rather than work to escape poverty the Mormons there prefer watching the same boring movie over and over. Rexburg, Idaho will have 2 temples soon, so the Nelson Youth of Eastern Idaho can choose which building to waste 2 hours in when the mood strikes them.
If the Mormon church were receiving any guidance from JESUS, then you would have seen at least one of the following headlines,
"LDS Church Announces 130 New Homeless Shelters to Span the Globe"
"1300 soup kitchens and food pantries donated by Mormon Church"
Until they do something with their billions to help actual poor people, you can rest assured things are still rotten in Utah's state religion.