Boyd K. Packer, Advocate of Conservative Mormonism, Dies at 90
By DAVID STOUT

Boyd K. Packer, the leader of the highest governing body of the Mormon Church and a vigorous advocate for a highly conservative strain of Mormonism, died on Friday at his home in Salt Lake City. He was 90.

The church announced his death on its website.

Mr. Packer had been a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, which serves under the church president and his two counselors, since 1970. As president of that body, a post he had held since 2008, he was next in line to become church president. The current president is Thomas S. Monson, who is 87.

Mr. Packer was revered by tradition-minded members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. To judge by his words, he was untroubled by doubt and sure of his place in the world.

“After all the years that I have lived and taught and served, after the millions of miles I have traveled around the world, with all that I have experienced, there is one great truth that I would share,” he said at the church’s general conference in 2014. “That is my witness of the Savior Jesus Christ.”

M. Russell Ballard, an elder of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, said of Mr. Packer on the church website, “From the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, he represented the Savior of the world.”

For decades, Mr. Packer, an educator by training, spoke for those in the church who resisted social change — a traditionalist call that carried influence in the church’s governance and teaching mission.

In a speech in 1993, he warned that three groups — feminists, homosexuals and intellectuals — posed the greatest threat to the church. In 2010, he condemned same-sex attraction as unnatural and immoral, making him a prominent target of gay rights advocates in Utah and elsewhere.

The church continues to reject homosexuality, a stance reaffirmed in a letter from its president and the Quorum of Apostles that was to be read in Mormon churches on Sunday in opposition to the recent Supreme Court decision recognizing a right to same-sex marriage. “Sexual relations outside” a marriage between a man and a woman “are contrary to the laws of God pertaining to morality,” the letter said.

Mr. Packer also warned against “the disease of profanity,” “bad music” and substances that “interfere with the delicate feelings of spiritual communication,” namely coffee, tobacco, liquor and drugs.

However unyielding he could sound, Mr. Packer had a gentle side. In 2003, after devastating wildfires in Southern California, he traveled to the region and personally comforted each family that had lost a home, praying “that you’ll be steadied and you won’t be unhappy, that you can have a peace and serenity which passeth understanding.”

He loved birds from early childhood, and on at least one occasion, birds seemed to reciprocate: He once coaxed several into his motel room in Hawaii, as he happily recalled for KSL-TV of Salt Lake City.

“There was a redheaded cardinal, a dove, a sparrow and a finch, all in the room on the floor,” he said.

Mr. Packer was a painter, sculptor and woodcarver, especially of birds. The church said his love of art had been nurtured by his mother, especially after he contracted polio when he was 5 and was bedridden for weeks. Much of his artwork is in a museum at Brigham Young University.

Boyd Kenneth Packer was born on Sept. 10, 1924, in Brigham City, Utah, the second-youngest of 11 children of Ira Packer, a service station operator, and the former Emma Jensen. “Sometimes in my growing years, I thought we were poor,” he wrote in a personal history. “I later learned that was not true. We just didn’t have any money.”

He enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1942, served as a bomber pilot in the Pacific near the end of World War II and returned home to enroll at what is now Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. In 1947, he married Donna Edith Smith, who survives him, along with 10 children, 60 grandchildren and 103 great-grandchildren.

Mr. Packer graduated from Utah State University in 1949, began seminary teaching and earned a master’s degree from Utah State in 1953. He rose rapidly in the church’s teaching and missionary system and received a doctorate in education from Brigham Young University in 1962.

Mr. Packer will be remembered “for an unyielding resistance to the secular, social world, especially as that world evolved during his lifetime,” Armand L. Mauss, a Mormon scholar and retired professor of sociology and religious studies at Washington State University, told The Associated Press.

If that is true, and if some people viewed Mr. Packer as trapped in amber, he seemed not to care. “We may one day stand alone,” he said in a speech at Brigham Young in 2004, “but we will not change or lower our standards or change our course.”

摩門教領導人帕克去世 享年90歲

耶穌基督後期聖徒教會（俗稱摩門教）領導人帕克3日在鹽湖城家中壽終正寢，享年90歲。

帕克1970年開始擔任摩門教最高行政機關「12使徒定額組」主席，生前是摩門教總會會長的繼承人，繼「12使徒定額組」成員裴里5月30日因癌症病逝後，近來第二位離世的該組成員。

摩門教可能在預定10月舉行的秋季大會中，遴選上述兩人的替代人選。

帕克死後，同樣90歲的「12使徒定額組」成員尼爾森將成為摩門教總會會長孟森的繼承人；孟森現年87歲，教會人士說，他自認已經年老體衰。

帕克1924年9月10日生於猶他州布里格姆市，二戰期間擔任轟炸機駕駛。摩門教領導人說，他是該教派的真正使徒。

摩門學教授麥森表示，帕克將終身多數歲月獻給摩門教，而且始終堅持他有關摩門教義的正統派觀點，曾經栽培至少一個世代的教會領導人，在該教派內部享有相當的分量；麥森又說，部分人士曾經將帕克喻為鬥牛犬，他本人則希望別人將他比擬為「塔上的看守人」。

帕克1993年在一次演說中警告說，摩門教面臨三大威脅：女性主義者、同性戀與知識分子。摩門教學者毛斯表示，帕克敵視同性戀，導致他近年來成為同志維權人士抨擊的目標。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/05/us/boyd-k-packer-advocate-of-conservative-mormonism-dies-at-90.html

2015-07-04．聯合晚報．A2．話題．編譯陳世欽