Suggestion: Do not print titles on Temple Ordinance Cards

LegacyUser

Andrew T. (Tas) Johnson said: This is a suggestion which may involve fundamental LDS Church doctrine and a change to temple ordinance procedures. As such, it may require review by Church authorities.

Titles are currently printed on LDS Temple Cards for deceased persons. These titles are read out loud along with the deceased person's given name when certain ordinances are performed.

My suggestion is that the title field be eliminated on any type of printed temple card so that titles will not be spoken when ordinances are performed. Only the deceased person's given name should be printed and read aloud for ordinance work. Or the title may be printed but not said aloud by temple workers. I think it is preferable to not print the title.

Here are my reasons:

1) Procedures should conform to LDS Church doctrine. In temples, I understand that all are equal before the Lord. A deceased king or president is on the same footing as a common citizen, a deceased general, colonel, or captain is on the same footing as a common private or sergeant, a deceased Sir, Duke, Esquire, Lord / Lady or Sheriff is on the the same footing as those without any title. A deceased Reverend / Bishop is on the same footing as any other member of the congregation. All temple patrons are dressed alike and are not distinguished by rank in any way, so there is no visible preferential treatment. The elimination of titles on printed temple cards will further minimize any perception of status because titles will not be read aloud.

2) Titles are not part of a person's given or adopted name although the first or second given name of a few may appear to be a title such as King, Major or Sergeant.

3) The printing of Mr., Mrs., or Miss as titles is not necessary, as Family Search application and temple procedure already considers gender and marital status.

I would appreciate a response to my suggestion from a Family Search Manager. It would be helpful to know the reason(s) why titles are needed other than that of additional information to aid in the identification of persons. Titles may be place in the Other Information section of the person's data. Does Family Search think the suggestion is helpful and should be pursued?

If I should be submitting this suggestion to a LDS Church office instead of to Family Search, please send me some contact information. Family Search may also forward it to the Church for review.

Your brother in the gospel,

Andrew T. Johnson, LDS member, Cardiff Ward, California
760-753-5238
andrewtasmanjohnson@msn.com

LegacyUser

S. said: wow Interesting, I Ponder what will be said about this one, Good luck.

LegacyUser

S. said: Yes I agree Some Titles should not be said. all I can say is pray always, Church people will know best what to do about this issue.

LegacyUser

Gordon Collett said: Apparently this is a bug in Family Tree that is being worked on.

See here:
https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea...

LegacyUser

Andrew T. (Tas) Johnson said: Andrew T. (Tas) Johnson less than a minute ago
Titles may be placed in the Other Information section. There will not be a mess if people entering data are careful. If they do cause a problem, then interested persons should mark their Watch list in order to be informed of any changes which are not correct and then change them back to the right information. Sources are very important references so that one may know if the right person is being identified.

The replies and answers so far do not address the issue / doctrine of equality for all members inside the temple, so please do not close my idea too soon. Titles should not be used because a perception of inequality becomes apparent. That is my main concern and reason for submitting the idea to not print titles on temple ordinance cards or have titles read when ordinances are performed.

I look forward to a reply which addresses my idea.

Andrew T. Johnson

LegacyUser

Gordon Collett said: Andrew,
Since you are new to this feedback board, please let me share a few observations from having had a lot of fun here the past year and a half.

First, regarding the board itself. It seems to serve two different purposes. As a community discussion board, it is a place where users of Family Search can help each other figure out how to best use Family Search. I have learned a lot about the web site from comments posted here and hope that I have been able to help a few people learn how to use some of its features. This function leads to most of the extended discussions around topics.

The other purpose is to submit bugs in the site and ideas for improvements. In his Roots Tech address last year, Ron Tanner assured the audience that every post to this feedback board was read by a Family Search employee. So your comment was seen by the proper people as were the previous comments on the same topic.

However, I have noticed that official answers and comments by Family Search employees are usually brief, to the point, and usually posted only when more information is needed by them to understand an issue. They usually do not answer the same question over and over but leave that up to the community of users. For example, your concern was answered in the previous post on the topic of titles when Ron Tanner stated, “We certainly have the goal that titles should not get in the way for temple cards.” So we know the issue is understood, that tiles should not be being printed on ordinance cards, and fixing the programming is on the list of items to complete.

Should every comment here get an official response? That would be, I guess, a fairly long philosophical debate. Is it better to just let it be generally understood that the boards are monitored or to post to every topic a generic “Thank you for your post, your comments have been forwarded to the proper department for consideration.”?

I have seen multiple examples of comments on these boards which received no response but appear to have led to changes. To take a trivial example of such, I posted this:

https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea...

three days ago. The only comment was by someone who listed the browsers in which he did not see the blue box error. No one from Family Search ever posted a reply. However, as of yesterday the blue box is gone. Personally I am glad that a programmer spent half an hour fixing the problem rather than wasting half an hour explaining to me why the box had shown up and how the problem was going to be fixed.

Secondly, regarding changes to Family Tree and other parts of Family Search. I assume, and certainly hope, that there is a definite hierarchy to the programmers’ focus. If I were assigning projects I would use the following format:

Problems and Bugs:
Critical - items which break the program.
Problematic - items which make the program difficult to use but can be worked around.
Trivial - annoying but can be ignored.

Features:
Critical - needed to further the goals of Family History work as supported by Family Search.
Nice to have - standard features of most desktop genealogy programs that most people are used to seeing or useful shortcuts to make working in Family Tree more efficient.
Trivial - polish to the site which makes it look high quality and pleasing to work with.

Difficulty of implementation:
Extreme - will take a year or two.
Moderate - can be done in months.
Trivial - can be programmed, tested, and deployed in a day or less.

My blue box issue? Trivial, trivial, trivial.

Family Tree’s continued dependence on New Family Search which leads to rand… [truncated]

LegacyUser

Angelo Longo said: I agree with you, Andrew. I'd also add that titles are essential if FamilySearch wants to keep the ambition to have the main World Family Tree based on scholarly historical research methods. Titles had the utmost importance in the past (and often even today), as records give us evidence. Not include titles in names would then be also unfair to history and put people out of the social context they where living in.

On the other hand, I also agree that titles have nothing to do with temple work, so I too suggest to just remove them automatically in the card printing process.

LegacyUser

Angelo Longo said: Update: Tom Huber explained that titles not present at birth should be added to the “Also Known As” alternate name in the “Other Information” section.
https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea...
https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea...