The LDS Church - and many of its members - objected last spring when HBO's hit series "Big Love" depicted a plural wife participating in a temple ceremony, calling the episode an offensive act that trivialized a sacred practice.

But an entire context is needed to sanctify an image, gesture, ritual or event, said Alex Caldiero, and without its unique context, the sacred cannot be violated.

"The sacred sort of protects itself against any inappropriate, any misuse or any foul play by being so protected and encased in a context," said Caldiero, artist-in-residence at Utah Valley University in Orem. "What I mean by this is, it is a multimedia event. If you've just seen an aspect of it, you've not really seen or [experienced] the entire context of the sacred."

Caldiero's comments came Tuesday during a panel discussion of "Revealing the Sacred: Is it Ever Ethical? Big Love's Temple Scene & Portrayal of the Sacred," part of Ethics Awareness Week sponsored by the university's Center for the Study of Ethics.

"Big Love," now entering its fourth season, chronicles the life of a polygamous family living in Utah. Its March 15 episode showed the endowment ceremony in an LDS temple as part of a plural wife's struggle with being excommunicated from the mainstream Mormon faith.

Days before the episode aired, the LDS Church issued a public statement criticizing media portrayals of the faith that are "false or play to stereotypes" and sometimes in "appalling bad taste." The cable show, it said, blurred distinctions between the faith and "fictional non-Mormon characters and their practices." The LDS Church officially abandoned plural marriage in 1890 and eschews any connection with offshoots that continue to engage in it.

The creators of "Big Love" said they strove to depict the temple ceremony with dignity and reverence.

Art - from film to painting, poetry and music - is all about revealing the sacred, Caldiero said, and "Big Love's" temple scene was "beautifully portrayed."

The ethical problems come when representations vilify or mock aspects of the sacred, Caldiero said. But what's being mocked is "something personal," not the sacred, he said, and even then such acts don't warrant censorship.

Other panelists said the quest for knowledge, like artistic expression, often involves intrusions on what others hold sacred, and even keep secret - whether that practice is a Mormon temple ceremony, street-gang initiations or an Inca corn-planting ritual.

"We go out and strive to gain information that can be used in revealing people's secrets, including their sacred secrets," said Lynn England, a sociology professor at UVU who studies the Tarahumara Indians of Chihuahua, Mexico. "When I reveal the sacred, I am the scientist, and I am revealing the sacred of people who are not speaking for themselves."

The issue of who has the right to speak and who can claim authority for cultural property is a growing one for Utah as it becomes more diverse, said David Knowlton, an associate professor of anthropology at UVU who focuses on Mormonism and Latin America.

Knowlton said he personally has decided not to speak about temple rituals. "Keeping things unspoken is one way of keeping something sacred," he said. But "there is no universal stance for any of this."

Jack R. Christianson, director of the Center for Engaged Learning at UVU, said having permission and input for the artistic endeavor might be an ethical approach. Loyd Ericson, an adjunct philosophy professor, focused on intent.

"The big question is not if we should," Ericson said, "because we reveal the sacred all the time" - from prayer sessions to baptism rituals.

Instead, he suggested that intent was key to ethical revelations of the sacred. "Is the intent to do harm, is the intent to explore, is the intent art, or what is the intent? All these questions then really complicate the issue when we see that it is not simply a matter of revealing the sacred is wrong, but what type of sacred, how is it revealed, the intent."