If that's so ... it also means that I must update each member separately, even if I want to make the same update to each ... more hassle than it's worth?

Not necessarily, the first thing is, MVC is one of those buzzwords (just like OOP) where multiple definitions apply. Asking "how do I do MVC" is like asking "how do I do arithmetic?"

Since you are looking for practical "nuts and bolts" responses, the best approach would probably be to just understand the 'axioms' of MVC (which it seems you do) then just start coding or looking at code. Do a search for "Template::Toolkit", "Catalyst", "Smarty Templates", "Velocity", "Ruby on Rails", (etc) ... and *avoid* searching on just "MVC". The former will tend to give you 'nuts and bolts', the latter will tend to give you 'ivory tower'.

As far as your question about the "hassle", one way to avoid it is to simply define the properties of your User object in one place, and then use reflection in your View components to automatically spit out a view. This still preserves the vaunted MVC separation while minimizing the number of breaking changes for things like adding and deleting members (or fields).