Real education must ultimately be limited to one who INSISTS on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding. Ezra Pound
The herding dog has no interest in making the animals independent, for the sole purpose of mustering the group is to exert control through modified predatory behavior. When the "authorities" at any educational enterprise are chiefly concerned with casting, holding, and barking, then their "students" will never attain genuine knowledge. As a result, the "students" will never function well when let out on their own.
Pistrina will make clear in the coming months that malformed completers of clerical vocational programs (like the one at which Anthony Cekada, according to the back cover of his book, "teaches liturgy and canon law") present a material and present danger to the faithful. As a result of a training facility's insistence on riding herd rather than imparting knowledge, the intelligent faithful will be haunted by grave doubts about the validity of the sacraments they receive from the hands of the ill educated and unsuited.
We have learned about one such completer who failed to pronounce the words of Consecration during Mass. Instead of being recalled to his alma mater (or is it atrox noverca?) for discipline and transfer, he was allowed to remain as pastor. Then, by way of expiation, in a recent sermon, he lambasted the faithful for making him work so hard that he neglected to say the essential words.
Priests and laity alike cannot imagine how this witless Levite managed to overlook both forms for the consecration of the bread and the wine.
Nevertheless, he did.
From the many reports Pistrina has received of this man, it's easy to understand how, in his case, he missed it. In charity, let's say he'll never be ready for prime time. His imprudence is terminal. For instance, one correspondent related that, in a sermon, this man once boasted--to the visible and audible horror of his astonished parishioners--of breaking off a fragment from the wall of an ancient church in Rome for a pious souvenir.
Some have tried to excuse him on account of his almost scandalously humble origins and his intellectual backwardness. The people at his current assignment are apparently so used to his incompetence that they no longer bother to comment on his admission of skipping the Consecration: they're just waiting for the other shoe to drop. They know they can't send him back to the factory, which wouldn't or couldn't warrant quality in the first place.
Today's Catholics don't expect geniuses or saints. All they want is valid sacraments. Yet in the case of this lost soul, on at least one awful day, he celebrated an invalid Mass. If a new ciborium had been on the Corporal, then the laity who approached the altar received mere bread, like Protestants. Furthermore, if there were an intention, no ministerial fruits resulted.
In one moment of culpable stupidity, a peevish, extraordinarily ungifted young man converted his chapel into the abomination of desolation. At grave spiritual risk are all the faithful entrusted to his negligent cure.
The story doesn't stop there, however. Only a week or two ago, this wretch urged the men of his forlorn little chapel to make their confession to him face to face so that he could "advise" them better. Although repugnant to American sensibilities, it may not be a bad idea, for then the faithful might be certain he administered absolution correctly.
From all reports, this man is uncommonly inept. However, because he responded so well to his drovers, he has advanced without supervision. Very few of the faithful at the chapels to which he has been assigned have any illusions about him. No doubt his current parishioners now undertake the precautions necessary for their spiritual health. They probably won't ask for a replacement because they will just be sent someone worse. They'll just have to make do with one of the herd's most intimidated sheep in order to keep the wolf from returning.
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