WHEN BAD MEN COMBINE

Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other. Edmund Burke

Successful enterprises, be they a school or a multinational corporation or a trades union, have one secret in common: they teach their students or employees or apprentices what "good" looks like. Quality organizations put forward as their models of performance only those practitioners of the highest character, qualifications, and achievement.

Pistrina has shown that the Blunderer, with his woefully inadequate education and his assorted gaffes and goofs, can never exemplify learning and scholarly judgment. We’ve also laid bare the Rector’s abject failure as an educator. Nevertheless, these two fools still take themselves seriously.

Well, we don't take them seriously. They are contemptible clowns who have no business running or teaching in a Catholic seminary. In this post, we’ve chosen two anecdotes from the dozens we’ve collected, which go a long way toward explaining why Most Holy Trinity [MHT] Clerical Vocational Program produces so many malformed priests. We’re sure you'll agree that the following pair of sketches reveals profound defects of temperament, which, in the real world, would bring about the closing of the institution these two plague with their presence.

Bad Behavior: Exhibit A

When the smarmy Blunderer was pretending to teach at MHT in Michigan, he liked to wander over to the parish school and kill time by unexpectedly turning up in classrooms (for “quality control,” as he told the teaching sisters). The sisters were sorely annoyed by his unwelcome intrusions as well as by his disruptive attempts to teach class. (After he once disastrously flubbed an accounting lesson, a nun had to re-teach the concepts from scratch; the children knew he blew it, too.) Another time, in order to avoid the usual disturbance, a young nun received the principal’s permission to lock her classroom door during the Blunderer’s week at MHT. Apparently a locked door was not enough of a message, because, undeterred, he knocked loudly after he couldn’t walk in on his own. The sister answered the door, and politely denied his request to enter. Now a normal person might have been embarrassed, but not this boor. He promptly ran to the Rector and tattled. The irate Rector then dressed down the principal for supporting the nun.

Bad Behavior: Exhibit B

On another occasion in Michigan, just before Mass, a seminarian queried the Rector about a liturgical procedure. The Rector directed the young man to ask the Blunderer (the so-called “liturgical expert,”LOL). During the course of the Mass, the seminarian followed the Blunderer’s advice. After Mass, as the ministers were unvesting in the sacristy, the Rector raged at the young man for what he had done. So loud was the irascible Rector that everyone in the chapel -- students, seminarians, laity, and other priests -- overheard every word of the disedifying and embarrassing outburst. The Blunderer took it all in, too, but made no attempt to come to the defense of the tearfully mortified seminarian. Later in the refectory, the Blunderer loudly approved the disgraceful episode. The young man eventually left the seminary.

With men like these as rôle models, it’s no surprise that MHT produces unfit priests for American chapels. The Rector and the Blunderer are not serious examples to emulate. They are case studies in the kind of behavior adults should avoid. The two violate every rule we ever learned in the sandbox or at our mother's knee.

Unfortunately, the malformation of clergy is not confined to the ’States because MHT actively recruits abroad. In his January newsletter, the Rector boasted that there may be three French candidates and two or three from Russia. In the hope that someone will contact these European candidates and warn them, Pistrina will soon post a shocking profile of one the French completers of MHT -- a real chip off the old blockheads if there ever was one. May it be a warning to any man who thinks he can escape MHT with his vocation unimpaired and his personality intact.