BETTER IS THE END OF A THING

The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains; and it is sometimes base, and by indignities men come to dignities. The standing is slippery, and the regress is either downfall, or at least an eclipse. Bacon

In a desperate attempt to appear relevant, the rector has tried to piggy back on the recent Vatican II critiques of monsignors Gherardini and Ocáriz Braña; he has even promised a forthcoming commentary on the latter (see the Jan. 2012 MHT Newsletter). It takes no insight to discern an anguished cry in the dark from a pathetic outsider who became irrelevant years ago.

As Pistrina has written, the Novus Ordo is undergoing its own counter-revolution of sorts. Real intellectuals within the Vatican Establishment -- men with authentic academic credentials and the insight that comes from a careful formation -- are now mounting the definitive analysis of the Council's failure and its radical departure from tradition. Sadly, it seems that they, not the carping lumpen pretenders of the traditional movement, have the intellectual tools to consign the Council and its evils to the trash heap of history.

The rector -- whose weak and borrowed light, though many orders of magnitude brighter than the dwarf-stars of "One-Hand Dan" and The Blunderer, is infinitely less luminescent than the brilliant scholars he envies -- has been eclipsed. Like F. Murray Abraham's Salieri, he endeavors without result to attach himself to real genius in the tragicomical hope of being (mistakenly) associated with genuine talent. Hence the embarrassingly patent effort to reflect a few stray rays cast off by two radiantly gifted scholars.

If the rector and his overstuffed clown-car of ill-trained clergy merited compassion, we would pity them as they struggle futilely in the face of insuperable limitations to claim a place in the most important theological discussion of this new century. As the Reader has noted elsewhere, the Novus Ordo is producing from within the rigorous analysis that will eventually defeat the heterodoxy of Vatican II. The reed-thin, shrill screeching of the half-educated traddie clergy is soon to be drowned out by the clear, steady, articulate voice of the growing conservative resistance of the post-Conciliar Vatican Institution. When the Restoration comes, it is this remnant who will have been the chief instruments of its triumph, not the feeble likes of the Terrible Trio and their ilk.

We wish it had been otherwise. We wish the traditional resistance had not been high-jacked by careerist entrepreneurs and clerical adventurers more interested in themselves than in the weal of Christ's Church. However, we now see that such was not God's will. Yet we still harbor hope for the Restoration: for as the traditional movement disintegrates, rent by suicidal, internecine controversies started by ambitiously acquisitive and terminally short-sighted clergy, Providence steps in to raise a well-schooled generation of men to take the holy fight to the brazen portals and into the hushed corridors of St. Peter's itself.

It is clear that the rector and his entourage can leave no legacy. Now, they won't even be a footnote in the history of the Restoration. At best, they offered some frightened folks a rickety lean-to in the storm of heresy. Sad to say, the leaky shelter was no match for the weather. As this series of posts has shown, the rebuilding of the fabric of the Church will belong to others outside the narrow and infernal circle of traditional cults and their poseur masters.