THE NOONDAY DEVIL

...daemonium meridianum, the most stubborn spirit to govern and guide that any man can meet, and the most perilous withal. Hawker

From the Desert Fathers to St. Thomas Aquinas, we stand cautioned against acedia, indifference in spiritual matters, "soulful don't-care-ishness." Yet in the Sede Vacante, we laymen remain uncaring of the dire effects of intellectual acedia, negligence in scrutinizing the scholarship and credentials of those clergy who lay claim to being our spiritual guides. How else can we account for our listless failure to reject out of hand Work of Human Hands -- that bespattered canvas of gaudily grinning errors---and the brazenly meretricious proposition that the Unacum market-cornering ploy is dogma. How else could we have listened to the nonsense that burbles forth from the pulpits of ill-formed MHT clergy, distinguished more for their blinding defects than for their illuminating learning.

We're not talking about the indolent acquiescence of the gullible and invincibly ignorant-- the witless wonderment of wan and sad-eyed Traddie women shrouded in their impossibly long, dirt-gathering calico skirts; or the surly aggressiveness of their pot-bellied and grim-lipped menfolk straitened by their seam-bursting, unlaundered polyester slacks three 0r four sizes too small. On the contrary, the Readers mean the educated and affluent Traddie minority, who would see the sham were they to awake from their inertia.

Without something substantial of the Church's intellectual tradition, the Traddie movement is nothing other than a cult. As the old ads used to say, Accept no substitutes. The un-credentialed Blunderer, "One-Hand," the rector, and other even more ignorant pretenders have no grounding in genuine Tradition. They are but a pedestrian re-imagination of the Church.

The problem will only get worse.

Just look at the shriveled and rotten fruits of MHT: One forgot the consecration at Mass. Another couldn't perform a burial service. A third was unable to bless holy water without an operatic mad-scene of self-doubt and embarrassing false starts. Today we have a fresh Lutheran convert from ultra-modern Scandanavia, who was fast-tracked to the priesthood. Next up is a Russian who was only received into the church when he entered MHT. Not only is learning flown away, but so is Catholic culture, the unspoken requirement of the priesthood.

In light of their scanty gifts, these purblind clerics are barely fit to offer Mass. No one need be a scholar to sense the sham so close to the surface. Why is it that so few laymen have detected these deficiencies in the manifest failures of the rector's completers? or in "One-Hand's" maudlin sermons? or in the Blunderer's howlingly laughably below-par effort, Work of Human Hands? The only explanation can be intellectual lethargy.

Pistrina invites the witted to wake up and shake off their sorrow about the intellectual good of the Church in exile. Refuse consent to a flight from the standards of good Catholic scholarship by condemning the Terrible Trio. Dispel your tedium. Subdue your turpitude by resistance to all these tempter-beggars disguised in grubby collars and shabby amaranthine robes. The Traddie movement simply cannot produce scholars or intellectuals. The rejects it possesses are only -- and just barefly -- fit to offer Mass and provide the other sacraments. Tell them so. Tell them to stop pretending and to get back to the basics. Demand they be silent until God raises better men. If they will not see that they can never be part of the Restoration, then

STARVE THE BEAST, STAY HOME ALONE, SAY YOUR ROSARY, MAKE YOUR ACT OF PERFEC T CONTRITION.