Ed. Note: Today Pistrina inaugurates a series of posts outlining the five main reasons for benevolent lay control of traditional chapels and Mass centers. It's time for the mountebanks, jokers, and flim-flam men who have usurped our rights and trammeled our hopes to get down from their deadly pulpits and try to do good for others, not themselves.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
First of all, during the Sede Vacante no one--prelate or priest-- possesses an ecclesiastical office; therefore, no Traddie clergyman has subjects over whom to exercise the power of government. Accordingly, a Sede priest or bishop has no standing under the law to demand that he be the governor of a chapel invested with sole dominion over property and treasure.
Second, as Pistrina has shown, the majority of Traddie priests are unprepared to manage, let alone rule, the chapels they serve. They often haven't undergone any formal schooling, and their seminary formation has been so inadequate that they are hobbled by irreparable gaps in their theological and liturgical education. (Recall the goofy lost soul in Michigan who skipped the consecration at Mass or the forlorn Frenchman who couldn't bless holy water.) Furthermore, after completing their suboptimal "seminary" training, they get no experience serving under skilled priests with years of successful experience in the cure of souls and the running of an organization. Their only models are the sad-sacks and self-seekers who have appeared in this blog and elsewhere on the 'Net.
Chapels in the Traddie world are virtually Harvard case studies of the Peter Principle in action, where slow-witted, badly trained priests in stunted "organizations" swiftly rise to their own level of incompetence. Think of the case where one very well-known ineffectual, acting against the advice of a successful and experienced lay investor, refused to sell the bond of a tanking technology company and thereby lost close to $10,000 of the laity's hard earned money. Alternately, consider all the stories over the years about bungled construction projects, wasteful do-overs, and insolent refusal to listen to professionals with expertise, both theoretical and practical. Or, how about the case of one prelate "pastor" who bragged that he didn't know how to keep a checkbook and so left everything in the hands of his famously bumbling assistant, who maintained a childlike budget in near illegible handwriting?
Every veteran Traddie can tell you many such head-shaking anecdotes of cluelessly stubborn stupidity.
Let's wake up and smell the coffee. Most of these guys have never held a supervisory position of responsibility, let alone a real job. (Sadly, they haven't even flipped burgers for a paycheck.) Truth to tell, if they ever had to earn their keep in the real world, they'd soon be out on their cans to join the ranks of the permanently unemployable. The only life-lesson they ever learned from their similarly ill-prepared and wretchedly inexperienced mentors was get control of everything the laity has so you can feather your nest.
In spite of their glaring educational and practical-skills deficits, these men pass their lives in the mistaken belief that their orders make them fit to manage what is essentially a small business. On the other hand, most traditional chapels boast laymen and -women who actually do possess the knowledge, experience, and human-relations aptitudes needed to run the organization competently.
In the "good-old days," a diocese had ample resources to assist priests in the efficient management of parish business. There were also remedies for removing gross incompetents from positions of authority. (Plus, back then, young priests spent a number of years working under the louche and demanding supervision of successful parish administrators before they were given more serious responsibilities.) All that and more is missing in the Sede Vacante, where unvetted, ungifted men, who imperfectly know liturgy and theology, think they have a God-given right to control exclusively and without supervision the fisc and real property of chapels. Indeed, they act as though chapels' assets are in effect their personal possession, and they go to great lengths to muddy the financial waters by establishing multiple corporations (some out of state), of which they, their clerical pals, or their family members are trustees.
Until the Restoration, let's get one thing straight: there can be no ordinaries, no pastors, and no parishes (in the strict, canonical sense). One of the many implications of that hard fact is these men have no more right than a layman or laywoman to manage the civil affairs of a chapel or Mass center. To assert otherwise is an abuse--or worse!
In the Sede Vacante, when we have no hierarchy to appeal to for protection against injustice, misfeasance, and incompetence, it only makes sense for the paying laity to safeguard their hard-won investment by insisting on a lay governance model. Besides, given the woefully impoverished formation and deficient aptitude of the majority of traditional clergy, assuming the managerial duties of these priests is an act of supererogation.
Thou hast spoken well...
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, all calm, rational discussion of this topic does not appeal to the vast majority of clerics in Traddieland. C'est la vie...
"Benevolent lay control of traditional chapels and Mass centers"!? Man, you are a piece of work, Toth. So how does Jim Gebel, Sr., attacking the Seminarians by name both on the net and in private oral and written correspondence factor into the equation of "benevolence"? How does betraying Father Ramolla for Janet Gaye's pet, Bernard Hall, factor as "benevolent"? How do threats of lawsuits from Jim and Janet to intimidate the Board at Fairfield factor in as "benevolent"?
ReplyDeleteYou are so intoxicated in your own pride and lust for power and control that you fail to see how transparent you really are.
If you recognize the problematic Canonical situation of the Priests, and if you decry what you perceive to be their incompetence, why not just leave for the SSPX or the Novus Ordo?
Receiving the Sacraments from Priests without jurisdiction is a mortal sin for you, Canonically speaking... but then again you don't receive the Sacraments at all, so you're covered, aren't you Toth? So is it only for control and power that you remain in a "sede" chapel, serviced by a Priest whom you so despise and against whom you have conspired?
People are waking up Toth. The "Community" will not accept your deformity of Catholicism. Only the Pavlovian dogs whom you have pampered as the "educated and affluent Traddie minority" will be stupid enough to be bamboozled by your Judaic perfidy.
Don't drink and drive, Toth. Don't drink and drive...
Reader 1: “You know what is so tragic about all this?”
ReplyDeleteReader 2: “What?”
Reader 1: “Craig had lamented and deprecated the incompetence of the traditionalist clergy, only to become as useless and noxious as the clerics and institutions he has criticized.”
Reader 2: “One may say even more useless and noxious.”
Reader 1: “Yes. He wasted away the golden opportunity he had to actually do something about the sorry situation of which he has complained so much for years.”
Reader 2: “You mean St. Athanasius Seminary, from which he suddenly resigned?”
Reader 1: “Yes. It was the opposite of the Martyr St. Cassian: he used his pen to victimize and destroy the futures of his former pupils, by exposing them to ridicule and the attacks of the pervert who had attempted to entrap them and of the litigious elders who have the same pervert as their pawn.”
Reader 2: “Speaking of pawns, what about Father Bernard Hall?”
Reader 1: “Another pawn, another Judas: an overgrown child who entered the Priesthood without a vocation, who betrayed those young men at the whim of his surrogate mother.”
Reader 2: “Did he not also decry the incompetence of the abuse of certain clerics and institutions?”
Reader 1: “Only to ape them in an absurd irony of dramaturgical proportions.”
Reader 2: “So this whole ‘New Lay Movement’ is just a---“
Reader 1: “A puerile and rank superimposition of egocentric solipsism upon ecclesiological constructs---“
Reader 2: “An autolatrous meretriciousness that is become a far worse abomination than the ones upon which Craig, Jim and Bernie so unnervingly laughed.”
Reader 1: “In the end it is they who have imperiled the future more than any of the clerics they have disparaged.”
Reader 2: “They really don’t care about any Board, or about the faithful, do they?”
Reader 1: “Not at all: had the clerics whom they first criticized served their purposes, they would have never begun their campaign in the first place.”
Reader 2: “They have adopted the most absurd and risible principles to clothe their egomaniacal paraphilia for influence and authority.”
Reader 1: “Truly it is manipulation elevated to a form of art.”
Reader 2: “An art that betrays the motives behind everything that was said and done by them throughout the last four years or so.”
Reader 1: “You ought to have stopped at said, for they have done nothing but play chess with the laity and clergy whom they ostensibly supported.”
Reader 2: “The lies of the ancient serpent are rehashed again, eritis sicut dii.”
Reader 1: “Apparently, they do think they are gods, doing whatsoever they will with Christ’s Church.”
Reader 2: “How long do you think this shall last?”
Reader 1: “Nolite errare: Deus non irridetur.”
Reader 2: “Horrendum est incidere in manus Dei viventis.”