PURPLE HAZE

Poems of high attempt and promise vast,/Oft dwindle to a dreary void at last,/With here and there a purple remnant found/Tagged on to throw a tawdry glare around. Horace (Howes' translation)

Ed. Note: Next week Pistrina will post the #1 reason for lay governance. We interrupted the series to bring you the following comments on the rector's March missive from the pesthouse. We think you'll agree with us: the rector, like Tony the Blunderer, is clearly not a serious writer worthy of any attention whatsoever -- except ridicule.

It must have been Lent, with all its radiant violet.

What else can account for the following overwrought specimen of livid prose from last month's MHT Newsletter?

Up to the present, the very term sedevacantism was never even pronounced. It was considered something like the insane woman in the attic of the big house in Jane Eyre, or the leprous mother and sister of Ben-Hur in the film of the same name. The expression on the Roman officer's face, to those who know the movie, is unforgettable, as he discovers them in the dank dungeon, and utters the unutterable word: "Lepers!"* In our situation, he would say "Sedevacantists" with the same horror.

There is so much wrong with the extract that it's hard to know where to start. (We'll pass over in silence the childishly silly last sentence, an emblem, if there ever was one, of the rector's muddled thinking and writing.)

Let's begin with the claim that the Modernists avoid like the plague the word sedevacantism. We googled the word and found 18,900 results. Each Reader then sampled the results, and we all agreed that many writers who adhere the Modernist Church use the term freely and fearlessly (though pejoratively). So we must conclude that the rector was exaggerating to enhance the drama of his not-so-clever observations. That's fine for potboilers but certainly out of place in a supposedly analytical work. (But you already know that nothing he writes is of any substance.)

Second, the rector's comparison of the supposedly taboo word sedevacantism to Brontë's fearful hag is also very wide of the mark. No one of sense believes that any official in the Vatican Establishment ever echoed anything like Rochester's grim boast, “No, by God! I took care that none should hear of it—or of her under that name.”

The smart Modernists aren't afraid of the word sedevacantism because they rest in smug complacence on the oft-repeated assurances of Bellarmine and Billot. The lesser Novus Ordite lights are content to point out the shoddy intellectual work of the Sedes (like that stillborn monstrosity of wretched scholarship and bad style, Work of Human Hands), while they merrily jeer at the sedevacantist thesis and its advocates. The reason for all the newsletter bombast must be this: the rector desperately wanted to support an untenable point and didn't have the wit or education to make it seem plausible.

But at least a Brontë novel stands on the periphery of serious literature. With his next similitude, plucked from the mother of all sword-and-sandal flicks, Ben-Hur, the rector falls precipitously into bathos. The choice of a popular movie as an image betrays naked philistinism (as well as a limited storehouse of allusion). Had he been literarily inclined, the rector could have chosen to quote from Lew Wallace's historical romance: in spite of its flat characterizations, unconvincing dialogue, and artificially driven plot, it is a text (one which, by-the-bye, was blessed by Leo XIII). Wallace's 19th-century sensibilities and prose style surpass the movie's fairly restrained idiom. To the Readers' ears, Wallace's "She and Tirzah were—lepers!" (p. 406, 1901 Harper Bros. edition), with its italics, dash, caps, and exclamation point, elicits more melodramatic frisson than the mere "Lepers!" the rector recalls.**

Okay. So the rector's allusion was both unapt and plebeian. We can forgive the absence of literary sensibility. No harm, no foul, as they say. After all, none of the Terrible Trio enjoys a real liberal-arts university education. (Late 1960s and 1970s seminary bachelor's degrees don't count.) But what we cannot allow to escape unnoticed is the suggestion that, in the ancient world, the words leprosy and leper were taboo ("the unutterable word" [emphasis ours]). That's simply erroneous, and probably results from the rector's watching too many Hollywood blockbusters rather than studying.

The word leprosy itself, and not a euphemism, appears well over 50 times in the Vulgate Old Testament; furthermore, all antiquity definitely did not consider the word "unmentionable." In the ancient Mediterranean basin, under the term leprosy were included various inflammatory diseases of the skin like lupus and ringworm, and both medical men and historians openly described it and recommended cures. In pre-Biblical Greek, λέπρα (lepra) meant psoriasis, as probably did the Latin borrowing in Pliny the Elder. The 2^nd c. a.d. physician Galen certainly knew of Hansen's disease but also used the word lepra frequently to characterize an affliction distinct from true leprosy. Later, in a.d. 726, Pope Gregory II openly gave St. Boniface a regulation concerning lepers (they were allowed to receive communion but not to associate with healthy people), and later in Europe there were numerous leper laws and rules (including the one laid down by Lateran III in 1179). Furthermore, in the high Middle Ages, the wealthy often donated funds to support leper houses run by religious.

All this shows that leprosy or leper was no more a taboo word than sedevacantism. The rector, we must conclude, was being theatrical rather than thoughtful.

Well, then, what does this all mean? It's simple: the rector, "One-Hand" Dan, and the Blunderer are NOT what they try to pass themselves off as. They're not even runners-up. They're grotesque caricatures of a once learned Catholic priesthood. We know that a lot of Traddies say that, in spite of their deep misgivings about the Terrible Trio, they must back these clerical showmen because they at least come closer to the practice of the faith than other Traddie groups and, therefore, can help restore the Church. The truth is: they don't and they can't.

They are irrelevant everywhere except among their foaming-at-the-mouth followers. We've said it before, and we'll say it again: the Novus Ordo is undergoing a traditional renaissance. Some would say a revolution. But don't take our word for it. Just read the op-ed article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. Deep changes are happening without the influence of the rector and his crew. He knows it, and he's enraged. That must explain why he resorted to that purple patch. He needs to appear to his hangers-on as though he can make a difference. Otherwise, why keep up the donations?

The rector will never play a part in the Restoration. N-e-v-e-r. If the Restoration were to take place today, he wouldn't even receive a courtesy invitation to resign. When Novus Ordo traditionalists at last embrace the truth that the Conciliar popes defected, they will have done so independently of the rector's or his sycophant buddies' vain efforts. Why should anyone pay heed to that pack of ill-trained, third-rate amateurs? In the end, the credit will belong to the stalwart SSPX and to the gifted, genuinely educated traditionalists in the Vatican II establishment who aim to make whole Christ's bride.

* We know the movie, and the rector misremembers here. It is the lowly jailer, not Drusus, Messala's adjutant, who gasps, "Lepers!" Drusus steps into the cell against the jailer's protest and quickly retreats with what we interpret as a look of muted pity and revulsion. In this day when everything can be swiftly checked, why hasn't the rector learned to be more careful about what he writes? We guess he knows his usual audience and doesn't care.

We reviewed the scene carefully. To us, the shaken jailer's exclamation sounded more like an anxious homeowner after inspecting his house's damaged siding: "Termites!"