Saturday, June 30, 2012

STEP VIII OF XII: HOLD A MASS MEETING

The feral clergy who prey upon the laity in "One-Hand" Dan's squalid little parcel of Traddielandia are small-souled, lupine self-servers. For that reason, you were probably served a no-trespass notice after you showed up at Mass. More than likely, the priest's base instincts overcame him, so he caused an unforgivable scandal by ordering the police to remove you from your own chapel.

Assuredly, it was an unedifying experience, especially for the children who witnessed the incident. Nonetheless, it's one the steering committee should have welcomed, as it set the stage for the mass meeting we had advised. The faithful will have seen with their own eyes the priest's intolerably boorish, irreligious behavior.  They will be ready to follow the committee's lead.

The agenda for the meeting should be short. The committee will first explain its two-fold goal of converting the chapel to a membership corporation and having the priest ordained conditionally (if he received holy orders from "One-Hand" Dan). Explain that the central objective is to allow the faithful to have a strong voice in running the chapel that they support with their hard-earned money. Given that the institutional Church is no longer in operation during the Sede Vacante, it isn't safe to put all the chapel's cash and goods into the hands of one improperly formed man, whose orders may be doubtful. Absent a divine institution into which people can safely put their trust, transparency and accountability are the only means to guarantee the good stewardship of your property.


Some of your fellow parishioners may question why the priest must be conditionally ordained. Some (who could not critically read Tony the Blunderer's monograph* on one-handed ordination) may comment, like a night-school lawyer who wrote us recently, that "the Holy Office during the 1950's repeatedly declared ordination with one hand valid for ALL grades of Holy Orders."


Well, the quoted account of the Holy Office's decisions is merely a hearsay anecdote from an unnamed bishop. Certainly we don't assert that the esteemed Fr. Regatillo, the author of the quote, made up the tale out of whole cloth. We merely insist that, without written documentation from the Holy Office, a speculative doubt about the validity of "One-Hand" Dan's orders remains in light of Pius XII 1947 Apostolic Constitution on orders. (As we have pointed out, the rector once shared this doubt, too.)


There's no record that the missing ceremony was later supplied to cure the defect or that "One-Hand" ever received conditional ordination before his consecration. Therefore, the only way to remove any doubt about the orders of a priest ordained by "One-Hand" is through conditional ordination by a bishop who had been properly ordained a priest.

After explaining the two objectives, the next item of business will be the election of a board of directors with a president, treasurer, and secretary. This elected body will replace the steering committee and will function as a shadow governing agent until the priest comes to his senses. After the election, inform the faithful that the next step will be the drafting of  bylaws for the reformed corporation so that there will be democratic rules to inform the chapel's leadership.   Next week, in Step IX, Pistrina will provide a model document.


* As we have explained before in several palces, the Blunderer's article, "The Validity of Ordination Conferred with One Hand," suffers from a fatal mistranslation of the most important point under dispute. For those with the patience to work through the technical details, here is an analysis of the error that renders the piece unusable in definitively deciding the question of "One-Hand's" orders. (A knowledge of Latin is not necessary to follow the argument.)

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