CARTOON OF THE MISBEGOTTEN

You're dethpicable! Daffy Duck

In the four years or so since "One-Hand Dan" suicidally delivered the death blow to his and the rector's stick-figure brand of sede-ism, all the cult's cartoonish claims have been unveiled as utter fictions, the cheesy product of reckless aspiration, fit only for the consumption of quickly duped hayseeds and profoundly warped social outcasts. The biggest of the myths -- and it was a real whopper, believe you us! -- was the brazen narrative of legacy and legitimacy.

The Toon-Town cult masters weren't content to insist they were the best of the motley and scattered sede characters. No. That was too relative. They wanted to be the best absolutely. In fact, they went for equivalency with the past: In their minds, they definitely were identical to the pre-conciliar Church. With this fiction in hand, they devoted all their meager talents and a great amount of the suckers' contributions to convincing the gullible, the guileful, and the thuggish into agreeing they were the real McCoy, that they had the right stuff, that they were -- how shall we put it? Ah, yes! -- dinkum (as some of their abettors might say).

And, for a while, you know, it really, really worked. 

The unsavory clergy got a pass on all their antics because they had marketed themselves, with a wink and a nod and a tongue-clucking, chin-wagging, mock coyness, as the genuine article. Through the alchemy of phony self-promotion, intellectual wooden nickels were circulated as coin of the realm in Traddielandia. The one-dimensional Blunderer was passed off as a scholar, a liturgist, a Latinist, and a theologian of the first water. (We can scarcely type without laughing -- or retching!)  Nowadays, irrationally driven by his ticlike hatred of his better-educated critics, the marginalized Blunderer stalks internet chatrooms talkin' trash (only to be firmly put, time and again, in his place by intellectually superior laymen).

The irrascible rector once also had a big, exaggerated rep. Why, he was not only the embodiment of pre-conciliar standards but also was a penetrating socio-political analyst to boot -- until "One-Hand's" folly brought about his exposure as "the great pretender."

Li'l "One Hand" was largely inked as an individual of wide culture, a connoisseur of fine cuisine, a man of letters, an accomplished orator, and a large-souled, kindly, gentleman-prelate, overflowing with grandfatherly blarney and ersatz-Hibernian good will. Better still, he was (almost) a Fulton Sheen redivivus -- but only better. (Oh, indeed, yes, they all thought.) Well, his behavior in late 2009 ripped off that mask.

As for the "sermon in stone" LOL -- we mean the crumbling cult center -- it was to be a destination site, where toothless, pink-eyed Traddie trogs, awestruck at this grimy, sede Shangri-la, could see what a Catholic church was really supposed to look like. (Yeah, right! Engineers predict it won't last another decade. But the cult will be finished well before the authorities condemn the structure.)

Oh, yes (we can almost hear the cult masters whisper to one another), they were the heirs of pre-conciliar Catholicism, and that gave them the right -- correction, the bounden duty -- to call the shots, to play the stern, little Miss Bossy-Boots, even if they knew they had no right. But they knew the people didn't know, and, soooo (they must have mused in triumph), who were they to dash the masochistic dreams of the sheep, anyway? Everything considered, you see, it was all for their own salvation, wasn't it? People need direction, don't they now! And, well (they would have concluded, with a flourish of the whip hand), that's what we were ordained for, right? Why else would the archbishop have gainsaid wiser heads?

Looking back, it's hard to imagine how so many Catholics fell for this caricature of the sacred priesthood and hierarchy. It was all just make-believe, and considerably less real and credible than Max Fleischer's Koko the Clown and his dog.  At the very best, it was nothing more than liturgical performance art.

Live and learn, we always say. The point is, it's all over now, thanks to "One Hand." Even the cult's supporters don't really believe the myth any longer. It's broken. Sure, they may still show up and surrender some cash, but in the back of their empty, troubled, bigoted minds lurks gnawing doubt. And why not? Trad World has come a long way since 2009.

First, we know that the under-credentialed Blunderer doesn't rise to the level of an ungifted amateur. His Work of Human Hands has been shown to be a sloppy, error-filled, ill-written piece of junk scholarship. His other endeavors, like trying to prove one-handed ordinations are kosher, have also been annihilated. Second, "One Hand" is not the urbane and cultivated churchman portrayed in the cult's puerile marketing campaign. (He may not even be a bishop if his one-handed priestly ordination proves to be invalid in the eyes of the institutional Church.) Third, the rector's unschooled errors of technical language and fact underscore that everything was just hype (and they explain the systematic malformation of his pesthouse completers).*  Maybe that's why his big $30K proposal was dead on arrival. Lastly, we know that the mirthless cult center proper, decaying visibly by the month in a shabby industrial park, is a shoddily constructed white elephant and bottomless money pit. Everything these cartoon characters did was motivated by an icy, arriviste ambition to get ahead on your dime.

Everyone at last understands that the cult masters are not-- and never were -- the exquisites of their over-wrought and under-informed imaginations.** Rather than haute cuisine, the wannabes would prefer to scarf up an oily, roiling bowl of fondue Néo-Mexicaine*** washed down with a couple of aggressively effervescent "big 24 oz." plastic bottles of Château de "Phaigeaux."**** All that collection money spent on chic restaurants -- *sigh!* -- was just image-making to keep the hill jacks in awe (and deep in debt).

Comical "One Hand" brought an end to these Traddie Toons. In the words of the immortal Porky Pig ... well, we'll let him speak for himself: (click here)

* We've got a hot, steaming, fetid, fresh example or two of his ignorance for next week. So, come on back!

** There's a very telling anecdote of the time when a small group of Traddie-trash clerics went to an Italian-American restaurant in Michigan. The owner, mistaking the priests for men of taste and experience, sent them over a complimentary plate of fried calamari. It went untouched, but not until after two barbarian ingrates giggled and grimaced in disgust. One of their table companions, a South American of Italian descent, was too intimidated to sample what he knew to be a fine dish.  He chickened out and allowed the uncouth losers to deprive him of a fine dining experience.  That's the cult for you! The lowest common denominator rules.

*** That's microwaved, store-brand processed cheese smothered with a bottle of extra-mild generic salsa, served with extra-salty, no-name, imitation tortilla chips.

****A richly sweetened, grape-flavored beverage imported from Detroit made from a variety "that goes 'pop'" when trodden "in a vat."