BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY

That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one. Johnson

"One-Hand Dan" and the rector doubled down last week. In spite of all our impassioned pleas on behalf of the Rev. Mr. Nkamuke's orders, "Big Don" suffered "One Hand" to ordain the hapless young man. It's our fervent though fragile hope that the rector clandestinely re-ordained this wretched victim to vanity the minute Dannie took off for the cult center with his motley posse of brown-nosers.

We can't say we're surprised, however. We knew when we posted the report about the change of ordination venue that "One Hand" would lobby heavily to get back in charge. He just couldn't lose face -- nor could the Blunderer. Oh, to have been one of the dozens of flies swarming on a humid, swampland wall when Dannie laid down his cards and called! It's no wonder our ears have been burning for so long.

Bonehead Tone, the serial blunderer, and his lip-synching, wrong-thinking croaking chorus of lay stooges, smugly (and erroneously) urge Catholics to ignore their instinct to choose the safer course. Maybe the rector fell victim to that hollow argument. (He's not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree either, you know.) However, as we have made clear, in the case of "One-Hand Dan" and all the men he's ordained, that safer course is conditional re-ordination (and consecration, where applicable).

Real Catholics will laugh off Tone and his squawking parrots -- first, because Pistrina has rebutted all the reasons advanced in support of his now-demolished claim (v.g., papal ordinations, Eastern rites, Sacramentum Ordinis* etc.); and second, because we ground our position on the prudent, piously cautious practice of the Holy Office in times long before Modernist moles burrowed into its ranks in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.

Last summer, in our replies to sundry comments, we referenced a famous instance where, despite Pope Pius VI's decision in a controversy over the necessity of physical touch at the imposition of hands for the episcopate, the Holy Office maintained its policy of conditional of re-consecration.  Owing to recent comments aping the Blunderer's wayward assurances, we think it appropriate on this sad day to devote an entire post to this subject.

In his commentary on Sacramentum Ordinis, Fr. Hürth wrote that the Holy Office "always chose the safe way in deciding particular cases" (in decidendis casibus particularibus, semper viam tutam elegit [p. 34]). After summarizing the transactions attendant to the pope's decision to accept the majority view of a committee of theologians, which decided that, in the particular case before it, physical contact was not necessary for validity, Fr. Hürth appended the following observation (p. 36):

Notatu dignum est: S. Officium ... non obstante decisione Pii VI. controversiam de necessitate tactus physici non habuisse solutam, ideoque, ob securitatem et ad arcendas funestas sequelas ordinationis forte invalidae, continuasse consuetam suam praxim, statuendo in casu dubii insolubilis: ad cautelam reordinetur ex integro sub condicione cum tactu physico. Literally: It is worthy of note that the Holy Office ... notwithstanding the decision of Pius VI did not consider the controversy on the necessity of physical contact solved, and therefore, for the sake of safety and to avoid the deadly consequences of a possibly invalid ordination, continued its customary practice, deciding in a case of insoluble doubt: as a precaution, let him be entirely re-ordained conditionally with physical contact.

Let's restate for emphasis Fr. Hürth's observation: notwithstanding a papal decision in a particular case, the Holy Office determined to follow the safe course in cases where doubt could not be resolved .  As you all know, cases of one-handed priestly orders conferred after the 1947 publication of Sacramentum Ordinis are insoluble until the restored Church makes a pronouncement. Neither a valid pope nor the Holy Office has officially and formally addressed the issue. All we have to rely on with certainty is the plain teaching of Sacramentum Ordinis, where Pius explicitly taught that the first imposition of the bishop's  hands constitutes the matter of the sacrament of priestly orders in the Latin rite.  All this leads to one fundamental conclusion: 

If the Holy Office decided to be safe even in the face of a papal decision in a particular case, then traditional Catholics must cleave all the more tenaciously to the safe side in the face of proximate-to-the-faith papal teaching directed in general to the entire Latin Church.

In the absence of any authoritative, authentic ruling to the contrary on the part of the magisterium, the safe bet is to adhere to the clear and unambiguous letter of the lawgiver: imposition of hands is the matter of the sacrament of priestly order in the Latin rite. Accordingly, since the question about the validity of one-handed conferral of priestly orders in the Latin rite is currently insoluble, conditional reordination is the only safe way out of this mess.


Now, we know "One Hand" will never remedy his own difficulty, not the least because doing so would be tantamount to admitting publicly what everybody knows as a fact: the Checkmeister's monograph is dead wrong. But those unfortunate men who were ordained by "One Hand," whose uncertain ranks Bede Nkamuke has now been compelled to join, are under no such constraint.

The MHT completers should immediately demand conditional orders from the rector. (We suggest they do so as a group: there's strength in numbers.)  Those who have no standing to petition redress from the rector -- who, we remind everyone again, signed the 1990 ad cautelam letter to "One Hand" --  must try to find another bishop to regularize their orders. A few may apply to the Italian seminary whence they came; others who have burned their bridges behind them must look elsewhere.

No matter what, for the welfare of the faithful, all these unlucky losers should obtain conditional orders soon, especially Bede Nkamuke, before he returns to Africa.  "One Hand" is on the back end of a train-wreck of an apostolate, but his "ordinati" are either at the beginning or the mid-point of their ministries. Bede Nkamuke is headed back to his homeland, where he may not have access to a valid bishop. Who knows how his fellow countrymen will react when they learn that he received his orders from "One-Hand Dan"? (And they will learn of it -- you can bet the farm on that.) Why should Bede Nkamuke put hopeful, trusting souls through such anguish when the cure is so simple? He'll surely be sorry later if he doesn't act now. He'll have a lot to answer for at his judgment.

No priest in his right mind can want to go through life without being entirely certain he possesses valid orders. In these times, there's no room for the slightest possibility of invalidity. The best play is the safe play. These men should run, not walk, out of Dannie's "Casino Loyale": they must ignore the Blunderer's dangerously bad idea that "there is no 'doubt' present that dictates choosing a supposedly 'safer' course.' " He's just whistling in the spooky grave yard of the sede experiment. Whom does he think he's kidding? Doubt has been present since 1976, from the moment the archbishop got back to the sacristy and realized what he'd omitted.

The time-honored practice of the Holy Office -- with just a little updating -- will open the door to securitas, "safety, security," or more literally, peace of mind, freedom from care:

ad cautelam Beda Nkamuke et socii infelices reordinentur ex integro sub condicione ab  episcopo haud dubie valido.

* By now nobody, we're sure, needs to be reminded that Pope Pius XII never wrote in Sacramentum Ordinis that the matter of the diaconate, priesthood, and episcopacy was "one and the same." Only an ignoramus like the Blunderer could have come up with that translation. And if the gross distortion of papal teaching wasn't caused by ignorance, then by what? Of course, this foul-smelling misrepresentation of formal papal teaching is only one of the vile ingredients in a reeking dog's dinner of mistranslation, faulty transcription, special pleading, and text-critical naïveté.