PERISHED COUNSEL

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People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Proverb

The surprising thing about the Blunderer is not all his errors or his intellectual untidiness. We've known for nearly 15 years that he's a half-educated poseur constitutionally incapable of acknowledging his mistakes and bitterly resentful of those who easily discover them.

No ... what's really surprising is how he won't follow his own advice. Even when it's sound! 

In 2006, Erroneous Anthony wrote an article calling into question the validity of the 1990 ordinations of two SSPV priests, owing, for the most part, to the ordaining bishop's reported mispronunciation of an essential word of the rite.

Following his analysis, the Blunderer presented a number of practical conclusions. First, said Tone the Bonehead, the two priests "must submit to another ordination." In support of this recommendation, he cited Regatillo:

"There is an obligation to correct a defect:* First, if it concerned something either certainly or probably essential... Manner of correction: a) If the defect concerned something either certainly or probably essential, the entire ordination must be repeated, either absolutely or conditionally."

He backed up Regatillo with this zinger of a quote from Nabuco:

"Further, even if one were to maintain that the ordination was not certainly invalid, but merely doubtful, the same course of action must nevertheless be followed: "A doubtful ordination, at least in practice, must be repeated again conditionally in its entirety."

Then the Checkmeister wrapped up his argument:

Therefore, until such time as the Society of St. Pius V provides convincing proof that the two priests ordained by Bp. Mendez in 1990 have undergone a repetition of their ordination, the faithful should neither assist at their Masses, receive sacraments from them, nor receive the Eucharist from tabernacles in the churches they serve.

For all the foregoing reasons, therefore, the re-ordination should take place as soon as possible.

(Does all this sound familiar? But let's not toot our own horn. Let's get back to Checkie's counsel.)

Whether the bishop's actual pronunciation error constituted a substantial alteration or not, no one can say for certain. The whole narrative is a thigh-slapping, Traddie low comedy of claims and counter claims. But that's not our point: We think the Blunderer gave good advice in this instance. (He must've been in idiot-savant mode at the time.)  As we have insisted over and over again, the slightest doubt about a priestly ordination demands we act out of an abundance of caution, for in the matter of priestly orders, there's no substitute for certainty.

Based on the account of one witness** -- and considering the possibility that singular not plural forms might have been used -- we agree there was enough doubt present to counsel choosing the safe way, namely, re-ordination. We also think that Cekada was right in advising the faithful not to assist at these priests' Masses and not to receive the sacraments from them until the doubt could be erased.

Bear with us as we reiterate:

There's just no room for any doubt whatsoever in priestly orders -- no matter what!

The smart move would have been re-ordination, even if, as we suspect, the one priest's attestation that the bishop "had pronounced the form exactly and correctly" were true. Why? There is just too much doubt that cannot not be resolved without an audio recording to settle things.*** In such doubtful situations, the sound advice is: fix it, forget it, and move on!****

The parallels between this case and that of "One-Hand Dan's" are too obvious for extended comment. Let's leave it at this:

Absent any official Church pronouncement, we don't know for certain whether, after the publication of Sacramentum Ordinis in 1947, conferral of priestly orders with one hand represents a substantial defect in the sacramental matter such that it does not signal what the Church intended. In the same way, we don't know whether Bishop Mendez's reported mispronunciation was sufficiently egregious as to corrupt the meaning of the form.

Anyone can see the bottom line here: There's a serious defect in both cases.  There's at least a well-founded and prudent suspicion that quite probably something essential might be missing in both cases. Defects, as Regatillo said, must be corrected. (But you don't need a learned canonist to tell you that, do you? Didn't you learn that lesson at your mother's knee long ago? And weren't you tearfully sorry when you didn't listen to her?)

The Blunderer could see this childhood truth when he was busy vexing an old adversary. Why, then, couldn't he see it when his boss, patron, and protector faced a similar crisis? If, instead of penning his troubled (and now thoroughly rebutted) monograph, he had given ol' "One Hand" the same practical advice he gratuitously pressed upon his nemeses in the SSPV, Dannie and the men he's ordained would be able to exercise their orders in peace today -- and poor, young Bede Nkamuke could return to his homeland without the stigma of doubt that will scar his priesthood forever, unless he is re-ordained.

* We can't help observing that, while Cekada's translation of the clause is accurate, in his footnote he incorrectly transcribes Regatillo's Latin. (How typical of that serial blunderer!) Tony Baloney printed Obligatio est defectus corrigenda (our emphases and color coding), which makes no sense at all. Any proofreader with a whit of Latinity would have known the original text must have read corrigendi. The Bonehead's faulty transcription results in all manner of nonsense. One possible but unbearably tortured reading could be, "The obligation of a defect must be corrected." Say what?

But to be fair to the Latin-handicapped Cheeseball, we checked a couple of editions of Regatillo, including the one he cites, just in case there might have been a printer's error. As we expected, both the 1946 and 1949 editions read corrigendi (as also does Regatillo's 1954 Theologiae Moralis Summa, ❡668, which covers the same material). Unlike Cekada, Regatillo along with his editors and compositors actually knew Latin. (Cekada should really stay away from Latin texts, and Catholics should stay away from anything he writes.)

** This witness was also a signer, along with the rector, of the September 1990 ad cautelam letter to "One Hand Dan." Doubtless he has a keen eye for discerning irregularities in bishops' conferral of sacred orders.

*** An audio record is necessary because the situation is more involved than Cekada, with usual tunnel vision, could imagine. For instance, if Bp. Mendez uttered "da quae [pause] sumus etc.," an unbiased jury of genuinely educated experts would have to evaluate the length of the pause to determine whether the meaning of the essential words disappeared (but see note **** below). However, if Bp. Mendez said "da [pause] quae [pause] sumus [pause] etc.," then the job of evaluation becomes trickier. The reason is that a pause after spoken da and spoken sumus might signal that quae+sumus was a parenthetical element logically, but not grammatically or syntactically, related to the rest of the clause.  To be sure, that's exactly how the word functions in the text of the Pontificale as commas signal its separation from the other words of the clause. Then, regardless of a pause between quae and sumus, the meaning of the form might have remained intact.

However, we have to concede that informed, expert analysis might not wipe away all doubts:  What if the panel of experts couldn't agree? What if other experts outside the panel disagreed? And so on, and so on. No, the only satisfactory course of action is the safer course: re-ordination. That's the same course of action that "One-Hand Dan" and all the men he's ordained should take. They should erase the slightest trace of doubt because the question cannot be settled or can't be settled until the Restoration, which at this time promises to be in the distant future. In the meantime, the faithful remain in doubt about the validity of the sacraments they receive from these clergy. The laity who are not mouth-breathing cultists will heed Cekada's advice and  "neither assist at their Masses, receive sacraments from them, nor receive the Eucharist from tabernacles in the churches they serve." We emphasize that the faithful should not receive absolution or last rites from any of these men, and no one should undergo confirmation from "One Hand" until re-ordination and reconsecration.

**** We so assert in spite of two reservations: (1) we tend to believe the individual priest who affirmed the exactness and correctness of the bishop's pronunciation; and (2) Cekada's argument is not as strong as it seems at first sight. According to Cekada,  "the way Bp. Mendez separated the syllables of a word (quaesumus) substantially changed the meaning of the sacramental form from 'Grant... the dignity of the priesthood,' to 'Grant the things we are.'"  We grant this charge sounds very persuasive in Checkie's abbreviated text, but the argument weakens when you examine the whole clause: Da, quaesumus, omnipotens Pater, in hos famulos tuos [or famulum tuum if only one priest is to be ordained] Presbyterii dignitatem (literally, Bestow, we beseech [Thee], almighty Father, the dignity of the priesthood on these Thy servants [or this Thy servant]).

To someone who understands spoken Latin, the idiom of which language requires the listener to wait until a structural unit is complete in order to register the full meaning, it would very likely still be clear, in the event of a noticeable pause between quae and sumus, that the object of the imperative da is the accusative dignitatem, thereby ruling out the possibility that quae was neuter plural accusative.

A fortiori, if that Latin-competent listener were an attentive, Missal-literate Catholic, he would have immediately recognized, in spite of the pause, the formulaic elements of petition found in the collects of the Mass: Da or Tribue or Concede or Praesta +  quaesumus or deprecamur or rogamus + the direct address to the Divinity. (See, for example, the oration for Pentecost xvii:  Da, quaesumus, Domine etc. or that for  St. Prisca: Da, quaesumus, omnipotens Deus etc.) Therefore, the actual probability of an educated Catholic's thinking that the meaning of the form completely disappeared is low -- perhaps even zero.

Notwithstanding these linguistic counter-arguments, on the basis of just one of Cekada's citations (viz.,  Cappello: "Separating syllables changes the meaning [of a sacramental form] far more easily than separating the words, so that even a moderate separation would render the sacrament either invalid or at least doubtful"), we would have strongly recommended re-ordination, too. In the same spirit of pious caution, we have recommended that "One-Hand Dan" and all the men he's ordained (both as priests and as deacons) be conditionally re-ordained.