THE WOULD-BE WISE MAN

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Editor's Note: Our holiday mail call continues with this electronic message from an outraged traditional Catholic:

My husband and I were shocked to read that Bishop Sanborn allowed Bishop Dolan to ordain that young Nigerian. He always seemed to be a cut above Dolan and the rest. You Readers are often brash and always insulting but you have made the case that ordination with one hand is at least defective. You have also proved that Father Cekada's defense of these defective orders is untenable. Of all people, Bishop Sanborn should have seen that. He is the best educated and smartest of all the traditional clergy. Why he sent that young man out into the world with this burden is a mystery and a tragedy. We have decided to stop all monetary support.

We applaud our correspondent's strong sense of right and wrong. We hope other traditional Catholics imitate her example and turn off the cash flow, too. STARVE THE BEAST, for, if rumors from the East Coast have any truth in them, it looks as if Big Don's already ginning up his next cash-vacuuming campaign in order to add a new wing to the pesthouse. (We guess he may hope to revive his stillborn big $30 K plan in order to build dormitories to house more misfit Euro Trash and native-born, home-schooled knuckle draggers, so hang on to your wallets.*)

The writer's disappointment in Big Don is based on a false assumption. The beginning of wisdom lies in acknowledging that the rector is not the erudite, widely informed, analytical thinker the sputtering cult public-relations machine portrays him to be. He's really a dud.  On numerous occasions in the past, Pistrina has documented his ignorance, botched assessments, and howling errors in language and history. Remember how he had to walk back his stupendously off-base prediction that the SSPX would run to the arms of Modernist Rome? (Even toothless carnival fortune-tellers have a better track record than this blowhard.)

From recent pesthouse newsletters, we now offer a fresh example of his shallowness to demonstrate that any respect for him as an authority is sorely misplaced. In June, Big Don accused Bergoglio of "a profound ignorance of even the basics of sacred theology and of church (sic) history." He characterized Papa Pancho as "a man of limited intelligence who has received a very poor formation"; to boot, he is a "first-class Loser."  In August, the rector repeated his criticisms, ranting that P-Squared is "ignorant of theology and Church history." Moreover, in the rector's eyes, he is "an intellectual dullard" and "dumb." In September, the obsessed rector shrieked that Bergoglio -- hobbled by a "lack of education in the basics coupled with a dull mind" -- "manifests a serious lack of intelligence."

What triggered this violent spasm of school-yard name-calling was Papa Pancho's novel (to say the least) understanding of the term "pelagianism." Apart from its childishness, the rector's superficial analysis betrays a seriously misinformed underestimation of his enemy. "Ignorant," "malformed," "dullard," "dumb," and "loser" are all fit descriptors for his buddies, the Blunderer and "One-Hand Dan," but it's a fatal mistake to tar the calculating Modernist Bergoglio with that brush.

If the rector were a subtler thinker or if he possessed a university education that had exposed him to techniques for the formal analysis of discourse, he might have read with care the Jesuit John O'Malley's What Happened at Vatican II. In it, O'Malley, a novus ordite, argues that the council produced a radically new language and style, an Orwellian ecclesiastical New Speak. In O'Malley's apt phraseology, Vatican II constituted a language event that drew a line separating its documents not only from those of other councils but also from all other official Church documents.

The revolutionary conciliar rhetoric, in O'Malley's view, represented a shift in language and style that modified the previous operational mode and model of the Church. For the drafters of Vatican II documents, style and literary genre were essential. The radically new language indicated and induced a shift in values or priorities. To endow the altered discourse with substance, the council's agents developed a new vocabulary with updated definitions and understandings.

The result was the subversion of fixed lexical meaning. In its place, Vatican II rhetoric established the foundation for ad-hoc definition. Ancient terms of art, once thought stable, take on any new meanings an "authoritative" speaker wants them to assume. The audience colludes in the distortion by acquiescing to the linguistic revisionism: Old understandings are laid aside as surprisingly novel, strikingly unconventional understandings emerge to drive the old away through repetition and social pressure. (The untested presumption of an "authoritative" religious speaker's competence is a robust obstacle to critical thinking and the search for truth, as many Traddies have learned from bitter experience: that's how both the Vatican-II establishment and the cult masters have survived for so many years.)

To effect such a move from precise denotation to unstable signification requires not only boldness of spirit (some would say chutzpah) but also rhetorical aptitude joined with a deep psychological understanding of how unwilling and unfit most Catholics are to question those who seem to be in authority, screaming error notwithstanding. (That may explain why before Pistrina's exposé no priest [including the rector] publicly noticed Cekada's grossly misleading mistranslation of Pope Pius XII's definition of the matter of the sacrament of priestly orders.) 

The man who purposefully manipulates for his own persuasive ends the meaning of words may be dishonest or conniving or cynical, but he is certainly not "ignorant" or "dumb." Team Bergoglio is both agenda-driven and savvy in their way with words.  Any traditionalist adversary, even a feeble one, who underestimates these men, does so at Catholics' peril.

Intelligent Trads must read Bergie's revision of the meaning of the pelagianism in the context of the revolution in theological discourse attendant to Vatican II. The rector's failure to interpret Papa Pancho under something other than this rubric proves him to be unworthy of our attention as well as our largess. A man this clueless won't participate in the Restoration. 

His superficiality also explains why he allowed Dannie the Deacon to "ordain" Bede Nkamuke in the face of overwhelming evidence that "One Hand's" ordination to the priesthood is patently defective. If he had an ounce of sensus catholicus, he would have known that "One Hand" needed to remedy the defect before laying on hands again.  Let's face it: the rector just doesn't have the equipment upstairs to see the problem, though he prays deep-pocketed Traddie moneybags don't notice.

We think they do.

*There's really no need for a wastefully expensive, brick-and-mortar seminary any more, given that in 2012 "One Hand Dan" ordained a man who had studied independently under one priest for just a few years and then under you-know-who for a much shorter period. The supervising priests had significant responsibilities to their own chapels and hobby horses, so they couldn't have given their pupil the same attention a seminarian would receive in a more formally structured and supervised academic environment aimed exclusively at forming clergy. (Even the intellectually atrocious pesthouse is better than independent study.)

There must be huge gaps in amateur's Latin, philosophy, and theology (and one day we'll go into greater detail after we finish gathering all the juicy data -- there's a great back story here, believe you us); however, this "well-rounded" guy appears to be able to say the Mass and take care of the basics, and that's good enough for the crisis. (He claimed, in an oral address to squirming, wedgie-chafed cult members, that he graduated from a four-year university with two (!!) degrees: criminal justice and philosophy -- what a combination! Wow! Two degrees, not just two majors!

 If true, that puts him light years ahead of Deacon Dan, Cheeseball Checkie, Big Don the Beggar, and most of the unibrow, stuttering-and-twitching completers. Apparently, he's adept at juggling, too, which adds to his usefulness to the fumbling cult masters. He'll be a worthy successor when (and if) the Gruesome Twosome head off for their long-wished-for Southwestern retirement.

What "One Hand's" ordination of this too-cool-for-school newbie means for contributors is that the laity don't have to cough up their precious savings to fund another wing for the pesthouse in swampy Florida. Basic, functioning priests can be churned out at a far lower cost. (Pistrina, as you know, heartily endorses such a plan of action.) The ol' rector doesn't seem to object either, because he lets this haphazardly formed interloper visit the pesthouse and particpate actively in ceremonies. (We think we saw him at luckless Bede Nkamuke's "ordination.")

So much for Big Don's insistence that only a "seminary formation" will do.  He doesn't have the courage of his convictions or else he would have barred a "priest" without seminary experience from setting foot on the pesthouse premises. 

Starve the Beast, so that this year, you can give your kids the Christmas presents they tearfully begged Santa to bring. They know the jolly old elf's itinerary includes more stops than just Brooksville and Rialto Road.