LEAPIN' LIZARDS, PART 3

Aw, why lose sleep over a bird like that. He sure looks like a bad one. Little Orphan Annie, the comic strip

We're continuing in the same vein as in the past weeks to show you we don't need to cherry-pick in order to make our point about "One Hand's" urgent need of conditional ordination and consecration, provided he wants to play it safe as a Catholic should. Today, let's see what the Jesuit Noldin had to say about jumping to the episcopate without valid priestly orders.

As late as 1960, the editor of the 32nd edition of Noldin's Summa Theologiae Moralis still could print the following:

Whether the episcopate is an order distinct from the presbyterate or a kind of extension and complement of the priesthood itself, is disputed. Nevertheless, it is more commonly affirmed that, when the priesthood has not yet been conferred, the episcopate cannot be validly conferred.*

So here we have another vote backing Pistrina's advice to "One Hand."  It's surely clear by now why Dannie's episcopal orders may not be enough. Oh, sure, the whole question of the leap is in dispute, and admittedly, we lack sufficient information to determine with certainty whether one-handed priestly orders are valid or not. And we won't know anything substantial until the Restoration, and maybe even then the world may have to wait for who knows how long to get a definitive decision. So, then ... wouldn't it just be better all around to play it safe now to assure the integrity of Dannie's Masses, absolutions, and ordinations, especially since the fix is so painless and easy? Wouldn't it also be better for the 14 sorry losers he "ordained"? Dannie could then re-ordain them all and ease their painful future.

And since we've cited the mighty Noldin in this post, we might as well hear what he has to say about the famous axiom in dubio pars tutior eligenda est -- "in doubt, the safer side must be chosen."

The Blunderer and his aping chorus of insolent e-viewers insist the axiom "applies only to a choice between a morally safe course of action and a morally unsafe one" (Cheeseball's emphasis.)  However, Noldin (p. 220, ❡236 [β]) instructs us that the axiom applies "where it is a question of the validity of the sacrament (ubi agitur de valore sacramenti)." Indeed, "where...it is a question of a matter on which the validity of a sacrament depends, the certain means must be chosen (ubi...agitur de re, a qua valor sacramenti dependet, eligendum est medium certum)."

In other words, we are bound to follow the safer course when the validity of a sacrament is at stake, which is what we, and many others, have been saying all along. And since we don't know for sure whether one-handed conferral of priestly orders is an invalidating defect or not, this is the right occasion to opt for the safer side. The sacraments are just too important to run any risk at all, even a slight one. (Although, we suspect, the defect of one-handed ordination renders the risk more than slight, particularly in view of the Holy Office's documented practice of re-consecration in related questions.)

"One Hand" has a duty of care to get himself fixed because the risk of being wrong in this matter touching upon the sacrament of orders carries so many deadly consequences. His failure to do so is telling. It illustrates how far removed the cult masters are from a genuinely Catholic frame of mind. Rather than seeking conditional orders and consecration, i.e., acting in the interest of the care of souls (the first law), Dannie thinks that by repeating over and over that he's producing undoubtedly valid priests, everybody will ignore his BIG problem. (Just read a sampling of some of his recent missives -- you'll catch the motif immediately.)

And why won't he get fixed? Pride? Arrogance? Fear of wounding the perpetually wrong Bonehead's feelings? Insouciance? Sloth? A gambler's love of risk-taking? A constitutional antipathy to the exquisite Roman sense of justice, charity, and religion?

Nobody knows the real answer, but it's obvious that the whole cult is no more than just-pretend Catholicism. The brilliant constellation of precise knowledge, spiritual disposition, and rightly motivated action that furnish true Catholic guidance is simply not present in Trad World's pitchy firmament. No amount of dolly-dress-up pageants and cloyingly saccharine missives can make up for its absence.

Just-pretend priests and prelates. Ersatz clerics. Make-believe seminaries.  Sham scholars.  Phony theologians. In counterfeit Cultilandia, these cheap knock-offs are seemingly good enough as long as the money keeps coming in. Just don 't you try giving the cult masters any wooden nickels! They themselves may be bogus, but they insist on genuine coin of the realm from their blinded and undemanding followers. Your prayers or straitened finances won't buy European trips with fancy hotels, wintertime South-American junkets, and chic desert-spa vacations.

Sick of the pretense and hypocrisy? Repelled by the theater of hauteur and the impertinent expectation of unmerited privilege? Would you like to clean up the whole mess?

RESOLVE TO STARVE THE BEAST IN 2014.

* Summa Theologiae Moralis (32nd editiion, Felician Rauch, 1960), p. 390, ❡454,1. Utrum episcopatus sit ordo a presbyteratu distinctus, an extensio quaedam et complementum ipsius sacerdotii, disputatur. Illud tamen communius affirmatur episcopatum, nondum collato sacerdotio, valide conferri non posse.