IMITATION OF LIFE

Editor's Note: Owing to our travel schedule, Pistrina posts early today.

When under any kind of noxious influences an organism becomes debilitated, its successors will not resemble the healthy, normal type of the species with capacities for development, but will form a new sub-species, which, like all others, possesses the capacity of transmitting to its offspring, in a continuously increasing degree, its peculiarities, these being morbid deviations from the normal form -- gaps in development, malformations and infirmities. That which distinguishes degeneracy from the formation of new species (phylogeny) is, that the morbid variation does not continuously subsist and propagate itself, like one that is healthy, but fortunately, is soon rendered sterile...Max Nordau, Degeneration

Last weekend, as we were reading the wise, über-erudite, and always insightful Spanish-language blog Sursum Corda, we found a spot-on analysis of Scut the Prefect's two recent jaw-droppingly moronic tweets. The first reads, "One single 'una cum Mass' is more offensive to God than all abortions ever performed. Just saying..." and the second, "Abortion is a sin against the 5th Commandment, a Mass offered in union with an apostate is a sin against the 1st Commandment..." To quote the astonished blogger, "De no haber visto que realmente él lo escribió, no lo hubiera creído" -- he wouldn't have believed it without having seen that Scut actually wrote it!

Both the blogger and his lively commenter were appalled by the palpable rancor, pride, hatred, ignorance, and malice of that clerical twit's tweets. We were, too, but an additional thought came to mind: Although we don't have a direct pipeline to the Almighty as Scut seems to claim for himself, we cannot conceive how "Big Don's" 1975 ordination at a Mass una cum the apostate Montini can rise to the ghastly sinfulness of the murder of countless innocent unborn, bloodily suctioned or ripped from their mothers' wombs. Just saying...

We're not theologians or mystics, but simple common sense argues that Scutty's equation is not only false, it's absurd, even if there were some substance to the nutty una-cum hypothesis. But there is no substance whatsoever to it. As every informed traditionalist knows, the so-called "una cum" injunction is not a Church teaching. Una-cum is not even a theologoumenon. It's an invention, just a rent-seeking ploy to keep the people and their money chained to the cult centers.

The mammonite lamebrains who concocted the una-cum superstition are malformed, religious scavengers with no brief from the Church to teach. More significantly, they decidedly are not theologians in any sense of the word. For one thing, they have neither the educational credentials nor the requisite teaching and academic publishing experience, and for another, they've never worked under the guidance and supervision of the Church's magisterium.

The cult masters are crass amateurs feeling the heat from the odium plebis in their chapels. That's why they promote this cockeyed theory in order to keep their well-shorn sheep from straying to the green pastures dutifully overseen by good shepherds. The fact that they try to pass off this counterfeit theology as dogma is yet another sign of their radical deviance from the Catholic faith.

Some have commented on these pages that, despite some superficial resemblances, what the cult masters have on offer is not Roman Catholicism at all. We agree. It's some weird, twisted replica, which cannot be termed a sect in accordance with standard sociological typology. That's why Pistrina labels their foul enterprise a cult. With the manic images of Carnival still fresh in the mind's eye, it's the right time now to explore in greater depth the exact nature of the cult's degeneracy and its fundamental unlikeness to the divine faith.

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The cult masters' fantasy world is nothing but tawdry, for-profit theme-park Catholicism as grotesquely imagined by some cult-intoxicated Walt-Disney-manqué. Their garish Traditionland is a freakish simulacrum of the faith, aimed at enticing the spiritually handicapped and the mentally deficient to shed their cash. Like the better managed and more uplifting secular amusement parks, Traditionland boasts a multitude of imaginary "themed lands" of its own.

Its leading attraction is Liturgyland, where you can view a comical "bishop" play dolly dress-up in an empty chapel and witness rites and devotions never-ever seen in the United States. Next door is Yesterdayland, which re-imagines the American Catholic 1950s as they never were; there you can pretend the general decree Maxima redemptionis was never in force.

In the center of it all is eerie Balderdash Mountain, featuring cutesy-pie but unnerving displays like the quaint "Baby Dr. Jesus," sporting hospital gown, surgical cap, stethoscope, and miniature medical bag. There's also a gift shop where you can shockingly overpay (errrr, uhhh, ... we mean, make a generous donation) for a chintsy packet of chalk, incense, and charcoal to inscribe the Magi's initials over your door.

Far away on the periphery, near the fetid garbage dump, is Make-Believe Curia, U.S.A., which is designed to let any unqualified idiot think he's a theologian or canon lawyer. In this land of demented whimsy, get taken for a ride to nowhere on the circular Epikeia Rail Road with stops at fictional Una-Cum Junction and the Forbidden-Leonine-Prayers City. (Be careful lest Scutty the Twitter-Birdbrain hurl a fatal imprecation at you as the train careens headlong down a slippery slope! That pathetic creature is wound tighter than a ball of rubber bands, you know.)

Finally, if you're looking for thrills and chills, visit Swampland Inquisition Square, patterned after the Palacio de la Inquisición in Cartagena, Colombia. It's got loads of vicious interactive games. Be sure to stop at the side wall where there's a small window through which you can denounce that uppity sister-in-law of yours who doesn't believe in the una-cum nonsense. And if you're itching for some more malicious kicks, stop by one of the Square's many sidewalk "confessionals." Pretend you're a "seminarian," and unburden your sedesceptic soul. Once you give the sleazy "confessor" his wickedly solicited permission "to talk to another priest," step outside and watch the sede clown-clergy go bonkers rounding up some intelligent Catholic kid who thinks for himself.  If you're in luck, you might see a summary dismissal. Go ahead and join Scutty and his Toady in cruelly taunting any unfortunate victim as he leaves.

When the hooting and jeering stop, you'll surely want to stay long enough for the nightly St. John's bonfire, where wild-eyed sede bad seeds burn in effigy the cult's critics, whom the cult masters feverishly style Our Enemies. (Warning: keep your mouth shut, or you may end up like a charred marshmallow.) Throughout your visit, everywhere you'll meet a wandering, head bobbing, stumpy mitered sewer rat, with a frozen, toothsome grin, rattling his massive beggar's cup in your face. Pause for a photo op at your own risk, and be sure to hold on to your wallet.

* * *

To get you to spend big bucks and reward their shareholders, the designers of profane theme parks use every trick in the book, liked forced perspective, to help you to suspend your disbelief as you walk through their distorted, exaggerated re-imagining of the world. You go along with the benevolent deception for family unity, the fun of it all, and the distraction it affords from the cares of the real workaday world. If you're well adjusted psychologically, when you leave -- souvenir laden and decidedly lighter in the pocketbook -- you and the kids know it was all a fiction. In the end, nobody believes that the frat boys in mouse suits, the wigged and heavily rouged co-eds turned ersatz princesses, or the jerky pirate automatons are real.

Likewise, the cult masters, in their unceasing efforts to encourage you to part with your money to feather their nests, have fabricated an implausible, cardboard semblance of reality. The difference is, they do everything they can to keep you from admitting it's all a flashy, cheap façade.  Unlike the happy families visiting normal theme parks, the ill-fated clans staggering through bizarre Traditionland end up divided to their dying day after one of their number sees through the malevolent ruse. 

In place of cherished memories of spine-tingling rides and enthralling sights, each anxious, hollow-eyed sede ma and pa, with their traumatized, snarling "youngns" in tow, head home impoverished, bedeviled by recurring flashbacks of the ugly SGG school scandal, screeching clerical cat-fights, harebrained theology, and the Bonehead's chilling Schiavo opinion.  In this wacko, suckers' playground, you're expected to deny what your conscience tells you. You're supposed to remain trapped there forever -- or for as long as you can pay the stiff daily admission fee and buy all the junk.

THE HOAX IS OVER.

IT'S OKAY TO WALK AWAY.

WHY NOT DO IT TODAY?