HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US

The time was out of joint, and he was only too delighted to have been born to set it right. Lytton Strachey

The day before yesterday, June 5, marked the fourth anniversary since the Readers first tumbled down the rabbit hole into Tony Cekada's dark Blunderland. Our four-year slog has taken us a long way through the feculent nether world of false scholarship, priestly malformation, terminally ignorant clergy, dubious orders, and all-'round "Let's Pretend" Catholicism. And we still have miles to go before we make a clean sweep of the filthy nest.

In celebration of the occasion, a little back-patting seems in order with respect to our initial series -- the systematic exposure of all the shameful errors and scholarly shortcomings of Tony Baloney's embarrassingly amateurish Work of Human Hands. We're rightly proud of our accomplishment. We're also equally proud of the prediction we made time and again that the Novus Ordo (along with the SSPX), not Sedelandia, will furnish the legitimate scholars (like Fr. Stefano Carusi) who will produce the substantive (and transformational) critiques of the conciliar liturgy and theology. (See, for instance this post from late 2010.)

Our comprehensive inventory of the blunders in Work of Human Hands should have been enough to consign that cringe-worthy monstrosity to the charnel house. But if it wasn't, that is, if all we did was to wound it mortally, then surely the 2013 publication of Dr. Lauren Pristas's The Collects of the Roman Missals of 1962 and 2002 administered the sorely needed coup de grâce.

What hopeless Bonehead Tone hoped to achieve but couldn't in his laughably inept chapter 9, Prof. Pristas, a genuine academic with a doctorate from Boston College in systematic theology, successfully realized in his book-length study. In fluent, well-structured prose written in the appropriate register,  she lucidly engages, through a comparative examination of the collects of the two missals, the "question of whether Catholics who worship by means of the post-Vatican II missal receive substantially the same doctrinal, moral, and spiritual formation as do those who worshiped by means of the pre-Vatican II missals" (p. 3). Along the way, Dr. Pristas unpacks the sede fiction, chiefly promoted by "One-Hand Dan" and windbag "Big Don," that the Blunderer can make a contribution to the discussion.

It's telling to observe that Dr. Pristas does not cite Cekada in her bibliography. Moreover, she writes (emphases ours):

No careful comparative examination of the texts of each missal has been published that shows whether the pre- and post-Vatican II missals assume the same posture before God, express the same convictions and sentiments about him (sic), present the human situation in the same way, beseech God for the same or similar graces -- and if they do not, in what specific ways, and to what extent, they differ (p. 2).  

So there you have it: Erroneous Antonius's 2010 junk scholarship isn't worth a glancing mention in the world of the truly learned and properly educated. Only a cathectic "Gertie" or a spasmodic MHT "seminary" completer would ever be so stupid as to imagine that Checkie's careless, combative, incompetently executed, error-plagued Work of Human Hands has any credibility outside the intellectual desert of Tradistan.

WHH's uncredentialed author does not bear mention in the same breath with professionally trained, authentically learned scholars like Prof. Pristas or the late Dr. László Dobszay, who despite their affiliation with Nu-Church serve the traditional cause better than Tony Baloney, whose squealing failure of a book makes a strong case against the traditional position. (Anyway, who wants to side with half-wits?)

For those who would like to witness how a real scholar, not an alien to academia, treats the material, but who might find the $45 Amazon price a little steep, here's a link to an earlier paper by Dr. Pristas (2005 -- published five years before Cheeseball's fatal embarrassment and 14 years after his absurdly shallow Problems with the Prayers of the Modern Mass).

In Dr. Pristas's pages, you'll find no smarmy asides, no sophomoric witticisms. The tone is sober, and the style obeys conventions of academic exposition. In making inferences, the professor is judicious; the conclusions are deftly nuanced, phrased so as to provoke thought, not controversy. To advance the argument, Dr. Pristas marshals quantitative and textual analyses by means of data-rich, visually effective yet simple graphics.

Best of all, Dr. Pristas possesses what no American sede cleric has, viz., a sensitive, rigorously informed, well-educated theological imagination. Indeed, although she sedulously keeps her personal voice in check, in the end, Prof. Pristas manages to give us a convincing (and profound) theological critique of the disastrous Vatican-II experiment, something that WHH rashly promised in its subtitle but which its over-matched author could never hope to deliver.

The work of formally-trained scholars from many fields is coming together to argue ineluctably that the council represents a violent rupture with the Church's past. With Bergie as pope, their work won't change things in the Vatican establishment. However, it may awaken a critical mass of faithful Catholics in the Americas, who at last will see that modernist Rome has no intention of turning back the clock.

God willing, these bitterly disappointed souls may act. And if they do, it will be the result of the work of rigorously-prepared, intellectually honest Novus Ordite or SSPX academics, not marginal sede pinheads who don't recognize their own severe handicaps. Not one of these clerical phonies will ever make it to the footnotes of the history of the struggle for the restoration of the faith, unless they're listed as hindrances.

IF ANYONE IS THINKING OF AN APPROPRIATE BIRTHDAY GIFT FOR US, THEN STARVE THE BEAST AND DON'T GIVE THE CULT MASTERS A DIME TOMORROW --  "REPUDIATION SUNDAY."