Finally we arrive at Gómez Dávila's third category that successively inspires outrage, worry, and hilarity when an old-time Catholic contemplates either the modern Church or the malformed sede clowns of Tradistan, to wit, theology. (For the others, see our two previous posts.)
In today's analysis, we won't reëxamine the cult's una-cum fairy tale, for even one of their own affiliated "priests" once told some South African faithful he didn't believe in it himself. We won't discuss sedevacantism either, because the gleesome threesome of Dannie, Donnie, and Checkie comically turned a serious, plausible hypothesis into a pseudo-dogmatic superstition. The solid, theoretical development of the sedevacantist thesis took place in Europe and Latin America through the work of scholars and profound thinkers like Dr. Carlos Disandro. The barely educated gringo pretenders are all Johnny-come-lately parasites. We also won't address the SW Ohio cult's calculatedly sentimental, nursery-school Mariology, which grimly offends pious devotion.
Actual Tradistani theology must be inferred from the cult masters' messages and behavior. You can't rely on the snippets of orthodox theology to which they give lip service in their aimless sermons or over-written newsletters: Everybody knows they don't practice what they preach. It's all pretense. (Remember: [1] Dannie, Donnie, and Checkie maintain that priests without a brick-and-mortar seminary formation are "untrained and un-Tridentine," yet Wee Dan "ordained" Uneven-Steven McFaker who "studied" (LOL) independently, while Big Don took him to Europe as his bag boy; and [2] Erroneous Antonius sneered at the changes in the 1964 Inter Oecumenici, one of which was the suppression of the Leonine Payers (WHH, p. 77), yet both he and Li'l Dan have suppressed them.)
After long thought, Pistrina has reached a firm conclusion: The cult masters' "theology" is a monstrously inverted amalgam of Creflo Augustus Dollar's "theology of prosperity" and Bergoglio's revival of the preferential option for the poor with his "poor Church for the poor." Both friendly and hostile readers of this blog are familiar with Bergie's views on poverty, but a quick reminder about Pastor Dollar may be in order. He's the televangelist who brazenly asked donors to fund the purchase of a $65 million Gulfstream G650 jet so he could better conduct his ministry of the "prosperity gospel," which preaches that material wealth is a sign of God's favor.
Putting it all together, we therefore posit the following: lying behind the cult's relentless, remorseless fundraising and unrestrained, big spending must lie a theology of lay impoverishment for clerical enrichment, or more simply, an "expropriation gospel." According to its outrageous tenets, God wants sede clergy to prosper by reducing hard-working Catholic families to grinding poverty through perpetual, confiscatory almsgiving. Why else would Dannie, over just a few months, unnecessarily travel to Florida and Mexico, whine about high heating bills, complain about the Lenten turnout, crowd-fund a second edition of Checkie's dreadful Work of Human Hands, hound the faithful to bring in their envelopes, fund-raise a new organ for Checkie, panhandle for the support of a Nigerian seminarian studying independently, and keep hinting that he and his clown crew need the laity to cater their meals?
The only answer that makes sense is that our prodigal prelate doesn't care what it costs the cultlings as long as he can enjoy a spendthrift lifestyle. This is what makes Tradistan vulgar: money-grubbing, uncouth maggots pretending to be Catholic clergy in order to live large off the backs of unsophisticated, all-too-credulous rubes who haven't the wit to see the cult for what it is, viz., a sinful mockery of the Church.
Tradistan is cheaply inauthentic in every way: malformed and, in a number of cases, dubiously valid clergy; a novelty-driven, entertainment-focused liturgy; and a greedy "theology" invented to keep the clerical pigs-in-clover fat and happy. The whole enterprise is outrageous, worrying, yet, in the end, hilarious.
And it all could never have happened but for the imbecility of the laity!
Their bovine financial support of the SW Ohio-Brooksville clown trio provokes outrage. Their slobbering willingness to throw away the family treasure on the cult masters' wasteful, harebrained projects and to entrust their children to the cult's "schools" is gravely troubling. Worst of all, their baseless delusion that they've found a Catholic oasis is too funny for words, proving they haven't the slightest notion of what the real Church was like.
As a result, the supine Tradistani laity lie penniless and twitching, awaiting their next victimization, while the cult kingpins arrogantly live the high life. The lay folks' voluntary enslavement testifies to the truth of the cynical bon mot of the bandit Calvera in the film The Magnificent Seven: "If God did not want them sheared, He would not have made them sheep." Undoubtedly that line is the central message of the "dispossession gospel" as well as the guiding text behind the pretenders' theology of lay impoverishment for clerical enrichment.
Have you started laughing yet? Or are you still just...plain ...outraged?
*La vulgaridad consiste en pretender ser lo que no somos.
I find it disturbing that sede clergy appoint themselves as "pastors" of whatever church they have.
ReplyDeleteHas anyone called them out on that?
Oh, sure they have. But as long as the people put up with that fiction, the cult masters don't care.
ReplyDeleteWhat we find worse than self-appointed "pastors" are the self-elected "bishops" of Sedelandia. They don't earn their orders; they weasel them out of another idiot just like themselves and then go on about how they prayerfully accepted election. What a joke!
But as long as lay stooges cooperate, these abuses will continue.