SUMMER 2015 MAILAG 4

Editor's Note: To close out this summer series, here's a recent note we received:

Thank God for your blog. I don't want to criticize, but not all Gerties are the "slack jawed, bug eyed" mindless cult subhumans you describe. There are some good people down here with common sense who are not as blind or stupid as you think.  Some made big sacrifices to get to SGG, volunteered a lot but now understand what you blog about each week.  Believe me they are waiting for the right moment to leave. The problem is that so much is at stake in some families, specially with those with younger children. Just wanted you to know. Keep up the good work. We are praying for you.

Yes, we know personally there are some Gerties who hate the situation they're in at the infernal SW Ohio cult center. We truly sympathize with them and can understand their hesitation. (See our post of July 25, IT'S OK TO STAY AWAY.) At times, it's true our posts do sound as though we can't imagine there's anybody at SGG with a lick of sense. Let us here and now reassure everybody -- in particular the poor souls who are waiting for the right time to make their move -- that we stipulate some Gerties do not belong to the hateful undead.

Common sense says we have to. 

Statistically, it's impossible for every Gertie to be a cult zombie. Despite the cult's diminishing membership, the whole of the remainder can't fall in the area under the farthest tip of the intelligence curve's left-hand tail.  These people really don't need Pistrina to open their eyes: Dannie's "Bishop's (?) Corner" with its weekly clerical travelogue alone is sufficient to awaken the most trusting victim.

Just take a brief look at the expenses.

Monthly there are three, perhaps four, round-trip flights to Milwaukee, where His Profligacy once kept a priest permanently. Then there are the missions in Minnesota and North Dakota as well as the occasional visit to the chapel in Louisiana. Next there's Checkie's monthly trip to "teach" in the "seminary," and let's not forget Dannie's periodic "pilgrimages" to chic Santa Fe, New Mexico, and his winter holidays abroad in the sun. 

If you throw in the cost of rental cars or depreciation on the cult auto along with food and lodging, you've got a lot of dollars supporting clerical wanderlust. (Next time you read the bulletin, hop online and get estimates of airfare for all these venues: Boy, it really adds up!) Moreover, since it's unlikely that many of the small missions can cover the entire cost of the travel, you can bet the cash-strapped faithful get stuck with the tab for a sizable chunk of the monthly travel outlay. So, in addition to the scandal-ravaged "school" and its "principal," the flat-broke Gerties have to underwrite the "missions," too.

So long kids' college fund!

But seriously, now. We DO empathize -- because we've all had the same experience. When you encounter the SW Ohio-Brooksville cult for the first time, your senses are overloaded with the endless pageantry, paraliturgical activities, pious talk, and clerical self-promotion. If you came of age after Vatican II, you say to yourself, "This must be what it was really like back then." If  you're old enough to have come of age well before Vatican II, you say, "This must be what it was like back then, only it's been so long that I've forgotten." So you get involved, hoping your enthusiasm, financial sacrifice, and surrender of autonomy will help you belong to what seems at first blush to be a true Roman Catholic community.

Then, after the first few years, however, a disquieting unease settles on your doubtful mind, especially if you've worked closely with the cult "clergy." The chintzy veneer of ersatz Catholicism begins to flake and peel away. You now see things that aren't right. The clergy's cynical, condescending explanations ring hollow. These bloodsuckers, you begin to suspect, are in it for themselves. You learn to read the subtext in your friends'  guarded remarks, or you talk to others like you who confirm your suspicions with unsavory horror stories of their own.

You want to leave, but you don't know where you can go, especially if you've made a big sacrifice to be near the cult. Furthermore, you worry whether your children will lose their faith if you exit. Most importantly, you want to leave on your terms, with your head held high, and not frog-marched out as a doctrinal delinquent with your name plastered all over the Internet in a cult-master fit of non-Catholic peevishness.

At this stage in the self-deprogramming process, you're deeply ashamed you haven't left the tyrannical, money-thirsty cult fiends. That's entirely understandable. Actually, it's part of the natural process of freeing yourself and your family. Just remember that almost everyone who's left the cult, including some of the Readers, felt the same way at one time or another.

In the meantime, you can help ward off the ghoulish cult masters even though you haven't yet walked out. First, give less and less money each week. Plead financial hardship if the collection-police come a-calling. Second, refuse to attend all the "really big shows."  Go only to low Mass on Sundays and holy-days, and never volunteer again.

Attendance at their extravaganzas and your donations are the life essence these clerical vampires need to sustain themselves. Deprive them of those, and they'll soon turn to dust.