FATAL VISION

And beyond the abyss I saw a place which had no firmament of the heaven above and no firmly founded earth beneath it. There was no water on it, and no birds; it was a waste and a horrible place. Ethiopian Book of Enoch (Trans. R.H. Charles)

 

The signs are unmistakable. They’re as plain as day. Simply open your eyes.

Despite the petulantly brave face “One-Hand Dan” summons with difficulty in his weekly “Bishop’s (?) Corner,” the SW Ohio magus must assuredly envisage the cult's accelerating material, emotional, and financial disintegration. That's why he subjects us to these endless talk-therapy sessions.

 

For instance, back on January 10, Wee Dan, with his wonted beggar’s candor, whined:

We have both mice and a broken stove in the Helfta Hall Kitchen. They will both have to go, I hope in time for Lent, with its church suppers.

The chief objective of this stomach-turning admission might have been to loosen up some cash from queasy Gerties fearful of competing with rodents for cold scraps during the starch-and-grease-fueled feeding-frenzy that SGG calls Lent. However, Panhandlin' Dan's words betray much more than his own anxiety to secure free, hot, high-calorie chow for himself and his ravenous dependents. By His Esuriency's own account, we'd say the cult center is teetering on the verge of condemnation.

 

It’s not a pretty picture. Deadly optics, in fact.

 

Either the mice have decamped from the “Young Fathers’” flophouse to occupy the kitchen of the social hall, or the pesky creatures have sent out a stalwart vanguard to establish a new colony. We’d say the first is the more likely scenario, since vermin go where the food is. That's probably why the Gerties must  now contend with a new sanitation threat to Dannie’s dump.

As if the uncontrollable raccoon infestation  weren't enough for them to bear!

 

The cult’s barren, industrial-park site will soon present to the squalor-besieged cultlings' horrified gaze a stark, apocalyptic landscape of crumbling piles, rusting appliances, and disease-carrying varmints run amok. We think Deacon Dan, in his mind’s eye, can envision the looming desolation more clearly than anyone else (except for Pistrina, that is). He recognizes the same old wolf growling and pawing at the rickety front door. As acute panic sets in, he grasps at the only solution his weak imagination has ever conceived: Squeeze the already bug-eyed Gerties for more and more filthy lucre.

 

That’s why last week "One Hand" awkwardly invoked St. Paul as a lame pretext to insinuate  “greater generosity as we plan out our Lent.” Here it’s obvious Dannie’s planning on an budget-bustin' exterminator and a brand-new stove. (Will it be a high-end, top-of-the-line Wolf range?) You know, a mention of the word “generosity” from Wee Dan is like Chekhov’s gun: if you see one in the first act, it’ll go off in the second or third. So Gerties should brace themselves for some loud collection-assaults come Ash Wednesday. Only big-spending can soothe a cult master's anxiety about on-rushing doom.

 

But he won’t get the bucks he needs to stem the cult center’s irreversible decline into a dark, sere wasteland. He’s lost the cultlings’ hearts and minds. They remain because they’re afraid to stay home alone. The long years of propaganda and disinformation have paid off only in one respect: the cult masters have a captive (though restive) audience.  But the failure to mend their spendthrift, quarrelsome ways or to make reparation has produced deep, bitter resentment. The people are so alienated they openly admit they'd leave the SW Ohio cult in an instant, if they thought they could.  Only brutal spiritual terrorism keeps them from bolting.

 

Other calamities, too, are weighing heavily on the cult masters, as the bleak, dilapidated, shoddily constructed edifice continues to come unglued. Everything is going so very wrong, especially for Tony Baloney.  The Blunderer is under unceasing attack from every side. (Check out this masterly skewering from “The Remnant.”) All he can do is spin his wheels uploading painfully amateur videos where he looks like a deer caught in a hillbilly poacher’s spotlight. Those long, futile hours of script preparation and sideshow production must leave little time for him to engage in much pastoral work or lend a hand with the other duties that helpless Li'l Dan expects.  Either the indolent “Young Fathers” have to do them, or they’re left undone. And with each video release comes a lucid, trenchant counterattack forcing the Cheeseball to slip back into the rut of more YouTube folly.

 

Insider reports confirm the strain is showing. Erroneous Antonius hasn’t the resources — intellectual or monetary — to give his distinguished, learned opponents a book-length answer. Exacerbating his dilemma is the awareness that an army of eager critics — critics with a real university education — stands ready to trash anything he writes in impotent defense.

 

Therefore, he doesn’t dare publish anything. Surrounded by idiot peers, he's got no one to proofread his ad-hominem drivel (which, BTW, intimidates nobody). Better hand him a box of tissues to wipe all the tears. On second thought, make that two boxes, because the cultlings are fed up with his crackpot polemics and misplaced priorities. They just want the Mass ─ and some peace and quiet.

 

Soon they’ll have to make their demands known. They can read the ominous signs almost as well as we can. It can't go on like this much longer.

 

Through the lens of disgust, cult-drunk Gerties finally see things are falling apart. At such times, dysfunctional leadership always seeks refuge in mindless distractions. Each sign of internal decay is as clear as glass: Checkie picks senseless fights he can’t win. Dannie craves foreign travel while obsessing over his ghoulish cats (which seem intimidated by the hyper-aggressive mice). Malformed pseudo-clergy immerse themselves for months at a time in dead-end, unnecessary projects like the enormously incompetent ORDO 2016, or they escape to far-flung "missions" that will never be self-supporting. Inevitably, the laity must pay for this frivolity — financially and spiritually.

 

But not for long, we think. Something big is on the horizon. It's coming.

 

You don't need a crystal ball to perceive these are end times for the SW Ohio cult.

Trad-mageddon starts as soon as a newly spawned "bishop" crawls out from the fetid swampland muck of feculent, southern Tradistan.