In his July 10 "Bishop's (?) Corner," a mere three months after Wee Dan taunted the Gerties with his defiant announcement, "I am in Mexico for another* quick weekend trip" ("Corner," 4/10/16), His Itinerancy bragged he would again "head off to Mexico for the weekend"!
If, for reasons of vain prestige, the Gerties, beset by so many expenses like the prematurely wrecked HVAC system, are willing to pay for all Dan's frequent luxury foreign travel, then we suppose it's their money to waste as they please. It's quite possible, you know, they might enjoy underwriting at great personal sacrifice Dannie's apostolate to nowhere south of the border. (Gertie kids don't need to see the orthodontist anyway: One day, when these twisted offspring finally find adult employment in a carnival freak show, they actually may need to eat an apple through the narrowly spaced bars of their cages.)
But (we feel obliged to ask) would they be so heedlessly generous if they knew that Travelin' Man Dan's Mexican enterprise is on the verge of coming apart?
Pistrina has reliable reports that at least one of the chapels has broken with "One Hand" in disgust. It's only a matter of time before the rupture is formally complete. We surmise that Dannie's flown down to try to keep one or another affiliated chapel from breaking away, too. (And who knows what inducements he's taken along?)
Since we don't have confirmed details, however, we'll have to leave it at that. Nevertheless, "One Hand Dan's" got a full-blown crisis on his hands. As usual, the Gerties will have to cough up the cash — just as they've had to bail out Dysfunctional Dan from all the previous messes he's gotten himself into.
But this time it's not fair. This time it's not the Gerties' fault: they've been taken for a ride.
The 2009 $GG School Scandal was a local disaster arising from within the cult's own community. Consequently, the Gerties' reprehensible decision not to exit with the principled moral majority was their own free choice. By staying, they tacitly agreed to assume the greatly increased burden on their family budgets created by the exodus, including paying the salary of the amazingly-still-employed "principal," who brought on the calamity. The groveling Gerties were depraved to continue enabling the cult masters after what had happened. Accordingly, since they did so fully aware of the circumstances, they don't deserve any sympathy for the non-stop attacks on their wallets after the decent people had left $GG.
However, the current Mexican crisis is a different ball of wax altogether. In this case, the goofy Gertries merit advice and assistance. They have no idea of what's going on. The image in their mind's eye is one of the Dirtbag enjoying a lavish welcome accompanied by tropical flowers; bright-eyed, colorfully attired señoritas; a spirited, thumping banda del pueblo; and loads 'n' loads of those "savory Mexican dishes" so highly prized in the rodent-infested $GG rectory. When Gerties read Wee Dan's novelistic accounts of his "episcopal progress" through Baja, they most likely imagine happy tradicionalistas gathered together in idyllic harmony around the old gringo "bishop (?)."
Beguiled by that imaginative, palm-tree-pocked traddie Arcadia, which Dan has invented to assure frequent tropical vacations, the Gerties may not begrudge His Spendthriftiness the excessive airfare and lodging expenditures as long as so many of the "less fortunate" are delighted to have the scum bucket in their midst. Furthermore, let's not forget that when Dannie got back from his winter Mexican holiday, he gave the cultlings fair warning of his intention to "get out each month and share the [Gerties'] wealth." It's entirely possible they might have agreed with the prodigal prelate's conclusion that "[w]e have so much at St. Gertrude the Great." (Click here for our post.)
Yet ... just like the neocolonialist yarns he spins when he gets back to the raggedy SW Ohio cult center, the adoring Mexican throngs are imaginary, too. As he's done wherever he ventures, "One Hand" has sown discord, division, and disappointment throughout our good neighbor to the south. Certainly that's not what the bled-dry Gerties bargained for. If he had come clean and told the culties that it's just about ready to blow down there so the trip was necessary, then we'd have kept quiet.
But he didn't.
All that wastefulness is quite beyond imagination. When Dannie gets back on Sunday or Monday, it's time to corner him in his shabby office and have a serious talk. (Watch out for the mice!) Dannie's summer getaway coming so soon after his spring fling has to be the last straw.
Quite possibly, the Gerties may be hesitant to confront him about the real purpose behind His Predacity's latest raid on their family budget. They're still so cult-addled they might believe it was just a routine part of his multinational "apostolate." To gauge his earnestness, they should apply the following test: if Dannie boasts that he went to Mexicali, where the average July high temperature is 108º F, you can be almost certain it was an emergency junket on the Gerties' dime to salvage his all-but vanished influence outside the ratty West Chester industrial park.
The cultmasters must be made to recognize that fixing problems caused by their personality disorders does not fall under the category of a legitimate expense. Surely the hundreds of dollars (or more) for airfare and other travel costs could have been better spent on much-needed repairs or saved for the next maintenance disaster threatening decrepit $GG. The cash-strapped cultlings assuredly cannot afford all this frivolous spending on interpersonal disasters of the Wee One's making.
Stop him now from planning and executing a fall foray into México lindo.
Insofar as Li'l Daniel will never listen to reason, no matter how politely the arguments are framed, the Gerties have but one recourse after he angrily shows them the rickety door:
STARVE THE BEAST
*Our emphases. Footloose Dan had just come off a winter visit to his buffoon buddy "El Bocón" with his pack of squealing chihuahuas in Juárez (in late February to early March).
July 17 SGG newsletter is out: Sgg is following Sanborn's lead and raising mass stipends. It says the mass stipend is meant for the priests to live for the day.
ReplyDeleteMy question is to live like who or like what? If people are cooking and bringing them food, their living quarters are paid for by the church, etc. Sanborn has a cook and special meals at fancy restaurants. Both prirsts travel outside the U.S., and take advantage of it to go tour around the countries. What kind of living for the day is this? How can parishioners with families live for the day with all that they ask to support?
Big Don and Wee Dan can play games with one of the many inflation calculators found on the web, but the problem for the faithful is that the wages of working men and women have not kept up with inflation. The end result is that struggling families, who haven't seen a real raise in years and whose purchasing power has eroded, now have to give these cosseted "priests" whom they clothe, feed, transport, and house a cost of living adjustment for Mass stipends.
DeleteIt's even more disgraceful when you consider that "One Hand" and the men he's "ordained" have doubtful orders. At the very least, Dannie could ask Tradzilla to ordain and consecrate him conditionally so the cultlings can be sure they're getting their money's worth.
Hi Dudes
ReplyDeleteI want to get a tattoo that says KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON in latin. My friends on social media say you can help out.
PERFER ET OBDURA - that is, if you'd rather have a genuine Ovidian Latin phrase, something a native speaker will understand, instead of some amateurish literal translation right out of Rialto Road's Latin kitchen. Anyone remember his grotesque "Suave conatum, sed havanum non datum"? O boy, Umberto Eco's Salvatore of Montferrat is a Ciceronian compared to these guys!
DeleteThe tag from Ovid is certainly the one favored by the majority of tattoo advisors or coffee-cup & tee-shirt purveyors on the Web. The brevity also recommends it for inking because it fits nicely within the brilliantly understated graphic design of the original.
DeleteAlthough PL believes "skin art" is abhorrent to Romanitas, just for the fun of it, we'll add our two cents' worth to this digression.
Perfer, in our view, doesn't quite capture the sense of "KEEP CALM." In the verse, it means "endure, put up with, suffer, bear, brook," the whole phrase then reading "endure and persist," something a pukka Englishman might find foreign.
If our "prose-comp" prof had set us this exercise, we would have written AEQUAM SERVATE MENTEM AC DURATE, echoing Horace in the first half and preferring a Tacitean usage in the second. The imperative plurals reflect our reading of the original poster as addressed to the great British public. Our choice of conjunction stems from our understanding of the original as inviting us to KEEP CALM (first) AND (then) CARRY ON.
However, we wouldn't recommend it for a tattoo, unless someone's got a broad backside. Although our version has the same number of words, it's far too long and graphically unbalanced.
If our correspondent must mutilate himself or herself, then we'd recommend the suggestion of the learnèd Tarquinius, who we're certain discerns more of a similitude between the feral Salvatore and the $GG illiterates than a shared love of Latinitas culinaria.
Reader,
DeleteI can't find PERFER ET OBDURA in the Metamorphoses. I tried a global search.
Anon Jul 17 8:36 PM
DeleteThat's because the phrase doesn't come from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Actually it's found in two of his other works, the Amores, III. XI (X).7, and the Tristia, V. XI. 7 (cites from OCT editions by Kenney and Owen respectively).
You are right as usual, dear PL, there are plenty of similitudes between the poor Frati-Benedictine and the $GG-crew. But I believe we have to do him justice the same way the celebrated Dominican Bernardo Gui did ... as it is written somewhere in the novel: "There is a hierarchy of depravity as there is of virtue. ... The flesh can be tempted according to nature and ... against nature."
DeleteOh, very well remembered, excellent Tarquinius!
DeleteMight it not be an amusing parlor game in memory of Eco, who died earlier this year, to extract quotations from the various characters in the novel and match them to the cult master who could have uttered them?
For instance, try to identify which of the cult scumbags could have said, "...I told you, it was a great carnival, and in carnival time everything is done backward. As you grow old, you grow not wise but greedy. And here I am a glutton.... You can condemn a heretic to death, but would you condemn a glutton?"
Or try the following: "There is unrest in the scriptorium[....] Nobody is working, they are all talking among themselves....What is happening?"
Or what about this one? "Merdre à toy, Bogomil de merdre!"
Extra points could be won by guessing to whom the cult master might be speaking.
Hey,You! Get back in your hole. (Please don't start messing this blog up.)
ReplyDelete"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
ReplyDeleteThese men have been given too much power.
What power they have comes only from the people they take advantage of. Since the cultmasters have no power from the Church — or from any other institution for that matter — it's easy to put an end to all these abuses. WALK OUT & LEAVE THEM WITH NOTHING. You'll be surprised to learn that there are many alternatives to these scumbags. You just have to get out first so you can see.
DeleteWhat will it take to wake up the Gerties? And are they so “cerebrally challenged” (aka, STUPID) that they do not realize that a trip to Mexico PLANNED AT THE LAST MINUTE must cost a FORTUNE??!!! And don’t they realize that they’ve been enabling a WHORE all these years? (Actually, “whore” is too good of a word; a prostitute AT LEAST provides a “service.” All Dannie provides is EXPLOITATION.) Wake up, Gerties!
DeleteDannie's 'Corner" for today is very enlightening. It looks like he must have flown all the way to Mexico City first before heading off for Vera Cruz state. He even planned some sightseeing in the capital, so he must have stayed a day or two at a hotel there. Note, too, he'll no doubt be feeding the three priests who met him, Romero, Gómez, and that loud-mouthed chihuahua-herder Mardones. Gómez and Mardones were with him in Mexico City back in Lent 2014 when he infamously "had dinner at an excellent Argentinean restaurant, consuming copious quantities of meat, as is the custom in these southern countries, even in Lent!"
DeleteIt appears as though he's given up on Baja and has found a new place to vacation in sunny Mexico. Poor Gerties. Higher Mass stipends and bigger travel bills: they now have to feed four insatiable "clergy" when Dannie travels.
What do the supporters of $$G and MHTS get for their $$$$$$$??? Big DON and Wee Dan have stolen their money and blinded their faith sucking the life of Christ out of them! Wake up people save yourselves STARVE THE BEAST.
ReplyDeleteMega-dittoes.
Delete"It's like the frog-stew analogy. You throw a frog in cold water, and he doesn't realize he's getting hot until he's boiled to death.”
ReplyDeleteAnd now the Gerties are over cooked. Oh, how Dannie's going to milk them to go to Vera Cruz this fall. He'll have three mouths to feed and three lazy carcasses to house in Mexico City when he visits. We ask whether the hotels will charge extra for loud-mouth Mardones's chihuahuas.
DeleteI hear that one of the young Latin teachers at the recent ACL conference has a tattoo with the letters SPQR on one of her arms. Now that is true devotion to Romanitas, In my opinion since I can't abide even the thought of needles.
ReplyDeleteExcept that the Romans only tattooed slaves and criminals. Note, too, Cicero: barbarus compunctus notis Threiciis.
DeleteThe young woman may love Latin but not the Roman ethos. Oh, well, de gustibus etc.
Hey Readers,
ReplyDeleteWhy would you say that Feeneyism is wrong and false?
I thought feeny rejected baptism by blood. for example, the martyrs.
DeleteAnon July 18 7:48 PM
DeleteThe Holy Office long ago did what you ask by distinguishing between those who belong to the Church in re and those who belong in voto.
Well, I am told that she's doing a fantastic job of updating Latin and inculcating a love for it in her students.
ReplyDeleteI still hope that Latin experiences a revival as Hebrew did, at least amongst scholars.
She indeed may have done that, and all Latinists should be grateful for her efforts. Our point was that a tattoo did not manifest of Romanitas.
DeleteLatin, in particular Ecclesiastical, Late, and Neo-Latin, is undergoing a revival, particularly among students of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Scholars realize there is a huge treasure of unread documentation waiting for discovery and translation. For those young academics with vision, good careers await those who learn Latin well.
Actually you should give yourselves a pat on the back because of your wonderful advocacy of Latin. You've inspired me to review old notes on the various authors as well as dusting off my copy of Bradley's Arnold.
ReplyDeleteIf you start writing about Greek I'll be forced to dust off my Smythe.
Gratias plurimas!
Salve tu quoque!
DeleteWe've actually have posted occasionally about Greek, for instance, when we quoted Aristotle in the original to demonstrate how wrong was the grossly malformed Uneven-Steven McKenna, a.ka. "the McFaker," when he made a fool of himself on that ridiculous Restoration Radio (click here).
If the cult masters ever dare to venture into Greek (alas! we fear they won't), we'll give you ample opportunity to dip back into the delights of Smythe and perhaps even try your hand again at the neat subtleties of the immortal Sidgwick, whose NOTES taught us to see classical Greek as a living tongue when we were callow youths.
Reply
How do you all object to Selway and tout the superiority of SSPX when Fellay appears to have been SSPX bursar from the time he was ordained (in 1982/age 24); consecrated bishop 30/1988; elected superior 36/1994 (Lefebvre died 1991). [what was his qualification for any of these positions except family money?]
ReplyDeleteBishop Bernard Fellay: The present Superior General, His Excellency Bishop Bernard Fellay, was born in Switzerland on April 12, 1958. He grew up near the seminary of Econe where he entered in October 1977. He was ordained to the priesthood on June 29, 1982 and immediately appointed Bursar General of the Society, being then also superior of the District of Switzerland. He was moreover in charge of several youth groups and of pastoral ministry. On June 30, 1988, he was consecrated a bishop and carried on as Bursar General until his election as Superior General in July 1994. In 1996, the General Chapter re-elected him for a second term of office. [and no new election in 20 years?]
http://fsspx.org/en/superior-general
Fr. John Brucciani, District Bursar
The District Bursar is chosen by the District Superior to efficiently manage the material affairs of the district such as accounting procedures, construction projects and renovations, insurance and legal details; thus he is concerned primarily with legal and financial matters. He oversees the buying and selling of properties around the district, the building of chapels and schools, and the district's employees' salaries.
http://sspx.org/en/district-superiors-page-0
Fr. Gregory Pendergraft, FSSP, Director of Development for the North American District,
http://fssp.com/press/tag/fr-gregory-pendergraft/
Fr. Bursar & Fr. Development will be speaking at the latest CFN/Remnant shakedown (no mention though of their titles--beyond "fr").
http://catholicidentityconference.com/page10/page10.html
Who said we approved of Fellay? We only assert that SSPX formation is several orders of magnitude better than that at MHT. However, we would have to guess that, on principle, Fellay as a Swiss enjoyed infinitely better primary and secondary schooling than Junior.
Delete"The Jews therefore marvelled, saying, How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?" John 7:15
ReplyDelete"Now seeing the constancy of Peter and of John, understanding that they were illiterate and ignorant men, they wondered; and they knew them that they had been with Jesus." Acts 4:13
Just a wild guess, but we're assuming these verses are quoted as some kind of rebuttal to our reply above with respect to Fellay's superior schooling over the Kid's.
DeleteIf so, we find them inappropriate, especially the one from John. In view of the Science of Christ, frequenting the rabbinical schools would have been unnecessary, as we see in OL's reply at v. 16, where we learn He was not an autodidact.
The malformed American cult masters, to paraphrase 2 Peter, are the unlearned and unstable who wrest, to their own destruction, things hard to be understood.
Anon July 22 3:24AM, I think you're completely forgetting or ignoring something very important in your John 7:15 quote: Christ was not only Man but God Himself. Sanborn, Dolan et al are mere men. Get it now? In your other quote, the last phrase is the key there - they had been with Jesus - not just any man. You've really got to think & meditate to get everything out of the Bible.
DeleteYet, these followers treat Sanborn, Dolan, et al as God himself. That's why they get so confused.
DeleteAnon 6:33PM My point exactly!
DeleteAnon. 7-22, 3:24 AM’s Bible quotes are the typical protestant-like taken-out-of-context claptrap that comes out of Cultlandia. Anons 4:30 PM and 6:33 PM couldn’t have said it any better: that Dolan et al are mere men, yet people like you treat them as if they were God. But -- you know what -- we LOVE to see comments like yours, because they are a perfect advertisement to show just how brain-dead you IDIOTS really are. So keep ’em coming, DUMMKOPF!!
DeleteThose cultlings who regard either Tradzilla or Li'l Daniel as their Supreme being are not only "children of a lesser god," they're also in for a rude awakening.
DeletePlease tell me what qualifies Selway to be a bishop? He has family money, which is the only thing. I thought Pope innocent xII, declared nepotism wrong? It sounds like he doesn't even know how to run a school or convent.
Delete"Daddy Cult Bucks" says so, and that's enough for Tradzilla.
DeleteHow about one of the cult followers tell us how/why Selway is qualified? What qualities does he have that will make him a good Bushop?
DeleteWe'd also love to hear from a Brooksvillite on that one, especially since a trad "bishop" hasn't any jurisdiction so there's no way to determine whether he's "good" or "bad" as a bishop. E.g., if a paraplegic is named a player on an NFL team, how could we evaluate his performance as a player according to the usual definition?
DeleteHey Readers,
ReplyDeleteHow would you translate this selection of St. Robert Bellarmine?
Quinta propositio: "Cæremoniæ non sunt res indiferentes, sed sunt utiles, meritoriæ, et pars quædam cultus divini."
Probanda sunt hæc omnia per tres partes. Ac primum, quod cæremoniæ sint utiles, probatur his rationibus. Primo; Cæremoniæ, ut devotione, ita etiam illam conservant, nutriunt, augent, ut Augsutinus docet lib. de cura pro mortuis, c. 5. et epist. 119. cap. 11. et lib. IX Confess. cap. 6. et 7. Et nos ipsi hoc exprerimur, cum intramus Basilicas ornatas, et mundas, et crucibus, ac sacris imaginibus, et aris instructas, et accensis lampadibus, devotionem facillime concipimus: contra autem cum ingredimur templa hæreticorum, ubi nihil est, nisi sedes ad concionandum; et mensa lignea ad cœnam faciendam, videmur ingredi profanam aulam, non domum Dei.
You can find the original here: http://cdigital.dgb.uanl.mx/la/1080015572_C/1080015574_T3/1080015574_38.pdf
The only thing i missed was an accent on the æ of hæreticorum, since the keyboard didn't give the option.
We usually handle such questions through email, and we don't want to establish a precedent for a free translation service for lengthy extracts, particularly in light of the fact that between ut and devotione 6 Latin words are missing (!), requiring our aged eyes to squint at the original through a magnifier. However, this time, for Anon. 6:23 alone, in consideration of the fact that s/he provided the original so we could verify and correct the transcription, we'll provide a completely literal translation of the paragraph:
DeleteThe fifth proposition: "Ceremonies are not indifferent matters, but are useful, meritorious, and a certain part of divine worship."
All these things are to be proved in three parts. To begin with, the fact that ceremonies are useful is proved by these reasons: First: ceremonies, as they arise from an internal pious disposition, and devotion, thus also preserve, nourish, and increase it, as Augustine teaches in his [you can fill in the cites from the original]... And we ourselves undergo this feeling personally (experimur, when we enter ornate and elegant basilicas and furnished with crosses, and also sacred images, and altars, and with lighted lamps, we very easily conceive a devotion; on the other hand, however, when we enter the churches of the heretics, where there is nothing, except the pulpit, and a wooden table to make a meal, we seem to enter a profane hall, not the house of God.
Yikes! You're right, i botched the copying of the document, even adding the word tres somewhere. Good thing i gave the original; it was the first time i copied something that long in Latin.
DeleteThanks a lot!
Piece of cake to The Reader. Wait for it.
ReplyDeleteThanks. We didn't see the comment until we got back from our Saturday editorial breakfast.
DeleteIsn't that the same way the ancient Roman church began?
ReplyDeleteOver time the Prots created beautiful churches. I'm thinking of the Waldensian church in Rome with its beautiful windows.
Fashions in church furnishings evolve, devolve and evolve as we are seeing today.
Pope Pius XII condemned that idea as antiquarianism in the Encyclical Mediator Dei, saying it would be a gross error to pretend to go back to the simpler way the liturgy was before.
DeleteI still see grotesque Protestant churches all over the place. They are still like St. Robert Bellarmine says they were back then: bare and with nothing but a table in the middle.
Fashions in church furnishings evolve, devolve and evolve as we are seeing today.
Prove it. As far as I'm aware, the Liturgy has been in constant embellishment, not in periods of degeneration, then back to beauty then back to degeneration and so on.
Nothing like the destruction of the Novus Ordo has ever happened in the Church before.
The Council of Pistoia?
ReplyDelete