PARADIGM FOUND

It is not obligatory for a generation to have great men. Ortega y Gasset

Picking up from where we left off last week...

Now that the sede politburo has bid До свидания! to its very own "Meester Beeg,"* the liver dumpling who labored unsuccessfully to pass as Grade-A foie gras, TradWorld will undergo a radical transformation.  In fact, the sea change has already begun. None of the "episcopal" proletarians scrambling for high-profile exposure can replace the "Lowly Worm" (formerly called Tradzilla) as commissar of the traddie Gulag. Therefore, no longer have we any reason to pretend Traddielandia is unified by a common set of principles dependent on a "clerical" chairman for interpretation.

It's time to accept the ascendancy of the tribalism that's been Sedelandia's true organizing principle from the very beginning.

Thoroughgoing destabilization has put an end to the grubby influences, the frayed allegiances, and the fragile myths surrounding "The Man of Tradistan." In the unfolding New TradWorld Order, no center still holds, not even a fictitious one: it collapsed on itself in 2009 when Big Don suicidally defended "One Hand" at the height of the $GG $chool $candal. It just took the 2017 intervention of Nature for traddies to see the gaping void. Hence forward, it's every sede cult for its own miserable self.

Case in point is the Swampland. Once the Boy "Bishop" accedes to his birthright in early 2018, B'ville will repudiate Dannie's ebbing SW Ohio sect. Painfully aware of the newly minted "bishop's" limitations as a brand, — grim portrait poses can't substitute for gravitas — Swampies'll go to ground, letting no one else in. CMRI will likewise cease its unsustainable overextension and contract in an attempt to preserve a dwindling funding base.

But the historical fact remains that whenever there's a social vacuum, something else must take its place.  The restless herds of refugees from Francis will be seeking shelter to practice the Catholic faith. However, there won't be one, single sede opinion leader to whom they'll stampede. People have grown too wise in the post-sede era, thanks to the Internet. Additionally, the only men around capable of inspired leadership don't want a job that demands they wear a mask of scornful arrogance.

Stepping in for the tired gang of discredited, cult-obsessed episcopi vagantes will be a different sort of traditional "bishop," one who acknowledges he's but a sacrament machine, one who refuses to promote the blasphemous falsehood that he belongs in any way to the hierarchy established by Christ. Almost all these men are former Novus Ordite presbyters who've returned to tradition. Armed with advanced degrees from recognized ecclesiastical institutions of higher learning and schooled in "the Roman System," they recoil at the impious folly of representing themselves as the Church in exile.

Since they have experienced first hand the filth of Modernist Rome, with its own toxic cult of celebrity, their selfless motivation lies in satisfying the laity's demand for life-giving sacraments.  By private conviction, they may be sedevacantists, but they have no interest in cramming a threadbare hypothesis, and a minority one at that, down the throats of their Catholic brethren. Divine faith is more important than some iffy conjecture. Furthermore, as former insiders, they're aware that sede cult leaders never posed a credible threat to the Vatican Establishment, which dismissed them as ineffectual crackpots who never belonged to "the System" in the first place.

For that reason, the new breed will never attempt to assert control over others. Instead they will act as conscientious middlemen for the faithful who want (1) the sacraments, not soul-killing polemics, and (2) sensible, well-vetted men of good will willing to confect those sacraments for the cure of souls. Under this new, decentralized paradigm, newcomers as well as long-time traditional Catholics who've lost confidence in the "bishop"-led "Church of Sedeology," will find a congenial—and peaceful—spiritual home. With no money-pit foreign "apostolates" to pay for, the revolutionary new arrangement will relieve the beleaguered pocketbooks of the faithful.

Say goodbye, then, to Sedelandia's big-frog-in-a-small-pond era. Say hello to a thousand puddles, each with its own tadpole. Conscientious laity, both those with and those without holy orders, will welcome a dawning age of decency, where traditional Catholics won't see a Big Bossman for many generations to come, not until the Restoration.

* Take, for instance, Comrade Dansky's barely disguised kiss off. The Wee One must be wallowing in the karma the rector generated with his November 2009 speculation about Dannie "as a greeter in Wal-Mart in order to support himself" (click here). From His Revengency's comment in the November 19, 2017, "Corner," it looks as though "One Hand" has written off the stricken Donster "...as he deals with a serious heart condition ... We offer our congratulations to Fr. Selway .... as [Big Don's] eventual successor." Hmmmmmm. "Serious" sounds permanent, doesn't it, and "eventual" doesn't sound too far off, does it?