Saturday, March 17, 2018

BEYOND THE SHADOW OF A DREAM


What happens to a dream deferred?/... Does it stink like rotten meat? Hughes

From time to time, developmentally delayed, religious deviants protest that $GG's continued survival on life support proves "One-Hand Dan" has weathered PL's criticisms and exposés. According to these purblind victims of ecclesiastical imposture, the Wee One is as optimistic as ever about the future of his cult.

We who see the truth recognize that the denial of looming collapse is groundless. If everything were peachy keen in SW Ohio, then Dannie wouldn't be obsessing about money, nor would he be aggressively begging for freebie meals and airport rides. Furthermore, $GG's weekly collection would show a steady increase over time, not the stubborn, below-subsistence flatline we've traced for several years. Volunteerism would be up, so His Impudency wouldn't have to impose upon the same, shrinking core of beleaguered, aging worker bees season after season. Most importantly, the number of bequests would be growing, not shrinking.

At this watershed moment after Junior's "consecration," an event that definitively marked the end of Dannie's rôle as the bench player of Sedelandia, it might be instructive to consider the phantom of defeat pursuing the Dirtbag throughout his lonely hours of tormented self-reflection. This May, he'll turn 67. Approaching one's 70th year on earth, a man naturally takes stock. For life's winners, the assessment is a joy; for life's losers, it's unrelieved agony. If the glittering dreams of youth and early middle age have turned out to be dross, a fortune's fool confronts a bleak future of zero triumphs, particularly as younger, ambitious, and more able men are scrambling to refine golden memories of their own to gild a happy old age.

To garner some insight into what must be Dannie's all-year-long winter of discontent, we must look at the controlling dream of his illicit "episcopacy." Wee Dan's April 27, 1983, expulsion from the SSPX dealt the thirty-something, pipe-dreaming idler a cruel reversal, but not for the reasons many might think. Having very early (and quite without justification) imagined himself a bishop someday, his ouster meant there would be no one to crown his overly wishful noggin with a coveted miter.

When finally, after a self-serving volte-face on thThục line's validity, he wrested the longed-for headgear from the hoodwinked Pivster, he was free to set his sights on a jet-setting career: One day, he would become the "bishop" of all the sede chapels and groups, traveling the world in style like that globetrotting Archbishop Lefebvre, who had unceremoniously  — and in-person — shown him the backdoor some ten-and-a-half years earlier.

As the days, weeks, months, and years following his unlawful "consecration" passed, that dreamed-of day never dawned. Everybody conspired to thwart the realization of his fantasy.  Pivareeno, whom he thought he could muscle out of the way both in sunny Mexico and at home, prospered, sweeping up chapels all over the map. (In fact, after the 2009 $GG $chool $candal, a well-motivated Pivmeister pitched camp in Li'l Daniel's back yard at the petition of a colony of ex-Gerties.) Within less than a decade of Dan's mitering, Big Don snared a miter for himself, much to Dannie's peevish dismay.  In the meantime, nobody of consequence signed up for the Wee One's "little" Salesian boys' club.

The Jellyfish was the next to elevate its slimy self. It then turned around and consecrated a South American with a large following in Mexico. Sensing a void, a few years later the Ham Sandwich mounted a coup, which almost emptied $GG, leaving only depraved culties. Not too long afterward, the triumphant Sammich — Lower East Tradistan's "Second-Hand Rose" — decorated his own swollen bean with a used miter ordered online (🎶 I'm wearing second-hand hats, second-hand clothes 🎶). One by one, the serious Mexican and French independent "clergy" cut themselves loose.

The upshot of it all is that the Mitered Maggot's fevered vision of VIP airport lounges, luxury hotel suites, smiling concierges too impressed to accept a gratuity, chauffeured limos, fawning maître d's at Michelin-starred eateries, comped lunches at Taco Bell, groveling "clergy," celebrity-struck laity, and painstakingly curated guided tours of Old-World venues never became entries in "The Bishop's (?) Corner." All those hallucinations lay forever out of reach.

Why, he never even got close! 

It was Diminished Don who was asked to England, Down Under, and the Continent (and he may yet fly off again soon if he gets medical clearance). But the Lowly Worm's travel victories over Dan are yesterday's news. Nowadays the title of Mr. Worldwide properly belongs to the hyper-ambitious, always scratching, ever conniving Ham Sandwich, who boasts a European apostolate reaching into Germany, Spain, and Italy, where he'll spend about a month and a half this spring. At best, "One-Hand Dan" has only managed to wrangle short-term invites from (1) a shunned group of Argentine malcontents notorious for their pants-wearing womenfolk and (2) some Trento breakaways in Mexico. (But even one of the latter groups soon grew disillusioned.)

As many a practicing therapist will testify, it's almost impossible to recover from a traumatic psychological setback occasioned by a dream that's toast, particularly if you had your heart set on it. It's worse still if you shared your wild hopes with a lot of people who have long memories. The verismo novelist Federico De Roberto once wrote that only castles in the air "avoid the dissolving hands of time." That's Dreamland Dan's cross to bear. That's what makes hellish the black hours of solitude spent in his room.

His vividly imagined persona as an American nouveau-Marcel trekking about the continents — an image refreshed and augmented over many nights in the delicious minutes before sleep overtakes — stubbornly persists. It cannot be erased, no matter how hard he tries. It reappears at the worst times to mock him. To remind him of the failure of his life, the defeat of his outrageous fancy. To bedevil him over the crumbling cult center and evaporating enthusiasm for his enterprise. To taunt him with the fine restaurants he can no longer afford. To heap abuse upon his useless, contemptible, self-mitered noodle.

Bitter is advancing age absent the sweet consolation of a personal chronicle of dreams fulfilled.  Add disappointment over disappearing resources while mixing in a growing awareness you never had what it takes to begin with, and you've got the makings of the misery of the damned. Although his self-destructive backing of Tony Baloney and the "Principal" triggered the mass exodus of 2009, thereby hurling his already moribund career into its current death spiral, Dannie actually never stood a chance to become a Lefebvre redivivus.

For one thing, he lacked the physical stature, the air of command. (A perpetual risus sardonicus, or rictus grin, inspires no awe.) For another, he didn't have the right formation or the necessary skills. But the greatest drawback to success was an incapacity to attract to his banner men of genuine ability. He had to settle for the third-rate Erroneous Antonius, whose abrasive personality, misplaced self-esteem, and penchant for windmill tilting only magnified the Wee One's defects in the eyes of both "clergy" and lay folk. Perhaps a gifted sidekick might have been able to mask His Deficiency's shortcomings, but then Li'l Daniel probably never could've attracted the allegiance of someone with unalloyed talent anyway. The ungifted needy seem to find each other, don't they?

Ambition is by no means wrong; it is often beneficial for organizations and individuals. But to achieve true success, both collective and personal, ambition must be underpinned by native ability and a desire to improve lives other than your own. To motivate competent people to follow, you need to offer them something besides a life of servitude to your person. The talented "bishop" who figures out that he must first become the servant of the "clergy" and laity, not their overlord, could become the "metropolitan" of Sedelandia, with whatever diminished perks it may now offer in its last days. However, since the sub-par sede impostors opt for adulation, not stewardship, nothing will change. They'll remain strutting, turf-warring, undistinguished daydreamers who cannot transmute airy whimsy into concrete reality.

WAKE 'EM UP: LEAVE THE CULT TODAY!

14 comments:

  1. That's why he was better suited to monastic life. There a cross may have included wishing he were elsewhere making a big difference. But it would have included consolations. Since humility is the foundation of all good as Our Lord showed continuously he would have only had to struggle with that once he recognized the cross of not being able to exercise influence as being from God straight to him for the benefit of his soul at death when embraced during life. It would get easier.

    He has a lot of silence in his life now, or rather, any silence is magnified.

    I don't believe he is fundamentally a materialistic person. I am not his defender but I understand where his potential lies and it is not in the material world.

    Ideally would recognize that earlier but now would have to be utterly oblivious to everything he has attempted to teach and in relation to all his devotions to not be seeing the positives going forward in the midst of misery priced in long ago, as in trading event risk sometimes years before it is expected to hit.

    As Brexit fully priced in to the pound and has been since the beginning; even Bremain is priced in.

    He's been pricing in (I hope!) event risk not only in desperate flailing financially obvious to others.

    He may have planned ahead to a very very modest wind-up to life at least as it appears to others. In truth it matters not WHERE he ends up! It's his business, but I hope and trust he has made plans.

    What makes me uncertain though is his relationship with Fr. Cekada. If those two men cannot separate, both are doomed. Yet it feels unlikely that either has prepared psychogically for any change like that.

    That is the fundamental problem spiritually in my opinion. You cannot go forward hand in hand with another mortal? Yes, something like that is certainly true.

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    1. Perhaps he was meant for the abbey. But in the old days, he would've been lucky to have been admitted as a lay-brother. But, then, what would he have done when faced with manual labor?

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  2. I'm surprised no one has taken you to task for quoting a gay black socialist atheist...

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    1. Dave,

      They probably don't have your broad education.

      Actually, we were surprised last week when no one blasted us for quoting a pagan poet who had studied Epicureanism.

      But if they do come blastin' away, we'll explain ourselves now with a line from another pagan, Seneca the Philosopher:

      Quicquid bene dictum est ab ullo, meum est.

      That way we can just delete 'em when they come in.

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    2. They'd have to blast Dante as well for having Virgil as his companion in The Divine Comedy

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    3. Dannie not "fundamentally a materialistic person”? Nandarani33, you are sadly mistaken on that point. Materialistic is ALL that Dannie has ever been! The problem is that this proud peacock’s feathers have been plucked -- and he is now regretting it. But if he wants to blame anyone, he need only look in the mirror: his fate is a product of his arrogance, his greed, his vindictiveness – and the fact that he is an amoral creature with no conscience.

      To pretend that Dannie is anything other than that is both unrealistic and untrue: and you are only deceiving yourself -- and everyone else – with such a supposition. In fact, it is almost uncharitable to say that about Dannie, for it gives a false impression to the unsuspecting, thus allowing them to be potentially victimized by this conniving leper. Dannie has reaped what he has sown – and he deserves every bit of his “harvest.” Let’s just leave it at that.

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    4. Dave 9:15 AM,

      They'd also have to write off the Middle Ages — the Age of Faith — which "subjected profane authors to allegorical interpretation as it did the Bible, and that it regarded them as sages... The medieval practice of invoking the auctores survived for centuries after Dante" (Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages).

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    5. Quiet thread...may I suggest riling 'em up tomorrow with a quote from Bertrand Russell or Stephen Fry?

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    6. Actually, we anticipated that the thread would attract a very low number of comments. There's really not much to say after reading it. Once you read it, you simply must agree. It's a portrait of a ne'er-do-well whose immature dreams were never realized. It doesn't, therefore, evoke pity, because good people regard the man with contempt. It doesn't evoke satisfaction for his failure either, because the failure was baked into the dream itself.

      The piece did elicit several lunatic protests that Dannie's cult is thriving and that PL has failed to destroy the cult. We spammed those comments because they aren't true: $GG is collapsing (last week another <$4K collection was reported!), and the cult is really a "dead man walking." It's finished. Everybody with sense knows it.

      Two very good suggestions for epigraphs, especially BR. Unfortunately, tomorrow's post features a quote from Samuel Johnson. However, the content of the post may stir things up.

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  3. Just an observation of Then and Now!

    Dolan could have done great things had he NOT been bitten by the "Greedy Power Bug." Too bad he didn't heed a simple remedy, "An ounce of prevention, is worth a pound of cure", by correcting quietly the mistake of Archbp Lef. as suggested to him by his fellow priests, and concerned laymen.

    No he knew better!

    He opened a school, empowered someone who at best should have only been a teacher, and not a Principal. This is the same tactic he was going to employ with another Lunatic, named Ramolla, who didn't even have a High School diploma, and he wanted to make him the Principal. Meanwhile he had a diamond before him with the humble teacher, and him he fired. Discernment? No just pride! He feared the teacher, and how much be was loved by both students and parishioners.

    Ultimately, Dolan did no good for the Principal, his family, or to the families of the school children who were subjected to him. There was no one to seek refuge in for justice in SGG, except one over qualified teacher who saw the injustice, and got fired when he defended the innocent. WHY?

    Now it is obvious! They could not afford to get rid of the Principal lest the swamp open, and the drainage begin. Ouch! $$$

    There is no justice or mercy, then or now in the Corp of SGG. This is the status quo, just like Washington, D.C. would be if Hillary got into office.

    The school was the Achilles Heel of SGG. The victims were just a Round Robin being tossed from one feline to another.
    The so called Shepherd herded them in and then led them to slaughter when they complained.

    Now this is all in the past and destined to repeat itself until The Restoration of Church is granted to us by GOD.

    Until then, attend Mass by a valid priest and support the priest with necessities, not luxuries. Do not entertain what God Himself is obviously punishing us for, and most of all hold onto the Faith through the cross.

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    1. While not personally knowing anyone involved with the 2009 scandal & having no experience with the Dolan/Sanborn chapels,this is one of the most thoughtful comments I've read on pistrina.

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  4. Is Sanborn a Jansenist?

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    1. We don't know, but he seems to harbor rigorist views.

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  5. What is a
    "Clementine Mass?"

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