TOP REASONS FOR LAY GOVERNANCE: #5

Ed. Note: Today Pistrina inaugurates a series of posts outlining the five main reasons for benevolent lay control of traditional chapels and Mass centers. It's time for the mountebanks, jokers, and flim-flam men who have usurped our rights and trammeled our hopes to get down from their deadly pulpits and try to do good for others, not themselves.

There's a great deal of misunderstanding about lay governance of traditional chapels. One of the most persistent errors falsely claims the motive is to exert malicious control over a priest.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

First of all, during the Sede Vacante no one--prelate or priest-- possesses an ecclesiastical office; therefore, no Traddie clergyman has subjects over whom to exercise the power of government. Accordingly, a Sede priest or bishop has no standing under the law to demand that he be the governor of a chapel invested with sole dominion over property and treasure.

Second, as Pistrina has shown, the majority of Traddie priests are unprepared to manage, let alone rule, the chapels they serve. They often haven't undergone any formal schooling, and their seminary formation has been so inadequate that they are hobbled by irreparable gaps in their theological and liturgical education. (Recall the goofy lost soul in Michigan who skipped the consecration at Mass or the forlorn Frenchman who couldn't bless holy water.) Furthermore, after completing their suboptimal "seminary" training, they get no experience serving under skilled priests with years of successful experience in the cure of souls and the running of an organization. Their only models are the sad-sacks and self-seekers who have appeared in this blog and elsewhere on the 'Net.

Chapels in the Traddie world are virtually Harvard case studies of the Peter Principle in action, where slow-witted, badly trained priests in stunted "organizations" swiftly rise to their own level of incompetence. Think of the case where one very well-known ineffectual, acting against the advice of a successful and experienced lay investor, refused to sell the bond of a tanking technology company and thereby lost close to $10,000 of the laity's hard earned money. Alternately, consider all the stories over the years about bungled construction projects, wasteful do-overs, and insolent refusal to listen to professionals with expertise, both theoretical and practical. Or, how about the case of one prelate "pastor" who bragged that he didn't know how to keep a checkbook and so left everything in the hands of his famously bumbling assistant, who maintained a childlike budget in near illegible handwriting?

Every veteran Traddie can tell you many such head-shaking anecdotes of cluelessly stubborn stupidity.

Let's wake up and smell the coffee. Most of these guys have never held a supervisory position of responsibility, let alone a real job. (Sadly, they haven't even flipped burgers for a paycheck.) Truth to tell, if they ever had to earn their keep in the real world, they'd soon be out on their cans to join the ranks of the permanently unemployable. The only life-lesson they ever learned from their similarly ill-prepared and wretchedly inexperienced mentors was get control of everything the laity has so you can feather your nest.

In spite of their glaring educational and practical-skills deficits, these men pass their lives in the mistaken belief that their orders make them fit to manage what is essentially a small business. On the other hand, most traditional chapels boast laymen and -women who actually do possess the knowledge, experience, and human-relations aptitudes needed to run the organization competently.

In the "good-old days," a diocese had ample resources to assist priests in the efficient management of parish business. There were also remedies for removing gross incompetents from positions of authority. (Plus, back then, young priests spent a number of years working under the louche and demanding supervision of successful parish administrators before they were given more serious responsibilities.) All that and more is missing in the Sede Vacante, where unvetted, ungifted men, who imperfectly know liturgy and theology, think they have a God-given right to control exclusively and without supervision the fisc and real property of chapels. Indeed, they act as though chapels' assets are in effect their personal possession, and they go to great lengths to muddy the financial waters by establishing multiple corporations (some out of state), of which they, their clerical pals, or their family members are trustees.

Until the Restoration, let's get one thing straight: there can be no ordinaries, no pastors, and no parishes (in the strict, canonical sense). One of the many implications of that hard fact is these men have no more right than a layman or laywoman to manage the civil affairs of a chapel or Mass center. To assert otherwise is an abuse--or worse!

In the Sede Vacante, when we have no hierarchy to appeal to for protection against injustice, misfeasance, and incompetence, it only makes sense for the paying laity to safeguard their hard-won investment by insisting on a lay governance model. Besides, given the woefully impoverished formation and deficient aptitude of the majority of traditional clergy, assuming the managerial duties of these priests is an act of supererogation.

MISSING THE FOREST FOR THE TREES

What is hard today is to censor one's own thoughts --/ To sit by and see the blind man/ On the sightless horse, riding into the bottomless abyss. Waley

The February MHT Newsletter finally appeared with the rector’s promised exposure of the “errors” of Msgr. Ocáriz Braña. As it turns out, the goof was Ocáriz Braña’s failure to acknowledge that, in the eyes of Montini and Wojtyła, Vatican II was intended to bind the faithful by its infallible magisterium and, therefore, cannot be so easily explained away.

Whatever the historical or juridical value of the rector’s point, the truth is, he misses completely the political and strategic significance of Ocáriz Braña’s article. A more insightful analyst than the Flushing Rat would have seen the piece as a sure sign of an inchoate revisionist campaign within the Novus Ordo, which will surely lead to a face-saving repudiation of Vatican II.

Ocáriz Braña’s argument was not meant to be a formal reconciliation of Conciliar teaching with tradition. Let's remember that his low-keyed article was printed in a periodical and by no means took the form of an academic thesis. It is, rather, a trial balloon, launched under the radar to gauge the “atmospherics”of a shrinking, embattled, and disgusted Catholic world grown weary of the effects of the Council-wrought disaster.

The article’s real purpose was to test how far the newly emerging reaction can go, how much revisionism will be permitted, and how the rank-and-file as well as the establishment leadership will react to what will amount to be a drastic reversal of a half century of policy. Simply put, attitude-shapers like Ocáriz Braña don’t care whether their interpretation squares with the party line of the past. What they’re interested in is whether they can concoct a palatable argument to “save appearances,” i.e., whether they can come up with something that will be accepted by large numbers of people as a tolerable explanation for the dislocation of the Council and tradition. If their first attempt doesn’t pass muster in its present form, they’ll go back, tweak it a little, and then float it anew. Eventually they’ll hit on the right formulation and go on to the next step (perhaps touching upon validity of post-Conciliar holy orders). The marginalized rector's two-cents' worth will count for nothing because he is not a player.

Whether all this is merely a sophisticated public-relations gambit or the beginning of the Restoration, only time will tell. Whatever it is, the rector has, as usual, misread what the tea leaves are telling him. The truth is that some influential members of the Novus Ordo are trying to find the path of least resistance so as to reject the Council’s teachings without causing too great an uproar. All they need to do is to find the just-right argument that will allow them to backtrack without actually having to condemn the Council formally. They know the benefits of such a move will extend into Traddieland.

The Novus Ordo’s intention is obvious. It means to steal the thunder of the likes of the rector and “One-Hand Dan.” All it may take is a carefully wordsmithed statement that Vatican II somehow lies outside tradition. Then many of the traddie young, who are sickened by the bad behavior of their traditional clergy, will be induced to abandon the un-Catholic cultism their parents have long endured in favor of something that appears normal.

The efforts of Ocáriz Braña, Gherardini, and the other Novus-Ordo revisionists should serve as a warning to the Terrible Trio and other grasping clergy that, unless they mend their ways, they stand to lose everything within a few years. Their egos and acquisitiveness, however, won’t let them see this threat to their already grossly diminished influence. Yet, if they want to withstand the whirlwind they will face when the Novus Ordo announces its nuanced rejection of Vatican II, they should stop all these amateur polemics now and refocus on serving the faithful.

But they won't. That’s why the rector and his kind, like primitives suddenly confronted with an advanced civilization, can only shout madly in anguished wonderment at a spectacle beyond their understanding -- and their reach.

THE IRON TIME OF DOUBT

Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm. Jeremias

There's one question that perplexes thoughtful men and women of faith: Why do Catholics continue to support certain traditional clergy in the face of so much damning evidence? Many laymen, indeed, have left their chapels in disgust, but there remains a stubborn minority who ignore the shocking behavior and keep on enabling these clerics.

Attributing such irrational persistence to ignorance or to brainwashing or to social class rings hollow. For one thing, it doesn't account for the allegiance of the morally well-grounded, who assist at traditional chapels while shamefacedly acknowledging the manifold shortcomings of their priests. People who otherwise would condemn cultism in other confessions never tire of repeating the meme that Catholics in the Sede Vacante must submit to these poorly formed opportunists in all matters.

One explanation comes from a highly unexpected source, a new book titled Religion for Atheists. The Swiss-born author, Alain de Botton, argues poignantly and sympathetically that religion, especially Catholicism, fosters a deep sense of community through its rules, rituals, doctrines, and liturgy, which give men and women both supernatural values and a common purpose and direction. Most significantly, genuine religious communities help hold "our fractious and fragile societies together." Despite his avowed secularism, de Botton is captivated by the transformative power of a religious community to heal the loneliness and alienation troubling modern man.

But what does all this have to do with the problems we experience with many traditional clergy?

In a word, under "traditional Catholicism," self-seeking clerics have a pre-packaged, stellar model for success, so no excess of talent and ability is necessary. All they have to do is to decorate the setting, utter more or less the words people want to hear, mount the externals people more or less want to see, and wait for the money to come rolling in. If they've got a gift of gab, a sense of theater, and enough reference books, they can produce something that will almost pass, at first glance, for a harmonious and humanizing faith community.

The difficulty is that in many cases the image is inauthentic. The empty welcoming postures, the overproduced ceremonies, the holier-than-thou and saccharine words don't quite satisfy, because self-interested advancement and control, not unselfish surrender in service to the faithful, motivate so many of these priests and prelates. True, it's not always easy to put your finger on what's wrong. Often we have to rely on our inner sense that something's fishy. One example, will illustrate our point.

De Botton contends that, as a result of modern society's "worship of professional success," our only access to a community depends on what we do for a living. If we have the right kind of job title, we are welcomed; if not, we are rejected. However, in the Church, where we put aside worldly values, "[i]t no longer matters who is the bond dealer and who is the cleaner." Inasmuch as job status isn't important to the Church, she invites us to "surrender our attachment to it." Happiness, we learn, is found in the Church's embracing community, which could care less about the trappings of earthly achievement.

Whatever dispensation de Botton belongs to, certainly most traditional Catholics would agree with his analysis. Yet, when we scrutinize the behavior of so many traditional priests and bishops, we find an altogether different ethos. At community dinners, clergy sit segregated at special tables reserved for them, where they are waited on and sometimes served better fare. A few take expensive vacations at high-end resort properties and return with travelogues of the lavish treatment they received. In sermons, you often hear little asides made about grand meals and deferential service for a bishop. In newsletters and bulletins, there are frequent references to the priest's or prelate's personality, achievements, and the impression he makes upon the little people he meets. Then there's always a good word -- and special privileges -- for the big contributors. In sum, what you get in a many a traddie chapel is a careerist's paradise, with its constant reminder that they have status and you don't.

Perhaps in the Sede Vacante we can't expect mere men to behave well. With no hierarchy, there is no locus of control to keep an error-prone man from pursuing material advantages and earthly prestige at the expense of his brother and sister. For some stout souls, the answer is to cross these hungry status-seekers off and stay home alone. For others, however, the need for some form of Catholic community and the sacraments urges them to remain with such clergy notwithstanding the nagging doubts and the absence of longed-for consolation.

If you are among the latter, you have an option. You don't simply have to take it. You can start by taking back your chapels. You are not powerless or without resources. You hold the pursestrings, and you can demand that your clergy clean up their act. But you must act together -- as a community -- if you want the peace you've been searching for.

When at last the Restoration gives us a sovereign Roman pontiff, Catholicism can return to a monarchy, but in the Sede Vacante, we must have a democracy to protect us from men grievously ailing from the effects of original sin.

A RUDE AWAKENING

Life is perhaps most wisely regarded as a bad dream between two awakenings. O'Neill

There's one good thing about the Terrible Trio: their behavior always proves their adversaries' point.

Last week, "One-Hand Dan" impressed his cult with a brief account of his ordaining to the priesthood a man who belongs to a group of latter-day "Dominicans" in Boston. Then he casually boasted that the newly minted levite would be spending a few months in West Chester to finish his priestly studies "under Fr. Cekada's tutelage."

Nothing, we think, is more emblematic of the intellectual morass of the traditional movement than this ugly, little story. As you can see, things have come to such a pass that "One-Hand" doesn't even bother with requiring a semblance of sacerdotal formation before he makes a priest forever. All that's required is a few months of post-factum indentured servitude in a highly dubious independent study program. (We won't even comment about the "tutor's" qualifications.)

What we have here is the blunt admission that becoming a priest is mentally less rigorous than getting a GED. Gone is all pretense that a Roman Catholic priest is carefully selected, well formed, and thoroughly vetted.

Perhaps that's a good thing. It better suits the crisis than the absurd charade that MHT completers have any connection whatsoever to the priestly training of the past. Perhaps such ordinations will, in the end, make traditional Catholics wake up a realize just how bad it's all become.

It all goes to prove the Readers' point that the Restoration will have to come from the conservative Novus Ordites, because Traddieland has surrendered.

STAY HOME ALONE -- YOU'LL BE IN BETTER COMPANY.

FLOOD OF REMEMBRANCE

Lest we forget -- lest we forget. Kipling

Pistrina's series on the Terrible Trio's zero-legacy leads the Reader to put the essential question: What is to be done to wrest traditional Catholicism from these small-bore minds with 16"/50 caliber Mark 7 ambitions?

They hold tight-fisted control of the non-profit corporations underwritten by the hard work and sacrifices of the faithful. They have made dead sure that the people who support them have no voice in any matter. They behave and spend as they please. They are confident they can weather the frequent storms of opposition that arise because they can rely on an unthinking base of cult followers to keep them in the clover.

No doubt, the fierce reaction to the Blunderer's grisly opinion on the Schiavo case or to the SGG School scandal has cost the Triad gravely. Indeed, they will never recover. Their stature in the traditional world is forever diminished.

However, just because they have been exposed and have lost their influence outside the small cultlets they have bewitched doesn't mean they are without financial resources to keep themselves going for a little while longer. By this time, it's not unreasonable to suppose that their tiny band of supporters is so brainwashed that they will keep giving until they have no more. Perhaps, there are a few decent souls left who harbor doubts, but the number of the principled few must be so small that their leaving will have little impact on the Trio's basic comforts. They know that the remnant they have is immune to reason and to an appeal to common sense and Catholic principles. Their lock on this morally lost, frightened cadre of fanatics is as firm as their heightened sense of self-preservation.

In a word, nothing short of actuarial tables, the economy, and their own aging can stop them from doing just about whatever they will. Sure, their luxuries have been drastically cut back by the severely reduced income stream, but the scope of their control of properties and organizations remains intact. No one's going to change that, even if they must one day become greeters in some big-box discount store to eke out a living.

Just the same, there's a reason enough to continue the vocal opposition. The Japanese have a saying that goes something like this: "After 75 days, all men forget." Without a swelling torrentof reminders, it's all too easy to forget what troubles the Trio has visited upon traditional Catholics. They may be unschooled, but their savvy self-interest has taught them the basics of marketing: They simply have to put on a good face and make nice, and then the money will come trickling back. In fact, their business model requires that the faithful just fuggedaboutit. Their cagey experience with the average Traddie has confirmed that weak-willed people hope time will heal all wounds.

Without opposition, time is on their side. That's why it's important to make everybody outside their cult remember just who these swashbucklers are. There is no anodyne for the suppurating wounds they have viciously inflicted on the traditional Church. While we cannot prevent them from preying upon their own passive cultists, we can contain their contagion by countering their PR initiatives with the truth.

Keep the Beast weak. Don't believe it. Refuse its avaricious demands for your money. Tell the world why!

THE NOONDAY DEVIL

...daemonium meridianum, the most stubborn spirit to govern and guide that any man can meet, and the most perilous withal. Hawker

From the Desert Fathers to St. Thomas Aquinas, we stand cautioned against acedia, indifference in spiritual matters, "soulful don't-care-ishness." Yet in the Sede Vacante, we laymen remain uncaring of the dire effects of intellectual acedia, negligence in scrutinizing the scholarship and credentials of those clergy who lay claim to being our spiritual guides. How else can we account for our listless failure to reject out of hand Work of Human Hands -- that bespattered canvas of gaudily grinning errors---and the brazenly meretricious proposition that the Unacum market-cornering ploy is dogma. How else could we have listened to the nonsense that burbles forth from the pulpits of ill-formed MHT clergy, distinguished more for their blinding defects than for their illuminating learning.

We're not talking about the indolent acquiescence of the gullible and invincibly ignorant-- the witless wonderment of wan and sad-eyed Traddie women shrouded in their impossibly long, dirt-gathering calico skirts; or the surly aggressiveness of their pot-bellied and grim-lipped menfolk straitened by their seam-bursting, unlaundered polyester slacks three 0r four sizes too small. On the contrary, the Readers mean the educated and affluent Traddie minority, who would see the sham were they to awake from their inertia.

Without something substantial of the Church's intellectual tradition, the Traddie movement is nothing other than a cult. As the old ads used to say, Accept no substitutes. The un-credentialed Blunderer, "One-Hand," the rector, and other even more ignorant pretenders have no grounding in genuine Tradition. They are but a pedestrian re-imagination of the Church.

The problem will only get worse.

Just look at the shriveled and rotten fruits of MHT: One forgot the consecration at Mass. Another couldn't perform a burial service. A third was unable to bless holy water without an operatic mad-scene of self-doubt and embarrassing false starts. Today we have a fresh Lutheran convert from ultra-modern Scandanavia, who was fast-tracked to the priesthood. Next up is a Russian who was only received into the church when he entered MHT. Not only is learning flown away, but so is Catholic culture, the unspoken requirement of the priesthood.

In light of their scanty gifts, these purblind clerics are barely fit to offer Mass. No one need be a scholar to sense the sham so close to the surface. Why is it that so few laymen have detected these deficiencies in the manifest failures of the rector's completers? or in "One-Hand's" maudlin sermons? or in the Blunderer's howlingly laughably below-par effort, Work of Human Hands? The only explanation can be intellectual lethargy.

Pistrina invites the witted to wake up and shake off their sorrow about the intellectual good of the Church in exile. Refuse consent to a flight from the standards of good Catholic scholarship by condemning the Terrible Trio. Dispel your tedium. Subdue your turpitude by resistance to all these tempter-beggars disguised in grubby collars and shabby amaranthine robes. The Traddie movement simply cannot produce scholars or intellectuals. The rejects it possesses are only -- and just barefly -- fit to offer Mass and provide the other sacraments. Tell them so. Tell them to stop pretending and to get back to the basics. Demand they be silent until God raises better men. If they will not see that they can never be part of the Restoration, then

STARVE THE BEAST, STAY HOME ALONE, SAY YOUR ROSARY, MAKE YOUR ACT OF PERFEC T CONTRITION.

BITING OFF MORE THAN HE CAN CHEW

...with small men no great thing can really be accomplished. Mill

The beginning of February has the Readers expectantly awaiting this month's MHT Newsletter. No, we're not looking for the rector's big $30K plan, the delivery of which has been unfulfilled since last spring. (That bit of beggary was a non-starter from the hour it appeared in print.) What we want to read is his commentary on the Osservatore Romano article by Mgr. Ocáriz Braña. Of greatest interest will be any remarks on what in January the rector called its "serious errors."

To be sure, Ocáriz Braña is a modernist, and his short article reflects the cant and New-Age vocabulary characteristic of Novus-Ordite writers (for instance, this little gem of rhetorical puffery: "an assessment of... [post-Conciliar] teaching should transform a possible situation of difficulty into a serene and joyful acceptance of the Magisterium..."). Secular academics know, that's what it takes to get published nowadays, and the bathos mustn't cause us to forget that Ocáriz Braña is, unlike the rector and the Blunderer, a man with rock-solid scholarly credentials.

Born in 1944, Ocáriz Braña studied physics at the University of Barcelona, a world-renowned public institution of higher learning considered the best university in Spain. In 1969 his received his licentiate in theology from the Lateran University in Rome and in 1971 his doctorate in theology from the University of Navarre, Spain. His formation took place in the early years of the Novus Ordo, at a time when Catholic educational institutions were in transition. During that period, some of the old standards remained (even at the Lateran, which owed much to Roncalli). Furthermore, the Opus-Dei University of Navarre is recognized as one of the finest private universities in Spain, and it ranks among the top schools in the world. Entrance requirements at these selective Spanish universities were and are high. Only the best and the brightest matriculate.

So it's no surprise that we're looking forward to watching our Brooklyn-schooled rector -- someone brought up during the struggling, chaotic, nascent years of Écône -- as he confronts a professional endowed with a world-class education and an advanced degree. Will it be a contest between David and Goliath? Or will this be a tale of a gnat annoying a lion and then flying off into a spider's web?

We're standing by our inboxes.