DON'T JUST TAKE OUR WORD FOR IT!

Oh-oh, yes I'm the great pretender,/Adrift in a world of my own. The Platters


Over the last few years, Pistrina has argued -- and demonstrated --  that Traddielandia's clerical clowns are poorly educated and intellectually sloppy despite their pretense to pass themselves off as rare scholars and profound theologians. 

Today, however, we'll let someone else make that point, just to show our bewitched, cultist adversaries that we're not alone in our assessment of these sorry poseurs. 

On February 11, the rector appeared on a Restoration Radio broadcast discussion  about the resignation (sic!) of B16. The program got off on the wrong foot almost immediately, when neither the host nor the rector could get his dates right.  Here's what a Top Commenter wrote in response to the interview:

Ok....(Sigh) What is most disturbing is the fact that your history is completely incorrect. You and Bp. Sanborn state that the last pope to resign was almost a thousand years ago, Pope Gregory XII. Bp. Sanborn states that it was probably the 11th century and was possibly succeeded by Benedict the IX. You are correct in saying that Gregory the XII was the last to resign, however it was during the Great Western Schism and he renounced the throne at the Council of Constance for the good of the Universal Church in 1415 - 598 years ago. Pope Martin V was elected and Gregory was appointed Dean of the College of Cardinals. How is that you have bishops, priests and laity who cannot do the proper research to give credibility to your arguments? If you cannot even get the history correct with the power of the internet, then how are you to be taken seriously when it comes to more intricate matters? 

In our view, the better-informed lay commenter was overly kind by merely exposing the rector's fractured chronology: There was more wrong with the content of his remarks than missing a key date by 400 years. After the rector fixed the previous abdication  in the 11th century (regrettably, he used the word  "resigned"), the emboldened wandering bishop went on to enlarge upon the circumstances by adding a garbled summary * of the history of Pope Gregory VI and his godson Pope Benedict IX. What's ironically sidesplitting is that, as he almost too eagerly interposed some historical precedents for papal abdication, without realizing it, he actually did summarize (albeit imperfectly) the basic facts of Gregory XII's abdication, even going so far as to reference the Council of Constance -- the 16th ecumenical council that famously** ended the Great Western Schism.***

Now, most people with a smattering of college-level ecclesiastical history are at least aware the Council of Constance took place in the early 15th century (1414-1418). As an aside, you should know that in seminaries and Catholic universities in the old days, the Great Western Schism and its resolution were always on the syllabus, and standard textbooks usually dedicated chapter to the period. Therefore, anyone with a lively mind and a mildly informed sense of Church history would have immediately realized his earlier misreckoning after recalling a papal abdication in connection with the well-known council. Yet there wasn't the least shock of recognition in the rector's voice; no,  not the tiniest sign of a connection.  Even worse, it sounded, to our ears, as though he goofily considered the 15th-century events antecedent to the last abdication before B16's.

Top Commenter hit the nail on the head: None of the clerical cartel can be taken seriously. Not on church history. Not on una cum. Not on the crisis. Not on the liturgy. (Especially not on the liturgy!) Not on anything at all, big or small. The clownish cartel members seem not to care about getting anything right. They inhabit an alien and distant "let's pretend" universe of their own. There they compose a directionless mutual-admiration society of underachieving make-believers who are strangers to excellence. They know their empty-headed followers -- a rum, slack-jawed bunch -- won't care either; so why do "the proper research to give credibility to [their] arguments"?

To underscore the point, we'd like to dabble in a little imaginative guesswork of our own -- a little Derrida-do, if you will, based on the rector's own discourse. For whatever such fanciful exercises in hierarchy-overturning are worth, they may help rid us of the now false binary opposition of ecclesia docens: ecclesia docta. (The sede jesters, as we all now know, don't have the right equipment upstairs to teach anybody,  so until the Restoration, the mentally stable laity may use their own lights, thank you.)

Let's start with the rector's declaration in the interview that he learned of the abdication on the morning of February 11 from watching the AP. While we have no idea of the exact content of the AP story he saw, we found on the AP's "The Big Story" a report released at 6:22 a.m. that day. Its lead-in reported that B16 was the first pope to abdicate "in nearly 600 years." Many other media outlets reported the same fact, some even giving the exact year. The important thing  here is that the correct time interval between abdications was available on cable, online, and on the air very early on and throughout February 11.  A little care and attention would have saved the day. (If you were going to be interviewed on "radio" about the abdication, wouldn't you have paid close attention to all these historical tidbits? You would've had to suspect that they might come up.  You'd've wanted to look good, right?)

Pace Top Commenter, but there are hints in the broadcast to suggest that, while the rector indeed didn't do "proper research," he might have done some. We suppose this because, in spite of his confusion, several of  his half-remembered  facts -- Benedict IX's appointment "at 20 years old" -- and his misremembered  details -- "both the Roman and Avignon pope resigned in favor of the one elected by the Council of Constance" -- have all the earmarks of someone who hastily and recently skimmed  through a raft of material but couldn't quite keep it straight. (Insufficient background knowledge, perhaps?) In addition, without prompting from the host, the rector seemed, in our estimation, a wee bit too keen to supply other examples, to wit,  a breathless "But there were others [who resigned]," an insistent  "there is precedent."  

But, then again, maybe not. Maybe he thought he could fly blind and still escape withering flak. Very poor judgment, we'd say.

Heaven knows that through many stretches of papal history it's hard to follow the arc of events without a scorecard. Like Lou Costello, even serious, well-educated students of history sometimes find themselves demanding in exasperation, Who's on first⁉  Top Commenter's complaint (and ours, too) is not about human memory and its cold-hearted betrayals. It's about unprofessional standards, about not making the effort to get it right, about gross amateurism, about ersatz competence.****

Why on earth would any sede high-muckamuck consent to do an interview about a Novus Ordo pope's abdication without first having made a thorough, air-tight preparation? It wouldn't have taken too much effort. The internet is bristling with resources that could have been printed out or accessed easily from a smartphone or tablet before or during the interview. (The Wikipedia has a really handy and readable chart that would have saved the rector from Top Commenter's rebuke, Pistrina's scorn, and Trad-World's stinging disappointment.) 

If the rector had wanted to inform -- or to impress -- why didn't he do his homework? Why did he risk certain exposure when he knew unsympathetic adversaries were parsing his every word?

We guess the Platters had the right answer:

 "I seem to be what I'm not, you see." 

Now that's a dead-on, accurate statement. 

*His account is strongly reminiscent of Sellar and Yeatman's 1066 and All That, but without the underlying intelligence, wit, and profound historical awareness.

** We won't lengthen this long post unnecessarily by transcribing the rector's ramblings or providing a historical summary of what really happened. You can listen to Sanborn by clicking on the link in ❡3 above (go to minute 9:37). For excellent short accounts of the two mid-11th-century popes and of Pope Gregory XII and Benedict (XIII), the antipope of the Avignonese obedience, we recommend The Oxford Dictionary of Popes.

***In the face of so much gaseous B.S., we can't resist riffing on a shop-worn Latin adage: nec inscientia, nec peditum celatur.

****The rector's  February 2013 MHT Newsletter gives us yet another instance of his shaky  knowledge of matters papal. In his article, he styles B16 as "a powerless antipope." However, the correct technical definition of antipope is a false claimant of the Holy See in opposition to a pontiff canonically elected (1907 Catholic Enclyclopedia). B16 never opposed a canonically elected rival, for the simple reason that no one else but he was elected in 2005. Even the rector himself, faithful to some form of the materialiter thesis, dutifully affirmed in his interview (minute 6:11) that "what [ B16] did achieve was an election to the papacy." Not knowing the correct significance of a common term of the historian's art is quite simply too embarrassing for words. 

WINTER MAILBAG # 3

Pistrina Liturgica:

IMHO the Traditional Church has been in free fall since the 2009 SGG School Scandal. In the last year or so everything has gone to the dogs. We now have several new bishops and new priests appear every day. New seminaries are popping up everywhere. There is even a new wild rumor about a married man's ordination.

I know the old guard is bad. But don't you think it would have been better to put up with their shenanigans than suffer through this mess? At least there would be some kind of "quality control." I feel like the whole movement will be destroyed by this disaster.

We agree that Traddielandia has tumbled precipitously downhill in the last three years. However, Trad-World was a disaster before the shameful SGG episode exposed its diseased corpse: Greed. Waste. Incompetence. Nastiness and backbiting. Bishops behaving badly. Priests forgetting the consecration or unable to perform a graveside service. Crying deacons. New mortal sins. Distraught "seminarians" running away en masse late at night following a disgraceful scream-fest.

That was the norm, remember. Before 2009, we just couldn't see it owing to the foggy hype, sophomoric marketing ploys, and undeserved self-congratulation oozing like raw sewage from the cult centers. After 2009, the blinders came off. The knuckle-heads opened Pandora's box, and crushed hope as they hamfistedly tried to close it.

Actually, when you think about it, the current situation isn't too much different from the pre-November 2009 dog days. Ill-formed wandering bishops generally self-elected themselves to the episcopacy (either directly or through transparent campaigning). There was no committee of well-formed  churchmen to evaluate their fitness and recommend their candidacy.  All that was needed was ambition and a willing (or gullible?) consecrator. The same goes for the priests. Any warm body could gain admission to sede "seminaries." Capturing holy orders was (and still is) more a function of groveling brown-nosing than academic and spiritual merit. The only sacred rule was not to offend any member of the ruling confederacy of dunces.

Is it, then, any wonder why young mediocrities have pantingly aspired to a chance at grabbing the brass ring? In the aftermath of the 2009 débâcle (which average executive skills and a smattering of common sense could have prevented), every wannabe saw the field wide open. Truth to tell, there had never been much talent in the sede faction in the first place. And most certainly there was never, ever much thought given to genuine "quality control" (as some of Abp. Lefebvre's ordinations prove). Naked ambition alone, not ability or achievement, was the key to an upwardly mobile life on the laity's nickel. In the absence of the awe and mystery inspired by men of exceptional intellectual and spiritual gifts, any hungry, wet-behind-the-ears non-entity could figure out the recipe for getting ahead in Trad-World: (1) a generous handful of chutzpah, (2) a pinch of feral drive, and (3) a soupçon of reckless self-promotion.

Overall, however, we regard the current messy state of Traddielandia as beneficial. First of all, a few decent, well-educated, and able clergy have emerged. More important, the wretched, little, regional cult monopolies have been broken forever. More and more clergy will become available to offer chapels a choice, and these chapels will directly compete with the hobbled cults for donations and members. The increased choice and competition will put lay boards in the driver's seat, so if these newly minted clergy start to emulate the "old guard," they can be swiftly replaced. As long as this new breed of clergy learns to say Mass correctly and abide by the seal of confession, the laity should be able to look forward to a period of calm (and a few more dollars in their bank accounts -- much needed now in light of the recently restored federal payroll tax). Moreover, the new ex-SSPX Resistance movement with its superior clergy will continue to grow and introduce even greater competition -- and restraint.

But wait! There's an added bonus: Those poor, bewildered "Traddie Trash" who misguidedly stayed with their ol' sede cult masters can surely expect improved conditions at their compounds: the "old guard" will have to be on its best behavior if it wants to continue enjoying luxury vacations and lavish restaurant meals. (We may be witnessing this happy outcome already: last week, "One Hand" confessed in his bulletin that going out to lunch at a local, upscale chain-restaurant was "a rare treat anymore"; then he defensively added, in what read like an uneasy attempt to forestall simmering resentment, "we had a gift certificate." They never used to explain themselves like that before the self-inflicted 2009 crisis!)

So, we thank any prelate who, in the good, old-fashioned sede tradition stretching back to the archbishop, lays hands on lightly. (We hope they make sure to use both hands!) We welcome all the newbies and wish them happy hunting. May they increase and multiply. 

They can't be any worse than what we had before the 2009 calamity.

WINTER MAILBAG #2

Hi Readers:

Last week I worked through your critique (see "Lost in Translation") of Cekada's defense of ordination with one hand. My neighbor who used to teach Latin at a private school helped me. We had to agree you demolished his argument.

My question is not very "scholarly," but I want to ask you anyway. If Abp. Lefebvre wasn't upset about using one hand to ordain a priest, why do you folks at Pistrina keep making a big fuss?

As they say, we're glad you asked that question.

Recently we contacted people acquainted with witnesses to the infamous '76 one-handed ordination. According to them, the archbishop was "in a state of panic" afterward. Apparently some of the clergy who noticed the defect were reluctant to bring it to his attention immediately while they were still in the sanctuary. (Ah, me! the horrors of the cult of the personality: it wreaks irreparable damage on organizations it infects.)  One report relates that Apb. Lefebvre only calmed down after "someone" supplied a justifying explanation.

What's interesting is that no one seems to remember just who provided the explanation and how soon after the defective ordination the explanation emerged.  Did they wait several days or weeks for a well-researched, impartial, and reasoned effort, or was it extemporized on the spot to soothe an unnerved Lefebvre? I guess we'll never really know. Apparently everyone then thought as our correspondent does: if it was O.K. with the archbishop, then everything was fine.

But we do know that everything was not fine at first. Why else would the archbishop have been in a "panic." He knew very well what Sacramentum ordinis demanded. He was right to be disturbed by his careless mistake. Accordingly, until a professional with a real academic background, a sound knowledge of Latin, and an advanced (and recognized) degree in Catholic theology addresses the topic afresh, continuing doubt about the validity of ordination with one hand cannot be so readily dismissed. (And some "folks" should seriously contemplate conditional ordination, just in case we all have to wait a while.)

Of course -- and this is pure, almost wild, wishful thinking -- if the next canonically elected pope were to abjure Vatican II and convert to the Catholic faith, the problem would be settled, since a restored Church would call upon all these fractious, wandering bishops to renounce their state of life and suspend themselves a divinis.

Wouldn't that be nice: restoration and good-riddance!

Bye-bye, beastie.

WINTER MAILBAG #1

Ed. Note: It's time to catch up on some correspondence of general interest.

Readers,

Really enjoy the blog but can't help but wonder why you don't get discouraged by Trads who support discredited priests. In the real world, normal people would never patronize a business run by men like them. I'm sure you know not everybody who forks over their money is a red neck. Some of their supporters have college degrees.

We get this question all the time, so we'll try to give a complete response. First of all, even death-row inmates have their fans. (Remember the report of marriage proposals sent to Scott Peterson?) No amount of evidence or appeals to decency will change the minds of folks so inclined.

The second, and more important, reason is that these losers are not the audience we have in mind. Sure, it'd be great if one or two could see the light, but we don't expect it. A university credential is no guarantee of moral clarity, a well-informed conscience, or the ability to invoke right reason. For instance, we personally know of a case where a highly educated professional returned to a cult-center in spite of his continuing well-founded misgivings. His excuse? **Sniffle. Whimper**He wanted to be with his family. (Good grief!)

No. Our target audience is not depraved groupies. We speak to those Catholics whose genuinely Catholic mothers taught them better. If they want to attend Mass at the cult center, we've no objection, although the question of a certain prelataster's priestly orders is by no means settled. (But, what the hey! Who knows what's what in the crisis, right?)

We just want to be sure that Catholics with a conscience don't support the untrustworthy ambitions of sub-standard clergy. We don't care about the odd sawbuck or double sawbuck thrown into the collection plate. Why, that's the price of admission to the "really big shew." We want to discourage the big donations that fund the world-travel junkets and wild-eyed building programs at the expense of the economic health of Catholic families.

And we're succeeding.

FEAR AND LOATHING IN THE SWAMP

No passion so effectively robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. Burke

Recent weeks have done much to explain this curious remark in the rector's November 2012 MHT Newsletter:

"What we do not want or need from Bishop Williamson is a rump SSPX."

Now that Bp. Williamson is leading the newly formed Resistance Movement and appears ready to consecrate three new bishops, we can see the above declaration is not the same-old-same-old gaseous, overheated air that blows up monthly from the swampland. It's the confused wail of the doomed. His Excellency's triumphant entry into non-SSPX Catholic traditionalism spells the end to all the false hopes the rector and "One-Hand" have self-deceivingly harbored.

Maybe the rector doesn't want or need the competition, but the faithful surely do.

Like most of the rector's analyses, this one suffers from incurable tunnel vision.* He seems to think that Bp. Williamson aims at getting "hard-line SSPX-ers to quit the comfort of the big Society for a breakaway group....which is meeting in Holiday Inns." The rector fails (or is afraid) to realize that there's plenty of low-hanging fruit ripe for the picking in traditional Catholic communities unaffiliated with the SSPX, including his own small cluster and "One-Hand's."

Many, perhaps even most, Traddies will abandon the malformed, Mammonite control-freaks who feed upon them when priests associated with Bp. Williamson come near their hometowns. (Traddies are very enthusiastic trekkers, you know.) Very soon after arrival, they won't need to meet in Holiday Inns because the laity will establish permanent chapels. (You might say, If they come, the laity will build it.) That's the real fear of sede honchos.

All this may explain the rumors floating around about some recent tête-à-tête between Bp. Williamson and the out-0f-luck rector. Pistrina asked a few very wise heads and long-time SSPX watchers for their analysis of the chances of Bp. Williamson's heeding the rector's yelp to "declare for sedevacantism." They all agreed His Excellency is just too smart to bite at that putrid bait. Remember: this is a man with a real education and solid credentials (he's a graduate of Cambridge University). He knows the safest position is one very close to our own aliquid-pravism: something's very wrong in the Church,  and we must fight it. To come out for sedevacantism now would place him in some very bad, undignified company. Besides, he'd lose support from the very well funded Resistance Movement organizing under his guidance, which is declaredly not sedevacantist.

No, Bishop Williamson will just sit back and prosper, supported by the luxury of the best of all possible traditional positions: defend the "pope" yet resist. His group will grow. Its new seminary will flourish as the pesthouse decays and falls prey to an unforgiving tropical climate.

The beast will starve in agony as it watches a no-longer submissive flock scramble to the shelter of the well-formed, well-led, and very well-bred Resistance.

*Were we given t0--and we're not!--a deconstructionist interpretation of discourse, viz. that accidental features of a text betray and subvert the text's essential message, we'd be inclined to conclude that so much attention and so much unsolicited, off-point advice suggest the rector tacitly acknowledges Bp. Williamson as the de facto spiritual and moral leader of all non-SSPX Traddies.

TRUST NOT IN WRONG

A man so various that he seemed to be/Not one, but all mankind's epitome./Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong:/Was everything by starts, and nothing long:/But in the course of one revolving moon,/Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon. Dryden

Last weekend, the Readers viewed a newly posted video interview with Anthony Cekada on the Thục consecrations. What we found of interest was not the thin account of his change of heart about the line’s validity, but rather one of the arguments he offered to defend the archbishop’s lucidity: To our choking amazement, Cekada argued that Thục’s writing out a consecration certificate in “correct Latin” (minute 12:31) should disprove in “the mind of any reasonable man” (minute 27:21) the claim that he was “a crazy old geezer who…didn’t know what he was doing” (minute 27:02).

Whoaaaa! That’s a real volte-face from the position taken in the anti-Thục-line screed "Two Bishops in Every Garage," where “Peregrinus” characterized the archbishop’s Declaratio as “extremely crude.”

We decided to take a closer look at Cekada’s video assertion about certificate’s Latinity and to consider, as well, the probative value of the Blunderer’s particular example. Our aim here, bear in mind, is not to discredit Abp. Thục. Pistrina is on record as defending the archbishop's Latin against the frivolous charge of extreme crudity (see our page “Pilgrim’s Fine Mess”). Furthermore, we have never doubted the Thục lineage per se. Our sole purpose, as it has been from the inception of this blog, is to disabuse Catholics of any notion that the Blunderer is an authority worth hearing.

Value of the Certificate as Evidence of Competence

The most important thing to bear in mind is this: the text of a consecration certificate, even an autograph text, should never be used as proof of mental or linguistic competence.* Why? Because the language is not a specimen of original, personal expression or self-possession. In documents like a consecration certificate (e.g., diplomas, wills, oaths, affidavits and jurats, resolutions, contracts, etc.), the wording is boilerplate, the structure formulaic. Coherence rises from fixed form, stock terminology, and stereotypical phraseology, not from the mental stability of the writer.**

If you’ve read a number of such documents over the years, it doesn’t take much presence of mind to mimic them. Most people without a day in law school or an understanding of specialized and often archaic vocabulary can generate some decent-sounding text by stringing together oft-heard snippets like "party of the first part...," "Be it known by these presents.....," "I give, devise and bequeath all of the residue and remainder...." Moreover, the archbishop may have copied directly from a model, perhaps even his own litteræ. Therefore, before reaching so important a conclusion regarding a consecrator’s mental health, the Readers would demand a very different sample of continuous prose (such as, for instance, the patently intelligible, original Latin of the archbishop’s 1983 Declaratio, which “Peregrinus” so roundly –- and wrongly -- condemned).

The Latinity of the Certificate

Now let’s turn to see how “correct” the certificate’s Latin is.  (Click here for a facsimile of the handwritten original). To avoid a tedious grammatico-textual analysis, we stipulate that, in general, the Latin is sound. But of  course, that’s only to be expected, for no matter who penned the words the contents are, for the most part, boilerplate! *** However, near the end there’s a serious morphological error, which surely originated with Thục himself: testes oculares erant Domini Doctori Kurt Hiller et Doctori Eberhard Heller. The Latin word doctor -ōris is 3^rd declension, not 2^nd, so the correct form is doctores (and written only once, mind you), if Thục meant, “The eyewitnesses were the Honorable (lit. lords) Doctors K.H. and E.H.”

Someone (say, a more educated latter-day “Peregrinus” with an old axe to grind) might argue that malformation of the nominative plural for so common a word as doctor is a sign of diminished capacity.

To be sure, “any reasonable man” wouldn’t arrive at that conclusion. The certificate was doubtlessly drawn up in haste at one sitting. The error may have resulted from distraction or the pressure to put to bed a mundane task as quickly as possible. We’ve all been in a similar situation and made similar slips in writing our mother tongue, especially when we’re at the end of a perfunctory duty and want to get it over and done with. Moreover, anyone who has learned Latin well enough to write it with some degree of fluency can testify to like mistakes when called upon to draft text on the spur of the moment. Nevertheless, we must admit that, in this case, the Latin form is definitely not correct.

The Point

It's obvious this challenged interviewee has no business commenting either on the evidentiary weight of a document or on the linguistic quality of any Latin text. Anyone with real academic preparation knows, by training and instinct, that a trier of fact will never treat as an instrument of proof of mental competence a writing sample that more than likely was produced largely by copying an exemplar. Furthermore, time and again, Pistrina has exposed the Blunderer’s many problems with the Church's sacred language. Yet, in spite of these embarrassments, he persists in trying to impress the untutored, who, owing to their ignorance, are bowled over by cringeworthy observations.

The gaffes once again prove that no one need pay attention to Tony’s opinions on anything: If he can't distinguish good evidence from bad, how can you rely on anything else he says?  Enough said. Just ignore him.

An Afterthought

While we’re on the topic of consecration certificates…

....in the video interview, the Blunderer made much ado about the certificate as “paper proof” of valid consecration (minutes 12:54-13:11). Here we enthusiastically agree with him. Therefore, we call upon all wandering bishops to post their certificates online so any layman can view tangible proof of their valid consecration. 

On a personal note, we’d also like to clear up a very nasty rumor that one or two of these episcopi vagantes didn’t receive "paper proof" at the time of consecration and may not be able to produce a document on demand. 

Are Traddie prelates courageous enough to submit to the Blunderer's test of validity?

If our wandering bishops don't post their certificates, the people who foot the bills should demand to inspect the original. If they do post them, we'd be happy to make any necessary corrections so they can get them re-signed and backdated while their consecrators are still alive. Better late than never, just in case they meet a "Peregrinus Redux."

*We’ve seen a minor-order ordination certificate so incoherent despite the use of formulas that, if you looked to its contents for insight into the writer's mental health, you’d have to say he belonged in a straightjacket. Of course, we know the prelate to be ignorant of Latin (among other things) rather than non compos mentis.

**Bonus points certainly are due for filling in the blanks with the correct forms of the Latin words supplied; v.g.,  Thục Latinized Carmona's given name in the appropriate oblique case (although the Reader would have preferred the Vulgate  spelling Moysi rather than Moisi). Notwithstanding his winning extra credit, a prudent man would still need a very different writing sample to make a probable inference as to the writer's competence.

***To anyone who would argue that Thục's  genitive anni (“of the year”) rather than the more usual (and idiomatic) ablative of time anno (“in the year”) indicates original composition, we answer that we have seen the genitive form in ordination certificates from the good old days. (At no time has every mentally competent bishop been first-class Roman-chancery material.)

BITTER PROPHECY

Till old experience do attain/ To something like prophetic strain. Milton

As expected, A.D. 2012 did not witness the fulfillment of the so-called Mayan "prophecy" of Tortuguero. Near the conclusion of the 13th  b'ak'tun, however, we did see two events that will assuredly bury "One-Hand's" and the rector's long-dead aspirations to lead the Traddie world.

The first, which we have already discussed, was the refusal of the SSPX to unite with the conciliar Church. There's ample reason to suspect that the self-deceived Duo had secretly hoped  a rapprochement would send legions of disaffected their way. The society, as most savvy observers had predicted, held firm to tradition, and so that laughable pipe dream of domination vanished like a dyspeptic belch in a wind storm.

The second took place from December 17-21, when ten priests of the Resistance movement assembled in northern Kentucky to attend a retreat given by Bp. Richard Williamson. There they acknowledged His Excellency as the moral authority under whose guidance they will work in a loosely structured federation with other like-minded organizations to resist the conciliar Church and restore tradition. They also announced that they will open a seminary on the retreat grounds in September 2013.

Now, everyone -- including our detractors -- can see that this group wants nothing to do with "One Hand" or the rector, despite the fact that the two were ordained out of Écône.  After all,  "One-Hand" is just across the border. Why did they need to fly in Bp. Williamson, if the SW Ohio cult is supposedly the "real thing"? Moreover, they obviously want nothing to do with the swampland pesthouse, or else why did they feel the need to start a new institution for priestly formation? 

As we've said before, nobody (except permissive troglodytes) gives them any credence.

But the good news doesn't end with the close of 2012. In 2013,  there are persistent rumors that Bp. Williamson is set to consecrate three new bishops. In fact, among the cognoscenti, there's a great deal of anticipatory chat. Without a doubt, one or two will be Americans, and when that happens, the U.S. Traddie world will change drastically.  As one wise and witty long-time observer has put it, the Duo has gone to great pains and expense to promote themselves loudly, but to little effect. Yet, "one whisper from Bp. Williamson" and the Traddie world is aflutter with expectation.

We predict that priests and people and money will flock to these new bishops, who actually will represent the real thing.

The beast is well on its way to the charnel house.