EACH TO HIS CHOICE

There is a tide in the affairs of men,/Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;/Omitted, all the voyage of their life/Is bound in shallows and in miseries. Shakespeare.

Editor's Note: Last week we promised to share yet another instance of the rector's scholarly deficiency. We'll put off that post until next time in light of a highly publicized incident that took place last week.

Every day, human beings get a chance to make the right choice, to stand on the side of the angels. Occasionally, perhaps only once in a lifetime, Providence presents us with a challenge to moral greatness. Often the decision to make that right choice, to join the saints, leads to ruin in this life; sometimes, however, immense temporal rewards can result from a morally principled decision.

Take the case of Tiger Woods last week. What would have happened if, after the exposure of his admitted violation of the rules of golf, he had immediately disqualified himself on the grounds that the integrity of the game and his reputation meant more than the thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars he stood to gain if he continued play at the 2013 Masters?

The answer's easy: Tiger would have become an ethical rock star.

Mr. and Mrs. America, ever eager to pardon celebrity, would have forgiven all the bimbos and forgotten the lurid gossip. Tiger would have been washed in the laver of televised public redemption. Glib, blow-dried sportscasters would have choked up; silver-haired grannies would have wept; solemn pundits would have filled the airwaves and cyberspace with gravely pondered admiration. Perhaps the President would have gratuitously intruded himself to pontificate on the supreme importance of good character in today’s virtue-starved world.

What Fortune 500 company, what Wall-Street financial powerhouse, what deodorant manufacturer, for that matter, would not have stood in line with fabulously lucrative endorsement offers for good ol' Tiger, the straight arrow, the man of transcendent rectitude, the Honest Abe Lincoln of the links?

But he didn’t step up. He didn’t take Nick Faldo’s advice to think about “the mark this will leave on his career, his legacy.” He passively-aggressively explained how he moved the ball back two yards; he parsed his admission in terms of the right yardage; and finally (and predictably)  he “respected” the decision of the (ratings motivated?) Augusta rules committee to invoke a special-circumstances rule so he could play on through the weekend.

In a nutshell, he blew the ethics championship. Now he’ll be remembered for both the bimbos AND the weaseling. (And he didn’t even finish in the top three.)*

Before we consider how all this applies to Sedeville's panjandrums, let’s examine one more case from the sports world. At the 2004 Olympics,  Paul Hamm’s gold medal in the men’s gymnastics all-around was called into question. A South Korean had been incorrectly scored and should have won the gold.  Although the International Federation of Gymnasts (FIG) decided not to change the results, the body suggested that if Hamm would return his 

medal to the Korean if the FIG requested it, then such an action would be recognized as the ultimate demonstration of fair-play by the whole world. The FIG and the IOC [International Olympic Committee] would highly appreciate the magnitude of this gesture.

But star-crossed Hamm, no doubt pressured by the narrow interests of the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC), steadfastly and defiantly turned down his golden opportunity to be magnanimous. 

Hamm had been in talks with General Mills to appear on the Wheaties cereal box, but nothing came of it after the controversy. One can only imagine the other opportunities that would have opened up to him had he told his medal-counting USOC minders to stand down as he stood up for what was right. He might not have become the spokes-jock for “The Breakfast of Champions,” but countless other deep-pocketed enterprises would have knocked down his door to sign up the poster boy of good sportsmanship.

His refusal perhaps explains his descent. The last report we read was that Hamm had been arrested in Upper Arlington, Ohio, accused of assault. He was heard on police video admitting he'd had about eight drinks. As Hamm sat handcuffed in the back of a cruiser, he asked police to release him and protested, "I don't understand. I'm gonna kill you guys." Now in people's minds he's another one of life's losers: the media had him for breakfast, and he's definitely not a champion.

Like Tiger and Hamm, the rector, too, had his singular moment of choice in November and December of 2009. He should have demanded that “One-Hand” remove the principal, discipline the Blunderer for his active role in the whole mess, and restore the individuals he unjustly fired after first begging their pardon before the entire cult membership: if “One-Hand” were to refuse, the rector would then denounce him publicly and cut off the supply of indentured servants from the swampland. Instead, the rector helped “One-Hand” circle the wagons. He sent a letter to advise a former benefactor to resume donations -- the pesthouse, mind you,  was also a recipient of the lost largess -- and another to argue (rather snarkily, we think) lest “One-Hand” and the Blunderer be reduced to working as big-box-store greeters. Yet the rector provided more than written aid and comfort: he allowed "One-Hand" to host a retreat for the pesthouse inmates, where they bowed, scraped, and waited on the embattled cult master (as he later reported when he got back to the wobbly Traddie Trash of SW Ohio).

For his miscalculation, the rector received some unexpectedly harsh replies to his missives from the laity. (He thought he was untouchable back in those days.)  In fact, he was unceremoniously taken to the woodshed by one very educated layman. But far worse than the verbal thrashing he endured was the permanent loss of traditional Catholics' esteem. He showed he didn't have the right stuff: The rector laid an egg in the moral theater.

He'll never escape the ignominy. Had the rector stepped up to the plate, he would have been the toast of Traddielandia -- and doubtlessly the financial beneficiary of all that fuzzy, gooey, Traddie good will. Even more to his advantage, his flaws and the pesthouse's terminal defects would have remained uncovered. (You know, a forgotten consecration, historical and linguistic errors, a botched graveside service, a hurried late-night exodus after a manic screamfest, the invention of mortal sins, etc.) Maybe, just maybe, he would have been able to get his big $30 K beggar's plan off the ground.

He turned his nose up at a once-in-a-lifetime chance and chose ruin instead. No wonder the sede cult is flatlining in 2013.

*Tiger’s behavioral resemblance to the cult masters of Traddielandia is eerie. When speaking of the Friday slow-play penalty assessed against a 14 year old middle-school competitor from China -- a penalty seldom invoked against the old pros -- Tiger quipped, “Well, rules are rules.” Just like the sede cult masters! Some individuals are indeed more equal than others and consequently above the law.

CARTOON OF THE MISBEGOTTEN

You're dethpicable! Daffy Duck

In the four years or so since "One-Hand Dan" suicidally delivered the death blow to his and the rector's stick-figure brand of sede-ism, all the cult's cartoonish claims have been unveiled as utter fictions, the cheesy product of reckless aspiration, fit only for the consumption of quickly duped hayseeds and profoundly warped social outcasts. The biggest of the myths -- and it was a real whopper, believe you us! -- was the brazen narrative of legacy and legitimacy.

The Toon-Town cult masters weren't content to insist they were the best of the motley and scattered sede characters. No. That was too relative. They wanted to be the best absolutely. In fact, they went for equivalency with the past: In their minds, they definitely were identical to the pre-conciliar Church. With this fiction in hand, they devoted all their meager talents and a great amount of the suckers' contributions to convincing the gullible, the guileful, and the thuggish into agreeing they were the real McCoy, that they had the right stuff, that they were -- how shall we put it? Ah, yes! -- dinkum (as some of their abettors might say).

And, for a while, you know, it really, really worked. 

The unsavory clergy got a pass on all their antics because they had marketed themselves, with a wink and a nod and a tongue-clucking, chin-wagging, mock coyness, as the genuine article. Through the alchemy of phony self-promotion, intellectual wooden nickels were circulated as coin of the realm in Traddielandia. The one-dimensional Blunderer was passed off as a scholar, a liturgist, a Latinist, and a theologian of the first water. (We can scarcely type without laughing -- or retching!)  Nowadays, irrationally driven by his ticlike hatred of his better-educated critics, the marginalized Blunderer stalks internet chatrooms talkin' trash (only to be firmly put, time and again, in his place by intellectually superior laymen).

The irrascible rector once also had a big, exaggerated rep. Why, he was not only the embodiment of pre-conciliar standards but also was a penetrating socio-political analyst to boot -- until "One-Hand's" folly brought about his exposure as "the great pretender."

Li'l "One Hand" was largely inked as an individual of wide culture, a connoisseur of fine cuisine, a man of letters, an accomplished orator, and a large-souled, kindly, gentleman-prelate, overflowing with grandfatherly blarney and ersatz-Hibernian good will. Better still, he was (almost) a Fulton Sheen redivivus -- but only better. (Oh, indeed, yes, they all thought.) Well, his behavior in late 2009 ripped off that mask.

As for the "sermon in stone" LOL -- we mean the crumbling cult center -- it was to be a destination site, where toothless, pink-eyed Traddie trogs, awestruck at this grimy, sede Shangri-la, could see what a Catholic church was really supposed to look like. (Yeah, right! Engineers predict it won't last another decade. But the cult will be finished well before the authorities condemn the structure.)

Oh, yes (we can almost hear the cult masters whisper to one another), they were the heirs of pre-conciliar Catholicism, and that gave them the right -- correction, the bounden duty -- to call the shots, to play the stern, little Miss Bossy-Boots, even if they knew they had no right. But they knew the people didn't know, and, soooo (they must have mused in triumph), who were they to dash the masochistic dreams of the sheep, anyway? Everything considered, you see, it was all for their own salvation, wasn't it? People need direction, don't they now! And, well (they would have concluded, with a flourish of the whip hand), that's what we were ordained for, right? Why else would the archbishop have gainsaid wiser heads?

Looking back, it's hard to imagine how so many Catholics fell for this caricature of the sacred priesthood and hierarchy. It was all just make-believe, and considerably less real and credible than Max Fleischer's Koko the Clown and his dog.  At the very best, it was nothing more than liturgical performance art.

Live and learn, we always say. The point is, it's all over now, thanks to "One Hand." Even the cult's supporters don't really believe the myth any longer. It's broken. Sure, they may still show up and surrender some cash, but in the back of their empty, troubled, bigoted minds lurks gnawing doubt. And why not? Trad World has come a long way since 2009.

First, we know that the under-credentialed Blunderer doesn't rise to the level of an ungifted amateur. His Work of Human Hands has been shown to be a sloppy, error-filled, ill-written piece of junk scholarship. His other endeavors, like trying to prove one-handed ordinations are kosher, have also been annihilated. Second, "One Hand" is not the urbane and cultivated churchman portrayed in the cult's puerile marketing campaign. (He may not even be a bishop if his one-handed priestly ordination proves to be invalid in the eyes of the institutional Church.) Third, the rector's unschooled errors of technical language and fact underscore that everything was just hype (and they explain the systematic malformation of his pesthouse completers).*  Maybe that's why his big $30K proposal was dead on arrival. Lastly, we know that the mirthless cult center proper, decaying visibly by the month in a shabby industrial park, is a shoddily constructed white elephant and bottomless money pit. Everything these cartoon characters did was motivated by an icy, arriviste ambition to get ahead on your dime.

Everyone at last understands that the cult masters are not-- and never were -- the exquisites of their over-wrought and under-informed imaginations.** Rather than haute cuisine, the wannabes would prefer to scarf up an oily, roiling bowl of fondue Néo-Mexicaine*** washed down with a couple of aggressively effervescent "big 24 oz." plastic bottles of Château de "Phaigeaux."**** All that collection money spent on chic restaurants -- *sigh!* -- was just image-making to keep the hill jacks in awe (and deep in debt).

Comical "One Hand" brought an end to these Traddie Toons. In the words of the immortal Porky Pig ... well, we'll let him speak for himself: (click here)

* We've got a hot, steaming, fetid, fresh example or two of his ignorance for next week. So, come on back!

** There's a very telling anecdote of the time when a small group of Traddie-trash clerics went to an Italian-American restaurant in Michigan. The owner, mistaking the priests for men of taste and experience, sent them over a complimentary plate of fried calamari. It went untouched, but not until after two barbarian ingrates giggled and grimaced in disgust. One of their table companions, a South American of Italian descent, was too intimidated to sample what he knew to be a fine dish.  He chickened out and allowed the uncouth losers to deprive him of a fine dining experience.  That's the cult for you! The lowest common denominator rules.

*** That's microwaved, store-brand processed cheese smothered with a bottle of extra-mild generic salsa, served with extra-salty, no-name, imitation tortilla chips.

****A richly sweetened, grape-flavored beverage imported from Detroit made from a variety "that goes 'pop'" when trodden "in a vat."

SURVIVING THE SEDES: TIP 3

Editor's Note: The third and last installment of the series.

TODAY'S SURVIVAL TIP

QUESTIONABLE COUNSELORS

The sermon (i.e., "presentation") and the confessional are the two chief dangers to the faith for most people who assist at a cult chapel. For some needy souls, however, a graver peril awaits: a counseling session about personal problems with a cult master or one of the brow-beaten apprentices. If the malformed completers and their money-obsessed mentors do not have a firm grasp of Latin, moral theology, Church history, dogmatics, Biblical languages, and scholastic philosophy, you may not expect them to know anything about pastoral theology. Furthermore, you can never be sure that confidences you entrust won't be used subsequently to manipulate you to become "more generous" or to micromanage your personal, family, and social life. You must ask yourself whether you are certain that the intimate personal knowledge cult leaders may capture from a counseling session will ever  be used covertly against you if you don't cooperate, if you resist their demands, if you raise a moral objection to bad form. Remember the history of cults: a large proportion of victims eventually ends up leaving in anger, self-loathing, and disgust. Here's how you can avoid leaving your secrets behind you.


There is only one step: never seek counseling from cultists. If you ever have a personal problem for which you must seek another's guidance, find a licensed professional counselor who is sympathetic to the emotional and psychological needs of a believer and who can formulate a therapy within a religious framework. There are many such ethical practitioners. They may not be sedes or Traddies, but even a good-willed Manchu shaman with a diploma from a recognized university and national certification can help you more than malformed, self-absorbed, agenda-driven sede cultists. Click here to start your search.

UNPLEASING TO A MARRIED EAR

All comedies are ended by a marriage. Byron

Editor's Note: We're interrupting our series of survival tips to reply to a recent email we received. We'll resume the series next week.

Readers,

A few weeks ago you talked about the "rumor" about the recent ordination of a married man. I can tell you it is not a rumor. It is a solid fact... What does your fancy New Lay Movement say about this? Would you attend his mass? Would you go to him for confession? Is this what you wanted?

There's a big difference between approval and prediction. It was a no-brainer to see this event coming, and we predict it will be repeated in the near future. The sede cult masters have made a mess of things. In Sedelandia anyone can be a bishop for the asking, and there are no real standards for becoming a priest (even high-school drop outs make it). Since the sedes operate outside the institutional Church, all the old disciplinary laws have necessarily gone out the window. Moreover, standard sede theory encourages all manner of twisted justifications for anomalous practices. Married priests, then, are a logical result of sede polity.  It's a wonder why this hasn't happened more often.

Now, as far as we're concerned, if a chapel can stomach a married priest, then that's their business. Most Traddies have had bad experiences with their unmarried clergy, so we can imagine that some Catholics may be ready to take their chances with a married man. For our part, however, we wouldn't have anything to do with him, and we would never, ever support him with our money.

Our aversion isn't based on moral or theological grounds. Our objection is cultural.  Trad World is already so bizarre that, except for a few externals, it scarcely resembles the pre-conciliar Church. Adding married clergy to all the lunatic novelties invented by the cultists would effectively erase the Latin Catholicism of memory.  The Traddie movement would end up looking something like the Old Catholic Church. At that point, the Restoration is moot. Traddies will have to convert if they wish to belong to genuine Roman Catholicism. 

So, succinctly put, our answer is no, this is not what we want. Married priests ordained late in life without the benefit of rigorous, formal training are no better than the malformed completers who now afflict the laity.  Holiness, good intentions, and love of the faith are but a small part of the Catholic priesthood, and, as Traddies know from experience, these qualities are often missing in their clergy. Formation is almost everything. (The Readers would be especially opposed to married clergy owing to their ignorance of Latin: if the current sede boobies have such a bad grasp of the Church's language, just think how ignorant these married priests are! Why, they'd make the severely Latin-challenged Blunderer look like Cardinal Bacci!)

Decent Catholics will stay clear of married priests, just as they will avoid the cult masters. Like the Novus Ordo, both are just plain wrong and should never enjoy anyone's financial support.

Starve the Beast, married or celibate.

SURVIVING THE SEDES:TIP 2

Editor's Note: The second in a series on how to keep your faith and conscience intact when you must enter a Sedelandia cult center.

TODAY'S SURVIVAL TIP

TREACHEROUS TERRAIN

For the decent Catholic, second to the sermon -- or, as a commenter has recently suggested, "the presentation," although even that word is too grand for what issues from the cult pulpits -- the most dangerous place is the sede confessional. As a rule, you are cautioned to stay away and seek the sacrament of penance from the SSPX or from an independent priest not affiliated with the sede cult masters. (Be certain, too, that the independent priest did not receive his orders from "One-Hand Dan," for until someone with genuine learning and brains opines on the validity of priestly ordination with one hand, "One-Hand's" episcopacy is not certain.) In addition, remember that none of these men enjoys a proper formation*, so your innermost secrets may never be truly sealed. However, if you must seek absolution from marginal figures who have rendered the sacrament odious, you should follow these steps to obtain short shrift:

Upon entering the confessional, disguise your voice by speaking very low, but not so low as to arouse curiosity. These reptiles recognize the voices of penitents and are waiting to ply every trick in their dirty bag. In making your confession, do not under any circumstances reveal specific details. Stick to number and species only, and never disclose anything they can use against you. Remember: they know who you are, and if they don't recognize you right off the bat, they'll be trying their level best to uncover your identity throughout your confession: be brief and to the point. Avoid as best you can any of their attempts to extract detailed information or to get you to speak at length. (If they become too intrusive, leave, so as not to participate in their sin.) To forestall all untoward events, you should position yourself at the very end of the confession line. That strategy allows you to dampen illicit curiosity and to assure that no addled but prying cultist remains behind to listen in and report your identity to the cult masters.

* We once again recount a personal anecdote: Some years ago, one of the sede kingpins was the substitute celebrant at a cult satellite chapel. That Sunday, a particularly long line had formed outside the confessional as the faithful took advantage of a visiting clergyman to unburden their souls. During the "presentation," this malformed excuse for a Catholic priest chided the faithful for repeatedly confessing the "same sins of impurity": one could almost hear a gasp as many an ashen-faced  parishioner slowly glanced around, horrified, in a panicked search for any accusing eyes that may have seen him or her waiting in line. In the old days, this reprobate would have been denounced to the chancery for appropriate discipline and retraining. But those are the days of yesteryear.

SURVIVING THE SEDES: TIP 1

Plan your moves. Be ready to move out quickly without endangering yourself if 

the enemy is near you. Use all your senses to evaluate the situation. Note sounds and smells. Be sensitive to temperature changes. Be observant. U.S. Army Survivor Manual

From the looks of it, we'll have to kiss goodbye our hopes for Restoration and Good Riddance:  Jorge "Pope Pancho" Bergoglio turns out to be just another tradition-hating, sob-sister, Jesuit social worker hell-bent on propping up the creaking conciliar dispensation. There's still something wrong, aliquid pravi. (If you have any doubts, just wait for the ouster of conservative-leaning papal M.C. Guido Marini.) Maybe the shrewd, hard-ball playing bureaucrats of the Roman Curia will stymie the plot to break them, and P² [read "P squared"] will take a powder like his predecessor.  

Until the day when we have another opportunity for Restoration and Good Riddance, many traditional Catholics will have to struggle to keep their faith and consciences intact under the malignant cure of disordered, malformed, irregular, and money-mad sede clergy.  So, for those folks who (mistakenly) think they've got to endure the sede circus, we're starting a new series -- a kind of survival guide for the Traddie perplexed, so they don't lose their savings and souls while visiting the cult's chapels.  Each week, we'll post one easy-to-remember-and-practice survival tip to keep you from falling prey to wily priest craft.

TODAY'S SURVIVAL TIP

POISONOUS PADRES

As a traditional Roman Catholic, you know wandering bishops and uncardinated priests have no jurisdiction. Without this knowledge, you would probably feel defenseless against their toxic appeals for obedience and alms. You might even believe they are the Church. But when you remember that they have no authority at all, you will feel safe and secure while you assist at their chapels. You may freely ignore their public utterances. You may rest guilt-free as you refuse to sip from the cup of venom they offer. Below is a pew-expedient tool you can use to avoid their lethal bite.

Flesh-colored, foam earplugs and small book of Catholic prayers will preserve your faith and conscience during a cult master's sermon. First, discreetly insert the ear plugs snugly into both ears as the cult master slithers to the pulpit. Verify that all ambient noises are dampened. Next, with your Sunday Missal open on your lap, place the small prayer book on top. If necessary, cup your palms around the sides to obscure the view in case any cult-followers are spying on you. You can identify these creatures by their glassy-eyed stares and the thick drool trickling from the sides of their open mouths. (Don't step in the puddle when you leave.) Look placidly up to the pulpit until the sermon begins. Then, slowly look down and begin reading silently from your prayer book. Occasionally look up to the pulpit, and then resume reading. Continue until you observe that the sermon has ended. At that point, you may circumspectly remove the earplugs, making sure you don't draw attention to yourself; softly close and cautiously put away the prayer book. You have now preserved your faith, conscience, and pocketbook during the most dangerous time of your visit to cultilandia.

BLAMEWORTHY

A bishop then, must be blameless…He should rule well his own household. I Timothy (CCD Revision) 

Of late, self-righteous Trad-World has been squirming in a moral funk over rumors of the ordination of a married man.  Strange, then, that amid all the scandalized hand wringing, no one has yet piped up to assign the blame for this latest indignity and, indeed, for all the upheaval of the last few years.

There's no doubt about who is responsible. Back in 2009, and even in late 2008, if "One-Hand Dan" had managed the SGG School crisis with finesse, none of this would have come to pass. What's more, the sede-Traddie movement wouldn't be in its death throes, disemboweled by razor-sharp revelations and maddened by withdrawal of financial support.

Sure, there are many players involved whose individual decisions and reactions helped shape the irremediable mess in Traddielandia today. However, irrespective of the side on which you may stand in this dispute, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to trace the deadly sequence of events right back to little, ol' "One-Hand." 

All "One-Hand Dan" had to do was to conjure up his sense of self-preservation and invoke his corporate authority. (He has no ecclesiastical authority, mind you.)  He could have intervened in the administration of SGG School to right the many wrongs. Furthermore, he could have reined in his blundering and alienating sidekick. There has been widespread conjecture as to why he so uncharacteristically failed to act in his own self-interest. Whatever the reason, be it sinister or silly, "One-Hand's" catastrophic misjudgment affected more than the weekly collection and the bamboozled yokels who keep spinning to nowhere on the cult's hamster wheel.

Think of all the grief he's brought down on the empty heads of his clerical crew. Then consider how he could have spared his collaborators if only he had done what would have been expected -- and required -- of a secular manager in similar circumstances. The Blunderer's sham scholarship and his less-than-amateur Work of Human Hands would never have undergone the rigorous necropsy that appeared on this blog. The rector's embarrassing shortcomings and the moronic pesthouse antics would have escaped the glaring light of continuing exposés. Traddielandia would not have learned about malformed completers who forgot the consecration, couldn't perform a graveside service, had difficulty blessing holy water, invented new mortal sins, and mercilessly harried "seminarians." Chapels wouldn't have dissolved or split. Family members wouldn't have turned against each other.  Most significantly, the ultimate "home alone" recourse -- the ordination of a married man -- would have been unthinkable.

Exposing his confederates to hostile attack is "One-Hand's" signature accomplishment. Whatever you may think of B16, you've got to give him credit for bailing out when he realized the harm he caused by failing to manage. But then, unlike sede panjandrums, B16 is smart, well educated, and self-aware. It's a tragedy that the traditional movement lies gasping in the hands of clueless third-raters crippled by so many toxic limitations.

All in all, we should be grateful, for "One Hand's" failure did help us recognize now-ruined Traddielandia for what it truly is: a mirthless gulag guarded by petty, rent-seeking clericalists from which every traditional Catholic with a conscience must escape. 


REMEMBER: YOU'VE GOT OPTIONS. EXERCISE 'EM NOW.