ROGUES, VAGABONDS AND STURDY BEGGARS

 Editor's Note: In restless anticipation of St. Nick's visit tonight, the Readers are posting early. We've got to hang up our stockings and wiggle into our toasty p.j.'s long before the jolly old elf lands on the roof of PL's editorial offices. (We've been very, very good this year.)

Don't worry: we'll leave Krampus a nice bottle of Himbeergeist along with GPS coördinates for all the SW Ohio-Brooksville cult centers and affiliates. (Let's hope he's got enough switches for the terribly naughty Tradistani "clergy.")

The horseleech hath two daughters that say: Bring, bring. The Book of Proverbs

The Readers thought they'd heard it all.

Then they saw last week's "Bishop's (?) Corner."

Mind you, we're accustomed to the degrading image of His Mendicancy's mooching fully prepared suppers from impoverished Gertie families. But nothing, and we mean nothing, beats the following example of grotesque impudence:

We’re surely grateful for meals for priests. Last week we did very well. Sometimes, though, it’s a question of meals or priestly work, and we’d much rather attend to the spiritual, but we are used to eating, alas! So, let’s work together. If you are cooking, please use the Cucina Clerical website. For last-minute offerings, just let me know, or Fr. Lehtoranta, so the food doesn’t get missed. Sometimes we forget to check the fridge. We should be good for Christmas, as we were indeed for Thanksgiving. But there can be some pretty spare days in between….

What was he smoking when he wrote that?

Unless you assume Panhandlin' Dan, suffering from some dissociative disorder brought on by increasing defections from his cult, is babbling some loopy, stream-of-consciousness monologue, it's hard to make much sense of the paragraph. To decode the Dirtbag's secret message, you've got to anatomize the text. In case you quickly skimmed over the immodest proposal, thereby missing all the parasitical implications lurking under the zany prose, here's our reading. Let's start with the third sentence:

Sometimes, though, it’s a question of meals or priestly work, and we’d much rather attend to the spiritual, but we are used to eating, alas!

That line is much more than a mortifying specimen of Dannie's frightfully gauche humor. It's a brazen threat:

"If you want us to do the job you're paying us for, then you'd better make sure we don't waste our time or money on grocery shopping and cooking for ourselves."

So what if your employers expect you to feed yourself on your own! So what if you have to take time out from what you want to do in order to shop and prepare dinner! The clerical leeches feeding off you in grand style won't be confined by the silly constraints of daily life. No way! If you want 'em to work, then you gotta feed 'n' serve 'em.

Like all inveterate freeloaders, Dannie's too practiced a sponger to let you ponder his insolence for too long. If he gave you time to reflect, you'd be furious. That's why he immediately made his move to lock in your thoughtless assent as you were still recovering from his aggressive cadging:

So, let’s work together. If you are cooking, please use the Cucina Clerical website. For last-minute offerings, just let me know, or Fr. Lehtoranta, so the food doesn’t get missed. Sometimes we forget to check the fridge.

See, Gerties, you've been slow on the uptake. He'll "work together" with you to guarantee a non-stop supply of ready-to-nuke-'n'-gobble goodies for himself and his bone-lazy clown crew. And since the cult "clergy" aren't resourceful enough to open the refrigerator to check whether you've brought their chow, it's now up to you to inform them. (N.B. In fairness, the cult "Fathers" might be scared to open the refrigerator door for fear of encountering another mouse inside. See our post of January 3,  2015. )

Apparently, the unannounced food drop-offs forced the curiously incurious "clergy" to rustle up their grub using their own cash. Gertie Gals, it's your fault the "missed" victuals rotted away or were carried off by the filthy vermin nesting in SGG. All we can say is that Li'l Daniel must be pretty cross at your inconsideration.

What makes your thoughtlessness more reprehensible is that on those days when the "clergy" missed the catered eats, Dannie probably had to pressure one of his work-averse "clerical" parasites to whip up something for his din-din. Can you imagine the screaming and yelling it takes to herd those layabouts into the kitchen, especially if they're squeamish about rodent scat?

After Dannie 'fessed up to forgetting to check on meal deliveries, he probably realized he'd crossed the line. The cultlings signed on to SGG for the sacraments, not to run a "clerical" chuck wagon and ring an iron triangle dinner-bell for loafers too indolent to crack open the icebox door. That's really taxing the dirty Gerties' vanishing patience, even by cult-master standards. Accordingly, his survival instincts cautioned him to pivot by playing the sympathy card:

We should be good for Christmas, as we were indeed for Thanksgiving. But there can be some pretty spare days in between….

"Some pretty spare days..."?

Did he say, "... SPARE..."???

What? Does "One Hand" mean the SGG chow-hound "clergy" didn't have enough freebies to wolf down between Thanksgiving and Christmas? Is the old scrounger's cupboard so bare that his poor "clerical" doggies have nothing to nosh on between holiday pig-outs? Can His Esuriency be suggesting that Gertie Gals bust their household budgets to cater meals every day, or else he and his famished entourage will starve? Could it be that Uneven Steven's at risk of involuntarily attaining the Body Mass Index recommended by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute?

If true, it's strange, because in the next paragraph "One-Hand Dan" reveals the "clergy" actually do have the resources, batterie de cuisine (almost), and advanced culinary skills to pull off a crockpot pot roast.* Experienced cook that he is, Dannie himself crowed, "it really is easy to do." Moreover, His Gourmandiseship pronounced the dish "delicious! A great winter dinner."

All-righty, then... the question we have — and one that should fester on the lips of every haggard Gertie scullery maid — is:

Why can't the scum "clergy" make their own dinners in a slow cooker every day?

There are hundreds of economical recipes online, such as this one for hillbilly crockpot raccoon stew, seeing that SGG has a generous supply of the critters infesting the ramshackle cult center. Alternatively, they could get hold of the bestselling Better Homes and Gardens Biggest Book of Slow Cooker Recipes which features a bonus chapter on 5-ingredient recipes. That way, Deacon Dan only has to use one hand when he goes marketing.

But don't waste your breath. Stop these bloodsucking worms before their hungry proboscides strike again:

END THE MEALS-FOR-CLERICAL-HEELS PROGRAM AT ONCE!

* Weirdly offensive as the "Corner" was, PL got a kick out of Dan's anecdote about cajoling the hapless Lurch into making a slow-cooker repast: 

... the other night after an excellent supper of Aztec Soup, I inveigled Fr. McGuire, of all things, into making Crockpot Pot Roast. He likes it, and was familiar with the concept... 

Hold on now! Fixing a pot roast in a crockpot is a CONCEPT????

Sheesh! He makes it sound as if he'd asked Lurch to factor 4th degree polynomials with synthetic division instead of dumping 3 or 4 pounds of eye-of-round along with a can of cream-of-mushroom soup into the inner bowl. Well, we suppose if one of your "things" is Lurch, you've got to pretend it's high functioning.

But right after Dannie declared the dish "delicious," his finely tuned prudentia carnis counseled him to excite the Gerties' pity lest they get the impression that the idle "clergy" are capable of fending for themselves in the kitchen:

The only problem is that when [Lurch] started, after having shopped for the ingredients, he discovered we had the crock but not the pot, the lining having been lost. 

Oh, brother!

A CARDINAL POINT

How many people live on the reputation of the reputation they might have made! Holmes

Of late, the media have been been spinning in a moral tizzy with hand-wringing outrage over fake news. Bergie himself, who stuck his nose into the uproar last week, declared it sinful. (One of the few sins still around in the Vatican Establishment, we suppose.)

In PL's view,  equally reprehensible is fake repute. Fake news is swiftly discredited as the truth swiftly comes to light. But fake repute endures because people don't want to surrender a comforting meme even when faced with evidence disconfirming their misplaced esteem. It then takes persistent effort and lots of repetition to motivate folks to abandon their misbelief.

In the aftermath of the calamitous 2009 SGG School Scandal, so much information surfaced on the web that it's probably reasonable to assume that no one, neither rite-trash cultist nor drool-glazed pesthouse completer, believes any longer that Tony Baloney is a "great scholar and theologian." Likewise, nobody with half a brain today assents to all the hype touting His Excremency, "One-Hand Dan," as a "man of broad culture" and an "expert liturgist." TradWorld 's citizens have been set straight on the Dynamic Duo:  One by one, the folks're walking —if not running — away.

But in the case of Tradzilla, there persists a widely accepted canard that he's the SUPREME AUTHORITY; that he's the revered go-to guy in Traddielandia for the last word when it comes to matters ecclesiastical; that he epitomizes the intellectual standards of pre-Vatican II clergy. This amusing but pathological delusion may explain why many, including some independent "clergy," still feed his insatiable money-lust or play the lap dog in spite of their intense, personal dislike for him.

Part of the blame falls on PL. We've spent most of our time exposing "One Hand's" and Bonehead Tone's errors. In our defense, on a number of occasions we've pilloried Big Don for cringeworthy gaffes in his turgidly written newsletter — remember his howling blunder "desirous of living a more hermetic life" (click here)? Nonetheless, as many correspondents have fraternally chided us, we haven't done as much as we should have to correct the mistaken impression of Tradzilla's "expertise."

In this busy week before the Christmas weekend, we'll make amends for our negligence. It's important for traditional Catholics to realize Big Don is definitely not the master of churchly lore that the guileful Tradistani PR machine claims he is. As is PL's custom in these matters, the Readers will zero in on one seemingly small (but in truth hugely significant) detail, inasmuch as it's the little things in life that reveal the most.

We discovered today's tell-tale blunder by happenstance, as we were scanning the November 2016 pesthouse newsletter in a fruitless search for Tradzilla's announcement of the formation of his long-promised new organization of "priests" (and possibly at least one other spineless "prelate").  On page 3, in the caption beneath a photograph of Raymond Cardinal Burke, we read the following:

The magnificence of the cardinalatial robes consists in the fact that they are reflections of the glory of the Catholic Church ...

Oh, my!

The Readers bet the hillbilly cultists and hollow-eyed completers were passing impressed with the lumbering polysyllabic qualifier "cardinalatial." Not without reason we surmise the Donster was pretty proud of himself, too. What a rare, virtuosic command of ecclesiastical protocol! How the word slips with oleaginous luxury around and off the tongue, like a mouthful of warmed petroleum jelly.

Ah! that lilting cadence, an even run of a Leonine cursus planus without caesura: 🎶TUM-tiddy-TUM-tee🎶.  This, kind friends and cult-crazy foes alike, is a word peerless, disciplinary experts trot out for our admiration and humiliation — a word from the domain of the chancery "in crowd." We, the uninitiated lay masses, recalling the lessons of freshman-year composition, would've penned without affectation, "... the cardinal's robes...." But only fastidiously schooled, real-McCoy clergy have an adjective like cardinalatial lodged in their honeyed throats. None other than an élite churchman could've mined such a sesquipedalian gem from the deepest, darkest recesses of the English lexicon.

E X C E P T ... cardinalatial isn't the lexical unit the really educated would have typed!

The adjective's etymologically correct form is cardinalitial.

Yeah, sure, lexicographers have attested to Donnie's nonstandard lexeme,* but the same can be said for that barbarity irregardless. When it comes to the form recognized by authoritative dictionaries like the New Shorter O.E.D. or Webster's Third International Unabridged, you'll find it's cardinalitial.

If, however, you don't read Church documents in Latin, then by all means you'll never come across clues to the correct English spelling in terms-of-art like rotulus cardinalitius** (= annual dividend paid to cardinals resident at Rome) and titulus cardinalitius** (= title taken by a cardinal from a titular church of Rome), or in whole clauses like Cardinales... qui dignitati cardinalitiae... renuntiaverunt... and Habitus quem vocant cardinalitium... (from Pius XII's 1945 constitution Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis).

Additionally, if you don't read Italian or French works on the subject of Church polity, you'll never encounter phrases like dignità cardinalizia or prérogatives cardinalices.*** And if you don't understand much about classical and post-classical formation of Latin words, then you won't know why the vowel is i and not a in English. Without approved models to guide you  — and if you're too slothful to consult a reputable dictionary — then you just make it up out of thin air. Perhaps, may we guess, like Big Don ...  on the misguided analogy of palatial, an adjective dear to his checked upwardly mobile aspirations?

To all you Tradzilla fans out there, we say, Go for the gusto: guzzle all the theologically adulterated cult Kool-Aid you want about women's clothing/footwear, mixed swimming, or the una-cum-as-dogma fairy tale. (Whatever floats your pervo boat is O.K. by PL. ) However, if you have any regard for ecclesiastical learning, reject the myth of Big Don as past-master of Catholica. Spit out at once any of that swill, if you took a sip.

Amid the gathering disintegration of Tradistan, try to earn a little respect from cult-free traditional Catholics by jumping off the Swampland bandwagon.  Acknowledge Tradzilla for what he is — a foiled arriviste, counting on his bamboozled boosters not to notice the unnerving absence of intellectual pedigree. And, once you do that, you won't hesitate to

STARVE THE BEAST!

* We saw cardinalatial in an old, woefully unscholarly Maryknoll Catholic dictionary and in John-Charles Noonan's pretentious, error-strewn, and incompetently edited book on ceremony and protocol (which he dedicated in part to JPII). We also laughed ourselves silly on those occasions.

** Sometimes spelled cardinalicius.

*** It's surprising the Argentinian Squirmin' Herman didn't correct the Donster, since he surely knew the Spanish equivalent cardenalicio, as in capelo cardenalicio, diócesis cardenalicias, títulos cardenalicios, Colegio Cardenalicio, etc. Deeply embedded informants tell us Hermie studied Latin in a real university back in South America before descending into the downmarket pesthouse vocational program. He, therefore, should have known Tradzilla was wrong and intervened before his loud-mouthed master publicly embarrassed himself again. Could he have been fearful of the Donster's wrath, of his envy of a minion's superior education? Or did Squirmy  let Big Don intimidate him into believing the Donster was a master of the English language?

DISORDERED ORDO XII

Editor's Note: Dannie's ORDO 2017 went on sale last week, so we hastily modified our posting schedule in order to inoculate decent Catholics against the effects of its unwholesome influence. Be aware that it's crucial to the true faith to keep this liturgical plague isolated from the rest of Traddielandia.

(N.B. To make the reading more accessible, we've assigned the most detailed, technical comments to the footnotes for those experts who enjoy that kind of stuff.)

Quarantine, the state of the persons who are restrained within the limits of a ship or lazaretto, or otherwise prevented from having a free communication with the inhabitants of any country till the expiration of an appointed time... Falconer's Dictionary of the Marine  (1769)

Fault find with the Dirtbag as we do, the Readers really admire Dannie's shameless impertinence. After PL's year-long series of posts exposing the cankered execution of SGG's error-infected ORDO 2016, "One-Hand Dan" still has the effrontery to offer for sale an ORDO 2017. Anyone else would've lain low hoping the world would forget last year's embarrassing liturgical mishap.

But not His Insolency. 

From the sample pages shown on SGGResources, we saw that he and his sidekick, Silly Sal, did fix at least one howlier uncovered by Pistrina: At the top of p. 87 (Sep. 13), it correctly reads ad unicum N[octurnum] and not the illiteracy he wrote last year, viz. ad unicam N (click here for the post.) For piety's sake, let's hope those two knuckleheads also corrected the bad grammar of the year-end doxological tag to the BVM.

But don't count on it, or on too many other corrections, for we see they still print the ungrammatical Archidiœcesi (!!) Cincinnatensis on one of their cover images of St. Pius X. (The genitive of that 3rd declension word is "Archidioecesis," or, if His Flagrancy had really wanted to show off, the Greek genitive form "Archidioeceos.")

At any rate, even if they had adopted our many posted corrections to their gross errors of Latin, there'd still be loads more in any new text they added. For instance, the caption at the top of p. 56 for May 12* (which in 2016 was the Octave of the Ascension) reads

SS Nereii, Achillei [ampersand presumably for et] Domitillæ V et Pancratii MM  [= "Of Saints Nereus, Achilleus and Domitilla, Virgin, and Pancras, Martyrs"]

As the Church's Kalendarium indicates, the Missal and Breviary print, and choice Latin demands, the conjunction before Pancras should be atque or ac (shorter form of atque), not et.

You see, in the Roman Martyrology's narration, St. Pancras wasn't martyred on the Ardeatine Way along with Ss. Nereus and Achilleus, whose remains were much later transferred with Flavia Domitilla's. His is an entirely separate entry in the Martyrology for the same day, where his place of martyrdom is specified as the Aurelian Way. Moreoever, these martyrs gained their heavenly crown, in different centuries according to the Martyrology's  accounts: Nereus and Achilleus refused to sacrifice to idols because they had been baptized by the Apostle Peter (hence, they would surely have been executed in the 1st century of the Christian era), whereas Pancras was beheaded under Diocletian (perhaps A.D. 304 according to Thurston's Butler). .

Now, the well-schooled Roman clergy who compiled the Kalendarium and the liturgical books were sticklers for precision, given that a detail-loving juridical spirit might fairly be said to inform every office of the Curia. Unlike the ill-educated Tradistani nosebleeds, these men knew how to use Latin to indicate that while Pancras is named in the feast's title along with the other three, the collocation is different from that which the others possess among themselves.

If we bear in mind Lewis and Short's careful distinction between atque/ac and et, we recognize that Pancras's connection to the three is a close, internal one, in virtue of the others' sharing the same liturgical day with him; it is not the external connection of the other three different individual martyrs with each other in the same Martyrology paragraph. Accordingly, the Roman compilers, who knew Latin as well or better than their native language, wrote ac/atque, not et.**

But all that's beyond Deficient Dan and Silly Sal. We can't figure out why he didn't just copy verbatim from the Kalendarium. What on earth persuaded those two foul-ups to go it on their own? It's a mystery. But what isn't a mystery, however, is that SGG's ORDO 2017 is sure to be as tainted as SGG's ORDO 2016.

Since shame won't stop Dannie from spreading liturgical pathogens, it's everybody else's job to make sure his ORDO 2017 remains contained within the SW Ohio-Brooksville cult, where only distempered cultists can be afflicted.  To that end, PL asks you to pass the word around never to buy His Inadequacy's contaminated garbage.  Should you have acquaintances who're looking for an ordo, refer them to England's Saint Lawrence Press (SLP) – click here. Remind them of all the festering deficiencies in "One Hand's" 2016 edition, which we clinically brought to light:

Virulent ignorance of Latin
Toxic editorial ineptitude and inconsistency***
Diseased contempt for traditiion
Morbid failure to acknowledge others' contributions
Ulcerated pretentiousness
Mephitic liturgical incompetence

If you assist at a trad chapel, stop by the sacristy to see whether your "priest" is using Dannie's ORDO 2017. If you find the septic volume, approach him immediately and demand he replace it with the SLP edition. Withhold all contributions until he removes the contagion forever to someplace where it cannot endanger traditional Catholics, viz. the trash heap.

*Incidentally, it appears that Dannie and Sal didn't insert page headers indicating the month, so once again users will have to suffer the same inconvenience as last year when trying to find an entry.

** For those of you Latin-language wonks out there in cyberspace, you can find a similar usage of ac in the Kalendarium for May 3, July 10, July 28, August 1, August 17, and October 7, where there's a separate entry in the Martyrology for each name or names joined by the conjunction. The use of ac on November 4 is slightly different, where the Commemoration of the Octave and Ss. Vitalis and Agricola are closely related internally since they're both commemorations in the day's Mass and Office. Here ac = "and also, and in addition." Likewise on January 18, where St. Prisca is also to be commemorated with St. Paul on the feast of the Chair of St. Peter at Rome.

Oct. 21 is altogether another case: there are different usages among several printers to the Holy See: some join Ursula and her companions with et, as in the Missal, Breviary, and Martyrology, and others unite them with ac. In the latter case, the editors must have felt a strong connection between the virgin and the unnamed maidens who accompanied her in martyrdom at Cologne. (Likewise the atque of June 15.)

*** Although PL hasn't to date fully inspected a hard copy of Dannie's ORDO 2017, his posted materials suggest this pervasive editing defect hasn't been ameliorated at all. As an example, for September 14 (Exaltation of the Holy Cross), he reprints the same flawed note he had in the 2016 edition:

N.B: [sic] In Epistola Missæ ad cantum Ut in nomine Jesu ... ad infernorum genuflectitur (= "N.B. In the Epistle of the Mass one genuflects at the chant That in the name of Jesus ... to under the earth")

We didn't tackle this mess in our posts this year – we didn't have space for all Dannie's goofs—so it's no surprise it reappears in the 2017 edition. We draw your attention to three major faults:

First, the sophomoric qualifying word Missæ ("of the Mass"). Where else, we ask, would the day's Epistle be found except in the Mass of the day?! Don't try to defend Dannie by arguing that pericopes from Philippians 2 are also found in the day's Office. Those of the Chapter at Vespers, Lauds, and Terce extend only to v. 7 and that of the Chapter at None only contains vv. 8-9, whereas the words requiring a genuflection in the Epistle occur at v. 10. The addition of the word was pure amateurism.

Second, there's the stupidity of instructing the celebrant to kneel when the words are chanted. Not all Masses in Traddielandia are sung, not even in the sere badlands of Tradistan. (We guess we're all supposed to be impressed with the hint that at SGG it's a Missa solemnis or cantata.) 

Third, and more significantly, there's the incompetent (and untraditional) press style with the ellipses and unneeded word. 

With respect to the last failure, in good academic style, ellipsis points within a sentence or clause indicate an omission between the first and last words. That means you don't have to add the preposition ad (= "to"): That's what suspension points mean, for cryin' out loud! Furthermore, if Dannie were conversant with liturgical Latin texts, he wouldn't have used ellipses at all. For instance, the General Rubrics of the Roman Missal (xvii. 1) enjoin the priest to genuflect 

ad illa verba in Epistola: In nomine Jesu omne genu flectatur, etc. (= "at the words in the Epistle: In the name of Jesus every knee should bow, etc.")

In the good ol' days, it wasn't necessary to cue the celebrant when to rise by giving the last word of the clause, because back then a Catholic priest understood the Latin he was reading. The reference in the Epistle's following clause to every tongue confessing was enough to signal a return to his feet.

But Tradistani "clergy" aren't too swift, so Dannie and Silly Sal felt obliged to prompt them as to when to stand up. Insofar as PL's acquainted with many of these numbskulls, we aren't opposed to Dannie's over-the-top explicitness:  if one of the pesthouse bedwetters can skip the consecration, then the whole clown crew needs all the help it can get. But at a minimum the Latin should reflect tradition and not sound ridiculous.

When you think about it in Roman terms, Dannie's note is far too long for a proper Catholic ordo. An ordo should be spare in its language, restrained in its directions, chary of notes.  Most old ordines the Readers have don't remark on the genuflection anyway because a rubric printed in the Mass text itself instructs the celebrant to genuflect! Why clutter the ordo with an instruction a properly trained priest is bound to notice, right?

Nevertheless, we understand Dannie wants to project the image that he's an exquisite liturgist, watchful that no reverence be neglected owing to poor "seminary" formation or native witlessness. To that end, if Deacon Dan must belabor the obvious, we suggest inserting into the Mass instructions, not at the bottom of the entry, the following abbreviated language characteristic of the terseness of traditional, pre-Vatican II ordines, when well-trained, real Catholics compiled them:

Ad Epist. verba: in nomine Jesu, etc. genuflect.

HAIL! TO THE VICTOR VALIANT

Times change, and men deteriorate. Gesta Romanorum

Fair is fair.  The devil deserves his due.

PL's spent a lot of time cataloguing Tradzilla's shortcomings, but today he merits our congratulations. Although he hasn't been able (yet) to swallow up Our Lady of the Sun in Arizona, his cult appears to have gained a new satellite — tiny Saint Dominic's in Highland, MI.

It seems this minor acquisition unfolded gradually over the last year.  First, Tradzilla and the Clone boldly celebrated there  "Bishop" Robert McKenna's Requiem. Next the mercurial Long-Island Jellyfish made a long-overdue "ad limina" pilgrimage to the boggy Swampland in order to participate in the "ordination" of the latest pesthouse completer (click here for the pix, last pages). Sealing the deal (at least in our view) was a notice in the cult's November schedule that the aforementioned completer was slated to say Mass on the 13th at the small Highland chapel.

The little place isn't particularly wealthy, but make no mistake: this is a huge victory for the rector.

"Why a victory?" you may ask. "A welcome boost to his badly bruised ego, yes. But how is it a triumph?"

The answer lies in the history of the contentious establishment of the Michigan mini-cult, which, in the opinion of one frequent visitor, always gave the impression of being organized around a raw and lasting antipathy to the Donster. As different as trads are socially, educationally, and economically, everyone at the splinter-group, including the "sisters," appeared to be on the same page when it came to the rector, the mention of whose name used to elicit wounded glances, furrowed brows, or venomous ridicule. (One witty, well-educated member of the group, a gifted mimic and stage-worthy comedian whose comic timing was impeccable, could induce wild fits of derisive laughter with his spot-on impressions of the loathsome cult kingpin.)

To lend credence our reading of the Highland emotional atmosphere, here's a bit of background.

Back in November 2003, amid talk of closing the "school" and relocating the Detroit-area pesthouse complex to the fetid Swampland, three members of Tradzilla's chapel filed articles of incorporation for St. Dominic Church, Inc. Then in March 2004, the Jellyfish along with a couple of so-called sisters filed paperwork for Saint Dominic Chapel, Inc., with the additional provision that "no laypersons...shall have any authority over, directorship of, management of, or financial control over this corporation."*

As you might guess, Tradzilla wasn't amused when he got hold of both documents a while later. In a February 23, 2005, communication with attachments, he charged the parties involved with hatching and executing a "breakaway plan." Hillary-like, he boo-hooed:

[...] it is deplorable that not a single one of these parishioners, some of whom I had known and served since the 1970's and 1980's, had the decency and forthrightness to come and tell me, face to face, what their grievances or accusations were, thereby permitting me to respond, a courtesy afforded even to common criminals — to face your accusers and to respond to them.

The year previous to the above communication had been one of acrimony over the closing and sale of the Detroit-area pesthouse "school," as blistering letters and combative emails bear out.  From what we can determine, the harsh exchanges started in late May 2004, when the Donster whined in a letter to parents:

Many of you have recently subjected me to backbiting, insult, and vilification concerning   these events, both in word and deed [...] most of you — not all — have displayed to me either insufficient interest, or downright bad attitude [Donnie's emphasis].

Taking umbrage, in June one of the lay signatories to articles of incorporation sent Tradzilla a long, allegedly "mortally sinful" letter airing much dirty laundry. After rehearsing a string of grievances and criticisms, he chided:

You have always said that if several people perceive the same faults in you and assess your behavior or personality in the same manner, you should consider it true and work to improve upon it. I can assure you that what I have written here is the nearly universal sentiment of the school families and many of the parish people [....] Up until recently, had you demonstrated the humility and charity to communicate in person with your parishioners, to accept the correction offered you by the elderly, pious Bishop who consecrated you, and to work in charity and justice to restore the confidence of the people in your leadership, you could have salvaged a lot of support. Instead [...] you relied upon hearsay and gossip for information dissemination, wrote increasingly mordacious letters accusing everyone and everything but yourself for all of the problems, and then wondered why you lost the respect and support of the school families and other parishioners.

Following up in October, another outspoken advocate for teeny, embattled Highland bitterly admonished Big Don:

Your interest has only been what would please your main benefactor. Does this sound like a hireling rather than a shepard [sic]? One could see that you had no respect for the other parishioners that had no interest in moving to Florida. Those that went appear to be cultists where you control every detail of their life. I feel sorry for the children in Florida, they didn't have a choice. I hope they don't drink the purple kool aid [....] On a personal note, I don't like your dividing families with no moral justification. Your simple mind control technique of taking advantage of a family tragedy. You can't hide poor management decisions behind the catholic [sic] religion. Feel free to contact me with any questions since I don't shun people nor believe that is the way our Lord spread his [sic] word.

Then, coming full circle, in response to Tradzilla's February 23, 2005, communication, yet another layman reproached the self-pitying rector for his double standards:

I truly think you should look at the mind of the Church in Her [sic] reaction to the Franciscan reforms, and apologize to Fr. Neville for suggesting he did a Judas-like act. West Highland is not in your back yard, but 50 miles from Fraser [MI]. It is outside of the radius you once set up for confessions, even at Warren [MI]. Hardly the back yard to Fraser. And it is even more ironic to see that when you moved the Armada seminary in the early 80's, out of all the places in the US, you chose to move it to Connecticut, right in the middle of two traditional mass centers in Brewster and Monroe, each about 15 miles away! [...] One can even wonder why you knowingly set up your Florida site about 15 miles from another traditional site, and then advertise in one of your public letters how you would like it to be a "center" for Catholics, thus effectively soliciting Catholics around the country and world to leave the priests they are currently helping to support....but horror that a person from Highland might have "contact" with one of your parishioners and possibly sway him towards another Mass site, so you indiscriminately forbid all St. Dominic parishioners from going to Mass in Fraser....even though the mind of the Church is to allow even heretics, Jews and pagans to attend a public Mass if they wish.

We've got lots more material, but that's enough background, we think, for you to get the picture: There was plenty of bad blood between the people of itty-bitty Highland and Big Bad Don. In fact, the animosity struck one observer as so pronounced that he can't conceive how this aggrieved community could countenance the Jellyfish's apparent communion with Tradzilla. From our perspective, it looks as though (1) the Donster didn't even have to make reparation for the hurt and pain over the last decade or so, and ( 2) the Jellyfish made his stunning one-eighty without so much as an eensy-teensy mouse-squeak of protest. (Sorry, folks, but bitter complaints over the telephone, in the car, or at the dinner table don't count as a challenge.)

Vanquishing an overmatched, former subordinate isn't that remarkable — if you know all the players' personalities. The signal triumph here is over the chapel laity.  Their non-reaction (other than a presumed private loss of respect and trust) is nothing short of startling. Why did this independent traditionalist coterie, once seemingly bonded together by a shared animus for the Donster, tolerate such abject capitulation?  Someone may correct us if we're wrong, but we haven't heard of any resistance to the cynical rapprochement.

Could it be that, like so many other trads, they'll always submit without vocal objection to their "clergy's" shifting positions, no matter how baffling? Could they be unaware that all Tradistani "clergy" come with a sell-by date?

If our speculation is right, then it sheds light on the control the cult masters wield over their prey. And it explains why cult "clerics" manifest so much contempt for the laity who pay their bills. Traddie laymen and -women seem willing to sacrifice their principles whenever their quicksilver "clergy" suffer a change of mind. Like a gullible, simpleminded child, they're willing to follow —with conscience silenced and common sense repressed— to the beckoning edge, notwithstanding the known peril awaiting them at their feet.

Theirs is an absurd noösphere, as bizarre as the word's coiner. In it antitheses dissolve, and impossibilities materialize:

What was black is now white;

Contradictory propositions may be, and are, both true and false at the same time — tertium quidem datur; 

The leopard can change its spots.

* PL wonders out loud whether someone might successfully challenge the midget corporation by arguing that trad "priests" and "bishops" are laypersons themselves. After all, how can they be bona-fide clergy if they neither belong to, nor have a commission from, an organized ecclesiastical body?