THE TYRANT'S PLEA

Necessity has a stern face. Schiller

We must've gotten under Dannie's skin.

Two weeks ago PL remarked on "One-Hand Dan's" unusual request for Gertie suggestions about fund-raising and mind-control opportunities for 2017 Lent. As we reported, the sheep aren't flocking together for his "church suppers and recollections," so the sede amazing scapegraces were looking for another way to herd 'em in for a spring fleecing. (Click here for the full post.)

From the looks of it, the cult commissars aren't waiting for input (which wouldn't be forthcoming anyway). Peeved, no doubt, by PL's reading of his dilemma, His Authoritarianship has apparently decided to lay down the law, as evidenced by last week's "Bishop's (?) Corner," where he somberly put his thralls on notice:

We’re busy planning a good Lent, offering everything we can think of, at a convenient time, to make for a truly spiritual and holy “forty day fast.” Make your plans to change your plans and offer up a little extra church time. Recollections [ReCollections??, Ed.], Masses, devotions, Stations for adults and children and even some suppers and social events are on the calendar and in the planning stages. But pray to be generous.

Allow PL to translate "One Hand's" stark Cultspeak for you:

No more surveys. No more waiting for the tongue-tied laity to pipe up. No more Mr. Nice Guy, pouring sugar and syrup all over his cynical pretty-pleases. The forbidding cult Thought Police have gone full steam ahead with their own plans to serve up a smörgåsbord of money-milking, gut-stuffing events at all hours. N.B. The Gerties aren't invited to attend. They're commanded to be there, no matter what else they have on their schedule: "Make your plans to change your plans," Bossman Dan harshly demands with the iron-handed resolve of a banana-republic despot whose back's up against the wall.

No excuses accepted! He doesn't give a refrigerator rat's toenail how tired the Gerties are after a long day of demeaning, low-pay work or futile wrangling with out-of-control kids off their unaffordable meds. They'd better make an appearance! Dour Dan's asking-days are over, got that? He needs Gertie greenbacks!

Everybody —"adults and children" — is expected to show up for cult "social events" during the "forty day fast," which, counterintuitively but not surprisingly, has "even some suppers" calendared. (We'll bet it's more than "some": Lent at the cult isn't Lent without plenty of free eats for the ever-peckish "prelate.") There'll be no question about who's got to fatten the "clergy" — and the vacation fund: Dannie stiffly ordered the Gerties to "pray to be generous," which means they have to come up with extra cash and do all the catering.

Woe to the indigent cultling family that doesn't meet His Inflexibility's hardline standards of generosity toward himself. If he doesn't collect all the money he craves this season, that means Ma, Pa, Meemaw, and Papaw didn't "pray to be generous" as Dannie enjoined. And if they failed to "pray to be generous," then, we imagine, they surely aren't worthy of Prudently-Dubious Dan's "sacraments." (💀WARNING TO GERTIES: Telling His Exigency your prayers weren't answered will get you nowhere!)

PL's going to venture a wild guess that the cult masters'll be taking attendance at all these activities. Our advice to the cowering Gerts who feel compelled attend is to keep an eye on the flinty "principal" and his wife (to see if one or both are keeping a record of who showed up). Try to observe whether they've got a little book where they surreptitiously take names and count family members present. In addition, when the collection plate comes around, watch the usher to check whether he's keeping tabs on who gave and how much.

There will have to be a reckoning of some sort if participation in 2017's Lenten gelt -'n'-grub grab is as dismal as that of past years. Should the Gerties ignore "One Hand" again this year, then he knows it's time to throw in the towel. The conditions are already so bad that SGG has resorted to offering bingo at 12:45 p.m. on Sunday (!!), February 26. Did the cult masters decide to abolish the Third Commandment in the same way that Tony Baloney did away with the Leonine Prayers?

 If Unsparing Dan's gone to all this trouble to slate a host of crypto-fundraising activities and the turnout is still low, he's going to have to make examples of some cultie cheapskates. We kid you not. He cannot  — will not — allow absentees to take Double Decker® Taco Supremes® out of his mouth or filthy lucre out of his pocket. Vacation time is 'round the corner. He's determined to care for his crushing needs.

. . . . . . . . .

It's a little off track, we know, but PL can't resist commenting on a couple of serious errors recently committed by the cult kingpins. Traditional Catholics need constant reminders that these clowns are NOT AT ALL like the highly educated clergy of pre-Vatican II days. To be brutally honest, the cult masters aren't equal to the educated Novus-Ordo clergy of today. To err is human, we'll be the first to admit. But the mistakes the cult "clergy" make are unpardonable, because they're not simple slips of the pen or Spell-Check intrusions. They're the unmistakeable marks of the illiterate and unschooled.

Last week, one of you noticed Big Don's February schedule listed the 24th as the feast day of St. Matthew (!) rather than of St. Matthias. Perhaps another hand drafted the schedule. It might have been the sloppy work of one of the (so-called) high-school-graduate-only "nuns" or an uneducated lay cultling. Nonetheless, a subordinate's ignorance doesn't excuse the Donster in this case: he either failed to proofread the document, or he missed the blunder when he did read it over.

If Tradzilla, or Junior, or one of the pesthouse "professors" (LOL) is responsible for this disgraceful blunder, then the fool would merit our most severe condemnation. Anyone who's been celebrating Mass for as long as he  has (or, for that matter, for as long as the Kid, Scut the Prefect, and Squirmy have) should know St. Matthew's feast day doesn't fall in February. Furthermore, such a gross error might indicate that Big Don and his "priests" aren't familiar with The Acts of the Apostles and so thought Matthias and Mathew to be one and the same.

But as head-shakingly awful as this blunder is, it doesn't match the egregiousness of Dumbo Dannie's mistakes in his Feb. 12 "Corner." They signal an ignorance more profound than not knowing the New Testament, for they present a triple threat to literacy in one sentence: (1) badly mangled prose, (2) mistranslated Latin, and (3) unfamiliarity with elementary English usage. Take a look at the mess:

... Lent itself is called for a number in Latin, Quadragesima, or forty, for the forty fasting days that comprise it.

(1) The sentence, with its awkward passive and unwieldy phrasing, reads as if the English word Lent got it's name from the Latin word Quadragesima. That's impossible, as any schoolboy or schoolgirl knows. The Modern English word Lent, comes from the Old English lencten, which originally meant "springtime, spring" (compare the Modern Dutch lente). What he should have written is:  "The liturgical Latin word for Lent is Quadragesima..."

(2) After stumbling over his unsure English, Li'l Daniel then obliterates his small Latin by wrongly informing Gerties that Quadragesima means "forty." Forty — quadraginta in Latin — is a cardinal, but quadragesima is an ordinal, so the correct translation is "fortieth." (The unexpressed noun that the numeral adjective quadragesima ("fortieth") modifies is dies, "day.")  Real Catholic clergy know the difference.

(3) Lastly we come to the usage howler "comprise." His Inadequacy wasn't privileged to receive a university education, so he never learned this simple rule: the whole always comprises the parts; the parts compose (= constitute, make up) the whole. Thus Lent comprises forty fasting says, or forty fasting days constitute Lent, but never do "forty fasting days ... comprise [Lent]."  As the redoubtable Fowler complained in Modern English Usage: "This lamentably common use of comprise as a synonym of compose or constitute is a wanton and indefensible weakening of our vocabulary."

Wantonly Wrong Dan needs to buy himself a copy of Garner's Modern American Usage or Roberts' Plain English out of this Lent's collection. Then all he'll weaken is the liturgy and the faith.

* Scholarship tells us the name Matthias (probably a shortened form of the Greek Mattathias) is a variant of the Greek form for Matthew, Matthaios, which itself represents an Aramaic Mattāi, a shorter form of the Hebrew Mattityāhû or Mattanyāhû, "gift of Yahweh." Although the two names come from the same word, the apostles bearing them are separate figures in sacred history. Need we repeat that a real priest or a real bishop would know that?

WOLVES IN SHEPHERDS' CLOTHING

Fine clothes are good only as they supply the want of other means of procuring respect. Johnson

As we were leafing through old files in preparation for the recent posts on the betrayed Michiganders at Saint Dominic's, we came across a letter that classically illustrates the wrong-headedness of trad attitudes toward cult "bishops."

In a pair of sniffy rebukes to a gutsy Highlander who spoke truth to Tradzilla, a misinformed Big-Don-brown-noser wrote in 2005:

The ordination of [the Skipper*] was a good reminder for all of us of the profound respect that is owed to our priests...The dignity of a priest demands us, as mere morals, to yield a respect that is not given to any other [sic!] layperson...You and certain others have not given [the Donster] the deference that his office deserves...It is not for the laity to pick and choose when a priest is owed respect and when he does not deserve it, for the dignity of his office is, at all times, present...In the eyes of the Church we are not equal to them. 

Oh, for pity's sake! Where to begin? There's so much that's wrong here.

We suppose we ought to start by reminding everyone (again!) that Tradistani "clergy," notwithstanding the valid orders of some, belong to a sect entirely separate from the Roman Catholic Church. They have no ecclesiastical commission, for they were ordained and/or consecrated without the Church's consent. In fact, their orders were conferred without authorization from any Christian body because Tradistan itself isn't organized as a confession; it cannot even be said to be confederacy of narrow, selfish interests.  It's a no-man's land of sharp-elbowed, sub-educated free-lancers who self-declare their election and then find some mitered moron willing to do it.

In the eyes of the Church, they're laymen just like us, albeit with the difference that some may have sacerdotal and some episcopal character. (Was our self-admitted, home-schooled apologist merely ignorant of English usage [and correct reference] when he insisted a "priest's" dignity "demands... a respect that is not given to any other layperson"? Or was his remark a tattle-tale Freudian slip?) When you get right down to it, the "priests" and "bishops" of Tradistan most closely resemble the recalcitrantly scandalous priests in the old days who'd been degraded to the lay estate — deposed from office, incapable of any position in the Church, deprived of clerical privileges, and hence ineligible for the singular deference accorded to clergy in good standing.

It's worth remarking that, unlike a deposed cleric of past years, the Tradistani lone wolves don't possess a title in the Church and don't enjoy an office in the first place. Any deference shown them as clerics, therefore, is grossly offensive to a well-bred Catholic. You see, the term office has a legal meaning. In the perfect and historical society of the Church (and, we might add, in imperfect societies elsewhere), an office has rights and duties, and the acts of the office are "objectively binding on the society."

When the Church installs someone, the office is thereupon divinely conferred. Without the Church's act of installation, the sole "offices" Tradzilla and the other scurvy episcopi vagantes exercise are the private ones defined in the documents of authority of the several insignificant enterprises they run under state or federal laws. No matter what they call themselves in their kiddie corporations, they absolutely, positively do not occupy an ecclesiastical office.

But our cult-addled letter writer's oafish error is understandable. The sede vermin do everything they can to pass themselves off as higher clergy. Chief among the cult kingpins' ruses is vesture. As soon as they're green lighted for consecration, they get kitted out in all the pontifical finery their cash-strapped little chapels can scrape together: rochets, pontifical crosses, ordinary cassocks with amaranth-red silk trimming and lining, mantellettas, purple choir cassocks with trimmings of crimson-red silk, silken purple birettas and calottes, heavy gold rings set with a large central amethyst, simars trimmed with amaranth red, etc. It's no wonder the illiterate culties mistake these vultures passing themselves off as peacocks for the real McCoy.

Yet, despite their flamboyant costuming, American sede "bishops" cannot, in that delicious papal turn of phrase, episcopali charactere præfulgent ("glitter in episcopal character"):  Insofar as their orders were obtained without apostolic mandate, they are not members of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. For this reason, a cheeky wag we know once quipped that they were consecrated "on the other side of the blanket."  Being illicitly impressed on lawless souls, their episcopal character is of necessity tarnished.

The practical import of all this is that the sedes are barred by positive ecclesiastical law from the use of pontificals.** Unfortunately, however, civil government, being indifferent or hostile to the sacred prerogatives of genuine churchmen, allows any Tom, Dick, or Harry who styles himself a bishop to dress howsoever he fancies, thereby facilitating the usurpation of others' legitimate entitlements — entitlements legislated by the Vicar of Christ.

One of the purposes of episcopal apparel is to signal to the faithful that the wearer belongs to the "princely hierarchy" of Christ's Church, subordinate to the Sovereign Roman Pontiff.  It also furnishes a visible warrant that the man so adorned has met the qualifications for the dignity of his office as determined by the Holy See, of which the most important are "good moral character, piety, zeal, prudence, and solid learning in theology and canon law." Moreover, pontifical habiliment assures the faithful that before his elevation, the wearer had been formed as a priest in an approved seminary, where he received properly supervised intellectual training under professors with advanced degrees from officially recognized universities or faculties.

No such signs and assurances attend the malformed, jurisdiction-less Tradistani adventurers illegitimately arrayed in the Church's regal garments. On the backs of these "wandering bishops," the once glorious raiment suborns blasphemous deception.

Therefore, clerical outfitters, at least those in Rome like Barbiconi, Gammarelli, I Sarti del Borgo, and, yes, the very down market Euroclero too, should refuse sell to any prospective buyer who does not possess an office in the Catholic Church. But that's hardly realistic. Under tradition-hating Frankie, business for ecclesiastical tailors hasn't been booming, to say the least. As a National Catholic Reporter journalist wrote in 2014,

On the streets of the ecclesiastical fashion district in the center of Rome, the mood is somber.... it seems [Bergie's] personal style, combined with the ongoing economic crisis, is having an impact on business. One store with an elaborate collection of clothing for cardinals, bishops and priests declined to speak to a reporter, while another proprietor conceded: "We are working less; the pope is a simple man."

And so it is that, as the nervous shopkeepers wait out what they hope will prove to be a short pontificate, they're more than willing to take, with a wink and a nod, the dollars of the flush-with-Sunday-collection-money sede impersonators.  (On spendthrift shopping sprees to the Eternal City, boorish trad wannabes have been known to load up on thousands of dollars of bespoke clerical gear.) Hence, like the unwitting purchaser of conflict diamonds, Roman tailors trading with U.S. sedes contribute materially to the misery of innocents — viz., the impoverished lay boobs of Tradistan, who consider these mountebanks in fancy dress to be honest-to-goodness bishops of the Roman Catholic Church.

As we all have learned from the cheerleading media, the Bergomeister shoots his mouth off a lot about relieving the poor and oppressed. So far it's been pure lip service and no action. Well, he can fix that right here and now. All he has to do is to issue a decree sanctioning tailoring houses that sell prelatical vesture to any American representing himself as a bishop, whose name cannot be found in the current Annuario Pontificio.

We're not concerned about the resultant financial distress for the Roman ecclesiastical outfitters. The revenue losses will be temporary anyway — Frankie ain't immortal. The greater good is to keep poorly educated, heavily-victimized U.S. rite-trash from being snookered any more than they have been.

Assured our cause is just, we herewith petition Bergie to promulgate immediately an apostolic constitution aimed at stopping sales of prelatical vesture to American phonies, say, by way of a motu proprio titled De quibusdam episcopis vagantibus qui nullis admodum Privilegiis Prælatorum propriis fruuntur.*** To help the old heresiarch get started, we'll even supply the first words: Plani obsiti Pontificalibus...  ("Impostors covered in pontificals..."). We'll be on pins and needles waiting for the rest from the Latin Letters Office in the Secretariat of State of the Holy See.

If Frankie steps up to the plate, Tradistani "bishops" will henceforth be obliged to earn respect in the same way their fellow lay brethren have to — by setting a good example, acting with charity, practicing humility, being reliable, listening and learning, taking responsibility for their actions, going above and beyond what's required, not focusing on themselves, controlling their emotions, acting discreetly, demonstrating integrity, honoring what they say, and refusing to bad-mouth others.

No longer will they be able to play dolly-dress-up and expect everyone to bow and scrape while putting out of mind the unseemly past and the by far nastier present.

SO, C'MON, BERGIE. STOP PICKING ON THE BLUE-BLOODED KNIGHTS OF MALTA, AND DO SOME REAL GOOD!

* For those who've only recently begun reading this blog: "The Skipper" is the imbecilic MHT completer who once skipped the consecration in a Mass, and then blamed the laity, accusing them of making him work too hard. And he's a reminder of the "profound respect" owed to an illicitly ordained "priest"? Give us a break, cultling!

** At best,  malformed sede petty chieftains might be suffered to wear priest's garb — provided your ecclesiology permits, in these terrible times, a priest to be ordained without incardination and dimissorial letters.

*** "Concerning certain wandering bishops who enjoy no proper privileges of prelates at all." A transparent adaptation of the descriptive caption to Pius X's 1905 decree INTER MULTIPLICES on prelatial privileges, dress, and insignia. In spite of the sedes professed adherence to Church teaching, they thumb their noses at the magisterium by unlawfully appropriating what is not theirs to have. On a more elementary level, the cult masters' usurpation of prelatical vesture not pertaining to their  condition in life is a transgression against a fundamental norm of Catholic decorum.

Several hundred years ago, St. Jean-Baptiste de la Salle wrote a little book on boys' etiquette titled Les règles de la bienséance et de la civilité chrétienne ("The Rules of Christian Good Manners and Civility"). In the chapter on apparel, he sternly counsels that, in outfitting himself, a man "have regard for his condition, because it would not be fitting for....a plebeian to be dressed as a person of quality" ("... ait égard de sa condition; car il ne seroit pas séant qu'un ... roturier estre [= être] habillé comme une personne de qualité," ch. 3, art 1, 1708). 

American sede low-lifes' dressing up as bishops of the Catholic Church is morally equivalent to a snaggle-toothed carnival freak's decking himself out in a Savile Row suit.

CLOTHED WITH ROTTENNESS

All men that are ruined are ruined on the side of their natural propensities. Burke

If you're searching for a sign heralding the doom of the decrepit SW Ohio cult, then read what Dannie wrote in last week's "Bishop's (?) Corner":

Easter is late this year, so we have all of February for Lenten planning. I’d be grateful for any suggestions about times or services. Not that many keep even the old Friday evening tradition of Lenten Stations, much less our church suppers and recollections. What would work for you? 

When the cult masters were riding high and mighty, they never asked for lay input. Without a care for the laity's convenience, druthers, or comfort, they imposed the schedule of crypto fund-raising and banqueting events they preferred. Before the 2009 SGG School Scandal, they could count on the culties to schlep their scabies-infested young'uns and a covered dish of greasy victuals to Dannie's Lenten Friday food jamborees, where he and his gluttonous "clergy" would graze for free.

Those halcyon days, as "One Hand" seems to admit, are gone with the wind they all used break after the legume-laden, crucifier-crammed feeds. The victims clearly want no part of the cult's side shows. If we had to guess, we'd say they've already spurned some alternatives Dannie's come up with to fill the Friday-night vacuum. Otherwise, why would the Wee One step out of character to stoop to solicit the groundlings's opinion?

"My-Way-Or-The-Highway" Dan must be worried sick. He's got a clown crew of four hungry mouths to feed and at least one bloated gut to stuff. If the Gerties are having nothing to do with his Lenten schemes to fill his "clergy's" insatiable maws, the "Young Fathers" may defect to Tradzilla's new clerical institute (LOL), where the eatin' is better— and organic. (That is, if the Donster'll have those misfits, one of whom didn't even attend a fake Tradistani "seminary.")

Although we have the utmost contempt for Li'l Dan, we'll never believe he's unaware of the danger staring him in the face. To the contrary. He's terrified by the poor Friday potluck turnouts. He knows it means the Gerties have lost interest in his flyblown operation. That spells certain ruination. For now, they'll assist at the (probably simulated) Sunday Masses, but it may not be for long. There are so many better choices in the Cincinnati area. In fact, he may have heard what we did: during past Lents, furtive Gerties have been spotted at Friday devotions offered by SGG's direct competitors.

This latest appeal won't have any effect. No one's going to tell him what "would work." Not because the cultlings don't know. They do. What "would work" is dismissing the "principal," shuttering crummy SGG "School," and sending Tony Baloney down to the Swampland. Add to that a massive austerity program to reduce expenses at rundown SGG, which would entail getting rid of the idle, resource-consuming "Young Fathers." They could be shunted out of state to depraved chapels that would pay and house them, thus relieving Gerties of the burden.

But that's something Dannie won't and CAN'T do, especially the part about the "principal." His Impotency doesn't dare. That would cause the ship to go down with its captain. Therefore, the Wee One will have to undergo the slow torture of watching his cult rot away leper-like, piece of putrefying flesh by piece. The Dirty Gerties are tired. Physically. Financially. Morally. Five adult male "clergy" do nothing to help with the drudge work. The moldering, vermin-filled cult center is a bottomless money pit. The weekly revelations of bad behavior make even the riffraff cultlings feel unclean.

Under these circumstances, Gerties don't want to stop by the feculent cult center any more than they have to. Furthermore, there's nothing to motivate the Gertie Gals to do all the extra cooking required for assistance at the "Friday evening tradition" of "our church suppers." Remember, if you're a cult zombie, you don't just make the stations and head on back to your shack. No way! His Appetency expects you to tie on his feedbag for him at the obligatory feast following the show.

Actually, the show's the pretext for the food. And you know Dirtbag Dan yearns for more than the "sooooooooop" he's always cooing about (even when he's in Mexico gorging on "copious quantities of meat" in Lent).  If it was flesh-mortifying Lenten soup he wanted, the "clergy" could put on a big pot of water with rank veggies, rip open a couple of boxes of stale saltines, and spread 'em with the rancid margarine from their mouse-ridden fridge. But Li'l Daniel's counting on Gertie gals saying to themselves, "Ah ain't lettin' Pa 'n' the kee-uds jes' have sum nasty, watery soo-oup. Ah'll fix 'em up a broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage 'n' three-bean cass'role with a big ol' slab o' Velveeta!" (Fond memories of youth, no doubt.)

Before Dannie, Checkie, and the "principal" dashed their illusions in 2009, the SW Ohio rite-trash were willing to play the catering game. No more.  From here on out, they're staying put on Friday nights. (At least the air will be somewhat fresher.)

Yet Dannie will resist the message. He'll continue to reach out, and each time he does, it'll mean his predicament's becoming increasingly untenable. With Gertie morale deader than a roadkill dog, something will have to happen soon.

Let's hold our noses and watch as SGG decomposes over this year, shall we?

GUTLESS WONDERS

The Master said, A fierce expression outside and cowardice within: if we seek an analogy among small men, such a one would be like a robber leaping over a wall or boring through it. Analects of Confucius (R. Eno's translation)

Unwittingly, PL set off a landslide of e-mails after a Reader commented that MHT's January schedule revealed Tradzilla himself would be at the Highland, MI, cult center on the 29th. As far a we know, the Donster had previously invaded St. Dominic's only for Bp. McKenna's Requiem, which reportedly had been closed to non-family and non-"clergy." But this week the Highlanders, who founded their chapel as the Flushing Rat was following the Big Boss to the Swampland, must suffer the arrogant, filth-obsessed sermonizing of someone they at one time in the not far distant past condemned in the harshest terms possible. (Click here for a little more background.)

Virtually every single message we received voiced outrage at the flagrant hypocrisy of the Jellyfish and the Highlanders. None believed this melancholy rapprochement to be the result of a Christian desire on the part of former blood enemies to make peace and forgive. The feelings of resentment must still be brutally painful on both sides. How could it be otherwise following all the vicious accusations, many unprintable in a family blog like PL?

This cynical union seems to be one of self-serving convenience: The Jellyfish may need a vacation or a visit home, while Tradzilla and his Tradpanzee "clergy" probably need another satellite. There could be a big payoff in it if the Jellyfish propels itself back to its native habitat after surrendering the corporation. (Rumor was that the chapel was sitting on a substantial building fund. Maybe it's still intact, at least in part?)

Tradfolks' indignity over hypocrisy surprised us.  IOHO, PL's correspondents should've been more disgusted at the spinelessness of it all. Over 12 years ago, one of Highlanders cheekily confronted Big Don with a challenge to practice "humility, justice, prudence and financial stewardship to the betterment of [his] followers." (The letter was classified as "mortally sinful.") Another insolently called out the Donster with the insult, "'the fish stinks from the head down.'" But in 2017, the Highlanders, who used to have nothing good to say about or to Tradzilla, must eat their words by tolerating his sneering, scolding, strutting presence in what used to be their chapel. (And the collection on January 29 will probably pay for his stipend and travel expenses, too.)

Their rolling over like whipped curs is something we can't quite understand. After all, we were sure they weren't fools. They remember the Donster; they're aware he hasn't forgotten how his "own household...[was] silently working against" him. The bill for payback hasn't yet been mailed, but when it does arrive, it'll be high. That's why anyone would've thought that hypocrisy would be the last thing to stir up folks' ire. (At the top of our list is poltroonery and alarming forgetfulness.)

That got the Readers to thinking and, naturally, to reading (that's what we do best). Just what is it about hypocrisy that inflames moral fury so?

We found the answer in new research from Yale, which will be published in the journal Psychological Science. In brief, the investigators (Jordan, Sommers, Rand, Bloom) found that observers can't stand it when others convey a false sense of their own virtue by self-righteous moralizing.  Our correspondents, we surmise, don't buy that everybody up in the Wolverine State is forgiving and forgetting out of Christian charity, moved by the divine imperative to patch things up with a wayward brother who's caused grievous offense. We agree. In the first place, the Donster hasn't done penance. Therefore, our correspondents must suspect that something else, something far less virtuous, is afoot.

Applying the Yale researchers' conclusion that it's better to admit your shortcomings rather than wrap yourself in a mantle of morality, PL thinks it would've been safer to confess the renewed relationship between the Jellyfish and Tradzilla has everything to do with expediency and nothing to do with Christian behavior. Tradistan has been under assault since Dannie and Checkie brought on the 2009 SGG School Scandal. It will never be the same again. For both parties, then, there's a pragmatic benefit in Highland's submission, even if it means its subsequent absorption into the SGG-Swampland cult. That's not too noble sounding, we know, but it's something students of Tradistan can accept as grounded in reality. Then they can forget the blatant hypocrisy and move on to the real reason for burying the hatchet with Tradzilla:

chickenheartedness.

We had always considered the Highlanders a breed apart owing to their die-hard antagonism to the despised Tradzilla. (Very few families escaped some form of pain.) For that reason, we can't help concluding they're now as scummy as the Gerties. However, all's not lost yet. There's still a chance for them to redeem their violated personhood and bruised self-esteem ... if they follow these three steps:

First, no one should assist at the Highland chapel tomorrow (Jan. 29). Let the Donster just stare in defiance at the grimly frowning "nuns," as he smirks back at their glowering, tear-filled eyes: their only real champion and protector is dead, so Tradzilla's home free to do or say whatever he wants without risk of exposure. The Highlanders' staying away will be then an act of charity: the "sisters" won't have to suffer mortification in public while the Donster won't have an audience to witness his gloating triumph over these humiliated women.

Second, have a delegation waiting at the Jellyfish's office the day it floats back in town.  Better wait in your cars in the parking lot so the Dragon Lady can't warn Its Gelatinacy to stay in hiding.

Third, when the human hyrdozoan arrives, tell it to grow a backbone. Then demand it get rid of Tradzilla as well as Junior. Inform the Jellysfish that you, the laity, will be taking over Saint Dominic's. If Jelly hedges or tries to sting, tell the icky little creature you're prepared to be very nasty, if it won't coöperate. That'll get its attention! (Don't worry if it undulates back to Long Island: there are plenty more "priests" and "bishops" willing to take Its Mucilagency's place.)

Tomorrow and the following week are make-or-break for the Highlanders. They can stand up now, or lose it all. Let's see if they can reclaim their independence, save their chapel, and show they're higher-order mammalian vertebrates, not galliformes.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces. Seward

Most of you have read something about the impending showdown in Rome between Bergoglio and the conservatives. Mainstream-media journalists and Vaticanologists alike are openly discussing imminent schism as both sides play a high-stakes game of theological brinksmanship. With the latest squabble between Frankie and the Knights of Malta, the hostilities appear to be approaching the point of no return.

The Readers can imagine how the cult masters, especially Big Don, must fantasize about becoming beneficiaries of a post-confrontation exodus of clergy and laity. Their delusion may explain why Tradzilla hasn't yet announced the foundation of the new organization he promised last year: the Donster could be marking time until the shootout, expecting ousted conservatives to come flocking as soon as the gun-smoke clears. Beggar-man Dan, like a ravenous tramp loitering behind a stinky restaurant dumpster waiting for the help to empty the garbage, anticipates snarfing up whatever leavings the rector tosses out.

Three words about the cult masters' wild dream:

AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN!

Not in a thousand years.

We don't mean schism won't occur: PL thinks it will. Bergie won't back down, not with the liberal, modernist media cheering him. And the conservatives won't blink either: if the Bergomeister triumphs, it's game-over.

No, what won't happen is the rush of fresh victims into the sleazy SW-Ohio-Brooksville cult. Here are three good reasons:

First, the leaders of the opposition to Frankie will either found their own organization or they'll join forces with the SSPX, either formally or informally. Why would any dissenting Novus-Ordo priest submit to the malformed cult kingpins when he can effectively fight back under savvy princes of the Church like the Vatican insider Cardinal Burke, who's earned several advanced degrees from both The Catholic University of America in D.C. and the Gregorian University in Rome, including a doctorate in canon law?

Second, the SW-Ohio-Brooksville brand has been completely trashed as a result of the 2009 SGG School Scandal. Whereas traditional Catholics used to believe the lie that SGG-MHT was the Cadillac of Sedelandia, TradWorld today regards its marque like the Chevrolet Corvair, "the One-Car Accident"— Unsafe at Any Speed. Going on eight years now, bloggers like PL have exposed the ignorance, hypocrisy, greed, and pitiful education of the cult's undistinguished nomenklatura. There's no recovery from that. Absolutely none. The West Chester/Brooksville sect is toast.

Most East-Coast trads with their mental faculties still intact consider SGG  "tainted meat." Amid a deluge of eyewitness reports of maniacal Swampland mind-control practices, esteem for the Donster, once the "Great Man of Tradistan," is tanking fast. By backing "One Hand" in 2009, the now-cornered Flushing Rat made himself fair game for those who knew he was NOT the world-class scholar-churchman he tried to make us all believe.  Consequently, no newcomer to Traddielandia will want to associate with the scumbo cult "clergy" or the degenerate, mullet-topped trailer trash who support them.

Third, the una-cum shibboleth* will prevent the Vatican Ephraimites from crossing over to the sede Galaadites. Actually, very few will exit. Most will stay put after the big gunfight, awaiting a judicial declaration of heresy and the ensuing, historically documented "discipline to be followed when the Pope ceases from his office" (click here for a short Novus-Ordite discussion of the problem, the content of which most of you know by heart after Salza and Siscoe took Tony Baloney to school).

As for any quick-on-the-draw early leavers, they won't want to ride with the una-cum-embargo-as-dogma loonies from the SW Ohio-Swampland McChurch anyway. Why should they go to the theological fringe when there's a simpler, perfectly Catholic competing opinion? It's possible, then, that any trigger-happy precursors to the Restoration will head straight to the SSPX until the declaratory sentence against Frankie is issued. Moreover, depending on how things work out, by that time, the society may have deftly maneuvered its Trojan horse inside the institutional conciliar Church, so nobody may need to leave at all.

Whichever scenario turns out to be true, it's fair to assume none of the resistance inside the Novus Ordo will be joining Tradzilla's sectarian hole-in-the-head gang. Only the same ol' no-accounts already in Tradistan will be around for Big Don's invitation, and most of them won't bother to RSVP. So just the morbidly dependent losers plumb weak north of the ears will show up to pay the Donster his propers — and membership fees.

If the conservative opposition does win the upcoming face-off on the streets of ecclesiological Laredo, the victors will NEVER ask the marginalized cult masters or their lame-brained sidekicks to join them in restoring the Church.  Maybe they'll allow some Tradistani desperadoes to return as the laymen they in fact are, but they'll never be permitted to exercise any kind of ministry: What with all the reports of decay and vermin at cult centers, they're unfit to apply for an unpaid janitor-trainee internship in a country parish. Besides, they'll be too busy making reparation for all the harm they've caused.

Should it all play out as expected, maybe we might be seeing both the end of Bergie's noxious reign AND the final days of Tradistan. Then at long last there'll be law and order in the West.

* As Catholic traditionalists we would naturally prefer "scibboleth," but the conventionally accepted English spelling of the word's figurative sense comes from the Authorized King James Version, not the Douay. 

OUT OF CONTROL

There are very few so foolish that they had not rather govern themselves than be governed by others. Hobbes

In 2017, liberty's blessings will rain down upon any cult chapel that hands Wee Dan and Big Don their walking papers: freedom from endless fundraising; freedom from the money-motivated una-cum boogeyman; freedom from sectarian strife hatched by greedy troublemakers; and freedom from hypocrisy. But these four freedoms, precious as they may be, are as nothing in comparison with 

FREEDOM FROM THE CULT BIG SHOTS' UNCHECKED  MANIA TO CONTROL EVERYTHING.

Letting "One Hand," Tradzilla, or their surrogates run your chapel is to (1) surrender its assets to the  civil corporations they and their cronies operate and (2) simultaneously invite their sharp-elbowed intrusion into your intimate, private affairs. Unless you belong to one of the wealthy, élite clans, then no detail of your life will escape their uncontrollable drive to regulate. The friends with whom the faithful may associate, one's choice of clothing and footwear, the children's upbringing, kids' career choices, a wife's rôle in household decision-making, everyone's political opinions, a family's choice of entertainment or swimming companions, and a multitude of other unspeakable encroachments are all fair game for their unbridled meddling.

What's yours is fated to be theirs; we imagine they resent your keeping any of your family treasure.

Perhaps if these men were bona-fide Catholic clergy, some of these infringements on privacy might be tolerated (to be sure, at a more restrained degree of invasiveness): real Catholic priests formed in approved seminaries are sensitive to boundaries. However, the truth is, the Tradistani ecclesiastical buccaneers are not Catholic clergy at all. In search of booty, they sail without an ecclesiastical mission the clannish main far outside the Church's territorial waters.

At their core, the cult masters are acquisitive totalists who brook no limits to their unrighteously arrogated authority over the people who affiliate with them. The chief means to preserve their brutal regime is religious terror, where the thought-terminating cliché "mortally sinful!" is supposed to silence anyone who objects to their tyranny. To extend their control, they weaponize the sacraments, while requiring their followers to lay aside their individual personalities and submit to the "clergy's" soul-killing interference.

Aside from their missing credentials and unholy intrusiveness, these factious busybodies are just plain contemptible. Every day brings fresh examples of pettifoggery and mean spirit. Ironically, it's often through their own efforts to tighten their grip over our minds and pocketbooks that we learn of their flaws. Take, for instance, this item from the "Bishop's (?) Corner" of January 8, 2017:

As Fr. McGuire wisely wrote in a recent St. Hugh Bulletin: 

The Heart of the Matter  

 If we let the liturgy mold us, forming our days and weeks and years, not dragging it into the turmoil of our superficial emotions, but letting it, gently and firmly, draw us into its own rhythm, then we will find in it a true school of Christian living, a source of wisdom and inspiration, and more and more we shall find that it is not just an interruption of the day, but its very heart.

As we interpret Dim-Bulb Dan's introduction, by choosing the verb "wrote," modified by the adverb "wisely," His Dominancy appears to suggest that Lurch himself authored the elegant meditation. That is to say, if Lurch had quoted the reflection, "One Hand," Sedelandia's  premier littérateur, would certainly have used a more accurate verb — with a different adverb as well — so as not to impute originality of authorship. Right?  For instance, something quite simple, say, "As Fr. McGuire appositely quoted in a recent St. Hugh Bulletin," would have telegraphed to all that the wise thoughts "One Hand" passed on to the Gerties belonged to someone other than his forlorn protégé.

But no, Deacon Dan typed "wisely wrote," so it's not unjustified to conclude he thought the sage observation came from Lurch's very own crayon. And, to be fair to His Errancy, if you consult the Wisconsin chapel's bulletin of 1-1-17 (click here), you'll find those gracefully cadenced lines printed without attribution just below the childish prose* of Lurch's Note from Father.

To be honest, if the Readers had seen St. Hugh's bulletin before reading the "Corner," like Dannie, we, too, would've inferred that Lurch had become the unexpected beneficiary of divinely infused wisdom (together with a mature writing style!). As every schoolboy and schoolgirl can tell you, the rules of civilized society require us to give credit to others if we use their words verbatim; in addition, clergy (even pretend "clergy") should be scrupulous with regard to others' property, especially others' intellectual property. We're sure you'll agree.

Being skeptics, however, when it comes to anything we get from the Wee One, the Readers found it impossible to believe cult "clergy" capable of such noble, well-crafted sentiments.  (That metaphor "true school of Christian living" is too fine a pearl to come from those swine.) Accordingly, we fired up our search engine and, as we'd expected, found 99% of the quotation here** — only this time, there appeared the following detailed attribution:

"Fr. Simon Tugwell, O.P. / Quoted In Magnificat, January 2011, Vol. 12, No. 11 p 265"

The credit to Fr. Tugwell, a prolific British writer and historian who last year celebrated his golden jubilee as a Dominican priest, certainly explains the lovely writing. (The Ohio cultists do have a habit of plundering Old Blighty, don't they? First the SLP Ordo Recitandi and now this.) What we can't explain is why Lurch himself didn't credit Fr. Tugwell in his bulletin. Two other bulletin features are attributed to their authors, so why didn't this fine snippet merit the same scrupulous attention? Was he frightened to cite a Novus-Ordo writer, no matter how orthodox the opinion? And if Lurch didn't know the writer's identity, as a matter of intellectual honesty he should have subjoined "author unknown." That way Grand Poobah Dan, who would've realized the lofty thoughts didn't originate in his underling, could have dodged PL's condemnation.

Of course, you can always argue it's simply a matter of the cult masters' habitual carelessness. No one meant to deceive anybody. As all TradWorld is aware, rite-trash "clerical" cult clowns haven't the "write" stuff to put together such expressive words. Dashing off his "Corner" in haste, Dannie was just trying to give his lackey a public "attaboy" in hopes the Gerties might soften their scorn for this much disparaged bumpkin.

Okay. We'll buy that. They're slouches, and everything in Tradistan is either propaganda or spin anyway, so who cares about persnickety niceties like avoiding plagiary? Yet, if that's true, then why should anyone allow these malformed slackers to have so much control over their personal lives?

Start the year off right. Break free of their baneful spider's web. Get control of these uncontrolled control-freaks. If your chapel is currently attached in any way to the SW-Ohio-Brooksville cabal, wipe that smirk of self-congratulation off the cult kingpins' overfed faces:

GIVE YOUR CULTMASTER HIS PINK SLIP TODAY!

*The Dale-Chall readability score for Lurch's awkwardly composed message is 6.14, meaning a 7th or 8th grader can understand it. The Dale-Chall readability score for Fr. Tugwell's writerly passage is 10.3, meaning it can be easily read by a college graduate. As you can see, Fr. Tugwell's penetrating insight was crying out for attribution.We'll leave it to others to explain why no credit was given.

**There is a difference of but one word: the linked webpage reads "Spiritual living," not "Christian living" as in Lurch's bulletin. If we had to guess, we'd say "Christian" is the original word, unless somebody thought one change was enough to evade the burden of attribution. Maybe someone can verify by checking the specific issue of "Magnificat."

SENSE & SENTIMENTALITY

A sentimentalist is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn't know the market price of a single thing. Wilde

PL's apostolate is devoted in part to debunking the wrong-headed presumption that SGG cult masters represent traditional Catholic culture and clergy. Their ignorance of Latin, their numerous scholarly and liturgical errors, their fixation on their bloodthirsty cats' mayhem, their non-stop fund raising, their alienation from tradition, and much, much more render the Ohio cult a worthless simulacrum of naïvely re-imagined 1950s American Catholicism. There's nothing substantial beneath the tinsel, hype, and cheesy showmanship.

In addition to the above deficits of Catholic mind and outlook, there's another, more alarming one: Deacon Dan's reflexive appeal to the sentimental in religion. His Emotiveness habitually spreads this poisonous, un-Catholic goo in an effort to disguise his malformation and to manipulate the Gerties' passions. (All the better to keep folks' money at the dying West Chester cult center, we surmise.)  So effective has he been that his victims don't realize the Dirtbag is feeding their souls empty-calorie emotional marshmallows, not life-sustaining spiritual bread.

Especially offensive to Catholic sensibility is "One Hand's" milksoppy, compulsive reference to "The Baby," when referring to the Christ Child. Here's a sampling from the last few years (emphases ours):

We usually have an excellent attendance on Advent IV, although it has been light since Thanksgiving. But I think some folk come the Sunday before Christmas, as a kind of a bow before the Baby, because they’ll be too busy for church come Christmas. But the Baby’s not here yet, and we’re just thinking about decorating. Come back for the Birthday! (12/17/16) 

How blessed are we to give and receive the gift of beautiful music for the Baby’s birth. (12/31/16) 

The Baby Jesus’ Little Helpers and big packed gift boxes for our poor Mexican children. (11/26/16) 

 Of course I prayed for you all at Our Lady of Guadalupe and at the dear shrine of the “Baby Doctor” Jesus. (12/23/16) 

I thank God in advance—as Fr. Solanus would do—for a wonderful Christmas, and each of you for the gifts you bring the Baby God for His birthday. (12/26/15) 

Ask him, and ask him often as you try to take good care of Mary and the Baby this Christmas. (12/27/14)

Oh, can't you just hear the Wee One cooing and hyperarticulating?

Apart from the unsettling echoes of Protestants' tacky birthday parties for the Baby Jesus complete with garishly decorated cakes, chintzy party supplies, and cornball jingles (click here for a gag-inducing example), Li'l Daniel's infantile Leitmotiv irreparably harms the Gerties' faith. The saccharine-saturated context reduces the Incarnation — "the one thoroughly laid down and safe way to avoid all going wide of the truth"* — to a sticky mess of superficial feeling typical of a trailer-park communal baby shower. The grave danger to Catholic truth posed by Dannie's sentimental coloring is this: A mundane, easy-to-evoke emotional response to a cutesy-pie evangelical Christian deviation from pious tradition irreverently displaces the awe Catholics should summon for the magnum mysterium of the Word made flesh.

The lyrical language of the Breviary's hymns and responsories, the Church Fathers' theologically precise sermons and commentaries, and the Martyrology's noble Proclamation of the Nativity all yield to Dannie's worthless — and alien — baby-talk. On His Insipidity's lips, the expressive worship of God degenerates into cloying sentimentality. As trained, genuine Catholic clergy will tell you, religious sentimentality perverts good human sentiment by removing its proper object. By so weakening both the intellect and the will, it's the enemy of the true, the good, and the beautiful.

If everything we've posted about "One-Hand," Tony Baloney, and Tradzilla wasn't enough to persuade you that these men stand far outside Church tradition, then surely Dannie's yuletide mawkishness will. His almost exclusive appeal to the affective faculty is, to be blunt, anti-Catholic. No properly Romanized bishop of the pre-Vatican II Church would have appropriated such disordered, insincere pap to arouse the faithful's fervent adoration.

Long decades of watchful supervision and painstaking socialization taught the well-vetted churchmen of yesteryear to restrain the emotive impulse to pour on the treacle. Had they not exercised self-control, they never would've received an apostolic mandate. (More to the point, they'd have never made it to the subdiaconate.) To the extent that those luminaries also had studied moral theology in depth (and in Latin), they correctly classed sentimentality as an unruly consequent passion, which can readily give rise to moral defects. In this case, the defect lies in supporting the SGG-Brooksville enterprise through financial contributions and submission to the Big Shots' unholy control.

From the evidence we've found in his "Corner," Dannie seems to be trying to make sentimentality the predominant Gertie passion for his own advantage. Aware that many seated in SGG's soiled pews blame his culpable inaction for the 2009 SGG School Scandal, His Excremency senses his grip loosening.  Vanished is the fiction of his "broad culture," liturgical expertise, and leadership of Tradistan. (PL's made sure no one falls for the first two fabrications, and arch-rival Big Don's given the lie to the third.) Whereas most cultling males have written him off as ineffectual or worse, Deficient Dan's only chance to survive is to enlist the distaff side in his cause: On the Gertie gals alone rests the Dirtbag's hope to silence their beleaguered menfolk's and ragged bairns' pleas to escape the spiritually suffocating and financially exhausting SW Ohio cult center.

To that end, Wee Dan has been re-inventing himself over the last couple of years as a gentle, sweet, childlike soul — the Forrest Gump of Sedelandia — who waxes all gushy and squidgy about babies, whether they be squirrels, bunnies, shoes, or the Divine Infant (from Whose royal patronage, invoked by real Catholic clergy, come palpable blessings, not hollow emotionalism.). He's banking on cheap schmaltz to stir up sympathy. After all, what stone-hearted brute could leave such an mewling innocent destitute of gelt and grub? "C'mon, Paw! We'uns caint jes' up 'n' dump de li'l ol' bee-uh-ship. Land sakes alive, he's no bigger then a rabbit pellet. Caintcha see how he luh-oves bye-ee-bees?"

To be sure, anyone familiar with the history of the SGG School Scandal sees through the transparent cynicism of Beggar-Man Dan's off-center musings. A reading of the litany of abuses detailed in December 2009 (click here) should tell you how fictitious is the tender, misty-eyed persona His Callousness projects. (No sensible adult would've permitted the "Principal" to remain employed after such horrors came to light.) Like all the other muck oozing out of the reeking cult cesspool, Dannie's baby-talk is aimed exclusively at capturing material resources for himself and not at lifting the hearts and minds of the faithful to venerate fittingly God Incarnate.

THE CULT IS NOT CATHOLIC. IT ISN'T EVEN A MEDIOCRE COPY OF THE CHURCH.

GET OUT THIS YEAR BEFORE

YOU

ARE NO LONGER CATHOLIC!

* The phrase as frequently quoted and anthologized; Augustine's original Latin is: sola est autem aduersus omnes errores uia munitissima.