NEWS UPDATE: TYING UP SOME LOOSE ENDS

We've just passed the autumnal equinox, so perhaps it's time to take a breather and catch up on some unfinished business:

1. There's been no MHT pesthouse newsletter so far for the month of September. That means, there's still no word about the rector's big $30 K proposal. Perhaps it's dead, so the cultists might be able to start saving for their children's Christmas presents.

2. With no newsletter, there's also been no word about any "permanent arrangement" with Our Lady of the Sun Chapel in Arizona. Let's hope, for the rich, little chapel's sake, that the rector is still simply a mere tenant with no immediate chance to grab the brass ring.

3. "One-Hand" Dan may be in France taking names and kicking Gallic derrière, but Pistrina has learned this week that only one of the three French seminarian candidates for the pesthouse has actually shown up in the swampland. The other two declined to attend. This is specular news, for it shows that the world is catching on to the problems with the cult.

SPECIAL POST: IN THE BURROWS OF THE NIGHTMARE

De vils despotes deviendraient/Les maîtres de nos destinées. Rouget de Lisle

Last Sunday la belle France awoke to a nightmare: “One-Hand” announced early in the morning that he’s on his way. Coyly, he claimed he would abandon his Ohio cult for three Sundays in order to help his client and protégé, but Pistrina knows that he’s headed to Chambéry.

“Demolition Dan” has gotten very small in the U.S. His influence is as slight as his diminutive, though corpulent, stature. He can’t threaten Americans any longer, not even his hypnotized, semi-literate cult followers. He must treat them very gently now, lest they all walk away in disgust and leave him, and his boss, "The Principal," penniless. That’s why he’s off to France: to show the French a good, old-fashioned American whip hand after they dared to seek their own priest when Dan’s collaborateur couldn’t serve them. Making the French submit as he swaggers before their downcast eyes (he must imagine) will restore his lost grandeur while destroying their sense of self-worth. Yes, three Sundays of triumphant, pip squeak bullying will be the tonic he needs before he must return to his cult and begin begging again for meager macaroni suppers and hand-me-down stoves. No matter what, the rector will be impressed! And the Blunderer, too.

As a rule, pride and piety are impossible companions. In this case, however, the Reader sees an exception. If they awaken, the faithful of Chambéry have the opportunity to assert their independence from a destructive foreign intruder and affirm that they are Catholics, not narrow-minded, divisive sectarians of the ghastly American variety, with their nightmarish cult of personality and hallucinatory insinuations. Moreover, now might be the perfect opportunity to repudiate once and for all “One-Hand’s” well-documented inclination for destroying chapels -- his lasting legacy to traditional Catholicism.

Pistrina wouldn’t presume to tell the French how to act. That’s why we haven’t appended a French translation. We have too much admiration for the French nation. We can say only how we would behave, were we proud and pious French men and women. The solution is really very simple. If the Readers believed they had been wronged by “One-Hand’s” unwanted intervention in a private matter, they would boycott all his Masses for the three Sundays during which he proposed to darken their door.

We would stay at home. Say the Rosary. Practice acts of perfect contrition. If we happened to see the Destroyer sashaying down the street wearing his trademark rigid and foolish grin, we would cross to the other side and bless ourselves for having avoided an ill-omened presence. We would not welcome him into our homes. We would not feed him. We would demand that he live in the tiny priest’s apartment or take lodgings in a luxury hotel at his cult’s expense. We would not give him money. (We might even summon the gendarmerie.)

Yes, he would become incensed, as all puffed-up, bruised egos do at well-merited slights. We would find strength in our proud resistance to an impiety. Even if he threatened to destroy our chapel, we would be resolute. We would show him that our self-respect could not be compromised. We would remember that we were free men and women, citizens of the guardian of high culture, in need of no lessons from an underclass, ill-educated, pretentious outsider, who is vilified in his country. We would send him packing. God will provide for us, since we remain true to our conscience.

If, as our punishment, "Demolition Dan" withdrew the services of his creature in France, we would beg our beloved, former priest to return to us.

The living nightmare would then end.

BUT WHAT IF THE CHEAP HOTEL HAS A REWARDS PROGRAM?

Ed. Note: Ludwig Wittgenstein was right: "Logic must take care of itself." Our bizarre series from the emailing clerical messenger concludes with this other-worldly, logic-bending, dreamscape excursus on (1) the pesthouse’s determined efforts to steer clear of demimondaines and (2) the eerie effects of the absence of control exercised by reason.

Oh, where is André Breton when you need him!

And then every once in a while we hear something else weird. The latest thing is that [two Russian seminarians] wanted to spend Easter vacation in New York City, but [the rector] would not let them because they could only afford to stay in a cheap hotel, and [the rector] said that if they stayed at a cheap hotel, people would think they were there to meet a prostitute. I didn’t hear what [the rector] said directly; I only heard what [Scut the Prefect] told us, and he tends to misunderstand and exaggerate things that [the rector] says. So I don’t know which of them said this, but [Scut the Prefect] said a priest cannot stay at a regular hotel; he can only stay at a very expensive hotel costing at least $100 a night, because if he goes to a regular hotel people will think he’s there to meet a prostitute.

Calling upon all his pesthouse logic chopping skills and powers of inference and discursive reasoning, our priestly correspondent demolishes his superiors’ artful theses:

Well, that’s about the craziest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. He also said a priest could not stay at just a regular hotel off of highway 75, for example between here and Cincinnati, for the same reason. I realize that there are very low hotels in bad parts of town, where prostitutes are walking all over the place, and where they charge you for the number of hours you stay there instead of by the night — those places are places of sin, and a priest shouldn’t stay at a place like that at all. But to say that every cheap hotel — even those places off of highway 75 that are just there for the people traveling up and down the freeway to spend the night in — are places of prostitution, is completely crazy.

Unsure that logic applies in this situation, our exasperated and unwilling epistolary informant first essays an introspective Socratic method (of sorts), staggers in the absence of synthesis, and limpingly clings to an analogy to convince himself that the pesthouse nomenklatura is as wrong as Siamese triplets on a one-wheeled bicycle.

And why is a priest safer in an expensive hotel? Do people NEVER have prostitutes in expensive hotels? I just don’t know what to think. More than 90% of the people who stay at a hotel are just there because they’re traveling a long ways, and they need to stop for the night. To say that people would think a priest is meeting a prostitute at a hotel, unless he goes to a very expensive hotel, is like saying a priest shouldn’t go into a bookstore because people will think he is there to buy bad books.

Ed Note: A dialectical effort worthy of Peter of Spain, that’s for sure! We hope Scotty beams our messenger back up to reality: There’s no intelligent life in the swampland (or at the SW Ohio cult center, for that matter). Not much of a chance for that, however. He’s been packed off to a Seattle gulag, probably for re-education, where he may have a chance to read and think about what he wrote in 2009.

Both the messenger and his new minder share the same opinions about the pesthouse, the rector, Scut, and the SW Ohio cult masters. The difference is, the minder was nastier but never put it in writing. He got his dose of therapy by shooting off his mouth to the laity. He also had the good sense to get out on his own. Now all he has to do is come wagging his tail when they occasionally whistle. Otherwise, he's got the backyard all to himself, so all strays are welcome -- under certain conditions...

THEY WON'T SHOOT THE MESSENGER, WILL THEY?

Ed. Note: Below is a continuation of the Marathon of Weirdness chronicled in a 2009 e-mail message plucked from oblivion, which we introduced in the Aug. 21 post MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE? You'll recall that we interrupted this series upon learning that our priestly messenger was on vacation and therefore wouldn't be in SW Ohio to answer in person to "One-Hand" Dan when he convened the Rialto-Road star chamber. Oh, how sharp will be the thorns of the cruel trilemma upon which our diffident and epistolary informer will sit, for he seemingly has no courage to screw to the sticking place.

The first two following excerpts expose the creepy-crawly mind-control games these cult masters play; the third attests to how they game-played in micromanaging the life of a priest who, at the time, wasn't going to enter into indentured servitude to them.

"Recently [the re-admitted Russian seminarian] told me that [the rector] told him he would be expelled if he had any communication with [a French former seminarian] or [a German former seminarian]. I can understand to some extent that [the rector] would disapprove of [the Russian] talking to them, but to threaten him with expulsion just for talking to them is pretty outrageous. I mean, these guys weren’t expelled for being heretics or for immorality; they were basically expelled because they didn’t observe the rule of silence perfectly, and they didn’t clean the kitchen as well as they should have*.

Another incident was that [a then-current seminarian] asked [the rector] if he could get a ride from [an American ex-seminarian] from Cincinnati to Chicago after Easter, so his brother [name withheld] could pick him up in Chicago and take him toMilwaukee. [The rector] said no, because he said [the ex-seminarian] had a bad attitude when he was in the seminary. I don’t even know what [the rector] was referring to. It might be that [the ex-seminarian] would not give up his silly idea that geocentrism is a dogma of faith; and he also clung stubbornly to some other ideas that were wrong, though not as serious as the geocentrism thing. But [theex-seminarian] and I were good buddies, and I never got even the smallest suggestion from him that he had what would be a bad attitude; and his moral character was above reproach. So whatever disagreement happened between [the ex-seminarian] and [the rector], it remained behind closed doors. I don’t know, maybe since he has been in Cincinnati he has been speaking out against the seminary or something, but if he has I haven’t heard about it. So to forbid [the current seminarian] to get a ride from him to Chicago is disturbing.

And on another occasion recently I suggested to [the Blunderer] that I could work with [the smurf], since it doesn’t seem like there is anywhere else for me to work. He just said, “No, don’t go to him.” I asked him why not, and he said, “There’s so much baggage there… well, transeat ["Let it pass," Ed.].” And he wouldn’t say anymore or even give me an explanation. If [the Blunderer] doesn’t like [the smurf] or doesn’t want to work with him, I don’t care; but how does it hurt [the Blunderer] if I work with [the smurf], especially when he is practically the only option I have left?"

* For the true story with all the facts, read our post from January 23, 2011.

Ed. Note: Some Kool-Aid anyone? We'll be back soon with more weird tales from the pesthouse as we continue to share our intrepid narrator's further reflections on the strange and unnatural. The next post, we promise, will be positively surreal!

RASH HAND IN EVIL HOUR

Here error is all in the not done. Pound

Ed. Note: We had hoped the rector's August MHT Newsletter might have commented either on the promised big $30 K proposal or on his quest for permanent status with Our Lady of the Sun Chapel. Instead, sad to say, it disappointingly contained an embarrassingly fifth-rate historico-political analysis. The rector should stick with what he knows best: distressing hapless seminarians, fearful laity, and priests without a conscience.

We recently learned that the priestly author of the revealing comments about the Terrible Triad and the pesthouse was on vacation last week. Accordingly we'll hold off publishing the rest of his tale of weirdness until he gets back. That way, when "One Hand" calls him on the carpet, the dressing down will have be fresh material. We really want our out-of-school tale bearer to have a chance to read what he wrote so he can face his off-put judges with a refreshed recollection. (This may end in tears. A resignation would be better for the man's soul.)

Our post about "One-Hand's" orders and the Blunderer's defense elicited quite a lot of anxious e-mail, and it filled the traddie forums. Here's our comment:

Many concerned Catholics wrote in, worried that the sacraments they received from "One Hand" might be invalid. In each case, we replied that their decision would be a matter of conscience. After all, we observed, many eminent canonists were of the opinion that a one-handed priestly ordination was valid.

Our central point is that the Blunderer's Latin translation of the key passage from Sacramentum Ordinis is just plain wrong, and the error has therefore rendered his defense of one-handed ordinations suspect. In each reply, we invited our correspondents to consult the Latin original of the authors Tony cites to allay any doubts.

Sure, we know that not everybody reads Latin nowadays (witness the majority of the traditional clergy), but our advice was not intended to torment. The problem is that Tony is such a bad Latinist (as we proved last year on these pages) that his translations and interpretations are not reliable. At the risk of wearying you, let us offer one, little example. (Please bear with us, if you will, for we will give you yet another substantive reason to mistrust everything Anthony writes.)

Among the strongest supporting testimony for Tony's thesis is the following quotation from the Theologia Moralis of Aertnys and Damen (Rome: 1958):

In Ordinatione presbyteri et Episcopi utriusque quidem manus impositio praescribitur sed nullo modo patet eam esse ad validitatem necessariam ad hoc ut plenioris potestatis translatio significaretur.

Now here's the Blunderer's translation:

In the Ordination of a Priest and of a Bishop an imposition of both hands is indeed prescribed — but it is plain that this is in no way necessary to it for validity, as though a fuller transmission of power would be signified.

There are two big errors in Anthony's translation. The first, in red, is merely a product of his gross ignorance of Latin idiom. The second, in violet, represents a genuine distortion in the meaning.

1) In Latin, the idiom ad hoc in this case means "for this (or the) purpose"; Anthony's laughable rendering "to it" is school-boy literalism caused by ignorance of the notion of grammatical antecedents and Latin phraseology.

2) In the Latin text, the word for "fuller" (plenioris) modifies "power" (potestatis), not "transmission" (translatio). Tony had no license to transfer the adjective to another noun in a different case, and the meaning he extracts, viz. "a fuller transmission of power," is semantically different from "a transmission of fuller power" of the original Latin.

There are a few other problems with his translation (a conjunction, the position of a modifying phrase and an adverb, a modal), but no sense in beating a dead horse. Tony's errors usually come in clusters. The bottom line is that no one should rely on the Blunderer for an answer to serious questions about the Catholic faith. (The warning is particularly apt for the abysmally ignorant traditional clergy who view Anthony as some sort of authority. )

For these and many other reasons, we say that everything about The Blunderer, "One Hand," and the rector is doubtful. It would be prudent of old "One Hand" to commission someone competent to retranslate all the Latin quotes in Tony's article. (That excludes the rector and the pesthouse completers.) Otherwise, people who have received sacraments at his hands will remain unsure.

MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE?

Ed. Note: The Reader knows that for some, who haven't been around the Triple Threat of "One-Hand," the rector, and the Blunderer, it's very hard to conceive how Catholic clergy can be so wrongheaded. Therefore, to overcome any misgivings you might have had about how accurately we have been reporting their antics, this week we bring you external commentary in the words of one of their own priests (and a pesthouse completer, you'll be pleased to learn).

The original text arrived by way of an e-mail last week (it had been found in the trash by a very alert layman). Dated March 27, 2009, it came as a PDF of an e-mail message. We won't quote it all this week, but the few lines we cite will confirm everything we have asserted. Just for the fun of it, we've replaced names with our preferred epithets, and, to be sure, we've withheld the name of the author.

On the Need for Priests and the Boneheaded Un-gleesome Threesome

"...there is certainly an enormous need for priests today. But now consider my situation: I'm going to be ordained, and where am I needed? Obviously not in [my home state]. And not in Cincinnati either, although ["One Hand"] and [the Blunderer] always tell us about how overworked they are. If they needed me they would have made the very reasonable compromise that [the rector]proposed of having me in Cincinnati for two years. But they didn't want to do that because they said if I were there, they would begin new projects to have me work on, and then when I left they would have trouble continuing that work. I said I could just ease their burden for two years without them starting anything significant for me to do, or even if I did, there are other priests coming down the pipeline after me who could take my place after I left...There were several reasonable ideas that could have been worked out, but [the Blunderer] would not even discuss them with me."

On New Priests and the Newbies' Travails

"... the parish clergy are not willing to work with [newly ordained priests], so they have nowhere to go...I think we do not say Mass in enough places; we need more to do, more people, and more money. [The rector] has known about this problem for a long while now, but nothing has really been done. It also makes a bad impression on the laypeople too, because they see a new priest get ordained, and he ends up staying at the seminary to teach instead of working in a parish as they expected. And if they knew all the politics that went into my staying at the seminary, that bad impression would be infinitely worse."

On the Pesthouse and its Strange Goings-on

"Another thing is that I am beginning to lose faith in this seminary as an institution. [The rector] told me that if I stayed there I would have to avoid saying anything against the positions or discipline of the seminary. (I was never told that anti-una-cumism was an official position of the seminary, though I think that is going to change.) As far as the discipline, I approved of the rules of the seminary on the whole, with the exception of one or two details, but now I'm starting to hear about strange things being done."

"The pattern I see emerging here is that we are forbidden even to speak to people whom [the rector] doesn't like. This is a trend that I did not notice in the past, and it disturbs me...So if nonsense like that goes on in the two years that I'll be here as a teacher, I will have to verbally support the seminary in situations that may possibly get weirder and weirder as time goes on."

Ed. Note: Honestly, you can't make this stuff up. Their own people know that everything is rotten with the three stooges of Traditional Catholicism. Now don't worry. We won't leave you hanging. In a future post, we'll continue with the first-hand account of all the weirdness. In the meantime,

KEEP YOUR WALLETS CLOSED & STARVE THE BEAST

"SLIGHT" OF HAND

His hand will be against all men, and all men's hands against him. Genesis

The Reader has been overwhelmed by e-mail inquiries about the origin of the sobriquet “One- Hand” Dan for the errant wandering bishop. We thought others might be curious as well. Accordingly, here’s the back-story in brief. It reveals quite a bit about the history behind the ugly SGG-MHT "association." It's also a good insight into the interpersonal relationships among this band of clerical brothers.

At "One-Hand's" ordination to the priesthood, Archbishop Lefebvre imposed only one hand, not both hands. Pope Pius XII had decreed, in the 1947 Apostolic Constitution Sacramentum Ordinis, that the matter of the sacrament consists in the first imposition of the bishop’s hands. In a letter dated September 21, 1990, nine priests then belonging the Society of St. Pius V, including the rector, cautioned Wee Dan as follows (emphasis in red ours):

In the course of the research which was being done in reference to ordinations and episcopal consecration, it was discovered that sacerdotal ordinations done with one hand are dubious…

Since your ordination was done with one hand, we must hold your ordination to be dubious, unless evidence can be brought forth that the one-handed ordination is certainly valid.

We therefore urge you ad cautelam to stop saying Mass, hearing confessions and administering the sacrament of Extreme Unction until this problem is resolved.

Please understand that our position in this matter is based purely on the dictates of Moral Theology, and has absolutely nothing to do with the disputes which exist between us.

Soon, in several rectories, the clergy began to use the moniker "One-Hand" Dan as an expression of derision, contempt, and disesteem. The nickname has stuck until this very day. It may all be harmless fun for some, but there do remain some serious considerations behind all the smirking ridicule and whispering.

In closing their 1990 letter, the signatories advised “One Hand” to do further research and report to them. The Blunderer did the research and issued an apologia, which is available here. While many have been satisfied with the findings, the Reader notes that there are several of the usual problems with the Blunderer’s understanding of Latin and his translations therefrom.

In a short 2005 note, one of our correspondents drew the problems to the Blunderer’s attention. As usual, the Blunderer dismissed the correction and offered a hasty and flimsy defense. His correspondent then sent a detailed, complete refutation. Given the complexity of the textual argument, Pistrina posts the full critique, “Lost in Translation,” on a separate page for anyone interested.*

Whatever your own conclusion is, it’s clear that traditional Catholics should avoid such men and the clergy who associate with them. They are definitely not “best in class.” Their influence is at an end. Their record speaks for itself. Too many doubts surround them. All that remains is for good and decent Catholics to

STARVE THE BEAST.

*Those ordained by “One Hand” might want to study the Blunderer's article carefully to determine whether his argument still holds in view of the corrected understanding of the Latin text of the constitution. If any priest is in doubt about validity, he may wish consult his conscience to decide whether or not to seek private conditional ordination from another bishop. Upcoming completers might wish to consider refusing orders from "One Hand."