PLUNGING THE STRUGGLING SHEEP

One sickly sheep infects the flock,/And poisons all the rest. Watson


The vile cult masters have reached a new milestone in their boundary-crossing race to the bottom.  A little birdie has informed us how they've resumed with a vengeance their nasty efforts to alienate traditional Catholic faithful from chapels unaffiliated with Tradistan. Right now, these creeps are spreading the big lie that bishops who don't have the required training cannot ordain validly, hence the priests of other chapels are not valid. As a "service," they're offering to take over these chapels (and their weekly collections, no doubt).

Let's get one thing settled once and for all:

NO sede bishop possesses the academic qualifications for the episcopacy, which would have proved his fitness in a manner determined by the Holy See of yesteryear. (We know of only one, an advanced octogenarian, who might possibly have come tolerably close, provided an amused Holy See of the past had the whimsy to assign a vicar apostolic to, say, Al Capp's Lower Slobbovia.) 

In most cases, the current universal impediment to "canonical fitness" results from the overall intellectual mediocrity of the sede episcopate. However, the practical reason is that these wandering bishops have no means open to them (a) to acquire the solid learning in moral theology and canon law required and (b) to earn the necessary credentials from the right schools. Today, unless they lied on their application form, they couldn't secure a licentiate even if they had been blessed with brains, knowledge, and a basic formation.  Moreover, why would any traditional Catholic cleric want to attend the "approved" institutions to earn a credential, where most of the professoriate and the curriculum are Modernist?  

Along with all this nonsense about invalidity comes yet more foolishness about canon law's forbidding bishops outside the cult to exercise their orders.  Putting aside the important question of whether canon law is in effect during the vacancy, we point out that, as a matter of fact, ALL sede bishops technically have been consecrated unlawfully and, therefore, by positive law must not exercise their orders. No papal mandate has ever been granted for the consecration any sede prelate.

In strictly juridical terms, that means none of the undoubtedly valid sede bishops ought to exercise their orders, including the cult masters. (However, in the case of "One Hand," he should not exercise any orders except the diaconate, until he gets fixed.) The bottom line is that anyone who receives the power of the episcopacy never loses it. That means the validly consecrated bishops who operate outside the SW-Ohio/Brooksville cult are just like other trad prelates: they ordain validly, though not lawfully.

It's the usual double standard at work. Ask yourself two questions: 

Why is it that only those whom the cult masters regard as "competitors" must be held to the unattainable standards of canon law (which cannot be enforced anyway)? Why is everyone else, except the cult masters, under pain of nullity?

Dannie tells a French lay group to reject a young priest because he hadn't completed seminary training, yet ol' Deacon Dan "ordained" a man who merely "studied" independently (and later separated from the first priest who supposedly guided his "studies"). The cult masters recruit simple-minded lay people from other chapels by telling them that other bishops have irregularities, yet they refuse to re-ordain and re-consecrate "Dubious Dan." The Trio claims that rival bishops don't live up to the academic standards of the past, yet their own published works are filled with howling errors (especially in Latin), and some of their priests have committed catastrophic blunders at Mass or in the administration of other rites. (Think of the "Skipper" who forgot the consecration and the Frenchman who couldn't bless holy water without a spiritual crisis. Both were pesthouse completers.)

"Sheep stealing" has always been a melancholy fact of the degraded landscape of traditional Catholicism. What makes this recent outbreak so loathsome is the misinformation they're spreading. In the past, Trad clergy of all sorts raided neighboring flocks by marketing their chapel's friendliness, its flexibility or rigidity in moral matters, or its focus on the liturgy etc. Often there was more than a grain of truth in these aggressive campaigns. 

We Readers certainly can see how Catholics might want to leave the chapel of an asocial, screwball priest who's incapable of offering High Mass, saying the simplified Pius XII Mass of Palm Sunday correctly, or performing a wedding ceremony so that they might attend a chapel offering sound liturgical praxis and more stable clergy. We can even understand how the strategic use of innuendo could be used to persuade the faithful to go elsewhere. After all, where there's smoke, there's often fire, as everybody in Trad World has learned from painful experience.

However, the whipsaw hypocrisy of these latest transgressions against truth and decency takes the cake. These renegade "clergy" surely know they could be tarred with the same brush with which they blacken the names of hardworking priests and bishops outside their sphere of influence. Why, then, do they act as they do? Because their contempt for the laity over whose blank, crossed eyes they pull so much wool empowers them to disregard any threat of diminished probity within the cult.

The cynical cult kingpins are aware that intelligent, well-informed Catholics of conscience despise them. Therefore, they only press into service small-souled, shrill morons in hopes that those addled creatures will siphon off one or two other fellow-defectives. The cult masters long ago accepted that they'd never permanently capture clear-thinking, worldly-wise, independent-minded lay men and women who can spot a con-job from a mile away. (They don't want those people anyway; they're satisfied if they can attract them for the short term -- long enough to squeeze some money out of them before the poor dupes recover from their temporary madness and leave the cult in a rage.)

That's why the clerical sheep rustlers have to go a-raiding: they need the influx of new fly-stricken, daggy daft-lambs  to replace the strays who have finally gotten a whiff of the wolf slavering behind the masquerade. These victims learned the hard way that the beast isn't looking for souls to save -- it's looking for donors to shake down. When awakened laity no longer submit to fleecing, the cult masters need replacements to pay for the luxuries they consider their birthright. (It's a characteristic of grasping guttersnipes to consider other people's money their money.)

So be on guard against any sicko, shrieking former chapel members who come slinking around with a cock-and-bull story about invalidity and canonical unfitness. You don't need to be defensive.  Turn the tables on the lowlife trash: Ask why they're carrying water for malformed, lupine bishops and asinine clergy who themselves are canonically unfit or worse. Let them know that the cult clergy are living in glass houses, so nobody has any business throwing stones.

Then tell 'em to crawl back to their filthy lair so the beast can feed upon them.

BUT AT LEAST A GOOD CIGAR IS A SMOKE

Emergency Warning for your Wallet -- from the Editors: It's an arctic Lent in frost-strangled SW Ohio, and the cold-hearted cult masters are ravenously hungry for your money. Their latest scheme to separate you from your hard-earned cash is to sell you a crucifix along with St. Alphonsus Liguori's Way of the Cross for $20.00 (!!) so you can do the stations at home. Don't be a sucker. Just use a wooden crucifix you already have and print out St. Alphonsus's text from this site (click here); ask an undoubtedly valid priest to perform the blessing if you also wish to gain the indulgences. BTW, if you use the site we give, you can be sure of getting St. Alphonsus's prayers. The booklet shown on the SGG cult site is for the method of St. Francis of Assisi. (Maybe the cult kingpins will change the image as soon as they read this, so check it out asap here, right side, middle image. In any case, Pistrina's got a screen shot.)

Now for today's exciting post.....

Ignorance is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their dupes... 1st Baron Beveridge

We never tire of exposing how alienated from the authentic world of scholarship and the Latin language the malformed cult masters are. Together with dubiety of one-handed conferral of priestly orders, it's our favorite meme. Consequently, it's always a pleasure when others highlight the gruesome twosome's moronic errors.

To date, we've received five e-mails gleefully pointing out a Latin-spelling goof in the short letter "One-Hand Dan" addressed to seven of the priests who signed the September 1990 ad cautelam missive warning him of the fearful doubt stalking his priestly orders. Click here and go to page 5 of 5.  There you'll see the Latin term-of-art status questionis (sic!), lit. "state of the question or investigation," meaning the chief learned opinions concerning an area of inquiry. As our correspondents observed, the correct spelling -- the spelling of trained and true Catholic priests in the modern era (and of secular scholars from many different disciplines) -- is quaestionis, with ae (or the ligature æ), never e (as found in some medieval texts).

We can't imagine a first-year student's making such a blunder, let alone someone who intimates to Traddielandia that he was "canonically fit" for holy orders. It's rank amateurism at its worst: trying to impress with a Latin tag and then misspelling it! LOL

To complement the wry, critical comments we received about Dannie's orthographic boo-boo, we thought we'd share with everybody a much more serious lapse of academic good sense in the same set of documents. In his reply to the superior of the SSPV (page 1 of 5, 2nd paragraph, in the above link), Deacon Dan ruefully taunted, "...you and your clergy now trump up charges that I am doubtfully ordained and may not really be a priest. Suave conatum, sed havanum non datum. Nice try, but no cigar."

Despite a pronounced reek of what the French call latin de cuisine, we're not going to comment on the Latinity of the slavishly literal translation of Dannie's variation on the popular American expression "close, but no cigar" -- or is that Tony Baloney's smarmy voice we hear there? As a specimen of callow, adolescent snark, it's O.K., we suppose, especially with the jingling homoeoteleuton. (We must, however, vigorously protest suave.*) Nonetheless -- and this is crucial -- the effort does not rise to the level of mature academic wit, nor does it embody scholarly best practice.

A well-schooled, real scholar with a university-educated taste refined at an accredited graduate school would have first chosen a genuine and idiomatic Latin phrase -- preferably a notable one  -- that captured the sense of "nice try -- or 'close' --, but no cigar." He then could have offered the vivid, U.S.-pop-culture saying as the rendering for the Latin original. As a result, Wee Dan's rebuke would have sparkled with class, perhaps (dare we say?) even with professional élan.

As it stands, the riposte is merely crass and gauche, for literally translating 20th-century American, colloquial English into Latin results in a jarring anachronism, to say the least. There's no cross-cultural interplay and hence no wit. What we have before our offended eyes is a Midwestern-American vulgarian swaddled in a ragged beach towel, who insists that we believe he's wearing a toga. Not even close!

Let's show you what we mean.  First, for our many readers from abroad, "nice try (or 'close'), but no cigar" is a colorful way of saying almost, but not quite. It characterizes an attempt that comes near to succeeding but fails to attain the sought-after object. Right off the bat, without even recalling the texts of classical authors, we thought of the familiar Latin phrase proxime accessit, "he came very near [to winning the prize]."

The expression is found all over the Web and in popular reference books like Stone's Latin for the Illiterati , Ehrlich's The Harper Dictionary of Foreign Terms, and the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. In modern English, proxime accessit is a noun-phrase from the 19th century meaning a runner-up, i.e., someone who comes in second place for an award, a prize, or a scholarship, etc. It's perfectly classical Latin, for  the idiom proxime accedere is found in ancient authors.

If Dubious Dan (and his blundering wing-man) had been formally educated under credentialed professors, the Dirtbag could simply have changed the grammatical person of the verb to the second person singular (he was addressing his career-long nemesis, the louche and disapproving superior of the SSPV): "Proxime accessisti -- Nice try, but no cigar," with the American expression amplifying the Latin to drive home the truth that a failure remains a failure. A deliciously snide opportunity to tweak an intimidating adversary lost to an untutored nitwit!

Now, already from the deepest, dirtiest corners of Trad cyberspace we can hear snarling, bark-like, spittle-laced protests that Pistrina's sinfully beating up on the deliriously mediocre Ren and Stimpy of Tradistan, who can never recover from their severely deficient formation.

Cross our hearts! That's not what this is about.

We've already exposed the manifold and irremediable educational and cultural failings of Dannie and Checkie as well as those of that gas-bag Big Don. The issue is settled forever; even the cultlings (grudgingly) admit it. No, this is about something else. This isn't a futile exercise in dead-horse whipping:

It's a reminder to the innocent, traditional Catholic laity who aren't enslaved by the SW-Ohio and Swampland cult-cabal.

You see, the cash-starved cult kings have resumed trying to lure the faithful away from competing traditional chapels under the pretext that the priests and bishops of those chapels haven't the requisite training. That's why it's important for future innocent victims of their guile to know that Dannie, Tony Baloney, and Big Don don't possess the requisite knowledge and preparation either. 

So, then ... when the twisted, mammonite clergy dupe the next simple-minded, barely literate, low-life-trash-pot lay stooge into undermining a rival chapel by spreading the blundering "seminary professor's" misinformation about "invalidity" and "unfitness," the faithful can take it all addito salis grano ("with a pinch of salt"). 

More on the new, raging outbreak of "sheep stealing" next week.

* The word nice in the idiom nice try means "very good, well-executed, well-conducted, outstanding" (Webster's 3rd International unabridged) or "done with precision and skill, deft" (American Heritage Dictionary), as in "a nice bit of craftsmanship," "nice shot," "nice job," and, adverbially, "nicely done!" The sense of the word nice in those informal phrases is different from its sense in such utterances as "nice color," "nice perfume," "nice wine," "nice song," and "nice feeling" etc. because it's a different lexeme.

The underlying cognitive meaning of suavis, suave is agreeable or pleasant to the senses or to the mind and emotions. Suavis  is chiefly said of sensations -- touch, taste, sound, sight, smell and, by extension, the character of persons. An able writer educated at a real university knows you can't just look up the word nice in an English-Latin dictionary and pick the first gloss you see (or recognize):  you first have to know the sense in your own language before choosing the right Latin word to represent in translation the English meaning (assuming, that is, you also know what the Latin options denote).

That's all too much for the educationally challenged cult masters, who apparently have no notion of polysemy. No one should pay attention to what these ill-trained buffoons say about anything. They fell flat on their smirking faces 25 years ago, and they keep on stumbling over their ignorance today. The only difference is they've moved from blundering in Latin to bungling theology.

BOUNDIN' BEGGARS

Hark! Hark! The dogs do bark,/The beggars are coming to town;/Some in rags, some in tags, /And some in velvet gowns. Nursery Rhyme

The begging, cajoling, wheedling, soliciting, cadging, and hustling at St. Gertrude the Great Cult  just won't stop.

This week we learned that on top of all the recent fund-raising appeals, the cult masters are now demanding an additional $5,000 - $6,000 to buy a replacement electronic organ "not only to maintain and expand our current musical program, but also for the sake of our upcoming generation of young organists, now 12 and 15."

Dannie and Tony Baloney are always playing the "kiddie card" when they need money for special pet projects. (Remember Dannie's video appeal for SGG School --  "It's for the children"?  And then in 2009 he defended the principal after the teachers exposed ill treatment of the little ones.) Why do the faithful have to underwrite the musical instruction of others' children? There must be many other local practice venues with state-of-the-art instruments for talented young keyboard musicians. And what ever happened to the former St. Clare chapel's organ, which the cult masters had in storage? 

Why can't that instrument be used to replace their "current 30-year-old electronic organ"? If it was sold off after St. Clare's was forced to close because all the decent folk had left, why can't the proceeds from the sale or auction be applied toward the purchase of the replacement instrument? (Or has that money already been wasted on dumb projects or travel abroad?) Furthermore, is the current organ really "slowly dying" or does the Checkmeister simply want a fancier toy?

If the cult really does need a another organ, how, then, could "One-Hand Dan" have in good conscience traveled to Tijuana and Mexicali, Mexico, last week (as he announced in his "Bishop's (?) Corner" on February 8)? If he paid for travel expenses, wouldn't it have been more appropriate to put that money toward the purchase of the replacement  organ? As of February 11, $2,375 had already been collected or pledged, and Dannie's trip will no doubt total at least $2K or more. For Pete's sake! That makes almost the whole amount they're asking for! 

For their own peace of mind and financial survival, Gerties must stop the cult masters' forever collection campaign. Dirtbag Dan himself may have shown the way: In the same "Corner" where he announced his trip to Mexicali, he wrote the following:

Do you have any questions you would like answered in a sermon sometime? Let me know. I’ll try to organize a Q and A Box for the vestibule, and maybe some Sunday Q and A sessions in Helfta Hall.

 If His Fecklessness ever does get around to "organizing" a suggestion box, we've got a perfect set of questions for a sermon answer, or better still, for a question-and-answer session in public:

Who paid for the 2015 pre-Lenten winter vacation to Mexico -- Dubious Dan or the Mexican faithful? If the Mexican faithful, can "One Hand" produce documentary proof? If Li'l Dan "shared" the costs, how much did he pay and how much of that was the chapel's money? Finally, if it was the chapel's money, why wasn't it used toward the purchase the replacement organ?

END THE MANIC AND ABUSIVE PANHANDLING. TELL 'EM YOU REFUSE TO BE AN "ORGAN DONOR."

HINT DROPPING

I'm tired,/Tired of playing the game!/Ain't it a crying shame?/I'm so tired! Lili Von Shtupp in "Blazing Saddles"

You've heard of "Fat-Shaming" haven't you?

You know...the use of public, social pressure as a catalyst to persuade the obese to lose weight.

Well, it looks as though Dannie's invented a new form of stigmatization -- Grub-Shaming -- to pressure the reluctant cultling-zombies to cook for and feed him. In last week's "Bishop's (?) Corner," His Dubiety really tried to lay a guilt trip on the cult's bleary-eyed womenfolk when he wrote about his week of relaxing in the Florida sun at Big Don's downmarket "seminary":

The retreat went well, in addition to the weather. It’s a nice treat, one for which I try to be suitably grateful, to sit down to a delicious home cooked meal, not just once, but—of the luxury of it!—three times a day, like in the old days. God bless Dorothy who does the cooking.

Oh, the humanity!

Distressed Li'l Dan has to go all the way to sun-drenched Florida in the middle of winter to get his three squares! The poor, wretched widdle ting is so deprived that daily homemade breakfast, lunch, and dinner seem an almost unimaginable luxury from an all-but-forgotten past. Why, the misery of the 2011 Horn-of-Africa famine pales in comparison to the Dirtbag's suffering, doesn't it?

Aren't you ashamed, you selfish Gertie gals?

Why can't you wait hand and foot on Wee Dan, too? Don't you want a blessing? Or are you too busy managing your own household? Shame on you for your heartless self-absorption! You know, it's not enough that your family has to support the cult masters' excesses*: You have to be their servants, too.  And you should be remorseful if you hesitate.

You've been set an example by the tireless and assuredly overworked Dorothy. Don't you know that you, too, have a high and mighty "bishop" (LOL) to pamper? (But wait! On second thought... maybe Dorothy gets paid for her troubles...)

While Dannie cannot fathom the cultlings' reticence to sacrifice even more than they do, we think we know the answer. Several weeks ago, we received a comment and a separate but almost identical email defending Dannie. The comment, a quotation from a blog,  read:

Bishop Dolan recently told me in an interview: 'If this were ordinary times, I wouldn’t be a bishop. I have no illusions about that.' He has grasped that because we are in extraordinary times, he doesn’t get to do what he would have wanted to do, which is be a simple parish priest – or even earlier – a simple Cistercian monk.  http://truerestoration.blogspot.fr/2009/04/restoration-i-dating.html

In our replies, we dismissed the self-effacement as bogus, since Dannie's outward behavior speaks otherwise. If he truly recognized his unworthiness for the episcopacy, he would never put on airs as a Catholic bishop, to wit, elaborate pontifical ceremonies and vestments, the expectation of  deferential treatment, self-referential remarks aimed at exciting reverence for his (doubtful) status etc. He would have comported himself in all ways -- including habiliment -- as a simple parish priest in order to signal both his yearning for simplicity and his awareness of his painfully obvious deficiencies.

 A fortiori, if Dubious Dan genuinely recognized his inadequacies, he would never have actively sought the miter. He would've refused it had it been offered (which, of course, it wasn't: it was coveted, to say the least.). There were many other men of his generation who were much more able, and he should have used whatever influence he possessed to make certain that a better educated, better formed priest be consecrated in his stead.

In our opinion, his heavy-handed hint about home-cooked meals is yet another proof that he expects to be considered a grand prelate deserving treatment reserved for the "Quality," as the English say. A humble man with adult organizational skills would be able to prepare his own meals at home. Millions of his betters do so every day. The Web is chock full of great-tasting, easy-to-prepare recipes. Since he doesn't live alone but has several doubtfully ordained "priests" as gofers, he could design a monthly schedule with a list of cooking/preparation/clean-up duties for each of the "lower clergy." (Better yet, he could ask one of the Gerties to do this for him in the event that the task prove too challenging for his limited resources.)

Naturally, if he and his associate, the Blunderer, hadn't been so set on defending the indefensible SGG principal and firing the truth-tellers in 2009, there may have been enough money in the budget to hire a full-time cook. Perhaps he had to defend the principal or risk certain catastrophe, whereas he gambled he could weather the firings. In the latter case, if he'd cut back on unnecessary and expensive foreign and domestic travel when half the cult left, there would probably be money to hire someone on at least a part-time basis. But since he's responsible for bringing the "old days" to an end, and since he won't give up traveling, he'll have to be content with grub-shaming the cult-crazed riffraff into cooking for him.

But it won't work. From what we hear, they're tired of all the begging and cajoling.

That means, as Lili so eloquently shouted, Dannie's "finished. Fertig! Verfallen! Verlumpt! Verblunget! Verkackt!"

* This might be the appropriate time to demand that "One Hand" reveal who paid the travel expenses to the retreat at the fetid Brooksville pesthouse. Dannie, you'll recall, gave the retreat for both the "seminarians" and the cult's "young fathers." Since the Blunderer was "the parish priest last week," it appears as though "Uneven-Steven" McFaker, Lurch, and the Forlorn Finn accompanied His Errancy. That makes four travelers. Did they fly? Did the "young fathers" pay their own way or was the excursion considered corporate inservice training and hence an SGG expense? Did the rector pay for His Verbosity to fly or be driven down as retreat master, or did Dannie cover the expenses himself in return for "a delicious home cooked meal...three times a day"?  If he paid, did he use his Christmas money and salary or did it come from SGG?

BRINGING FORTH CHILDREN IN SORROW

If you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent. Gascoyne-Cecil

By now, many of you have had a chance to study the documents related to the horrific SGG School Scandal of 2009.  A large proportion of the e-mails we've received expressed shock and dismay at Dannie's transgressive refusal to do the right thing for the children at the school despite the protests of laity and clergy. He defended the indefensible and thereby lost his apostolate. No matter how hard he tries or what he says and writes, his cult will never recover. His legacy will remain permanently tarnished: The events of November-December 2009 will haunt him for the rest of his life.

A number of our correspondents remarked on Wee Dan's obsession with the "innocence" of children. For instance, in a Christmastide message in "The Bishop's (?) Corner," Dirtbag Dan gushed:

Holy Innocents Day! May Innocence Himself, with His Immaculate Mother, bless you on this Christmas Sunday by restoring your innocence, and renewing your devotion to protecting innocence in our midst;

and just last week he emoted "Thank God for the voices of innocent children..."! The jarring contrast between his cold, callous stance of 2009 and his current warm, sheltering enthusiasm inspired many a writer to lash out in the harshest language (which we won't cite, for we're a family-oriented blog).

As for Pistrina, however, it's not the hypocrisy of Tradistani clergy that moves the Readers to righteous indignation. That's been the cult masters' hallmark for many a year, as we have exposed time and again on these web pages. What truly disturbs us are the laity who financially support and continue to send their children to SGG School.

If Dannie is to be believed, the school is "larger than ever." We think that's cause for concern. It's almost impossible to imagine that any rational parent who knew of the ill treatment reported here would send their own flesh and blood to the school still under the control of the "principal" at the center of the 2009 crisis. Even the humblest parents with children languishing in dreadful urban public schools wouldn't allow their offspring to attend such an institution unless there had been a thorough housecleaning. (Middle- and upper-class parents at suburban schools would have ended the career of any administrator who employed such practices as well as the career of any school executive who supported such behavior.)

But hard-core, Traddie trash apparently don't possess normal parental instincts. They have surrendered their weak wills and small intellects to their cult masters. In return for a rush of faux piety, they have offered up the innocent. In this regard, they, like their malformed, under-educated, often dubiously valid clergy constitute the great Other -- aliens to the values, emotions, and upbringing characteristic of an ethically centered, organized society. Standing far away on the margin, they glare maliciously from the outside onto the morally sensible world and mock it for being overly protective of the young. They pride themselves for approving and even encouraging disproportionate, vindictive, irrational discipline administered in ire, which they justify because it "concentrates the mind," as the Checkmeister says.

Some Traddies may argue that things have changed since the SGG School Scandal of 2009: The great benefit of the massive SGG exodus, many have said, was that, like a rod of correction, it focused the cult masters' attention and forced them to alter their policies to assure their survival. We, too, are sure the situation is not the same. But that doesn't mean the bad old days will never return. Contrary to the advice given in the Blunderer's "School Dazed," there remains a big reason why loving parents  should never, ever "[f]orget and forgive," and why they should definitely "hang on to the memory of someone’s past offenses": 

There's trouble in River City, and the money's drying up.

That means the cult masters' nerves are on edge. Who knows how much longer they can keep paying the principal tens of thousands of dollars a year? A while ago, Dannie exasperatedly complained that he had to come up with 800 bucks so that a Ukrainian priest could get an apartment for himself in his strife-torn homeland. (Of course, Li'l Dan meant that he expected the Gerties to cough up the cash!). Then last week, after lamenting the prohibitively high shipping costs to Nigeria, where the doubtfully ordained Bede Nkmauke has relocated, he melodramatically intoned, "God grant a solution." Now, since even "One Hand" is not so naïve as to suppose that the Almighty will fracture the economy of salvation by intervening to effect a dramatic reduction of overseas postal fees, it's obvious that he expects the remedy to come from the Gerties themselves.

In the old days before the scandal, he'd've flat-out asked for the cash to pay off these pet projects that have no direct or indirect benefit for the Gerties. However, he knows the cultlings are suffering from Giving Fatigue, the gradual lessening of the will to donate in once generous but now emotionally strained donors who have been repeatedly and abusively asked to give. He's heard the whispers after Mass in the social hall: donors are burned out. From what we've heard, the reluctance and embarrassment to say "no" has been replaced with annoyance, the result being the decline in revenues. 

That's bad news for the cult, because once Giving Fatigue sets in, donors are disincentivized to give with each new appeal, no matter how indirectly it's phrased. They're on to the game. Fully aware of their own hardships, they're tired of being buttonholed at every turn to underwrite Dannie's schemes (most of which are aimed at promoting his rapidly fading image abroad). As the cash stream dwindles to a trickle, cult tempers will be on edge. Conditions may well become ripe for a repetition of the unconscionable events that led to the 2009 scandal.

Parents who cannot -- or will not -- foresee the risk need intervention. But these morally impaired lowlife have drunk too deeply of the cult's noxious brew. No human can intervene with such people. The only recourse is to seek the intercession of St. Germaine Cousin of behalf of the precious innocents by making a novena in the name of this great protector of children.

* * * * * * *

Beloved Saint Germaine, I praise, bless, honor and glorify you. I love you and hold you in deepest esteem. I thank Almighty God for you.

Pope Pius IX called you "A new star shedding a marvelous glow...over the Universal Church." To you, then, the "new star," shining brilliantly in Heaven. I lift up my mind and my heart. Allow, I pray, your bright radiance to fall upon me in benediction.

Reverently mindful too of the words of Pope Gregory XVI who said that you are "The Saint we need" and following the paternal exhortation of Pope Pius IX, who counseled us to "Go to Germaine," I come to you, Saint Germaine, to render my homage and veneration, humbly begging you, "The Saint that we need," to attend to my prayer and to lay your hand upon the innocent children in blessing.

Your life on earth, dear St. Germaine, was unspeakably hard. You were an outcast, unwanted and unloved by everyone. Sick and frail, ragged and starved, brutally beatened and abused, your only home was a sordid stable. Hated and ridiculed by men, you were dearly loved by God, to Whom you were supremely pleasing and precious and to Whom you gave all the warm and tender affection of your loving heart.

Your life, which seemed utterly useless and insignificant to men, was a continuous song of love, a prayer of praise and worship, ascending as a fragrance to God.

I marvel exceedingly, Saint Germaine, at the thought of your gentleness, your sublime sweetness and patience, at your complete lack of complaint and bitterness.

I am filled with admiration for you, Saint Germaine, as I recall the pity and compassion which melted your heart at the sight of anyone's need. So eminently kind and good were you that you gladly shared with others the little crust of bread which was the only food your cruel step-mother permitted you to have each day.

I rejoice at the wondrous miracles with which God crowned and glorified your life and at the countless favors and blessings which He has bestowed upon your clients through your intercession and for your greater glory and honor. Saint Germaine, you who are now in resplendent, heavenly glory, remember the innocent. Pray for the innocent, help the innocent,  have pity on innocent, graciously intercede in the innocent children's behalf with God to Whom you are so dear. Amen. 

---

Add an "Our Father," Hail Mary," and a Glory Be" in honor of Saint Germaine.

OUT UNDER NEW MEXICO SKIES

Santa-Fe/ Dear, dear, dear, dear Santa-Fe/ Since I'm never gonna to cease to roam/I'm never, ever far from home. Bob Dylan


By golly, Li'l Dan's a sneaky one, isn't he?

Without so much as a peep or a burp, a couple of weeks ago Dannie took off to Albuquerque, New Mexico, "for Confirmations and a pastoral visit to St. Gertrude the Less, and hoping for a bit of warmth as well." No one -- not even the Reader --  was the wiser until "One Hand" published his "Bishop's (?) Corner," although Pistrina had correctly predicted earlier this year a winter side trip to fashionable Santa Fe. 

Time was when Wee Dan would've announced his vacation with great fanfare well before he made his getaway: he'd've wanted the Gerties to know the wide extent of his "apostolate." But now, after so much public scrutiny into his dollar-wasting, rambling ways, he's been reduced to creeping out of town without so much as a 'bye-'bye, you suckers.

With Dannie's poor-mouth complaining about this "season of high heating bills" and "the imperious Duke" (the local energy company), we triple-dog-dare the half-frozen, flat-broke Gerties to confront their footloose, wandering "bishop" with a couple of burning questions, now that he's returned from toasting himself in the chic Southwestern sun.

The first sizzling question is: Who paid for the round-trip airfare, local transfer, food/lodging, and the excursion to swanky Santa Fe? (Was there also a quickie sojourn at the ritzy Bishop's Lodge featuring the SháNah Spa and Wellness Center, with its massage-and-meditation teepee?)  Did the money come from the pitifully few members of "St. Gertrude the Less" (what a ridiculous name!) or from SGG's coffers? If SGG paid all or some of the freight, then ask if he plans to reimburse the chapel from his Albuquerque stipend and his own Christmas money. Let him know in no uncertain terms that you hard-scrabble Gerties aren't operating a missions society. (And, BTW, demand to see receipts.)

The second red-hot question is: If Travelin' Dan's planning to trot off  to Mexicali, Mexico, this winter, who's paying for that? The Mexicali chapel, SGG, or (Absit!) Deacon Dan on his lonesome? Be sure to remind him you were disgusted by last year's Lenten meat-eating bacchanal. Inform him that you don't intend to underwrite such offensive clerical behavior this coming Lent, especially in light of all the recent expenses, like two replacement vehicles, the exterminator, and high heating bills. 

But let's be open and honest: the West-Chester wild rover's not going to answer these questions.  (The sternly ignorant Checkmeister won't allow it.) Therefore, since you're bound to be kicked out for asking them, you might as well just

LEAVE THE CULT TODAY AND SPEND THE MONEY YOU SAVE ON YOUR FAMILY.

MAYBE YOU CAN TAKE A VACATION IN 2015, IF YOU GET OUT NOW!

THE PEOPLE'S CHOICE

Oh, spa-a-a-nk us!

You asked for it...
and Pistrina delivered.

After a long absence from cyberspace, all the information related to the screamingly disgraceful 2009 scandal at St. Gertrude the Great School is now back online at

sggscandal.com

For those of you who've forgotten or who weren't around in late 2009/early 2010 to read the material posted on the old sgginfo website, you now have complete access to the whip-smart letters, editorials, articles, responses etc. that exposed the cult masters and got out the true story of the shocking events at SGG.

At last, you'll see at first hand the beginning of the end of Tradistan and understand why the cult is now up a creek without a paddle. You'll also find the chronological list of documents very useful as you refresh your memory or learn for the first time whole truth. 

Until next week, happy reading!