THE END PROVETH EVERYTHING

Straw shall not be provided for you. Exodus (CCD Version, 1952)

Shhhhhh!

You can hear it, can't you?

The throaty growl at the rickety door? The muffled snarls leaking through a cracked, dirty window? The menacing tattoo of razor-sharp claws against rotting porch floorboards?

The wolf is at Dannie's door.

Take a look, perhaps for the second time, at last week's "Corner":

How Fr. Cekada manages to pay for all of [the many repairs to the crumbling cult center]  remains a mystery to me, for like the Hebrews, he is always making bricks without straw [sic!]. But I do know that more bills will be coming in, and more work needs done. Many of you, when you do come, contribute nothing, not even a token amount. How’s about it? If not for justice sake, at least for charity. Contribute your fair share to your church each week or each month. You know God will reward or punish you accordingly. As with forgiveness, we get to write our own ticket ...Will you alone come without a gift? God is never outdone in generosity but men are always outdoing each other in cold-hearted cheapness, whether in support or service. “Freely you have received. Freely give.”

There you have it! And in the Dirtbag's very own words. Confirmation of what PL's reported all along: the disillusioned Gerties are STARVING THE BEAST within decaying $GG. "One-Hand Dan" has mocked human nature for the last time. Vanished is his claim over the cultlings' income.

Ask yourself this: Why should culties surrender more of their treasure to the Wee One? He cynically warns, "more bills will be coming in, and more work needs done," while they remember he's just returned from unnecessary junkets to sunny Mexico and Argentina's wine country with its architecturally stunning bodegas (right on the heels of splurging on a vacation for two to chic New Mexico)!

How in the world could the Argentines have ever afforded the exorbitantly costly airfare from Los Angeles all the way down to Mendoza — a ways south of the Tropic of Capricorn —and then back up across two continents to SW Ohio? Didn't His Itinerancy recently describe his mendocino hosts as "truly poor, dirt poor, as they live a hard life among the dusty vineyards in Argentina. They even manage without a car, so that every little shopping trip or sick call entails begging a ride"?

He sure did!

Could the Mexicans, at least, have sprung to underwrite their part of Travelin' Man Dan's south-of-the-border autumn getaway?

Doubt it!

It's no surprise the cash-strapped Gerties are holding back: If His Profligacy can blow so much "needed" money on expensive foreign travel, then there's plenty of coin in the kitty to cover  upcoming expenses. Right? At any rate, cultlings never "freely received" anything from the Mammon-mad cult "clergy." Over the years, they've paid dearly for everything. Indeed, they've paid so far ahead they can give their exhausted pocket books a well-deserved rest.

Seeing that Gertlings have already sacrificed an un-fair share from their family fiscs for the "clergy's" comfort, they won't be intimidated by impious threats of divine retribution. Nor will they blush in shame at loutish insults or self-serving recriminations. They've become defiantly prudent cheapskates who also refuse to cook and clean-up-after an ill-bred "clerical" boys club.

Dannie's angry tirade against his wised-up flock foreshadows the impending end of the SW Ohio cult. But that's something you and we already knew. What IS revealing, though, is his wrong-headed reference to the Hebrews' "making bricks without straw." But first, let's show you why it's wrong.

Without the addition of straw (1) to allow the clay or mud to dry more easily and, as a binder, (2) to add stability to the product, the finished bricks would have broken and crumbled. (Straw, acting as a "flexible supporting lattice ...  will redistribute the force throughout the brick, decreasing the chance of breakage" [Smith, as cited in Capaldi, 2011].)  Pharao(h)'s taskmasters would, therefore, never have permitted the fabrication of such defective building materials. After all, scholars believe brick-manufacture was probably a government monopoly in ancient Egypt, since most bricks are stamped with the name of the king.

As any literate person who reads Exodus 5 will tell you, the problem for the Children of Israel was that "[w]hile some continued at the [brick] works, others went about the fields to gather up every grain of chaff and piece of straw which they could find" (Haydock). The consequent diminution of the brick-making labor force would've made it impossible for the Israelites to meet the daily quota of bricks set by the Egyptian overseers.  ("Why have you not completed your prescribed amount of bricks, yesterday and today, as before?" [5.14]).*

This means that the Hebrews never stopped adding straw to the bricks they produced; they simply produced bricks in reduced quantities, since under the new regimen they had to collect, sort, and chop the straw in addition to digging, tempering, mixing, and moulding the clay ("The people, then, scattered throughout the land of Egypt to gather stubble for straw" [5.12] ).

Don't get us wrong. We're not writing to prove (once again) that the cult masters can't read Scripture closely. (They can't — click here for a recent example.) No, the Readers see much more than the expected sede ignorance, for we possess the key to "One Hand's" subconscious messaging. Years of decoding Danniespeak, you see, have led us to conclude that "straw" = "collection money." Thus in Deficit Dan's erroneous reading of Holy Writ we discover the truth about the cult:

it's runnin' outta cash! 

Ever since the 2009 $GG $chool $candal, we've observed they've been having trouble making ends meet in order to pursue a jet-setting life of ease. But now financial straits are truly grave.  At the precise moment when the cult masters need the Gerties' meager financial resources the most, they're not forthcoming.

$GG is far beyond the stage of elective repairs. As Li'l Daniel himself wrote last week,

... we have been taking care of some repair/replacement projects which have come due, or have long been delayed. A small crew has been working on one of the roof leaks, right over the vestibule... The parking lot asphalt repair has been scheduled, finally, for next month. 3 ½ heating/air conditioning units have been replaced and seem at last to be functioning well

By their own admission, the cult masters can no longer postpone essential maintenance. Engineers we consulted estimate that, based on their experience, tens of thousands of additional dollars may be needed if the "clergy" have let things slide so, considering the shoddy cult center had a limited life to begin with and experienced serious problems from the onset. Unfortunately for Dannie and Checkie,  they can no longer count on the Gerties to cough up the large dollar amounts they need to keep $GG from its certain collapse.

Insults or threats notwithstanding, disenchanted Gertlings will continue to arrive empty handed, forcing Dannie to try to gather funds from outside the cult. After so many years, unaccountable spending has at last become a casualty. Any effort to glean money from afar is destined to fail: all Trad Nation has "One Hand's" number by now. As His Insultancy accelerates the name-calling, like the Hebrews of old, Gerties will leave the bondage of the traddie cult "company by company."

Just in time, too, for the wolf has already crossed the broken door-threshold.

*in his Jewish Antiquities (II.xiii.4), the historian Flavius Josephus (AD 37 — after 93) differs from Fr. Haydock in his explanation of the division of labor :

Although formerly furnishing them chaff for brick-making, [Pharao(h)] no longer supplied it, but he made them endure hardship in the works by day, and collect the chaff by night ... the distress for them being double... (our literal translation).

The brick-pit slaves' exhaustion, therefore, could also account for the drop in productivity.

Whichever scenario you prefer — Haydock's or Josephus' — the fact remains that the Hebrews kept on making bricks with straw, contrary to His Ignorancy. BTW, here's the Greek of Josephus if you don't believe us:

 ὁ δὲ ἄχυρον αὐτοῖς παρέχων εἰς τὴν πλινθείαν πρότερον οὐκέτι παρεῖχεν, ἀλλ᾽ ἡμέρας μὲν ἐπὶ τοῖς ἔργοις ταλαιπωρεῖν ἐποίει, νυκτὸς δὲ συνάγειν τὸ ἄχυρον ... τοῦ δεινοῦ διπλασίονος ὄντος αὐτοῖς ...

For anybody out in cyberspace who, like the cult masters, can't read Greek or understand the plain text of the Bible,  there's an alternative resource to confirm Dan's error. Cecil B. DeMille, who acknowledged Josephus near the end of the main title of The Ten Commandments, got it right, albeit with a little dramatic license:

John Carradine — "Aaron" [stentoriously]: "It is Pharaoh's order that you be given no straw to make your tally of bricks." 

Male voice amid the protesting Hebrew rabble [in outraged disbelief]: "No straw! ... How can you make bricks without straw?!" 

Edward G. Robinson — "Dathan" [nasally, with whining contempt]: "You will glean the stubble of the fields by night ... And remember: the tally must be the same!"

Didn't Dannie ever watch that flick?  NBC, we think, used to broadcast it nationally every year. Maybe it still does. His Deficiency should check his local listings this spring.

PUBLISHING TRUTH

Profred servyse stynketh. Chaucer

The existential threat of the onrushing collapse of the SW Ohio/Brooksville syndicate seems to have afflicted the Wee One with a tic, where he involuntarily discloses what's really got his goat.  Take this astonishingly frank paragraph from the cult's autumn 2017 newsletter:

[Name], one of St. Gertrude’s “founding mothers,” was called into eternity on September 3. For many years she was the one who did anything that needed to be done for St. Gertrude the Great and its clergy, from cleaning to chauffeuring to cooking (especially cooking!) to secretarial work to art, for she was a talented artist as well. Oh, and she did the laundry, too. God reward her many, many years of loving and faithful service. How I wish He would bless us with other...souls so deeply devoted to the Holy Mass and the Faith it perfectly expresses. Her keen never failing love of these things both inspires and reproaches our Catholics of today.

Although at paragraph's end there's a perfunctory and rather vague boilerplate reference to the departed's devotion to the Mass and the Catholic faith, the "virtues" he enumerates have to do more with groveling service to the $GG "clergy" than with piety: cleaning, chauffeuring, cooking, laundry, and clerical work. And you can bet that what really "reproaches our Catholics of today" is that no Gertling chick has been willing to step into the role of the "clergy's" charwoman.

Today's Gertie gal won't be fooled into mistaking a scullery maid's grimy kerchief for a heavenly crown. Nor would she find fulfillment in hurriedly and harriedly rushing to answer the tinkling of a bell when the bone-idle ringer, just ten feet away, could have gotten off his keister to speak to her — or simply performed the task himself.

Normally, even if only a matter of good taste, you'd expect a eulogy to underscore the specific and repeated instances of the deceased's holiness, with but a brief, perchance discreetly oblique, mention of servile work. We should've read of her regular Mass attendance, almsgiving, visits to the Blessed Sacrament, concrete examples of charity to others, faithful membership in a confraternity, ardor for our Lady, etc. Instead we're shocked to find a job description for a domestic.

All the emphasis is upon her bondage to workaday, menial tasks for the sole benefit of the "clergy," who themselves should've been capable of doing their own laundry, cleaning their own quarters, and transporting themselves. There's only the most general reference to the departed's fidelity to religion (which as practiced in the cult is sadly but a para-Catholic boondoggle: so much good-hearted effort for naught!). That makes it seem as though the reproof of today's Catholics isn't aimed at lukewarm faith but at their steadfast refusal to assume a servant's burden.

From the looks of it, the ever-gauche cult master couldn't manage to conceal his resentment over the fact that no one has volunteered to take this long-suffering soul's place. Her passing seems to be the occasion for him to wear his resentment on his sleeve, to lash out at others for not putting His Self-Importancy before their own and their family's good.

What gives us hope is that PL's not the only one who could detect Dannie's peevishness. Gerties see it, too. And we're sure many a cultie crone cackled to herself when she read his rueful words, "Spit in one hand, Bee-uh-shup,  'n' wish in the other, 'n' see which one fills up first."

YAG ORDER

Getting money is like digging with a needle; spending it is like water soaking into sand. Japanese Proverb

We like to think the obscure, easy-to-overlook, mundane details tracing the arc of sleazy cult life are more telling than a written confession. Take, for instance, the $GG calendar item for Sunday, October 15, 2017. There, sandwiched between parentheses, we learn the "2017 YAGers" will offer the stipend for the 9:00 A.M. High Mass.

On the surface, it appears an unremarkable clerical detail. And, yes, it has a ring of authenticity: If the soul for whom the Mass is to be said had attended the 2017 YAG, it wouldn't be impossible to believe that fellow participants ordered it up from the unused registration moneys. That's surely the impression anyone might draw from the notice, if she or he had bothered to think about it — or even paid attention

But it's not the only explanation.

A little thought will make our suspicions clearer. We see two plausible* scenarios behind the calendar entry:

A. One of the Gertie YAG attendees, either upon his or her own initiative or at the self-interested prompting of a cult master, shares with erstwhile get-together companions the sad news of the tragic death and polls them about offering a Mass from the unspent fees they wasted for their book-burning weekend last summer. YAGGIES, who got the message and who bothered to respond, give their express approval. Therefore, the Gertling informs the cult to make some of the funds in the YAG account liquid for the celebrant's spending pleasure. ** 

B. The cult masters, in need of Mass stipends, decide independently that surplus YAG registration fees should be applied for a Mass for the repose of the young man's soul and the comfort of his family. After all, the money's theirs now and should be used for necessities.

Laying aside (but never forgetting) the important question of the validity of $GG "clergy's" holy orders, in either scenario a Mass is said for the departed. That's objectively good, so the question is:

Why does PL give a hoot about who requested the Mass? 

Why don't we just let it go? Besides, it may well be nigh impossible for outsiders (and even rabid Gertie loyalists) to learn which is the more correct explanation.

Well, we've got three reasons for our inquiry:

First, scenario A is just a trifle too complicated, while B is simplicity itself. (But out of fairness, until we confirm B, we won't dismiss A. In addition, our faith in mankind's basic decency is so strong, we'll presume A until there's no doubt about B.) 

Second, we've always argued that in justice the unspent funds from the 2017 YAG registration fees should have been returned to the "2017 YAGers" and not squirreled away in $GG's bank account for uses other than the 2017 lonely-hearts misadventure. (Don't forget, they were originally baited with a Golden Corral buffet before the bowling-alley soggy pizza switch.)

Third, we've been observing lately how Mass stipends are paid by the Rosary Confraternity, the Alter Christus fund, or some other cult-sponsored-and-controlled moral person rather than by named human beings.

We surmise this absence of individuals' Mass intentions might be another sign of rapidly diminishing enthusiasm for the cult, a statistical oracle of its last days. Most independent priests we know are booked solid with Mass requests for months into the future. In fact, some are so overwhelmed that they're obliged to binate occasionally on weekdays. Common sense argues that $GG should be experiencing the same high demand from the faithful, so stipends shouldn't have to be paid from the accounts of cult enterprises.

For the time being, we can only wait, watch, and hope the end comes soon. (Tales of malaise in all the bishop-led trad cults abound.) Nevertheless, if only out of intellectual curiosity, we'd like to know whether scenario A, or something like it, is true. Accordingly, we're asking "2017 YAGers" to confirm whether they were asked either (1) to approve spending surplus 2017 registration fees to put money in "priests'" pockets or (2) whether they contributed afresh for the Mass. They can either e-mail us (pistrinalit@gmail.com) or comment anonymously. (We'll keep all email names confidential.)


* Some might argue there's a third scenario where some non-$GG YAGGIES learn of the tragedy, ask for contributions, and send in a stipend on their own. In our mind, that doesn't sound plausible.

** PL wonders about the exact amount of the stipend. We recall from our pre-Vatican II youth in upper-middle-class parishes that a High Mass stipend was twice the amount of a Low Mass stipend. Perhaps someone can tell us whether $GG charges more for a High Mass and what that amount is.

OPEN FOR BUSINESS

Through all the seas of all Thy world, slambangin' home again. Kipling

The Readers are finally back from their annual furlough. Those who coordinated the Lay Governance Conference returned with news of an unqualified success, and the Reader-in-Chief arrived from a vacation in the Mediterranean with some juicy news about the disgraceful Southern-European antics of a U.S.-based religious buccaneer. Some important — and moneyed — people over there are hopping mad, to say the least, and details of the whole unsavory episode have been shared with the Italian press. PL will have more on this later.

Since it'll take a while for our readership to learn PL's open again, we'll keep this post short. No sense in folks' missing good, hard-hitting slams at the scumbag cult masters. However, we can't pass up a comment on "One Hand Dan's" twin junkets to Mexico and Argentina (announced in last week's "Corner"), which came on the heels of the Dirtbag's low-keyed getaway with Cheeseball to oh-so-chic New Mexico. (Keep in mind that El Santuario de Chimayó, where Dannie recently made a "little pilgrimage," lies only a short 28 miles away from hip, multiculti, artsy Santa Fe, "The City Different.")

As we've been following the $GG collection reports over the summer, we wonder where the money's coming from to support all this lavish travel. From what we've seen, even on the better Sundays, the takings barely manage to exceed $4K: September 24, one of the Sundays "with an excellent turnout ... due to visitors" yielded a measly $4,196. (Remember it takes a lot of cash to support the
"Principal" and keep up with the repairs on the decaying cult center.) It's also important to note that right after bragging about the influx of outsiders, Li'l Daniel lamented "we are missing some of our own" and ordered prayers for their swift repatriation.

This latest spending-spree on travel reminds us of the pre-2009 $GG School Scandal Days, when money was no object. But now with diminishing numbers and ever-increasing maintenance expenses, all these excursions at home and abroad seem self-destructive. What happens if the Farmer's Almanac prediction of a mild and wet 2017-18 winter for SW Ohio is wrong? Will the remaining Gerties be called upon to bail Dannie out when "The Duke" (the energy provider for the cult) presents a massive demand for heating expenses?

In our humble opinion, the purpose of the Mexico and Argentina holidays is to dupe cultlings into thinking the Wee One is still a player on the international trad stage. (He isn't.) Big Don's got a completer stationed in Australia and is making noises about a "seminary" in France, while he occasionally jets off to Dear Old Blightly to impress the swells in London town. That must be too much for His Invidiousness to bear. We guess his ego must be stroked at any cost, lest the Donster's contempt grow. (That may also be why he puts up with all those pants-wearing Argentine gals.)

The international forays may give Travelin'-Man Dan an emotional boost, but what about the long-suffering Gerties? With the self-confessed shrinking cult membership, it's obvious those cultlings who remain with "One Hand" will have to make increasingly larger contributions. That may prove too heavy a burden in these difficult financial times.  Culties need to ask themselves once and for all whether it's worth it or whether it's now time to

STARVE THE BEAST.

ON FURLOUGH

In the aftermaths of soft September.... Housman

The ninth month, "tang of fruitage in the air," is upon us.

That can mean only one thing:

IT'S TIME TO GET READY FOR THE ANNUAL LAY GOVERNANCE CONFERENCE.

This year's event is action-packed with workshops and presentations. One of the most promising is a plan to supply chapels emotionally attached to the Latin rite with validly ordained, educated men who have no connection at all to the cult masters. Another will feature a practicum lead by an Eastern-rite priest, on how to worship at a Uniate parish for those who don't have a cult-free chapel nearby yet don't want to be home alone.

One thing's for certain:  Our attendees will return home with lots of options for faithful Catholics.

New funding from a former cult donor means we can do quite a lot this year. But it also means we won't be posting until after the conference ends later in the month. Again, we're running the whole shebang, from conference planning to airport shuttling, and that means we have to dedicate all our material and intellectual resources to the success of the conference.

In the meantime, we invite our readership to consult the bi-weekly LAY PULPIT posts.

See you when the conference is over!

BACK TO "$CHOOL"

And be these juggling fiends no more believed,/That palter with us in a double sense;/That keep the word of promise to our ear/And break it to our hope. Shakespeare

Have you ever noticed how a big corporation, when it gets into trouble for bad behavior, almost immediately launches a massive public-relations campaign where it claims to exemplify the very principles it so lawlessly violated? In sputtering exasperation, you ask yourself, "How in the world would anyone possessed of common decency and an intact memory fall for such a cynical ploy?"

Unfortunately, the majority of us swallow the deception, so the bad actors are soon back to their nasty, old tricks. A few people, however, those firmly grounded in morality, hold the corporation accountable by refusing to purchase its products or services. They're a distinct minority, without question, and for the most part their resistance has no real impact, unless they organize. Nevertheless, even if they don't band together, and notwithstanding their powerlessness to inflict the just punishment the corporation deserves, they're proud to have stood on their principles.

We're sure many trads would find common cause with this moral minority. They recognize a striking parallel to their own resistance to the modernist Vatican Establishment. Most likely, they'd say they, too, would boycott a hypocritical corporation that refused to admit to wrong-doing and chose to avoid coming clean by hiding  under P.R. spin.  Some of you reading this post may be of a similar disposition. If you are, then we ask you to read and react to the following:

In the August 20 $GG bulletin, an item captioned A TEACHER'S PRAYER began with these lines:

Lord Jesus, Supreme Educator of souls, I thank You for having called me to this wonderful task of education. Make me ever more worthy of the confidence shown me by parents, by entrusting to me what is dearest to them in this world—their children! Teach me to treat these souls with the delicacy and infinite patience of Your Holy Spirit. Grant me Your light, the better to read hearts; Your perspicacity for discerning Your work and penetrating Your designs; Your mercy, for forgiving and healing; Your wisdom for counseling and directing the young lives entrusted to me. May my actions be Your actions, my hands, Your hands; my lips, Your lips; my life, Your life; so that nothing may touch these children that is not divine, and that I may not impede Your action in their souls. 

For those of you familiar with the lurid details of the 2009 $GG "$CHOOL" $CANDAL, the SW Ohio cult's own version of "the Sicilian Vespers," you're probably shaking your head in disgust at $GG's effrontery. In justice to the few remaining decent Gerties, PL is positive they weren't deceived either. They must still painfully remember how children were treated in the many months preceding the 2009 uprising.

But since some of our readership may not be as aware of the horrific scandal as others, we'll briefly remind everyone of just a few of the reported incidents that led to the mass exodus of decency from the cult. The Readers promse it'll be an eye-opening experience to compare the petitioned virtues of the prayer to the shocking practice of the past. (If you'd like the full report published on December 3, 2009, at the height of the $GG "$chool" cri$i$, you'll want to click here.)

👉Less favored students were characterized as retards, spoiled brats, and other derogatory names, and in the case of girls, tarts and even sluts, sometimes in public.  The younger children with learning disabilities were referred to as "retards." 

👉On one occasion, a student's bag was emptied, and all the equipment the child's parents had provided for the beginning of the school year was thrown into the trash. 

👉A seventh grade student was forcibly prevented from leaving church during Mass to go the bathroom, resulting an emotionally traumatizing "accident."

👉A high-school girl received a uniform violation for having her hair in the wrong place, even after she had corrected her hairstyle and had it approved by one of the women teachers.

👉A seventh grader was publicly humiliated for allegedly not cleaning a thurible after Benediction.  The boy's father checked with the head MC, and was told the thurible was cleaned perfectly.

👉A teacher was forcibly prevented from escorting a sick first-grade student out of the chapel on the first day of school.

👉A seventh grade boy was punished corporally in the presence of witnesses, during which punishment the paddle broke.

Undeniably, it's been some eight long years since the outbreak of the $GG "$CHOOL" $CANDAL.  Therefore, it's entirely possible, even plausible, that there's been a change of heart, or at a minimum a change of policy and practice at the "$chool." With grace anyone can change for the better. But, knowing human beings as we do, and realizing the present-day tendency of scapegrace organizations to give lip service to reform rather than change fundamentally, we're naturally suspicious about the appearance of the prayer in the $GG bulletin right before the start of a new "$chool" year.

Li'l Daniel told us in the "Corner" that "school preparation meetings...for our teachers" were set to take place last week. No doubt printing the prayer in the bulletin was meant to suggest to parents that their children —"what is dearest to them in the world" — will be in good hands. Don't you think, though, that in light of what we've just reviewed, Gerties should make double sure that the teachers who invoke this prayer will be able to act in behalf of little ones?

For instance, if teachers receive the gifts prayed for, yet cannot exercise them, how can the teachers' "actions, ... hands, ...  lips, ... life" be those of the "Supreme Educator of souls"? How can they answer our Lord's sacred calling? Moreover, shouldn't both parents and the handful of principled Gerties insist on the $GG "pastor's" written assurance (1) that every staff member at the "$chool" model the behavior for which the prayer begs so that (2) that there will never be a repetition of the horrors that produced the 2009 catastrophe?

That's a no-brainer. Absolutely they should. When you consider all that led up to the 2009 $chool $candal, a flowery bulletin item, soon forgotten by all, is not enough.

Consequently, here's what we recommend: The cult is a small-ltime operation so you can make a difference if you get organized. Flood Dannie's inbox with e-mails demanding he adopt a written action plan to ensure that every staff member be worthy of parents' "confidence" and treat each child with "the delicacy and infinite patience" of the Holy Ghost.

The plan must include specific provisions to guarantee that staff will emulate our Lord's "mercy for forgiving and healing" and behave in such a way that "nothing may touch these children that is not divine." Insist the plan contain explicit provisions for remediation or punishment of any staff member whose behavior does not conform to the prayer's entreaties. Also, require the Wee One to spell out a grievance process for parents and teachers to lodge complaints about the treatment of children.

In other words, force the "$chool" to live up to the promises of the prayer, and if it doesn't ...

STARVE THE BEAST!

IN ENDLESS ERROR HURL'D

He who can take no interest in what is small will take false interest in what is great. Ruskin

There's one trait that marks true professionals in every corner of the world:

THEY SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF.

From medicine to movie production, it's attention to apparently minor details that makes the difference between amateurism and greatness.

For that reason, we Readers are always on the lookout for the cult masters' blunders, the telltale emblems of their masquerade. Many of their howlers we pass over in silence. But the goofs that cry out loudly against the sede "clergy's" unprofessionalism — that convict them of carelessness and malformation —will always find a place on these pages. To the extent that, in life, the little things really do matter, the faithful have a right to know into whose hands they've (mis)placed their spiritual welfare.

Last week's SW Ohio cult bulletin delivered a classic example of sede incompetence at its worst, one that calls for extended analysis. On the front page of $GG's August 13 Pentecost X bulletin, right beneath the Missal-setting notice for the next week, we came across this odd, "orphan" notation (emphasis ours):

In Greek, the tax collector uses the definite article in describing himself as “the” sinner! He chooses the lowest place and humbly offers himself to God in his lowliness; Jesus exalts him (Lk 14:11 [!]).    

We say "orphan" because the italicized snippet, which reads so disjointedly out of place, bears no caption.

The second anomaly that caught our attention was the blurb's embarrassing conflation (= confusion?) of two separate parables of Jesus, viz., (1) the "Parable of the Last Seat" in chapter 14 of Luke (the Gospel pericope for the 16th Sunday after Pentecost, which will occur on Sept. 24 of this year [!]) and (2) the "Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican" in the same Evangelist's chapter 18 (the Gospel pericope for the 10th Sunday after Pentecost, which fell on Aug. 13, the date of the  $GG bulletin).

A cursory glance at the two Lucan chapters will remind you that in chapter 18, the tax-gatherer — remaining in the temple and not attending a supper —is described as "standing afar off," which verbally is not the same thing as choosing the "lowest place" at the dinner table.*

Moreover, in Luke 14, Jesus, after observing how his unmannerly fellow guests at the Sabbath dinner "chose the first seats at the table" (in Gk., πρωτοκλισία = "place of honor at a dinner"), takes advantage of their boorishness to make a point about the Kingdom of God. It's important to remark that the Gospel setting of Luke 14 makes no mention at all of an individual in attendance at the dinner who actually  "chooses the lowest place and humbly offers himself to God in his lowliness."  That's cult fiction. (As anyone with some Greek will tell you, Christ's advice at 14:10 "to sit down in the lowest place" is joined to a clause of future contingency.) A competent commentary might say the lesson to be drawn from what appears on the surface to be instruction about table-manners is that God invites to the Kingdom those who acknowledge their lowliness. But that's something different from the bulletin's assertion that the revenue officer selected "the lowest place."

Where this scandalous mixup came from is anybody's guess. It's hard to imagine the cult got it, as printed in the bulletin, from any reputable source.  You could surmise an $GG idiot might have found in some commentary a note about the individualizing use of the Greek definite article at 18:13 (what some grammarians term the par excellence usage), and then, perhaps after looking away from the copy for a moment, mistakenly inserted the reference to 14:11 after he returned to copying from his source.  In fairness — and PL is always fair — we'll grant it's possible both parables could've been discussed together, since each concludes with the identical logion, viz., "because every one that exalteth himself, shall be humbled etc." at 14:11 and 18:14.

But parablepsis facilitated by homoeoteleuton doesn't explain where $GG got the wrongheaded notion about the tax-collector's choosing "the lowest place." That's patently fictitious, and we doubt the error came from an authoritative source. It smells like the sloppy work of a lazy cult ignoramus thoughtlessly condensing his source material to fit into the space available. (Maybe that's also why there was no caption???)

Defenders of the cult might argue the flub was the fault of a semi-literate lay compiler of the bulletin. But, then, why didn't the $GG fake clergy catch this serious blooper before going to print?  Don't the cult's theologasters proofread the bulletin, at least the portions dealing with Sacred Scripture?  Since Protestants often criticize Catholics about their knowledge of the Bible, you'd think the sedes would be especially conscientious about making sure their scriptural references were 100% accurate.

Or did this giant boo-boo come from the imitation clergy in the first place?

Whatever the answer, long years of following this and other blogs have proved to you that cult sedes are not skilled professionals. What kind of professional would perversely mistranslate infallible papal teaching? What professional would have made such errors as PL brought to light out of that darkling mess Work of Human Hands.  What professional Catholic organization would have published an ordo so filled with mistakes that it took PL a year to cover them? What professional would have occasioned this exposé from the Readers? But in Tradistan, professionalism counts for zilch, zip, zero, nada. The depraved cult zombies are so clueless they don't even notice flagrant mistakes, nor do they care to learn the truth from better-schooled heads.

The Readers guess today's erroneous tidbit found it way into the bulletin because someone wanted (A) to impress the gullible Gerties with a faux-learned reference to the koinē text and (B), probably, to suggest that cultlings put themselves last and the grasping "clergy" first. The result was neither the edification of the faithful nor good P.R. for the cult masters. It's a horrible mishmash of the New Testament at which any thrush-infected pulpit-thumper from a storefront Bible-belt "cathedral" would twang in anti-papist derision.

If the SW Ohio cult can't manage to summarize the Word of God correctly in a tiny bulletin item, how can traditional Catholic laity trust the cult masters in the large matters of faith and morals? Getting the minutiae right is a warrant that someone can handle the big stuff. Disraeli was wrong: small things affect great minds. That's why the little stuff matters ever so much to professionals. It's proof they have the skills and knowledge to deliver what you're paying for.

It was bad enough when Tony Baloney wrongly altered the sense of Pius XII 's teaching in Sacramentum Ordinis (click here, see VI-VIII). Now someone at the cult is altering the content of Christ's very words. If the gross error featured in today's post were only one of a kind, then we'd be wrong to harp on it. But it isn't.

 Everybody in TradWorld knows it isn't. **

MAKE YOUR ESCAPE FROM THE TRADISTANI GHETTO TODAY!

*And the Greek isn't close either: μακρόθεν ἑστὼς is certainly not ἀνάπεσε εἰς τὸν ἔσχατον τόπον. Nor is the Latin: a longe stans  ≠  recumbe in novissimo loco. 

** If you still think we've been too harsh in our judgment of the sede sub-sub-amateurs, — and we know some of you do — then ask yourself why, with Checkie's library "filled with scholarly books"(which you'll recall the YAGGIES visited on Cheeseball's boring tour of the cult center), couldn't $GG have printed something with the same message but without the error?  Take our word for it: there's no end to professional English-language commentaries on "the" special sinner of Luke 18:13, even from the years before an approved popular Catholic translation printed "the sinner" (Confraternity) rather than "a sinner" (Douay Rheims).

For instance, in his 1906 The Gospels of the Sundays and Festivals (which contained both the Greek and Latin pericopes for the priests of yesteryear who could read both languages), Cornelius J. Canon Ryan wrote the following:

... the publican ... directs attention to his own sins only. He says: "Be propitious to me, a sinner," or as it is still more forcibly put in the Greek: "Be propitious to me, the sinner." The pharisee considered himself alone in a class: he was the saint, and all others were sinners. On the contrary, ... the publican in his appeal to God calls himself "the sinner,' the transgressor by excellence, in comparison with whom all others are just (vol. ii, p. 217).

Now, then, all $GG would've had to do is add a caption, say, NOTE ON TODAY'S GOSPEL, and they'd've had a professional bulletin entry. So close, yet soooo far.