TIME YOU WERE OFF

Through the Jungle very softly flits a shadow and a sigh -- / He is Fear... Kipling
The union of aliquid-pravi Catholics needs no overwrought -- and over-budget -- buildings. (There's no sense in trading in one evil for another of the same ilk.) Catholics from all over the world will be able to find clergy, locate services, get answers to their questions, engage in productive dialog, and seek direct assistance in wresting their chapels from the hands of greedy clergy through a website that's free of charge. (That's a new one for the Traddie world!)

To our delight, one of the first steps needed to form the union is already under way. Right now an eager cadre of Catholics is hard at work building a new site that will be an information clearinghouse for genuine Catholics. They're also busy lining up resources so that when you're ready to show "One-Hand," the rector, the Pesthouse clods, and sundry other clerical and prelatical spongers the door, you'll have plenty of assistance. These Catholics are funding the project with the money they're withholding from the collection plate at the cult centers they now attend. (That's why you're hearing a lot of fervent appeals from the cult masters.)

At present, this dedicated group must work in the shadows out of fear that their families will be denied the sacraments by lawless priests and spendthrift wandering bishops. Soon, however, the grasping clergy will be sick with fear when the cash-flow dries up. If you want to get involved, you may send an e-mail to pistrinalit@gmail.com, and the Reader will forward it to the group's leaders. All correspondence will be kept confidential. If you can't get involved at the moment, that's fine. You can help by just starving the beast and putting your collection money into a fund for when you start your own chapel.

We don't know when the site will go online: we learned of the project only a few days ago. However, we've seen the templates, and we've met the principals via Skype. We're impressed. It appears as though there's a real ground swell rising up against money-hungry clergy who have for far too long tried to bully the laity into submission.

GAME OVER, SCROUNGERS! YOU'RE IN THE SHADOW OF SOMETHING BIG, AND YOUR DAY IN THE SUN IS LONG OVER. BETTER PACK UP AND LEAVE.

FOLLOW AN ANTIQUE DRUM

The union of hands and hearts. Bp. Taylor

Catholics who have matured beyond the divisive boys'-club strategies of "One-Hand" Dan and the rector can become a real force in the return to traditiion. Leadership doesn't have to come from these self-serving wandering bishops. (God forbid!) Whether they know it or not, aliquid-pravi Catholics possess all the resources they need to start moving finally in the right direction -- on the path to unity.

There are some good and decent clergy who abhor the ravages wreaked on the cause of tradition by swashbuckling clerical buccaneers. Many laymen have acquired theological knowledge that far surpasses the mediocre attainments of the miserably formed clergy who have set themselves up as "the real thing." (Why, they can't even tell the difference between a noun and an adjective!) Lay professionals are more than willing to lend their expertise to erecting chapels free from money-mad, mitered mountebanks. There are now fully developed plans to establish training programs for new priests, and there is the will to escape from the deadly embrace of men more intrerested in keeping Catholics apart than in uniting them. Most importantly, real Catholics who know that something's wrong with Rome want to stand together with anyone who feels the same. Forget everything else!

So, how do we throw out the bums and get together? How do we make sure that Catholicism isn't hijacked ever again?

The answer's simple. We form a union. A union of Catholics who admit that something went wrong in the wake of Vatican II. A union of Catholics for whom solidarity means more than sophomoric hairsplitting and half-baked theorizing.

Over the next few weeks Pistrina will talk about this union -- how to get it going and how to organize it. The posts will be short and sweet. Then we'll leave it up to you to act.

OH, SO WRONG AGAIN...AND AGAIN AND AGAIN!

...he usually gets it wrong. Marquis

Right after we uploaded last week's post, we received another confirmation that the opinions of the rector and his equally clueless pals aren't worth a leaky bucket of warm spit (as the euphemized saying goes): In our mailbox we found the August 2012 MHT Newsletter, where the rector had to walk back the oft-repeated prediction of the SSPX's imminent surrender to Rome. To the rector's chagrin --he confesses to being "overall depressed by the prospect" --  for now, at least, the society hasn't caved in. Even better, it's reserved the right to disavow Vatican II's "novelties ... tainted with errors" and its "reforms."

So it's clear these sede clergy on-the-make are not only busts as theologians, they're also duds as SSPX "kremlinologists." They are utterly and terrifyingly lost in a world they can't possibly understand.

We think the rector is wrong again when he claims this episode is "the final chapter in regard to the negotiations between the Vatican Modernists and the Society of Saint Pius X." Having worked in the real world, the Readers are well aware that the internal power struggle within the SSPX is probably far from over. (Smart men don't give up so easily.) Nevertheless, for the time being, the society is echoing, for all practical purposes, Pistrina's aliquid pravi theory, viz., something went dreadfully wrong in Rome after council. That makes them fellow Catholics in our book. If the SSPX continues to hold the line, they'll be the true leaders of the Catholic Restoration.

Given the rector's lousy track record as a prognosticator, he's surely wrong , too, in his surmise that "[i]t will take many years" before the vested interests in the Vatican Establishment recognize that the council's teachings contradict tradition. Pistrina hereby informs the rector that events are spinning out of the Modernists' control, as the embarrassing recent leaks from the Vatican's inner circle demonstrate.

B16 is an inept and out-of-touch chief executive. Moreover, the criminal convictions of Bp. Finn and Msgr. Lynn in the U.S. are just the beginning of a world-wide effort to bring negligent prelate-cronies to account. That's why there's a better-than-even chance that the unstoppable forces now set in motion will accelerate the scholarly analysis of the council's break from tradition. (The Novus Ordo wants to distance itself from dead ideas as much as Traddies do.)  That research will soon make plain to the world that something indeed went very wrong in the wake of Vatican II. Sooner than we think, the Establishment may have to capitulate in the face of a "Traditional Catholic Spring."

The rector, "One-Hand," and the Blunderer have been as off-base in their ecclesiology as they have been in their ecclesiastical punditry. Accordingly, these laughably trained "Wrong-Way Corrigans" are deserving of no Catholic's attention. Their wild conjectures merit contempt. In fact, real Catholics may give themselves permission to discount anything and everything they say.

The laity and right-minded clergy who simply acknowledge that something's wrong with Rome have much more reliable sources to look toward for assistance and support. It's time to give these clerical dividers of houses the bum's rush. There's no place for segregation in Christ's Church. Show these Roman-collared losers the door, and end all this greed-inspired religious apartheid.

Next week, we'll discuss how aliquid-pravi Catholics can get together to work for the faith.

TURNING OVER A NEW LEAF

The old order changeth, yielding place to new. Tennyson

Sede Vacantism. Sede Privationism. Sede Plenism. Recognition and Resistance. Suppression of the Leonine Prayers. Suspect Episcopal Lineages. Una-cum Masses. The Contagion of the Pius XII Rite. Vitiation of Novus-Ordo Holy Orders. 

These are more than Traddie catchwords. They are shibboleths to detect "subversives" who might not agree with certain cult leaders. They also needlessly divide Catholics of a similar mind from each other. Each of these buzz words has its fanatical proponents and opponents.  Each has been the cause of aching distress and disunity. Yet every one of these Traddie rallying cries is nothing but a mere theory, which must remain hypothetical until a restored Catholic Church renders an authoritative decision. 

At first, many of us thought these terms represented a principled attempt to explain the shattered state of the Church visible in the long, post-conciliar nuclear winter. However, we've all grown up. Shape-shifting clergy have at times both advocated and later condemned the same position, leaving the laity to scratch their heads in stunned bewilderment. The motive behind these trigger words now seems to be more economic than spiritual -- to compel, on pain of mortal sin, the faithful to remain in and support one chapel no matter how disgracefully its clergy behave. If people don't think they have a choice, so the reasoning goes, then they'll tolerate the intolerable for their souls' sake and keep on forking over their cash.

Now, we say, is the time to discard all this fruit of a poisonous tree. Traditional Catholics don't need divisive tests of their faith, tests based on opinions. More importantly, many of these opinions have been loudly promoted by half-educated clergy without the requisite training to speak on such weighty matters. We need something simpler, an idea that will unite us in our holy faith, not separate us from our brethren. Let's no longer allow worldly Mammonites to keep us apart over what are in essence amateurs' guesses about the unknowable.

As an alternative, we propose the following simple affirmation as the mark of a Catholic: something is wrong with the institution that emerged after Vatican II -- somehow the Vatican Establishment has gone off in the wrong direction.  If our proposal must have a name, then we'll call it the aliquid pravi* thesis. (Traddies love Latin slogans, even if they and their clergy have never mastered the language, so we'll oblige.) Like the Church itself, aliquid pravi is a "Big-Tent" concept. SSPXers, conservative conciliar Catholics, and every stripe of sede-ist can find shelter and fellowship there.  There'll be no finger-pointing or infantile "mine's-better-than-yours" taunts. Instead, Catholics will enjoy the harmony that results when virtuous men and women share a common purpose.

Since aliquid pravi is not a cult movement, there'll be no attempt at thought-control. Catholics are free to hold and discuss any detailed explanation they please for the current crisis. For instance, we Readers, if really pressed on the subject, are partial to the materialiter theory, but we listen to other positions, ever hopeful for a more satisfying account. We frankly don't know who's right or who's wrong. What we won't do, however, is condemn a Catholic who has another take on the problem. As long as a person admits that Rome has gone astray by rejecting immemorial tradition, then for us that person is a fellow Catholic whether he be some kind of sede, use the Pius XII rite or the '62 Missal, attend a Summorum Pontificum Mass, or belong to a conservative Novus-Ordo parish. We may choose by reason of conscience, taste, social status, or habit not to worship at that person's church, but we won't call him a heretic.  More to the point, we won't uncharitably lay the charge of mortal sin against anyone who chooses to pray with a fellow Catholic. They are all our brothers and sisters in the holy crusade against Modernism, so we'll let everyone follow the dictates of his conscience (and keep our noses out of what isn't our or the malformed clergy's business).

Lay governance of chapels will hold aliquid pravi harmless from cult-inclined priests, especially from those money-hungry, wandering bishops who falsely suggest (or, worse, assert) that they are true successors to the apostles. Those sharpies know they haven't a whit of jurisdiction, so they foment disunity in order to direct the flow of resources into their pockets alone. They are brother no man. Any loyalty they possess is to their own narrow self-love. They would devour each other if it were to their advantage. Their savage "apostolate" has two clear-cut policies: (1) divide families and friendships, and rake in the bucks, and (2) keep the faithful irrationally frightened, and act with impunity. Aliquid pravi is indeed a "Big Tent," but there's no room under it for the likes of these ruthless preachers of discord, these cynical apostles of malice.

Yes, now is the time for lay well-intentioned women and men of shared purpose to (a) repudiate the self-interested narrative of flim-flam prelates, (b) take control, and (c) unite with fellow Catholics whose hearts have counseled them with moral certainty that something is wrong with Rome.

*We would also accept aliquid pravum (Virgil wrote aliquid magnum, "something big") because many Traddie clergy don't understand the usage of the quantitative partitive. Pistrina likes the genitive of the thing measured because it echoes the refined colloquial sophistication of Terence's aliquid mali, "something bad," our in-house name for the Terrible Trio.

AS GOOD AS A FEAST

...'tis enough, 'twill serve. Shakespeare

Our series on a new model of priestly training set off a landslide of mail. We expected it would, because we impugned the false narrative scripted by the so-called elites of Sedelandia. (What a state we're in when a pace of braying, jack-pudding, hard-scrabble clergy can even be termed "elite.") Absit!

Several correspondents asked how a two-year program like ours could produce professional clergy. If they understand the word professional to mean fitness for the priesthood assured by many years of formal preparation in a recognized academic institution under the guidance of highly educated, experienced teachers, then the Reader frankly admits that its products will not be professional clergy. They will, however, be professionals, at least in the civil sense, in virtue of their college degrees, which they must possess in order to be admitted. (That's a lot better than most of the laughable completers.)

But, so what if our priests aren't professional clergy, in the sense of the definition above? The current batch of sede seminary Pesthouse completers can't be called professionals in that sense either. Only a few have a real college degree from a recognized university. (Their instructors' late '60s and early '70's "seminary B.A.'s" don't count a bit.) Completers emerge after several years of performing menial labor as janitors, waiters, and scullery drudges with little knowledge, having believed their clerical cheerleaders' chant, "we're the best seminary in the world." Their "teachers" either are (1) unschooled, self-taught nincompoops who embarrass themselves every time they put pen to paper or are (2) recent completers who have been pressed into instructional service because they're unfit, or too scared, to work in a chapel.

Since the sede world is incapable of producing professional clergy, our program emphasizes vocational competence as a practical solution to the problem. In this life, a competent man -- someone who knows what to do, how to do it well, and actually does it -- is the most valuable asset in a crisis. (J.M. Barrie's play "The Admirable Crichton" offers a comic morality tale on that theme.) True, our clergy won't enjoy the same educational prestige as do the alumni of SSPX or FSSP seminaries, but they'll be able to do everything expected of a priest at a sede chapel. That alone renders them far superior to the Pesthouse completers.

They'll know what's a mortal sin and what isn't. The faithful can approach the tribunal of penance in confidence that the seal won't be compromised. If our products don't have a ready answer to a question, they'll look it up, not make it up. The laity will be treated with dignity, not contempt. The chapel's funds will be secure. Our priests will say Mass with practiced ease and definitely will not skip the consecration.

 No more patience-numbing  40-45-minute Low Masses scarred by rubrical gaffes. Furthermore, the homilies will be brief, intelligible, well-organized, and spiritually grounded. Insofar as our program will produce priests who can read the Missal fluently, the laity won't have to suffer through all the stumbling, re-reading, and stammering that detracts from the Pesthouse completers' Masses; more to the point, the faithful won't have to worry that their priest may have misread something in the canon of the Mass and thereby failed to confect the sacrament. 

With our clergy, there'll no longer be any nagging, lingering doubts about the validity of their priestly orders, since we've made certain that the bishops we use have been ordained to the priesthood with two hands, as the apostolic constitution Sacramentum ordinis requires. We're too scrupulous to take two years of a man's life only to deface his résumé with a badge of shame in the form of a scarlet letter D. (This last point is so important that we'll even arrange for "One-Hand"-ordained priests to receive conditional ordination, as our gift to the laity. They just need to send us an e-mail, which we'll keep confidential.)

The bottom line is this: Today a professional priest cannot be found in the sede world.

But life's hard. In such circumstances, second best is more than good enough. We warrant competence, which no other "seminary" has been able to underwrite. Let the Restoration give back to us the professionals. Meanwhile, let's throw out all the clutter and concentrate on the basics. More on a new way of thinking about the crisis next week.