GETTING PRIORITIES STRAIGHT

The cabbages are coming now.  Betjeman

About a month ago, Michael Brendan Dougherty posted a much admired article at "The Week" censuring Catholics for "becoming party apparatchiks." In today's distorted celebrity culture, he notes that Catholics "tend to treat the pope as their 'party leader,' and to treat 'the world' as an opposing party." This contemporary mindset is flawed, for it tempts the faithful to rally behind the leader at any cost:

Party membership and church membership are not alike at all. Party bids its members to spin, minimize, and explain away supposed contradictions between one party leader and the next, to hide deviations by party leaders from the party platform. Because party members cannot know the outcome of the next election, crimes, oversight, or simple mismanagement by the party leader are treated as much less serious offenses to the cause than the scandal that would come from admitting or publicizing them in the sight of the opposing party.

The reflex to defend the leader at any cost is psychologically and spiritually dangerous: 

Catholics conditioned by the last 50 years of life in the church are totally unprepared for the eventuality of the pope or a papally approved Synod (i.e., a governing council) issuing a "policy" that flatly contradicts church teaching. For many of them, many good men, it will just be a new party line. Or perhaps, more insanely, they will claim, in an Orwellian turn, that the new policy was always the church's real policy. 

Dougherty's article is well worth reading in its entirety for its insight into the current "Catholic Party" mentality that adheres to Bergoglio even as he sets into motion policies that will do away with the last remnants of orthodoxy in the Vatican Establishment. However, the piece unwittingly sounds a warning to Traddies, who in their partisan defense of this or that sede tribal chieftain, are blind to their radioactive masters' greed, arbitrary decision-making, invented doctrines, prejudices, ignorance, mind-control schemes, and ill will. They behave like the fanatical followers of Hillary Clinton, who, as party loyalists first, willfully ignore the scandals of Travelgate, the Whitewater controversy, Filegate, the Bosnian-sniper-fire tall tale, the Benghazi massacre, and so on and so on.

Traddies often ask in exasperation how citizens can be so blind as to support political hacks whose public record would consign them to oblivion if we inhabited a virtuous country. Yet they, too, thoughtlessly prop up equally reproachable cult leaders. It's not as though the truth about sede bosses lies hidden. It's been either made public or can effortlessly be learned by asking around. In many cases, the party faithful of Tradistan have heard all the stories -- and they know they're true. Nonetheless, these bewitched folks close their eyes and keep on funding the sede Svengalis in spite of the evidence. A classic example are those degenerate zealots who witnessed the repulsive SGG School scandal and yet remained at the cult center, choosing cardboard personalities over Catholic principles.

Such blindness is a dereliction of a Catholic's duty to the faith. Personalities are not the faith, nor do they represent it. They do not possess immunity from error or from criticism when they do err. More importantly, no Catholic needs, even in these dire times, personalities to retain their faith, which comes from God, not from some malformed huckster with a dubious pedigree. If Bergie and the grasping sede mountebanks flew away together to Neverland to re-unite with the other lost boys who weren't clever enough to stay put in their prams, you'd still possess the faith as pristine as ever. (In fact, it would be stronger, for you wouldn't have to fear losing it because of the head honcho's hypocrisy.)

Embracing the cult of a leader's personality -- whether you live in Pyongyang, Washington, Rome, or a pinprick of a town on the map of Ohio -- is the default setting of a lazy, diseased, and terrified mind incapable of demanding that self-appointed bosses conform to what is objectively right. It's a mind that refuses to think critically lest it be unsettled by howling contradictions.  As manifested among the Novus Ordites and Traddies, the mental disorder makes vulnerable Catholics confuse a one-dimensional cartoon character for the substance of divine faith. Most reprehensible of all, the confusion prevents the mentally fragile from fulfilling their obligation to condemn unworthy leaders who offend religion.  As Dougherty counsels:

Sometimes, the duty of a faithful Catholic is not just to rebuke and correct those in authority in the church like St. Catherine of Siena, but to throw rotting cabbage at them, or make them miserable, as we once did, with the connivance of worldly authorities, during the deadlocked papal election in Viterbo.

If you aspire to be a traditional Catholic of any stripe, you must first refuse to join the Catholic Party. Insist you belong to the Catholic Church, albeit you can't quite see her clearly nowadays. Do your duty: This time, instead of lobbing putrid veggies at crackpot pontiffs playing fast and loose with doctrine or at self-mythologizing, under-educated clerical entrepreneurs playing fast and loose with the laity's generosity, make them all miserable by denying these third-raters all the cash and material resources they must have to complete their squalid agendas.

You'll preserve the faith as surely as did the great saints who knew better than to put their trust in mere men -- especially vipers like these so deserving of the Catholic community's scorn.

SPRING MAILBAG #5

Editor's Note: The last letter in our spring mailbag series. 

I am very upset about Dolan meddling with the priests who left the Trento Society. Mexico has preserved the Traditional Faith and True Sacraments longer than in the US. It is wrong for him to go down there and stir up trouble and division.

When I go back to visit, I want to warn the people that Dolan may not be a priest or a bishop so the confirmations he gives may not be valid so they should stay away.

I have read your articles about one-hand ordinations, but can you give a simple explanation that the average person could understand?

We're glad to help, although it seems our correspondent's already mastered the gist of the argument. Someone has to stop Dannie from trying to poach the faithful in other countries. He's no longer welcome in France, so it's time for our good neighbor Mexico to slam the door on his silly face. Were it not for Mexican leadership in the first place, Dannie wouldn't have been able to wrangle a consecration.

Here's the argument in a nutshell, written for easy translation:

1. In 1990, nine American priests sent Dolan a cautionary letter. In it, they wrote, "Since your ordination was done with one hand, we must hold your ordination to be dubious, unless evidence can be brought forth that one-handed ordination is certainly valid." They urged Dolan to "diligently...research the problem" and report his findings.

2. Anthony Cekada researched the problem and claimed that priestly ordination with one hand was valid. In 2000, he privately printed and circulated a pamphlet that contained his defense of one-handed conferral of priestly orders.

3. For a time, most American and foreign clergy uncritically accepted Cekada's "findings." 

4. In 2005, a wandering bishop suspected that Cekada had gravely mistranslated Pope Pius XII's definition of the matter of the sacrament of priestly orders for the Latin rite (found in the 1947 apostolic constitution Sacramentum Ordinis, which decreed the imposition of both hands for valid ordination). A subsequent analysis by a trained Latinist confirmed the translation was erroneous.

5. In 2013-14,  the blog Pistrina Liturgica published a series of posts refuting and/or rebutting Cekada's "findings." In additiion, the blog exposed many other serious errors of scholarship and Latin.

6. As a result, today no one may use Cekada's pamphlet to uphold the validity of one-handed priestly ordinations: the original positive doubt raised by the 1990 letter of the nine priests remains in force. 

7. Since valid priestly orders are generally held to be a requirement for the valid reception of the episcopacy, Dolan may not be a bishop if one-handed imposition invalidates his priestly ordination.

8. Since the Church cannot decide the problem until the Restoration and since, in the case of the sacraments, Catholics are obliged to pursue the safer course, the Catholic attitude in practice towards Dolan's priestly and episcopal orders must be that they enjoy no presumption of validity. Consequently, both his priestly and episcopal orders must therefore be treated "null and void."

9. If Dolan is conditionally re-ordained a priest and re-consecrated a bishop by a valid bishop who correctly follows Pius XII's ruling, then he may be considered a valid bishop.

Within a few months Pistrina will publish in English and Spanish a summary of its posts from May 4, 2013, to January 11, 2014, in a simple, reader-friendly format. After that we hope to publish French and German translations. Our goal is to distribute these versions widely so the faithful can be informed of the truth. We also hope that the clergy ordained by "One-Hand" will see how necessary it is that they be conditionally re-ordained, too.

In the meantime, Dubious Dan must be prevented from disturbing the peace in other countries. He needs to stay put in the U.S. anyway and defend his turf in SW Ohio. The new chapel in Lebanon, Ohio, is off to a great start, and it can offer masses where there's no doubt about the validity of the celebrants' orders. On the other hand, the cult center has three priests ordained by "One Hand," so there'll always be some measure of doubt at most Masses celebrated there. Dannie's got an uphill struggle in front of him, so he'll do himself a favor by letting Latin America be governed by Latin Americans, who are both better educated and more responsive to their faithful.

SPRING MAILBAG #4

Editor's Note: ¡Arre, Burro! Dannie's barely unpacked from his last adventure when he's off back to the west coast of Mexico again (♬ Ya va llegando el PEN-dejo ♬). Here's an email we received about "One Hand Dan's" plans to head on down for the sun-and-fun of Tijuana on the Baja Gold Coast via luscious San Diego:

I couldn't believe my eyes when I read that Dolan is heading back to Mexico so soon! It looks like he is "doubling down" in the wake of your criticism. Do you think he is showing you he can do whatever he wants no matter how bad it looks? 

When you described the St. Gertrude parishioners as "low class imbecile suckers" I used to think you were just being your usual nasty, mean selves. How wrong I was -- my bad. Normal people would not put up with his behavior after the $3000 heating bill.

The "Gertrudians" are so dumb they should belong to a protected class of individuals under the law to keep them from being exploited. You have to say one thing about Dolan, he has a blank check and is fearless about the amount he fills in.

On the face of it, yes, it does seem as though Dannie's got the SW Ohio cult trash in hand. Yet we question how tight his grip really is. In his "Bishop's (?) Corner," right after announcing his latest getaway, Dannie somewhat defensively wrote this baffling non-sequitur:

Every aspect of travel is a labor of love, only of love, but so is life for a Christian.

How does a non-cultist Catholic interpret such cloying drivel? The obvious meaning, without question, is: Wee Dan loves to travel, and the "Gerties" must labor to provide it. But we also suspect there's a deeper message beneath that absurd pap.

"One Hand" is worried.

In the shabby hallways and rancid latrines of the moribund cult center, there's been sharp talk about his wandering ways -- and the big expenses. Attendance is down. Collections are getting thinner. The blank faces are morphing into resentful frowns. Raised eyebrows and surly looks contort beyond recognition the savagely twisted features of the restive victims staring back angrily from the pews. In the stifling atmosphere of decaying SGG, there's a palpable sense that all is coming to an end, especially when St. Therese the Little Flower chapel opens up in its new, permanent home in frighteningly nearby Lebanon, Ohio, tomorrow (May 18).

Tormented simultaneously by the burning itch to travel abroad and the bowel-loosening fear of mass defections, Dannie has turned to what he knows best -- religiously themed B.S. In his anxiety, he fretfully hopes and prays the culties are stupid enough to believe that Christian brotherly love motivates his unnecessary, money-wasting wanderlust. By the very act of explaining himself so pitifully, he betrays his weak position. And the sheer outlandishness of his disordered explanation further diminishes His Edginess.

Imbeciles, too, have a threshold for credulity. Eventually the blindest mark will refuse to be suckered into a game with the deck stacked against him once he detects the card-shark's ill will. So, it's natural to ask why Deacon Dan hazards another cash-burning, sun-blasted trip that may push his culties another step toward a peasant revolt.

The answer is that Dannie's fractured self-esteem is on life support.

In the U.S., outside his ratty, down-market cult center, decent clergy and laity alike consider him beneath contempt. Just whispering his name provokes a mixture of repugnance and loathing: He's like a cockroach at a wedding reception. Everyone knows that whenever "Big Don" finally drops him, he'll have nothing to do except write his disjointed weekly weather report for an ever diminishing readership.

But Dubious Dan's plight is far worse than his universal disrepute: He's secretly running away from the truth that his career has been an abject failure. In fact, his failure is so complete that he isn't even anyone's rival -- especially in Mexico. The Trento bishop knows Dannie's tapped out, so his tenuous "apostolate" down there won't last much longer. It'll just take a little push.

The long and the short of it is that His Deficiency counts for nothing in the traditional movement. All his adversaries have surpassed him in span of control, chapel membership, cash-on-hand, accomplishment, and sanctity, despite his razor-sharp elbows and unrelenting scheming. By American religious-cult standards, all "One Hand's" chapels put together don't equal a fair-sized evangelical micro-church. So insignificant is His Non-Entity, the SSPV doesn't stoop to attack him seriously. Every Traddie priest and bishop of substance ignores him, and the most popular and influential U.S. wandering bishop has set up shop right, smack in the middle of helpless Dannie's back yard. The humiliation is too much for an overmatched soul to bear.

That's why he must travel to Mexico, the last country outside Tradistan still open to him. Otherwise, he'd be compelled to doubt his relevance.

Whenever Dannie makes a run for the border, the psycho-social milieu changes.  In sun-caressed, sapphire-skied, and languidly distant México lindo, His Insufficiency can imagine he's somebody important, an adult with a mission, a gringo churchman worthy of admiration. The trusting, innocent Mexican faithful -- whose cynical priests use Needy Dan to settle scores with their old boss (and get a handout)  -- have no idea how reviled he is in the 'States. With childlike faith, they trust their cunning clergy, who ply to their advantage His Inadequacy's pathetic wants. Waddling into some poor village, surrounded by smiling, simple people who know nothing of his record, Li'l Dan can pretend for a day or two that he's a glorious prelate of yesteryear and not the grubby butt of unseemly, present-day jokes in Gringolandia. 

That fleeting, giddy feeling affords him temporary relief from the jeers, sneers, and snide remarks he must endure at home. That's why for "One Hand" it's worth chancing the loss of cultie allegiance in exchange for a moment of manufactured adulation. Then the imminent risk of rebellion is not important as long as his ego gets massaged. But this escape route from reality may soon be closed to His Dubiety when the Mexicans learn he might not be a priest or a bishop.

When he tries to distract them by citing Tony Baloney's error-filled monograph, they'll answer with Pistrina's rebuttal/refutation.  Like France, Mexico will soon wash its hands of this grasping interloper when they learn the facts. Then Deacon Dan will be all dressed up with nowhere to go. Maybe he'll just get out for good after the rudely awakened "Gerties" decide to stop being suckers.


 

SPRING MAILBAG #3

Editors's Note: We continue last week's post with additional comments from Dannie's apple-polishing bootlicker, who was so bent out of shape by our highly acclaimed reporting on "Dannie's Excellent Adventure":

Here in Mexico, and you know very well, we do not have the same laws with respect to fasting and abstinence as in the United States. What is worrisome is that today many false teachers arise who want to control the clergy...This is not the spirit of the Church!!!*

When "One-Hand Dan" crossed over into Mexico, he didn't enter into another dimension. He didn't move "into a land of both shadow and substance," where he was forced to act against his will. No weird power mysteriously transported him to a posh Argentine eatery and compelled him to gorge on "copious quantities of meat." Wee Dan easily could have honored gringo Lenten practice without offending a soul (except perhaps the free-loading native priests who craved a barbecued meat-and-offal eating extravaganza at somebody else's expense). 

If "One Hand" did eat at the elegant Cambalache restaurant, he could've ordered the costly 10-ounce tuna steak, the Norway salmon, or the whole whitefish, while his carnivore dining companions wolfed down, say, the 28-ounce rib eye and/or the equally massive tenderloin or perhaps greedily devoured the heroically proportioned mixed grill. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean to have to do it. To abandon the stricter yanqui discipline during his exotic spring holiday abroad showed a singular contempt for piety. Invoking a petty legalistic excuse to interrupt the soul-purifying rigors of Lent is certainly not the spirit of the Church.

And speaking of the spirit of the Church, we question the standing of this self-serving priest to appeal to it:

✭Is it the spirit of the Church for an expelled seminarian to defy his lawful superior's explicit, direct command not to wear the cassock when he returned to his own country?

✭Is it in the spirit of the Church for the same expelled seminarian to return and lodge a civil charge against his superior for discrimination?

✭Is it in the spirit of the Church for seminary rejects to go hunting for priestly orders elsewhere after being so decisively judged by competent authority?

Would "Big Don" countenance this behavior from one of the pesthouse inmates?

Certainly not. This is the problem with the sedes: The rules always apply to somebody else, never to them. In the on-going ecclesial crisis, the spirit of the Church is almost invisible, and it's plain as day that sede cult clergy haven't the wherewithal to preserve it.

The spirit of the Church has never allowed the clergy to exercise their own whims unchecked. Guidance, oversight, and direction of the clergy is, in fact, a hallmark of the Roman Catholic Church. Everyone is accountable. Consequently, absent a visible and divinely established hierarchy, malformed, clericalist, and mammonite priests must be regulated by the next best thing -- the laity who pay all the bills. If the spirit of the Church still flourished, many a sleaze-bag hypocrite would never have received holy orders.

What's ironic is that our priestly correspondent once had the grace to condemn Dannie's parasitic ways. Years ago, after several lay people once complained to him about Wee Dan's manic "alms" gathering for St. Gertrude's, he aggressively barked, "St. Gertrude is in heaven! She doesn't need alms!" Well, we suppose that financial dependency "doth make cowards of us all," so now this false-faced chilote bolsero busies himself with carrying water for the gringo cult masters who scooped him out of the gutter and dumped him into their own reeking cesspool.

As his reward for mounting this laughable defense, maybe "One Hand" will ask him to tag along on his upcoming trip to Tijuana. We double-dog dare this shameless aprovechado to ask Dannie to prove who's paying for this new foreign junket. We triple-dog dare him to tell the people of Tijuana that "One Hand" may not even be a priest let alone a bishop.

*Aquí en México,y Ud. lo sabe muy bien,no tenemos las mismas leyes con respecto al Ayuno y Abstinencia como en Estados Unidos. Lo preocupante, es que hoy surgen muchos seudo-doctores que quieren controlar a los Clérigos … Este no es el espíritu de la Iglesia!!!.

SPRING MAILBAG #2

Editor's Note: Our post about "Dannie's Excellent Adventure" must have touched a nerve -- or drawn blood: We received a puffed-up and preachy e-mail from a huffy sede priest who hitched a ride on the back end of "One Hand's" latest junket to sun drenched Mexico. The e-mail, written in Spanish and captioned Aclaración ("clarification, explanation"), wasn't addressed to the Reader, so it automatically went into spam. It was only by chance our webmaster saw it before deleting the other trash. We have translated the relevant parts and appended the original in the footnotes (exactly as we received it).

…Bp. Dolan’s trip was financed by Fr. Hernán Vergara and his parishioners. They have sufficient economic means for this and more. As a result, the priests who belonged to the Trento society have sought out and asked for the help of Bp. Dolan in order to work with him.*

All that may be true, but if we were "Gerties," we'd insist on seeing the documentation proving the Baja group paid for the (1) airfare to and from the U.S., (2) air and ground transportation in Mexico, (3) food, (4) lodging, and (5) gratuities for the La-Paz leg of the tour as well as for the rest of the vacation, viz., (1) the sojourn in Mexico City, (2) the "medical tourism" excursion to Puebla, and (3) the round-trip jaunt to Vera Cruz state. In addition, we would want to know who paid the expenses of our e-mail correspondent, a Chilean by birth, who resides -- the last time we heard -- near the U.S.-Mexico border.

Remember, boys and girls: declaring those good folks have the means to underwrite Li'l Dan's spring vacation doesn't mean they actually did.

Without receipts showing who paid what, this sycophant's "clarification" clears up nothing.  As a defense, it's worthless ... of no probative value whatsoever. It simply invites more questions. From long experience, we're all familiar with the sedes' tiresome mental reservation and equivocation. Only genuine receipts can support this contemptible lickspittle's insinuation, for it taxes belief that the people of Baja underwrote Dannie's excellent adventure in its entirety, including the reprehensible Lenten red-meat-eating frenzy at a swanky Argentine steak house in the capital.

That's an awful lot of money for an international trip that was as unnecessary as it was wasteful. Several thousand dollars buys a lot in Mexico. As we've noted before, the Mexican priests didn't have to use "One Hand" if  they didn't want the Trento bishop or, as the case probably stands, he didn't want to have anything to do with them. There are plenty of other bishops around down there. And if those worthies balked, the priests themselves have the power to confirm.

Truly, it would've been better for the Baja and Vera Cruz faithful if their own priests had conducted the confirmations. As you all know, it's not only possible, but also in the realm of probability, that "One Hand" may not be a priest (and hence is not a bishop). What a crying shame if they squandered their precious resources on an invalid sacrament, when their own clergy could have confected it validly at no cost at all.

For the sake of discussion, despite the utter absence of tangible proof, we won't categorically dismiss the brown-nosing Chilean's claim that the Baja chapel contributed to Dannie's Lenten holiday spree. The good folks down there could well have paid for only the first leg of Travelin' Man Dan's spring break, say, the round-trip flight from Mexico City plus the Baja lodging amidst fragrant laurel trees and swaying coconut and date palms.

However, without first seeing receipts, we definitely will not take the word of any pants-on-fire cultish priestling -- especially one of "One Hand's" untrustworthy lackeys -- that the good folks of Baja paid for the whole spring-fling. From what we've learned of this loudmouth troublemaker,** we don't believe he was moved to write to Pistrina on his own. In fact, we don't believe he'd ever read us at all. Somebody else must surely have put a nervous bug in his servile ear.

We're convinced the pressure on Panhandlin' Dan is increasing at the SW Ohio cult center. Some very knowledgeable sources inform us that the SGG cult established a separate fund to pay off the staggering winter heating bill. By all accounts, quite a few folks down there have grown weary of the incessant appeals for more and more money to bail out the high-living big spenders. There are also credible reports that attendance is suffering, too.

Now, if the few conscious "Gerties" think that "One Hand Dan" spent any cult money at all -- even his own -- on the Mexican escape while he knew of the outstanding heating bill, they would be very upset. Hardworking families understand when there's a crisis at home, that's where all resources belong. In a financial crisis, the whole family makes sacrifices for its survival.

Many "Gerties" will have to cancel or curtail their vacations this year because of their own sky-high household fuel bills. Unlike the cult masters, they've got no one stupid enough to bail them out. Had Dannie cared about his raggedy flock, he'd have known that people have enough trouble as it is meeting their monthly bills without his high-pressuring them for more and more money. If St. Gertrude's is a "family," as Dannie loves to say, why can't ol' Pops sacrifice a bit, too?

Consequently, before Deacon Dan demands more cash, he owes his folks -- both the spinning imbeciles and the casually deluded -- a detailed, day-by-day explanation (with all documentation attached) of where the money came from for both his Mexican adventure and his earlier escapade down Argentine way. A toad-eating errand boy's petulant complaint to Pistrina is no substitute, especially when the absence of documentation renders its veracity questionable.

Unless His Unaccountability can produce unimpeachable records to prove that his hosts paid for all travel expenses for both vacations, then the "Gerties" are morally obliged to withhold support for the next bail-out appeal, which will be coming soon. The money flushed down the toilet on these two ego-titillating getaways would have paid the SGG's winter fuel bills and then some.

TO BE CONTINUED...

* "El viaje de Mgr.Dolan, fue costeado por P.Hernán Vergara y su feligresía. Ellos, tienen los medios económicos suficientes para eso y más. Por lo cual,los Sacerdotes que pertenecieron a la Sociedad Trento, han buscado y solicitado la asistencia de Mgr.Dolan para trabajar con él."

** This clownish windbag used to pass himself off as Dannie Boy's "deputy" in Mexico. In that capacity, he caused a lot of trouble with his hot temper and Little-Miss-Bossy-Boots ways. Perhaps one day we'll tell the story of the trouble he fomented in Cuernavaca with a refined priest from Argentina. This intemperate clerical clod does not like Argentineans one bit (although he seems to have no objections to their excellent beef cuisine, especially at Lent).