DREAM ON

Unpinned even by rudimentary notions of time and space, dreams float or flash by, leaving in their wake trails of unease, hopes, fears and anxieties. Brook

As Yahoo almost daily reports another of Bergoglio's madcap efforts to remake the Vatican Establishment into something the Novus Ordo itself doesn't recognize, the sede cult kingpins renew their unrealistic hopes of an emergent, cult-plagued empire. Most importantly, these uneasy pipe dreamers envision their corporate, out-of-state bank accounts swelling with the grateful contributions of the disenchanted, conservative Novus Ordites who, they vainly fancy, will flock to their discredited cult centers. According to these lucre-addicts' hallucinations, the fresh meat will revive both their emptying chapels as well as their dashed hopes of influence. The crowds of refugees, these hucksters calculate, will more than recompense them for their ongoing losses. Once more (they dream) the 7:00 a.m. Sunday Mass will be standing room only, and the weekly collection will skyrocket past pre-2009 highs. No longer will they have to pad the statistics.

While we certainly agree that conservative Catholics are growing dismayed at Bergie's ungodly pronouncements, we have seven reasons why we don't believe that these latter-day pilgrims will set out for Tradistan's wasteland once they finally see the light.

First, the leavers will be mainly thinking, educated Catholics, not the addled "I'll-stick-with-the-Holy-Father-come-hell-or-high-water" types. (How similar to the trad troglodytes who cling to Dannie and Donnie despite the evidence!) That means these prospects will do the research before they leap to any group promising the true Catholic faith. It won't take them very long to find all the negative stories on the web about the cult's infamous clerics and their reprehensible antics over the years, especially the 2009 SGG School Scandal and Cheeseball Tony Baloney's blood-curdling, vengeful "opinion" about forsaken, tortured Terri Schiavo, who surely met a martyr's death.*

Second, they're used to accountability. As corrupt as the Novus Ordo is, there do exist institutional mechanisms and processes for the redress of lay grievances against clerical injustice and over-reach. Moreover, the abuse scandals of recent years have radicalized the N.O. laity, so, from the start, they'll be wary of arrogant sede clergy who are obviously out of their depth. These good people are used to speaking truth to power, so they won't remain silent in the face of bad behavior and B.S. from ineffectual ne'er-do-wells elbowing their way to an easy life. When they see how "One Hand" and Big Don run everything like a whip-crackin'  ante-bellum Mississippi plantation, they'll stay away or they'll leave at once, if they'd been so stupid as to ignore all the ominous warnings on the 'Net.

Third, those souls who do wander in out of curiosity, or through bad luck, will soon detect all the characteristics of a religious cult. The outlandish, ego-centric, self-referential sermons and communications. The Una-cum scam. The sede spielers' preoccupation with making money in the form of "alms" and bailouts. The requirement to socialize only with members of the cult, to sever family ties, and to alter personal goals. The expectation and constant exhortation to devote large amounts of time to the cult's activities, including policing the cult leader's garden and supplying food for cult's possibly invalid hirelings. The vigorous discouragement of questions about finances and the cult leaders' practices. The emphasis on the cult leader's personality and the demand for unquestioning commitment to his ever-shifting aims. The cult masters' unceasing attempts to induce feelings of shame and guilt in order to control the membership. The polarizing "us-versus-them" mentality.  The manic drive to attract new members. The luxury spa vacations and fancy trips abroad, cynically disguised as "pilgrimages" and "apostolates."

Fourth, any N.O. exiles are sure to steer clear once they read a few issues of Li'l Dan's twee "Bishop's (?) Corner" with his morbidly obsessive, ghoulish, weekly accounts of the clergy's marauding pet hell-cats' bloody offerings of  shredded baby-bunny carcasses. They'll see it for what it is: sick! sick! SICK!

Fifth, many, if not most, of the newcomers will come from upper-middle-class parishes where their fellow Catholics shared the same social values, upwardly mobile aspirations, and good genes as they. The minute they spy the mousie, greasy-haired, rheumy-eyed Trad womenfolk wrapped like rickets-riddled mummies in floor-length skirts sewn from faded curtains shoplifted from the local Goodwill thrift store, they'll turn in mortal fear and run. In fact, they'll exit so quickly they won't notice either the females' slobbering mates hunched over beside them in a formless, quivering heap or their undernourished, sallow-faced, flinching spawn. Furthermore, since many of these new arrivals will possess advanced degrees themselves, they'll recoil at the sede clergy's notoriously impoverished formation. (Remember that many N.O. priests and bishops possess real academic credentials, having earned their bachelor's, master's, and/or doctoral degree from recognized colleges and universities, not the Flushing Rat's intellectual leprosarium or some vague "independent study.")

Sixth, the cult money-grubbers don't have the sense to realize that potential N.O. recruits aren't the least bit interested in the question of the invalidity of Novus-Ordite holy orders. They'll have left the conciliar Church because of Bergoglio's hostility to the basic tenets of the faith, not because they believe their former priests and bishops were invalidly ordained. Accordingly, when the cult masters start preaching their unprovable, rent-seeking hypothesis -- and that's all it is, until the Restoration settles all such questions -- these folks will step back in disgust. Some will leave even faster once they learn the story of Dannie's orders: No one wants to risk leaving the N.O. only to find his family assisting at sacrilegious Masses.

Seventh, these searchers are products of contemporary, casual, mid-American culture, so when they come face to face with the cult's quickfire, paranoiac dress codes coupled with the fearful cult masters' disturbing fetish with women's clothing and footwear, they'll rebel, especially when women and young girls are blamed as the cause for randy Trad menfolk's lubricious fantasies.  Moreover, in an age when first professionals dine at upscale restaurants in smart polos and sporty cavalry twills, they'll laugh at the cult's lunatic insistence on dress shirts, ties, and jackets. And you really can't blame them.  Last Sunday, Dannie railed against the casual dress and "slovenly attire" of Traddie visitors to his cult center, betraying the fact that other (mentally stable) Trads unattached to his cult reject all such sinister, mind-control efforts. The Novus Ordo may have deprived these folks of the ancient faith but not of common sense. To see the other side's point of view, we've got a little test for you.  Who better honors our Lord in "His house" and on "His day" (as Wee Dan might say):  (1)  an immaculately barbered gentleman outfitted in a professionally starched, open-necked tattersall shirt with spotless, crisply pressed khakis and well-cared-for, country bluchers; or (2) an unkempt, ill-shod, cultling zombie lout stuffed into a wrinkled, dingy-white shirt with a food-stained tie under a moth-eaten sweater-vest that fails to cover an unsightly, flaccid gut pillowing over stained work pants so tight-in-the-seat as to threaten an ill-timed (and, indeed, unwelcome) mooning?

It's time the anxious cult's hawkers wake up and end their impossible dream. The beneficiaries of any mass exodus from the N.O. will be the SSPX, the FSSP, and those traditional priests with sense enough to reject the moribund sede business model. The only Novus-Ordite seekers to join the cult chapels will be spasm-shattered misfits, who, in short order, will wreak so much mischief that the cult barkers'll wish they'd folded their circus tents to head for a subdued retirement in the desert Southwest.

* When the neophytes read what an authentically trained and humane  priest,  Fr. Juan Carlos Iscara of the SSPX, has to say on the matter in general, they'll avoid the cult and idiot Checkie like the plague. See for yourself here.