SUFFER FIRST THE CHILDREN

Charity and beating begins at home. Fletcher

Dubious Dan's "Bishop's (?) Corner" may be silly, but it's often a picture window on his psyche. Hunched in that shabby nook, he wrestles with his demons, airs his grievances, and encodes his intentions. One psychologist-friend pronounced the column a "therapist's dream." Most of the time, it's good for a laugh, but last Sunday's message left us unsettled.

Five years ago, around this very time of the year, the infamous SGG School scandal began to spin out of Dannie's control. The pressure for reform was so great that the cult masters promised to replace the embattled lay principal with a priest, insisting that clerical leadership had always been their dream. As you may know, the "priest" whom they appointed ended up with the pink slip, not the principal at the center of the crisis. After Wee Dan's calamitous miscalculation, SGG shattered ... never to be put back together again.

The haunting memories and the terrifying angst brought on by so much lost income must make these late September days appear especially dark. Therefore, it's no surprise that last week Dannie gave the culties a hair-raising meditation on SGG School and the virtues of corporal punishment. We'll try to parse what he wrote.

Right after "One Hand" noted the school-children's "making good progress in many fields," he found it necessary to scold the crumb-crushers, compelling them "not to bring food or drink back to the classrooms, or indeed, around the building." Then he bitterly snarled, "We don’t have a janitor anymore, and I do need each of you to do your part." You can almost feel the seething anger about to erupt, can't you? He lost his apostolate because of sniveling urchins, and now they're littering his decaying cult center. From what sounds like a vicious reproof, we gather there's no money to pay -- or no one to volunteer -- for the sorely needed custodial services.  

Immediately afterward, Dannie reveals what's really getting his goat: "Crumbs left in classrooms, and cups of coffee spilled in the school wastepaper baskets create unnecessary Monday morning work for our teachers, who already have so much to do." Ah-HA!  Now we get it. The "teachers" don't want to be janitors either, so they must have complained about Dannie's poor people-management skills. He and the principal can't even supervise a few scrawny kids and addled adult catechists at Sunday school. Now that's incompetence!

(Just one small observation on our part: On leisurely Sunday afternoons, why was it too much to ask for the principal -- the proximate cause of so many of Dannie's woes -- and the doubtfully ordained "priests" to take a couple of minutes to police what few classrooms the cult center has? Perhaps these eminent theologians consider basic hygiene to be servile labor, but fixing stacks of flapjacks isn't.) 

The complaints must have really made "One-Hand Dan" angry, because he then lashed out at Gertie parents, who, if the collection statistics are accurate, aren't doing their part either with the collection basket to allow SGG to hire custodial help: 

The old discipline of eating neatly, and in one place, is a precious one to pass on to our children. Encourage them as well, by word and example, to clean up after themselves, even in Helfta Hall (or at home!) Don’t leave a mess for the nonexistent janitor. You probably don’t have a janitor at home either.

If we're not mistaken, it looks as if the low-class cultling adults, like their uncouth offspring, aren't cleaning up after their slovenly selves. It's a pity Dannie doesn't understand the effects of the financial demands he makes on the suckers. If he did, he'd know that they're flat broke from supporting all the cult masters' excesses. They have to leave crumbs around at home as bait for cockroaches: How else can their runt offspring get the protein they need to grow up to be the Traddie thugs of tomorrow? C'mon, Dan: They were just trying to be helpful by leaving food waste. Empathize!

No matter.  Dannie was in a fine funk about it all. He used the NFL's Adrian Peterson (not Petersen) scandal as the springboard for what read like some wistful thoughts on the bodily punishment of children.  Appealing to no less an advocate than Fulton Sheen, Dannie archly quoted the archbishop's one liner,"' Everything in the American home is controlled with a switch, except the children,'" cheerfully adding that Sheen "went on to praise the efficacy of giving children a good pat on the back, provided it be low enough and frequent enough. "

And that's what's got us unnerved.

Is this convergence of  (1) the ominous fifth anniversary of the ruinous SGG School scandal, (2) the cultie children's and adults' barnyard manners, (3) the pathetically insufficient contributions, and (4) the aching nostalgia for the "use of a switch" a mere coincidence?

Or does it herald the return to pre-2009 SGG School policy?

You know, almost all the decent people left in late 2009 and early 2010, so mostly the dregs remain. (The few downright scumbags who did exit at that time have since returned to the cult with their tails between their legs.) Some of the brainwashed  zombies might not object if the school resumed its former hard-line, hickory-stick ways.

IF YOU CAN READ AND STILL HAVE A CONSCIENCE, TAKE YOUR KIDS AND GET OUT OF THE CULT TODAY!

DUNG AND DEATH

Now, there's one thing that you men will be able to say when you get back home, and you may thank God for it. Thirty years from now when you're sitting around your fireside with your grandson on your knee, and he asks you, "What did you do in the great World War II?" -- you won't have to say, "Well, I shoveled s--t in Louisiana." George Patton

Doubtful Dan unwittingly telegraphs so much in his "Bishop's (?)  Corner"-- in addition, of course, to the weekly weather almanac. Since he wears a contemptuous heart on his sleeve, the dirtbag can't help revealing his real opinion of the overburdened souls who waste so much of their treasure and lives on his moribund cult and spendthrift junketeering. Last week's message, with its foul -- or should we say fowl? -- scatological allusions, is a perfect example.

It's a nasty subject, and we're revolted that Dannie brought it up, but comment we must.

As Dan-O announced the passing of a Gertie, he couldn't resist humiliating the deceased. (He's always got to demean others, even supporters.) Instead of eulogizing the man's virtues in elevated terms, Dunghill Dan focused on the late gentleman's membership in the "shovel brigade," the cult's now disbanded chain gang that cleared the path for Dannie's showy processions by "shoveling away the goose droppings in all weather."

Gag us with a spoon! Of all the good deeds this soul must have performed in a lifetime of thankless service to the ungrateful cult masters, what on earth possessed Dannie to single out his removing the accumulated splats of pathogenic, parasite-infested goose excrement? Did "One Hand" honestly imagine so repulsive an image to be a fitting, tasteful memorial? Is that how the man's grieving children and grandchildren want him remembered? Or was His Gracelessness trying to intimate that people should be happy to do anything for him?

Look: we don't question the humility of someone who, for the love of God, undertakes such a filthy, debasing assignment. May a heavenly crown be his. Our objection is that work-shirking Wee Dan, who would never lift a finger in so lowly an effort, chose to memorialize this man by choosing -- in the Sunday bulletin no less, mind you -- this particular contribution among the many the gentleman surely must have made.  At a time when bereaved family and distraught friends anticipated a noble, uplifting reminiscence from their cult leader, Li'l Dan chose to leave them with the lowliest, most ignoble of images of the dearly departed, as if he mattered for nothing more than keeping Dannie's shoes -- and sensibilities -- unstained.

Although "One Hand" expressed rhetorical amazement at such an "act of penance," we question whether he or his sidekick, the Checkmeister, would do the same. (Such penance is for the "little people," you know.) The dirty work, however, apparently still needs doing, for Wee Dan wrote, "The shovel brigade is no more, and we Rosary marchers have had plenty of opportunity to get in a little Fatima penance along with our processional prayers." 

We're puzzled at this remark. Instead of stepping in the goose crap and calling it penance, why not remove it yourself before the procession? You'd still get to do your penance, and you'd have made the trek more edifying for the faithful processionists. As for us pragmatic Readers, we'd rather hose the nasty goop off the blade of a long-handled shovel than scrape it from our dress shoes!

The laity have seemingly wised up and won't help out any longer. They know their master won't do the things he asks of his followers. (Real leaders eat last and lead by example.) Perhaps that's why Dannie frantically implored

Almighty God to raise us up five, ten, fifteen more such men; examples to others, strong in their faith, active in church, generous in giving of themselves. The work must and does go on, and we must go on, but this is the help we require, and beg of God’s grace.

It looks like Wee Dan's reached the end of his rope: he's running out of pliant serfs, and unless he gets some more, he might have to work -- or retire. The cult's menfolk must have figured out that they're being used. Yeah, sure, you still hear from some of the old timers the empty bar talk, "I'd go to hell for 'Bishop' Dolan," but plainly these brash loud mouths won't shovel bird poo for His Delicacy. (If they keep on stroking Wee Dan's big ego, these brown-nosers may get a chance to make good on their boast to journey to the nether regions. And then these adulators will most likely end up in Bolgia 2.* Wouldn't that be ironic!)

After the SGG School scandal, Dannie and the Cheeseball can no longer easily dragoon the laity into doing work they themselves avoid, nor will they lower themselves to serve as an "example to others" and pick up where the "shovel brigade" left off.  Therefore, we ask, Why doesn't "One Hand" order his three doubtfully ordained, younger stooges to grab a barn shovel and get scraping. After all, isn't there a proverb that says, "many hands make light work"? You may have noticed, too, that one of those goofballs clearly could use the exercise. The added benefit is he might be kept so busy he wouldn't be able to make a fool of himself on Restoration Radio.

Dannie, however, is always resourceful when it comes to avoiding unpleasant work that he can't make others perform and for which he's unwilling to pay. (He knows those young louts of his would bristle at the command, and with his Mexicali, Mexico, trip looming on the horizon, he'll want to keep every penny for himself.) Like every challenge, it looks as if he'll just bury his head in the sand. As Dan pondered, probably in hopes of shaming someone into volunteering:

 I have been vaguely thinking about moving the procession across the street next year, where it is a bit quieter. That way we would not have to compete with the cars and traffic – and geese.

That's just like Do-nothin' Dan. If someone won't do it for him, and he and his clown crew haven't the stomach for the work themselves, he hides from the problem -- just as in November 2009. Good from him! Although his bad decisions five years ago assured that the cult center will never become a "sermon in stone," it now has a good chance of becoming an "oration in ordure."

DON'T LET YOUR EULOGY READ:

"HE SCOOPED GOOSE POOP FOR DUBIOUS DAN."

GET OUT OF  SGG TODAY!

* The wry commenter who sent us the Italian verse fable of the toad and the hen will surely have caught our allusion to Dante's Inf. xviii. 113-117 and the punishment of flatterers:  Vidi gente attuffata in uno sterco,/Che dagli uman privati parea mosso:/E mentre ch'io là giù con l'occhio cerco,/Vidi un col capo sì di merda lordo,/Che non parea s'era laico o cherco.  (Le Opere di Dante Alighieri, ed. E. Moore and P. Toynbee, Oxford University Press, 1963). We translate literally: I saw people immersed in a dung/That appeared sloshed from human latrines:/And while I search with the eye down there/ I saw one with a head so soiled with fecal matter,/That it did not appear if he was layman or cleric.

MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO

As if his whole vocation/Were endless imitation. Wordsworth

If we Readers, like the manipulative cult masters, were impiously disposed to assign a supernatural interpretation to every mundane event resulting in our favor, we'd say that last Monday's service disruption at Restoration Radio was providential. It was as if the Court of Heaven, valiantly championed by the glorious company of Apostles and the massed holy Doctors, had visited upon the network the condign punishment of silence for "Father" Uneven-Steven McFaker's appallingly incoherent "exposition" of the first part of the Summa Theologica. 

Yet Pistrina is not so rash as to attribute divine intervention to each happy chance. Especially in this case, for had a celestial host had interceded, those assembled defenders of truth would surely have disabled the point-of-purchase system of buy-now and add-to-cart! But, in their apology for the technical meltdown, the cult's media enablers triumphantly announced to their complaining audience that the money-raking features were "still correctly functioning." How typically Trad: the system's dead, but you can keep on buying. So, you see, the disruption couldn't have been the work of heavenly hands, that's for sure.

(Of course, on second thought, it's always possible that ...  just perhaps ... Ol' Scratch sneaked in to save the collection mechanism .... but nah! ... that's too much like Cult-Think and Dannie-Speak. We refuse to go there.)

Confidentially, our first reaction to the universal silencing of the streaming media players was to look for a natural cause. (No need to multiply entities, as you well know.) In fact, insofar as the network's moderator used to have a good reputation, we thought he'd decided to do the right thing and pull all the podcasts of this offensive "priest." It sounds ingenuous, we know, but the weird notion crossed our minds that there actually might be an intellectually honest soul wandering in deepest, darkest Tradistan. But then we learned it was only a technical glitch. How wonderful! All that transcendental idiocy available again -- and waiting as eagerly for exposure as a starving cur for a chicken bone!

So ... there'll be no reckoning with the rector on the long trans-Atlantic flight home. No righteously flushed Flushing-Rat's demand for the McFaker to suspend his doubtful ministry. No Big Don exhortation to humbly enter the swampland's MHT seminary to undergo, at long last, his sorely missed philosophate under the whip hand of punishment-loving Scut the Prefect and his compliant toad, Squirmin' Herman. (We bet those two marshland martinets are itchin' to humiliate this puffed-up masquerader who got "holy orders" without waiting tables or mopping the pesthouse's fetid, wailing halls.) More significantly, Phony Tony won't be challenged to administer emergency remedial education to the Stevemeister. Nor will "One-Hand Dan" call him aside on his first night back to the SW Ohio Cult Center to counsel him in Christian candor about the disgrace he's brought on the empty heads of Tradistan. He struck out in philosophy, but he'll round the bases anyway and be home free.

Why, you may ask, will there be no condemnation from the cult kingpins, either medicinal or vindictive?

The answer's easy:

Uneven-Steven is Dirtbag Dan's McMini-Me...

...which means the Stevemeister has to be Wee Dan's successor. And some day there just might be a glittering miter in it for him, as long as he doesn't cross Principal Murky Lowturdsky or get too ambitious too soon, like the previous boorish pretender to the Gertrudian faldstool.

Dannie and the Blunderer must want to escape all the problems they're facing, but they probably can't afford to cut themselves off entirely from the cult's resources. (Santa Fe ain't cheap!)  The McFaker is their "Great White Hope." Deficient as he is, he's the only one in the pipeline with a personality and a public presence that has a slight chance of keeping the Gerties paying once Li'l Dan and the Checkmeister jet off in first-class seats toward a purple, artsy, desert sunset for their jubilación santafereña. (The other two stooges would empty the place out in a year.)

Now some of you out in cyber space have taken exception to this oft-repeated prediction. One cult banshee screeched, "How do you know? Are you the Bishops (sic)  confident (sic)?" Absolutely not, Madam! We run in better social circles. What we do, however, is closely observe the signs.  Here's a very telling one that'll confirm our conjecture:

If you listen to the McFaker's sermons, you'll be impressed by just how accurately he apes Li'l Dan. Seriously, it's a very, very good job of impersonation.  Amazing, really. The McMonkey's got no head for philosophy, but he sure has an ear for "his master's voice." His pitch is perfect with respect to Dannie's rhythms, articulation, final cadences, emphases, tempo, diction, phrasing, speech patterns, and intonation. Honest to goodness, he's got the exact tones with the same contours, and even an eerily similar voice quality! What we mean in linguistic terms is: the suprasegmentals and paralinguitsic features are spot on.

Truly, it's a masterly job of mimicry, and his clear baritone outclasses Dannie's frail, nasally pitched piping. Moreover, he does a far more convincing job of sounding "cultivated" in spite of his dreadful performance with the Summa. And if ever in his preaching he repeats "im-pass-say" for impasse, the culties won't notice, just as most didn't notice when Dannie once pronounced the ch in "Chalcedon" (the Asia-Minor site of the Fourth Ecumenical Council) like the ch (/tʃ/) in cheeseball rather than the /k/ in clown.

Note carefully that the McMimic's "sermon" voice is very different from the normal tone of speech he used in his disgraceful interview on Restoration Radio or in his 2013 Rosary Sunday talk to a herd of Gerties. Like Dannie, when he sermonizes, he makes a real effort to sound ethereally artificial, with dawdling modulations, overly careful articulation of each consonant, and odd vowels. (To his credit, his risible usage of the British "prō-gress" sounds far more natural than Dan's backwater Southern evangelist "Pen-tee-cost").

To put it in a nutshell, you get the feeling that Dannie is right there with you, cooing and gurgling as he outstretches his greedy palm for a "little alms." In a year, the McMini-Me may be able to deliver a perfect re-creation of the whole Dannie pulpit experience, so authentic that the cultists just might keep on paying through the nose when "One Hand" heads to the chic Southwest with Checkie as bag boy.

But don't take our word for it. Listen yourself, first to the McSimian in his sermon Temptations Against Purity and then to Wee Dan  right here. Two peas in a podcast, if there ever were.

The only questions that remain are:

(1) Can the McMini-Me sustain the cult's syrupy fictional narrative of sticky-sweet 1950s pop Catholicism?

and, most importantly,

(2) Will the future McCorner continue to deliver the weekly weather report?

SO ... ARE YOU READY TO START THE COUNTDOWN-TO-RETIREMENT CLOCK?

E-MAIL US YOUR PREDICATED DATES!

ON A WING AND A PRAYER

It is a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/Signifying nothing. Shakespeare

Motivated by a correspondent's timely suggestion, we've started listening to podcasts of the cult amateurs whose performances bring disgrace to the Restoration Radio Network. In our search for fresh, wincingly embarrassing examples of sede ineptitude, we clicked on the February 23, 2014, program with "Father" Uneven-Steven McFaker on the topic of the first part of the Summa Theologica.

As you'll recall, we've mentioned the McNewbie several times in the past (most notably, for instance, here and here). We reported that Dirtbag Dan "ordained" him despite his never having attended a brick-and-mortar seminary, in contemptuous violation of principles solemnly articulated by Cheeseball Checkie in his article about untrained Trad clergy. (Dannie used these same "principles" to blacken the name of a young French priest.) Some of you might know that the Stevemeister "studied" independently with one priest out West until cut loose, and then "studied" for a short spell under the busily clueless Tony Baloney. In the podcast discussion, the malformation really, really shows.

In about an hour and a half, this joker comes off like an unprepared D-student nervously faking his way through an oral book report. We've all seen this phenomenon in high school and occasionally at university. Probably at one time or another, you, too, have been guilty of trying to wing it through something you haven't read or fully understood.

Do you recall the anxiety you felt as you fretfully scanned the unfamiliar pages hoping to find something to save your lazy hide? Didn't you feel like a drowning, shipwrecked seaman wildly surveying the surface of an overwhelming sea in hopes of latching onto some drifting flotsam? Remember how you could sense your dry tongue thickening, your heart racing, your throat constricting amid the mounting panic as you thrashed about, helplessly submerging deeper and deeper into the sloshing, choppy, whirling b.s.? You bet your booties you do, Granny! And this outrageous podcast will prove a delight as you watch from afar this wretch futilely struggle to stay afloat. (Suave mari magno, and all that, right, all you classicists out there?)

As you listen, you can almost see his trickster's eyes furtively darting across the computer screen as the coughs, the pauses, the stuttering resumptions, the misplaced emphases, and the overly prolonged syllables betray that he's piling it on ever higher and ever deeper while each excruciatingly uncomfortable minute slowly ticks by. If this loser weren't talking about the Summa of Aquinas, we could all content ourselves with the delicious Schadenfreude, as another cult phony makes a fool himself in front of the world. (Anesthetized Sede Nation may have loved this charade of unforced errors, but it didn't impress the alert citizens in the Republic of the Informed.)

For some of us who were privileged to read the Summa under the strict tutelage of fluent, scholarly, Laval Thomists, who revered -- and intimately knew in Latin -- the texts of the Angelic Doctor, we cannot laugh. We are, in fact, angry -- not so much at this pretender or his gullible host -- the two of them haven't the humility to do proper show preparation and, besides, they don't know any better. Our anger is aimed at Big Don, the pesthouse rector; His Insipidity, "One-Hand Dan," and Erroneous Antonius don't count the slightest in matters of the mind.

If the rector really were the "theologian" his risible PR effort makes him out to be, he would've persuaded the moderator (a big fan of his) to remove the podcast as an offense to Catholic culture and a mortal danger to the reputation of traditionalists.  He then should've begged Li'l Dan to instruct this interloper to keep his unschooled mouth shut.

However, as we learned last Sunday from "One-Hand" -- who, BTW, just got back from a carefree holiday in stylish Santa Fe (as we had guessed!) -- Big Don needed Dannie's wingman, the McFaker, to accompany him to Poland last week  "as MC, chauffeur and bag boy."*  Clearly, the rector has another set of priorities besides Catholic truth, especially if this McFaker is Wee Dan's heir apparent. (Veritas post nummos, we surmise?)

To illustrate this clown's ignominious performance (and to make it easier on you, for the audio is really painful), we've carefully transcribed a short portion (minute 83:55 - 83:08) of the farcical program:

And then ... his [St. Thomas's] second objection is that from more of a philosophical point of view and ... also from, you know, the ability of, um, uh, uh, of the human ability, and basically saying that ... *gasp*, that we can only know certain things, um, by reason and so therefore we shouldn't, ah, really go beyond what we are able to grasp by our reason because we get into something that's beyond the ... the ph-philosophical science. And this is an argument put forth by ... by Aristotle himself (!)...And so... *throat-clearing noise* ... and so that's how he lays out the two objections as to why we should not know sacred doctrine. (Underscoring,  italics, and interpolated editorial protest ours.)

Say what? Absolute BULL Sss... (er, um, *cough,* uh, ah) ... Winkle! 

For the record, here's how St. Thomas actually represented the core of the second objection (Thomas Gilby's 1963 translation):

...the philosophical sciences deal with all parts of reality, even with God; hence Aristotle [in Metaphysics vi] refers to one department of philosophy as theology, or the divine science .** (Our insertion of cite, based on the Latin text.)

In other words, the second objection proposes, on the authority of Aristotle, that theology is a branch of philosophy. It says nothing about the inadequacy of reason.  It's about knowledge. It's about whether a science separate from philosophy is necessary. St. Thomas, who wrote a commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, is referring to Aristotle's conclusion (starting at Metaph. E 1026^a18 in the Greek text) that theology, along with mathematics and the philosophy of nature, was one of the three theoretical philosophical sciences.***  This is the real argument, not the fabrication the McFaker pulled out of his aaa, er ... out of his, um ... uh ... out of his... hat.

 He's so far off base that we must conclude he didn't examine the text, for no one could be so clueless, not even "the Skipper," the MHT completer in Michigan who skipped the consecration at Mass.

Although later on in his "exposition," the McFaker gets his head just above water (by then he'd had time to read over Thomas's respondeo dicdendum quod, which makes the argument perfectly clear), that doesn't make up for all the gibberish that preceded. What should have been made plain from the very start is that article 1 is not about the limits of human reason. It's a refutation of the thesis that philosophy alone as a discipline is sufficient to know all the truths about God. (Hence the necessity for our welfare that divine revelation signify for us those truths.) **** 

You can see for yourself if you won't believe us, provided you possess the ability to comprehend written English. Read the Summa's article 1  here to discover on your own how dead wrong this oafish b.s. artist is. (The Dale-Chall Readability Index for the article assesses the grade level as 9-10, within easy reach of most people.)

It's easy to see that these cult "priests" have no real learning. It's all play acting, posing, and bluffing. In Tradistan, expertise is achieved by self-declaration, not earned through long and hard study. The faithful would do well to ignore everything they hear from the sede impostors. They're making it up as they go along. Their ignorance, however, isn't confined to the big things, such as theology, Latin, or the interpretation of the Common Doctor. Time and again, we've shown how they lack the small stuff, which sometimes is more indicative of inauthenticity.

Before we sign off for the day, allow us to expose two slips that further substantiate this guy isn't for real. The first is his reference to the Book of Sirach, and the second is his uttering the name Isaiah.

Now it seems if a priest were sincerely committed to the Traddie cause, he'd make the effort to preserve Biblical names as found in the Vulgate or in direct translations from it. After all, these are the traditional forms, and many Vulgate proper nouns and titles of sacred books differ from the forms found in modern versions of the Bible (the forms of which the Novus Ordo has adopted in its new translations of Scripture).

The Vulgate usages are those found in most of the missals laymen use, too. Accordingly, insisting on the Vulgate forms would appear to be not only the mark of a traditional priest but also another quiet act of resistance to the Novus Ordo's leveling agenda. Putting it another way, using the Vulgate conventions is an indicator of authentic Catholic traditionalism and a sincere token of fidelity to the historical Latin culture of the Roman Church.

Not so for this McFaker. Instead of saying "Ecclesiasticus," he says "The Book of Sirach," and instead of "Isaias," he says "Isaiah." The former instance of betrayal of traditional norms no doubt resulted from his use of the New Advent online Summa. However, if he were a thoroughly trained traditionalist, we should think he would've automatically supplied the traditional name for the book. (Didn't he have a Scripture course during his five years of independent study?)

The second betrayal indicates that he hasn't made an effort to unlearn the Protestant form of the prophet's name, which, we admit, is by far the more commonly heard and seen. We guess he either doesn't know there's a difference or doesn't care. But why should he? If you don't care enough to get St. Thomas right, of what importance, then, are traditional Catholic spellings and usages?

If you wish to corroborate independently just how incompetent the buffoon's presentation is -- and if you have the patience to listen through the full 10 minutes or so of all his stammering, hedging, coughing, hemming and hawing, and clumsy juggling on question 1, article 1 -- here's the link (starting at minute 86:45). Some of what he says is so positively incoherent that multiple listenings won't tease out any certain sense. One example of his bizarre musings is a head-scratching observation on Aristotle's theology against the backdrop of pagan Greece. The sede mooncalf apparently is blissfully unaware that philosophical monotheism had been around in Greece for at least some two centuries before the Stagirite flourished. 

Isn't it obvious that this cult clown has no business at all talking about scholastic theology and philosophy? *****  

When you've finished listening to the McFaker's bogus exposition, read the paraphrase of Thomas's article 1 below, written by a real Catholic teacher-priest from the good ol' days, when the clergy were truly educated and their orders were undoubted. It'll take you less than a minute. Then you'll understand our claim that these sede "priests" fall so far from the Catholic standard of excellence we must consider them aliens. 

Man's most urgent need is to know truths about God. Some of these truths can be known by philosophy, that is, by thinking them out. Other truths about God are made known to man by divine revelation. And indeed divine revelation is required for the proper understanding of all truths about God, even those which philosophy teaches. For without revelation man could not know quickly and accurately the naturally knowable truths about God so as to make these truths the rule and guide for his responsible life right from the start. Therefore, philosophy is not enough for man; divine revelation is required. ******

Since the rector won't act, the McKnow-Nothin' and Restoration Radio should pull this reprehensible Play Skool®-astic podcast, buy a copy of Msgr. Glenn's A Tour of the Summa, and just read it to the audience, who surely deserve better than the deadly misinterpretation they've been fed.

But they won't. So it's up to you.

PROTEST THIS OFFENSIVE PROGRAM BY SENDING YOUR COMPLAINT TO

MAIL@TRUERESTOATION .ORG

.

* We wonder who paid for the "clerical" dogsbody's airfare, food, and lodging. Big Don? Or was it a gift from the SW Ohio cult at the laity's expense? And we also wonder why the rector didn't invite the Forlorn Finn, a European and a completer of his "seminary," to  accompany him instead? Wouldn't he want to show off one of his own? Or is he ashamed? Or did Dannie offer the McFaker free of charge to advance the newcomer's standing in Tradistan?

** The New Advent translation, which we surmise the McFaker was using, reads: "But everything that is, is treated of in philosophical science --even God Himself; so that there is a part of philosophy called theology, or the divine science, as Aristotle has proved (Metaph. vi)." 

*** ὥστε τρεῖς ἂν εἶεν φιλοσοφίαι θεωρητικαί, μαθεματική, φυσική, θεολογική (Aristotelis Metaphysica, ed. W. Jaeger, Oxford Classical Texts, 1963). The text, as Thomas would have read it, is as follows (from John Rowan's translation of Thomas' Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle [p. 456, Regnery, 1961], lest our adversaries accuse us of special pleading had we offered our own translation):

538. Hence there will be three theoretical philosophies:  mathematics, the philosophy of nature, and theology.

An absolutely literal translation of the Greek is: "And so there would be three theoretical philosophies: mathematical [philosophy], natural [philosophy], [and] theological [philosophy]."

It's worth noting here that the McFaker persists in his ignorance of what Aristotle actually said up until the end of this foolish discourse. At minute 78:31 he references "...the argument from ... from Aristotle himself that we can't ... *gasp* ... use anything more than or we shouldn't strive to use anything more than philosophical knowledge." You just read Aristotle's words, so you yourself know that Aristotle said no such thing. It looks to us as though he's confused what Aristotle said with the Scriptural quote in the first objection and (maybe) considers the conclusion of the syllogistic argument of the second objection to be Aristotle's. This guy's clearly out of his depth.

**** Because of his ignorance, he doesn't understand the importance of the subject of the article 1 as it relates to Thomas's overall design of the Summa. As the Dominican Eschmann wrote in his monograph A Catalogue of St. Thomas's Works, "The main and most properly Thomistic feature of the Summa, is its plan by which for the first time in history theology obtained the status of a science." And science is, as Thomas says, "recta ratio scibilium," right reason of things that can be known with certainty, IIa-IIae 55, art.3. (Our emphasis.)

***** Not only does it appear as though this bamboozler's neither had a survey course in Greek philosophy that covered Xenophanes nor ever read Aristotle's doxographical passages, seemingly he's unaware of St. Augustine's City of God, books vi-viii.

******Paul J. Glen, A Tour of the Summa, Question 1. Sacred Doctrine, 1.