A SHUT SOUL'S HYPOCRISY

Foul whisperings are abroad. Shakespeare

Editor's Note: We've interrupted our fall 2014 mailbag series to bring you this special report on the ordination that took place on Saturday, October 25, 2014, in Lawrence, MA. We'll post mailbag #4 on Nov. 15-16. 

Just when you think bottom-feeding, American sede clergy couldn't go any lower, along comes this story.

In Lawrence, MA, there's a small community devoted to Dominican spirituality. They call themselves the Willing Shepherds of Jesus Christ. They mind their own business and avoid Traddie polemics. Several years ago the group managed to acquire from the scandal-broken Boston archdiocese a disused Catholic church, which they restored. They also supported one of their members to study for the priesthood under a West-Coast priest recommended to them by an aged wandering bishop. Their candidate separated from that priest after several years and then went to "study" for a time at the SW Ohio cult center. In 2012, he was ordained by "One Hand" at the Willing Shepherds' chapel in Massachusetts. After several months, he abandoned the chapel to reside at cult central, leaving the community that had so generously sponsored him without a priest.

The Willing Shepherds made do with visiting clergy until another member of their community could be ordained to the priesthood. This gentleman studied under two priests in New England and was periodically examined by the Most Reverend Andrés Morello, formerly of the SSPX and now a traditional bishop based in Argentina. After careful examination on a number of dimensions including dedication to study, the religious spirit, simplicity, and love of poverty, Bishop Morello found the candidate worthy of promotion to major orders. (His Excellency also scrupulously observed the canonical interstices.)

When norteamericano sede pond scum heard that a distinguished bishop would soon ordain to the priesthood an American on U.S. soil, they decided to play the spoiler, like psychologically disturbed adolescents at the mall at Christmastime who tell small children there's no Santa. They must have been frightened to death at the upcoming ordination: Not only would the beautiful chapel of the Sacred Heart be out of the sedes' grasp forever, but also they would have to compete with a genuinely educated traditional Catholic bishop whose credentials and probity far exceed their own their contemptible mediocrity.

It was all too much for the sede busybodies.

In the weeks before last Saturday's ordination, unsubstantiated, back-alley rumors began to circulate about the ordinand's formation. The situation grew grave enough to prompt Monseñor Morello to issue a lengthy letter to put an end to the hypocritical innuendoes and to set the record straight. Although he learned the identity of the gutter-snipe rumor monger, His Excellency is too decent to expose to the world's ridicule such a despicable windbag. Instead he discreetly notified the laity that

an ecclesiastic of prominent hierarchy (to whom we offer the charity of not naming although he didn't have it when he formed his evaluations) called a trustworthy priest on the phone, asserting that we would be ordaining a candidate who lacks sufficient formation.

What in the world could this nameless gringo "ecclesiastic of prominent hierarchy" have been thinking?

Didn't he remember that in 2012 "One-Hand Dan," the Grand Mufti of Tradistan, "ordained" to the priesthood a man who, like this new priest in Lawrence, had studied independently under two priests and not in a seminary? Didn't he know that Deacon Dan's chobdar, the rector himself, had tacitly endorsed such a non-traditional formation by inviting that same "priest" to accompany him to Germany, Poland, Austria, and Hungary this year? How can it be that, in one case, guided study under two priests is O.K. but in the present case, it's wrong?

The usual double standards of American sede hypocrisy must surely be at work here.

The truth is, the man's formation is unblemished. His community did not have to prod him to study. Never were they forced to mark his books secretly so they could later confirm whether he had at least opened his theology texts. Neither of his tutors ever had cause to deliver a bad report to his ordaining bishop or to the community he will serve. Moreover, the new priest continues to maintain very cordial relations with both the priests who supervised his formation and spiritual direction.

As for the ordaining bishop who examined him, Monseñor Morello possesses educational and social advantages that far surpass the pitiful attainments of Tradistan's sorry, hardscrabble hierarchy. As an Argentine, His Excellency was the beneficiary of a first-class high-school education. The standards and expectations of the Latin-American secondary school he attended are far higher than those of most high-schools in the United States.

When he began his priestly formation in 1974, his archdiocesan seminary boasted internationally renowned professors who had earned doctorates from the Gregorian University in Rome. In addition, since Argentina was at the time a Catholic country, there was no dearth of very bright, accomplished candidates of good family. His archdiocesan seminary could be highly selective in its admissions, quite unlike the vocation-starved American seminaries in the '70s, which took in just about anybody who could fill out the application form.

We personally know that Latin-American seminaries are renowned for their superior teaching staff. As any informed churchman will tell you, the professoriate of these seminaries was and still is far better trained and credentialed than their counterparts in the United States.  We Readers are red-blooded U.S. patriots, but we have to acknowledge this sad fact. English-speaking Catholics were never heirs to a great theological tradition such as we find in Spain, to which Hispanophones have easy access.

Furthermore, Latin-American middle- and upper-class culture, as a whole, is far more intellectually sophisticated than the commercial vapidity that disfigures the U.S. As His Excellency observed in his letter, even at Écône he did not encounter instructors with as "much depth...in philosophical and [T]homistic erudition" as the scholars under whom he studied in his native country.

Now when a prelate of Bishop Morello's prudence -- a man who has spent 40 years in seminaries, a man superior in every way to the repulsive clerical cockroaches infesting Sedelandia -- judges a candidate worthy of holy orders, then second-rate American clergy should shut up, especially when their own house is so disordered.

But they couldn't, could they?

So with the greatest reluctance, el monseñor in charity rebuked the loathsome scoundrels. All we can say is they're lucky His Excellency and the Willing Shepherds hate scandal and won't reveal any more of what they know. (Perhaps one day the jackals will push the Shepherds too far and they'll call in the dogs, telling how they once solved the mystery of the locked-up Levite. That would be so timely today, what with all the news reports of protested quarantines.)

Sad to say, but this unspeakably vile behavior on the part of gringo sedes was to be expected. In fact, the Readers predicted it privately to others. It's part of the rogue sede clergy's modus operandi before every ordination or consecration that threatens their imagined turf. They don't dare allow better men to provide an example of priestly goodness to the laity: the folks just might have their expectations raised and then stop funding all the divisive nastiness the sewer rats foment.

It's all ridiculous and transparent. A couple years ago, a goofy brown-nosing stooge, acting on behalf of trashy sede clergy, attempted to derail an ordination slated to take place in their backyard. (Everybody had a good laugh at this lay loser's ham-fisted efforts.) Some years before that incident, when one of the under-educated cult priests learned that a layman was serving as an MC at Bishop Morello's consecration in Guadalajara, he clumsily tried to terrify the man's wife by saying her husband could be arrested in anti-clerical Mexico! (She and the rest of the chapel also had a good laugh, too, at this creep's expense. BTW, there were Mexican police at the ceremony -- they were there to stop any possible disruption by Masons. In the U.S., it seems, we need cops at ordinations to prevent disruptions by jealous sede clergy!)

American sede weasels just cannot stop embarrassing themselves by engaging in such villainous antics.

With each failed endeavor, they plummet in the estimation of Catholics around the world. Soon this story will reach Europe, South America, Australia, and Mexico. Catholics in those regions will finally be convinced of what many Americans have known for years: Good Trads should have nothing to do with the unwholesome and un-Catholic clerical mob from Sedelandia U.S.A.