ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL

What is this, the sound and rumor? What is this that all men hear,/Like the wind in hollow vallies when the storm is drawing near,/Like the rolling of the ocean in the eventide of fear? Morris

June 5 marked Pistrina's fifth anniversary. At the time,  however, our "Counterfeit Catholicism" series was in progress, so we didn't have the opportunity for a proper celebration until this week. Our nose isn't out of joint, though: a modest fête is actually more appropriate this weekend, so near, you know, to the feast of Ss. Peter and Paul, the traditional date of  SSPX ordinations.

Five years of blogging against the hypocrisy and ignorance of the malformed cult masters represents a significant milestone. It's an accomplishment deserving of something memorable, don't you think?

Sure you do! And and we think so, too.

That's why we've got a blockbuster announcement to share with you in commemoration of a lustrum of service to Catholic truth -- and laymen's wallets:

A well-connected source from abroad has made it known that a priest now swears a one-handed conferral of priestly orders occurred during the 1976 ordination ceremony at Écône!


With this fresh report, we've got what qualitative researchers term "triangulation" -- validation of the 1990 ad-cautelam letter to "One Hand" through cross verification from two or more sources. As you'll recall, in that letter, nine priests advised Dannie, "Since your ordination was done with one hand, we must hold your ordination to be dubious..."  (the full text of the letter may be found by clicking here).

The first source, which Pistrina cited in its rebuttal and refutation of Tony Baloney's error-laden defense of orders conferred with one hand, confirmed that a one-handed ordination took place and added that the archbishop was "in a panic" when he realized his mistake. Now today we have a second corroborating account from an SSPX priest who was an insider eye witness to the ceremony.

And, WOW, what a report it is! It's a game-changer.

According to this priest, who saw the one-handed imposition up close and personal,

(a) only one ordinand was defectively ordained in '76 (!!) -- the rest were ordained validly with two hands; and 

(b) the archbishop thought about curing the single defective ordination but was advised that if he did so, people would then doubt his fitness.

This newly surfaced testimony is the most detailed to date, and it answers a lot of questions. First it tells us that Bishop Williamson is decidedly not cursed with a defective priestly ordination. (Some time ago, a commenter or two challenged us on this matter; we prudently replied that we only had information about "One-Hand Dan" and thus could not possibly remark on any other case. Well, now we all know the answer. Yes, we do!)

Second, the testimony explains how a well-traveled, independent priest residing in Europe could have safely affirmed "before God" that he saw nothing untoward on that ordination day in 1976. In light of the new information, his asseveration is perfectly justifiable, and we needn't impeach his recollection:  No sophisticated European or Latin American would have paid a moment's attention to a lone and loathsome gringo troll, whose graceless and grinning presence spoiled the joyful occasion for everyone.

In those early years at Écône, the Europeans (the francophones in particular) held the seminarians from the U.S.A. in utter contempt. Deeply mistrusting the Americans' worldliness and materialism, they considered them devoid of spirituality. More than likely, on that June 29 almost four decades ago, tiny, insignificant Wee Dan was virtually invisible to this cosmopolitan affiant, who reserved his benevolent attention for the more worthy (and far better educated) ordinandi. 

Who could blame him? Li'l Dan simply can't command the attention of his superiors -- not even in squalid Sedelandia.


With this confirming testimony, it's growing harder and harder to dismiss as a baseless rumor the claim of a one-handed conferral of priestly orders in 1976. The single defective ordination of '76 is surely more than a meme circulated to vex an unloved and widely despised sede interloper. It's clear that the persistent account of a one-handed ordination is well-founded, institutional knowledge, both in the SSPX and in American traddie circles.

Surely it all boils down to this cold, hard fact: Despite being vested in pontificals and despite his intention to confer holy orders validly, the archbishop simply goofed in one case on June 29, 1976. (Was it the heat or a Freudian slip due to a priest's admonition? Only God knows!)

Worry over the opinion of men, we fear, overcame what Archbishop Lefebvre knew in his heart to be the right course of action: re-ordination. Any rational person should now accept that the only way for "One Hand" to escape the specter of doubtful one-handed holy orders is conditional priestly ordination and episcopal consecration.

It's what "Saint" Marcel really wanted 39 years ago come this Monday.  The Gerties should demand it, if His Deficiency won't.

COUNTERFEIT CATHOLICISM 4

Vulgarity consists in pretending to be what we aren't. Gómez Dávila*

Finally we arrive at Gómez Dávila's third category that successively inspires outrage, worry, and hilarity when an old-time Catholic contemplates either the modern Church or the malformed sede clowns of Tradistan, to wit, theology. (For the others, see our two previous posts.)

In today's analysis, we won't reëxamine the cult's una-cum fairy tale, for even one of their own affiliated "priests" once told some South African faithful he didn't believe in it himself. We won't discuss sedevacantism either, because the gleesome threesome of Dannie, Donnie, and Checkie comically turned a serious, plausible hypothesis into a pseudo-dogmatic superstition. The solid, theoretical development of the sedevacantist thesis took place in Europe and Latin America through the work of scholars and profound thinkers like Dr. Carlos Disandro. The barely educated gringo pretenders are all Johnny-come-lately parasites. We also won't address the SW Ohio cult's calculatedly sentimental, nursery-school Mariology, which grimly offends pious devotion.

Actual Tradistani theology must be inferred from the cult masters' messages and behavior. You can't rely on the snippets of orthodox theology to which they give lip service in their aimless sermons or over-written newsletters: Everybody knows they don't practice what they preach. It's all pretense. (Remember: [1] Dannie, Donnie, and Checkie maintain that priests without a brick-and-mortar seminary formation are "untrained and un-Tridentine," yet Wee Dan "ordained" Uneven-Steven McFaker who "studied" (LOL) independently, while Big Don took him to Europe as his bag boy; and [2] Erroneous Antonius sneered at the changes in the 1964 Inter Oecumenici, one of which was the suppression of the Leonine Payers (WHH, p. 77), yet both he and Li'l Dan have suppressed them.)

After long thought, Pistrina has reached a firm conclusion: The cult masters' "theology" is a monstrously inverted amalgam of Creflo Augustus Dollar's "theology of prosperity" and Bergoglio's revival of the preferential option for the poor with his "poor Church for the poor."  Both friendly and hostile readers of this blog are familiar with Bergie's views on poverty, but a quick reminder about Pastor Dollar may be in order. He's the televangelist who brazenly asked donors to fund the purchase of a $65 million Gulfstream G650 jet so he could better conduct his ministry of the "prosperity gospel," which preaches that material wealth is a sign of God's favor.

Putting it all together, we therefore posit the following: lying behind the cult's relentless, remorseless fundraising and unrestrained, big spending must lie a theology of lay impoverishment for clerical enrichment, or more simply, an "expropriation gospel." According to its outrageous tenets, God wants sede clergy to prosper by reducing hard-working Catholic families to grinding poverty through perpetual, confiscatory almsgiving. Why else would Dannie, over just a few months, unnecessarily travel to Florida and Mexico, whine about high heating bills, complain about the Lenten turnout, crowd-fund a second edition of Checkie's dreadful Work of Human Hands, hound the faithful to bring in their envelopes, fund-raise a new organ for Checkie, panhandle for the support of a Nigerian seminarian studying independently, and keep hinting that he and his clown crew need the laity to cater their meals?

The only answer that makes sense is that our prodigal prelate doesn't care what it costs the cultlings as long as he can enjoy a spendthrift lifestyle. This is what makes Tradistan vulgar: money-grubbing, uncouth maggots pretending to be Catholic clergy in order to live large off the backs of unsophisticated, all-too-credulous rubes who haven't the wit to see the cult for what it is, viz., a sinful mockery of the Church.

Tradistan is cheaply inauthentic in every way: malformed and, in a number of cases, dubiously valid clergy; a novelty-driven, entertainment-focused liturgy; and a greedy "theology" invented to keep the clerical pigs-in-clover fat and happy. The whole enterprise is outrageous, worrying, yet, in the end, hilarious.

And it all could never have happened but for the imbecility of the laity!

Their bovine financial support of the SW Ohio-Brooksville clown trio provokes outrage. Their slobbering willingness to throw away the family treasure on the cult masters' wasteful, harebrained projects and to entrust their children to the cult's "schools" is gravely troubling. Worst of all, their baseless delusion that they've found a Catholic oasis is too funny for words, proving they haven't the slightest notion of what the real Church was like.

As a result, the supine Tradistani laity lie penniless and twitching, awaiting their next victimization, while the cult kingpins arrogantly live the high life.  The lay folks' voluntary enslavement testifies to the truth of the cynical bon mot of the bandit Calvera in the film The Magnificent Seven: "If God did not want them sheared, He would not have made them sheep." Undoubtedly that line is the central message of the "dispossession gospel" as well as the guiding text behind the pretenders' theology of lay impoverishment for clerical enrichment. 

Have you started laughing yet? Or are you still just...plain ...outraged?

*La vulgaridad consiste en pretender ser lo que no somos.

COUNTERFEIT CATHOLICISM 3

The Catholic apologist seldom distinguishes between what must be rejected with respect and what must be squashed with disdain. Gómez Dávila*

We headed last week's post with an aphorism from the Escolios ("glosses") of Nicolás Gómez Dávila, the Colombian thinker and political theoretician who with surgical precision criticized, among other modern atrocities, Vatican II and the destruction of the liturgy.

You may recall he observed that a Catholic of old, looking at the clergy, liturgy, and theology of the modern Church, is at first outraged, then worried, and lastly overcome with laughter. Since we thought the observation applied equally to the curdled, rancid, hot mess called Tradistan, we reported how the cult "clergy" elicited the identical threefold, progressive reaction.

This week, we'll examine the cult's liturgical practices, once again through the same focusing lens of Gómez Dávila but under the two categories suggested by our favorite aphorist in today's epigraph.  You'll be outraged, then worried, and finally rolling on the floor with belly-busting mirth at the cult-masters' adolescent, self-absorbed pretentiousness and monumental hypocrisy. More significantly, you'll leave convinced that what's on offer from Tradistan is plain-and-simple, make-believe Catholicism, completely isolated from the true faith.

LITURGY DESERVING OF RESPECTFUL REJECTION

Traditional Catholic liturgy is not a department-store display littered with curious antiques found by overly animated, artsy designers rummaging breathlessly through flea markets in search of cute knickknacks to recreate an artificial mood of days gone by.  Liturgical history is replete with examples of abandoned practices, of interest to the scholarly specialist but with no place in authentic, living praxis. Reviving obsolete practices smacks all too much of the ritual productions of well-to-do, High-Church Episcopalians with their "renaissance Masses," "Sarum Masses," "Armenian Masses" etc., etc.: Lively historical theater and monuments to verisimilitude as well as deep pockets, to be sure, but, in the end, as unreal as a modern-day reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg.

The itch to bring back to life a practice mummified after long years of desuetude is twin brother to the modernists' false antiquarianism: the monomania turns liturgy into performance art. Motivating such revivals is the meretricious spirit of the sleazy showman, or worse, the neediness of the psychologically impaired show-off. The overarching objective is surprise and applause. Entirely absent is the Catholic spirit of seemly, discreet public worship.

Recently, His Ostentatiousness awkwardly contrived, by way of a tasteless kitty anecdote, a painfully transparent ploy to advertise the cult's unearthing of the long-dead-and-buried praegustatio ceremony at the Offertory, where the sacristan consumes an unconsecrated altar bread and some unconsecrated wine. Paraphrasing the Englishman Fortescue, Dannie admits it's a "curious relec [sic!] of earlier days." 

We would guess that in the United States, at least by 1948 but doubtlessly much earlier, that quaint little rite was usually omitted or, perhaps, habitually omitted. In his widely popular Manual of Episcopal Ceremonies (4th edition) -- a much more user-friendly guide than Fortescue in virtue of its granular treatment of the pontifical Mass at the throne -- the American liturgist Aurelius Stehle omits all reference to the praegustatio, not even appending a footnote. (The 1916 2nd edition, BTW, is similarly silent.) Therefore, it's not unreasonable to infer that, in the U.S. at least, the ceremony was rarely, if ever, carried out. Dannie's weird reanimation of the praegustatio, then, essentially introduces a novelty into American Catholic practice, and what he produces, therefore, is a counterfeit or, rather, a "zombie" liturgy.

One tiny detail in "One Hand's" footnote to his tedious cat's tale betrays both his ugly compulsion for acclaim as well as his naïve egotism. At the end he wrote, with the ungovernable candor of  a village idiot, "I think it is safe to say that we are the last prace [sic!] in Christendom to observe this rubric, otherwise fallen into obsolescence." Sorry to burst Wee Dan's silly balloon, but as anyone can see by clicking here (14th photo and later comments), the SGG cult is by no means the last place in Christendom to mark the obsolete rubric.

The preconciliar Church respectfully consigned the praegustatio to the museum archives. Real traditional American Catholics do the same.

LITURGY DESERVING OF DISDAINFUL SQUASHING

A sophisticated and very well informed commenter (5/31/15, 3:41 PM), whom we much admire, anticipated our next example several weeks ago. Nevertheless, we think it deserves repeating in a regular post for all to see the SW Ohio cult leaders' flagrant hypocrisy.

As most of you know, Dannie and Checkie are forever condemning any innovation approved under the influence of Bugnini and other reformers. For instance, Phony Tony wrote with apparent seriousness in his laughably  bad book, Work of Human Hands (p. 405):

... there was a clear causal link between the modernist ideology of leading figures in the twentieth-century Liturgical Movement, the series of incremental liturgical changes introduced during the years 1955-62, the principles for liturgical reform laid down by Vatican II, and the creation of the Mass of Paul VI.

Okay, we think we see his point.

So, then, if the innovations were links in the chain of alterations leading to the hideous New Mass, wouldn't you think that a Tradistani Catholic "bishop" should scrupulously avoid any new practice sanctioned during those terrible years of remorseless liturgical tinkering? After all, didn't the Checkmeister on p. 404 specifically point out that "the seminarian Daniel Dolan" was "[n]otable among" those "English-speakers during the Society's early days...[who] promoted the old Missal and Breviary"? 

Don't even bother to answer those questions: In hypocrisy-infected Tradistan, you can't expect the malformed cult masters to practice what they preach!

In the same error-filled Work of Human Hands (pp. 76-77), Cekada lists with obvious disapproval the "fairly extensive" changes in the Mass introduced in Inter Oecumenici, the 1964 instruction for carrying out Vatican II's Constitution on the Liturgy, (which was, in Checkie's words, the completion of "the sixth step in the creation of the New Mass"). Nonetheless, Dubious Dan must have considered at least one of those "incremental liturgical changes" fit for Catholic worship, viz., the concession of II.I.48.l, "It is lawful, when necessary, for bishops to celebrate a sung Mass following the form used by priests."

Never mind that the vile 1964 concession was fruit of the leveling spirit of Montini and Bugnini, who no doubt aimed at killing off the pontifical Mass with a much simpler substitute: our prelatical Pagliaccio coveted heightened theater, so he easily made an accommodation with the poisonous devils who spawned the modern liturgy he pretends to abhor.

Speaking for traditional Catholics, Tony Baloney firmly concluded (p. 405) that "Catholics who do not feel at ease with the Late Bugnini of 1969, it seems, should therefore be equally discomfited by the Early and Middle Bugnini of 1955-62." Accordingly, if the clown Dannie were a true Catholic, he should have been "discomfited" by the "Late-Middle" (or is it "Early-Late"?) Bugnini's 1964 concession to cheap theatricality, right? But apparently he wasn't, for in the days when Zany Dannie didn't have a clerical clown crew to pull off a pontifical Mass at SGG or at one of his satellite cults, His Creativity cobbled together an elaborate "pontifical Missa cantata" to impress all the gaping lay folk with his dignity. 

And what an accommodation it was! Two MC's, four torches, thurifer, boat bearer, acolytes, crucifer, pontifical canon, bugia, extra candles on the predella steps, urceus and bacile, silver salver for his zuchetto: you name it -- the whole ball of wax. Anything to heighten the spectacle, with the ol' ringmaster Deacon Dan at the center of the flamboyant circus. A pity it's counterfeit, an ill-conceived, latter-day restoration of a tainted liturgical reform.

From the outset, a genuinely traditional bishop would have disdainfully repudiated the modernists' concession to celebrate Mass in cantu more presbyterorum. He would have insisted that he either celebrate solemnly or say a pontifical Low Mass. He would have distanced himself completely from the impious reformers, even at the cost of foregoing pomp and circumstance. Never would a real traditional churchman have honored Montini and Bugnini.

In sum, an authentic traditional Catholic bishop would have known that everything in the 1964 instruction deserves to be unceremoniously and disdainfully consigned to the liturgical charnel house, leaving the spiritually dead to bury the liturgically dead.

* El apologista católico rara vez distingue entre lo que hay que rechazar con respeto y lo que hay que aplastar con desdén.

ANUNCIO ESPECIAL (SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT)

Avisamos al mundo hispano-hablante que ahora está disponible en español nuestra refutación de la errónea monografía de Tonto Toño Cekada, en la página La Incertidumbre Sobre la Ordenación Conferida con Una Mano (clique aquí).

(Spanish translation of "The Dubiety of Ordination Conferred with One Hand" available here.)

Now, see below for the second post in our series on

COUNTERFEIT CATHOLICISM.

COUNTERFEIT CATHOLICISM 2

Looking at the Church of today (clergy - liturgy - theology) the old-time Catholic at first is outraged, afterward grows worried, and finally splits his sides in laughter. Gómez Dávila*

When Nicolás Gómez Dávila penned the aphorism in today's epigraph, he was naturally referring to the modern Church. His words, however, apply equally to the fake Catholicism of the clownish cult masters of Tradistan. In the next three weeks, we'll look separately at each of the three dimensions -- clergy, liturgy, theology -- that provoke a Catholic's threefold response to the grotesque sede comedy sadly playing out before his shocked and bemused eyes. In the concluding post of the series, we'll advance a fourth dimension -- the depraved laity who permit and support all the abuses.

Poster-boys for fallen standards, the malformed clergy by themselves are proof that Tradistan offers only ersatz Catholicism. 

This blog has chronicled in detail all the reasons for the laity to reject Tradistani clergy and any other priests affiliated, even remotely, with the cult. Just a small sample of their laughable failures is sufficient to detect spurious currency: the entire group's substandard education and training; the Skipper's forgetting the consecration at Mass; the fabrication of new mortal sins; the lingering scandal of one-handed priestly orders; Cekada's many errors and his perverse translation of papal teaching; Uneven-Steven's "formation" through unreliable independent study and his embarrassingly incompetent "exposition" of the Summa on Restoration Radio; a French MHT completer's inability to bless holy water; the reprehensible behavior of Scut the Prefect in the scandal of the rector's wet cat; the cry-baby deacon who wept when the Scut unjustly raged at innocent seminarians; the mindless MHT completer who couldn't perform a graveside service and who told the Arizona laity the 2009 SGG School Scandal was "all false."

The list goes on and on and could keep you laughing for days. Today, we'll concentrate on one seriously worrisome and outrageous incident perhaps never revealed before. It alone is sufficient to demonstrate that these "priests" are definitely not genuine Catholic clergymen.

About a decade ago, a severely disabled, confirmed child had to undergo a dangerous, lengthy operation to straighten a painfully curving spine.  Although the doctors held out hope, they warned the parents of the real possibility of death during the complicated surgery. The worried father -- a very generous donor of time, expertise, and money -- called one of the cult "priests" to request extreme unction. 

The poorly educated,  callow "priest," who quite mistakenly fancies himself a theologian, replied that the sacrament was unnecessary insofar as the disability rendered the child incapable of the use of reason and, consequently, the child was not a subject of the sacrament. 

After conferring with others, the anxious father reminded the misfit "priest" that the child (a) had attained the age of reason, (b) had been examined by a traditional bishop (who, you should note, was a feared rival of a cult kingpin), and (c) had received the sacrament of confirmation. He also volunteered that he and his wife could attest that, albeit inarticulate, the child possessed the use of reason and knew the difference between right and wrong. 

Still the fatuous cleric persisted in denying the sacrament. An educated professional, the father assembled citations from theologians regarding the subjects of the sacrament, which he sent to the reptilian cultist. In particular, he reminded this vermin "priest" of the secondary sacramental effects so beneficial to the body as well as to the soul: as true Catholic priests know, at times the sacrament has restored bodily health. 

Perhaps realizing he was cornered and fearing loss of face (as well as loss of contributions from this well-to-do, highly skilled professional), the mean-spirited "priest" promised to consult his library. Shortly afterward he agreed to administer the sacrament. The child survived the surgery.

If this counterfeit cleric were an authentic Catholic priest, the child's father would never have had to suffer prolonged agony in his dark hour of deep emotional distress. He would not have had to struggle, under such trying circumstances, to bring this reprehensibly bad imitation of the Catholic priesthood to the few senses he might possess.

A real Catholic priest with a pastoral orientation and a knowledge of moral theology would have known the "rules" about extreme unction backwards and forwards. He certainly would  not have needed a layman to school him. And if he needed to double check, he would not have issued a denial as his first response to a troubled parent's heartfelt petition. Never -- NEVER -- would a true Catholic priest have let peevishness and petty one-upmanship get in the way of his solemn duty in a grave matter pertaining to the cure of souls. Most importantly, a real Catholic priest would have been a source of comfort, not of grief, to anguished parents.

This incident, you must remember, is not an isolated instance subject to dismissal as a one-off event. This kind of knee-jerk, wrongheaded, ignorance-fueled arrogance is standard practice in soulless Tradistan. For this reason, all right-minded Catholics must sever any connection to the bogus cult masters. 
  

*Ante la iglesia actual (clero - liturgia - teología) el católico viejo se indigna primero, se asusta después, finalmente revienta de risa.