A LOST GENERATION

O! call back yesterday, bid time return. Shakespeare

One of the most elementary, yet essential concepts behind good pedagogy is time on task. For students to learn effectively, they must spend as much time possible in the classroom fully engaged in efforts directly related to achieving instructional objectives. Of course, some off-task behavior may be tolerated, but it must not be too long or too distracting or so tiring as to impede school's central mission.

Moreover, administrators must make certain that children view any educator-initiated interruptions from a proper perspective: they're often refreshing, at times useful, and can support indirectly children's mastery of their subjects. However, at no time are they ever to be allowed to surpass in value teaching and learning the curriculum. School officials, when scheduling extra-classroom activities or events during the school day, must plan them such that their duration is short and that they do not weaken children's emotional commitment to academics. Otherwise, it's educational malpractice.

Those who follow this blog with any regularity know our low opinion of the SW Ohio cult center's "school," the so-called principal  (LOL) of which stood at the center of the 2009 scandal that rocked SGG to its creaky, rotting foundation. Most of the Gerties, even the beady-eyed fanatics, at least know enough not to send their kids there (enrollment seems to be confined nowadays to a couple families). Well before the online exposé began in earnest in 2008, troubling stories and parents' uncanny sixth sense for the welfare of their offspring warned most people to steer clear of the creepy and kooky despite the hype from the "Bishop's (?) Corner." Good parents -- even the cult-addled ones -- recoiled at the thought of leaving their children to the harsh mercies of the Addams Family of lower Tradistan.

Although much of the shocking behavior that precipitated the catastrophic November 2009 SGG School Scandal appears to be under control (for the time being, at least), for one reason alone all Gerties should demand a thorough housecleaning before giving any more money for the support and maintenance of the "school": precious learning time, time that may never be recovered, is being wasted on the school choir.

Web watchers are aware that the "school" boasts of a daily sung Mass. (How unlike the 1950s when priests and nuns understood the importance of educating young Catholic minds and therefore offered Low Mass). To make sure the cult's poorly attended daily Big Show goes on, starting in the first grade, SGG children -- it seems to be only the girls -- must learn to chant. Now the choir isn't an after-school, extra-curricular activity optional for the kids who're interested. Reliable reports say it's required (no doubt because choral groups seem to be dear to Dannie's heart: maybe he imagines he's being serenaded -- the "Donkey Serenade," we'd venture).

Based on observations and first-hand intelligence, rehearsals and performances must consume about 90 minutes each day! So if, say, an instructional day is about six hours long, that's 25% of the time spent on just one activity, which isn't even a core academic subject!! (That estimate is all the more terrifying in view of research findings indicating that, on the average, students spend just 42% of the school day actively engaged in learning.) On some days, the loss of instructional time is more scandalous because all funerals appear to be scheduled to take place during the school's daily High Mass. Since staff members must also sing, the boys serve, and the disgraced principal act as the officious usher, a large portion of a "Requiem school day" goes to support a single, non-essential activity.

This waste of invaluable instructional time is all the more reprehensible when you read self-serving remarks like the following, which were made in a 2008 Restoration Radio interview with Dannie and Checkie:

... we’ve gotten students here who have come from a homeschooling background and they are really behind. I mean, there are some real exceptions, of people who do really well. But, my impression is that a lot of the mothers just aren’t up to it time or education-wise.*

What a load of self-serving bull feathers! Well, it's more than our impression that SGG School personnel aren't "up to it time or education-wise" either. The cult masters were obviously trying to shame the poor moms who don't feel secure in sending their children to that educational black hole. (Bear in mind that the exposure of SGG School's administrative troubles began in 2008, so there might have been another agenda at work in the interview.)

For our part, we'd like to see how these cult-bred kids perform on the state's proficiency tests against the public schools and homeschooled youth. The result might be eye-opening for everyone. If only the cult masters had the sense and conscience to weep over the time lost forever, never to be restored, rather than harass what they call "highly protective...and sometimes critical" parents whose hearts tell them not play the cult's game. Say what you will about these well-intentioned moms, but at least they don't fritter away a huge chunk of valuable learning time on choir.

In the real world, which Sedelandia despises, no real school -- public or private -- could long survive if most of the students squandered a quarter of each instructional day on choir activities. Right-thinking parents along with the authorities would have stepped in long ago to save the poor children's future. You Gerties who support this farcical "school" with your contributions must step up to the plate and go to bat for the innocent. First you must withhold all moneys. Only then will Dannie know you're serious. Once he's desperate enough to hear you out, you must tell him to close that disgraceful place down for good and get rid of the whole crew.

Members at other sede cults operating a "school" also need to take a good, long, hard look to determine whether their kids are being miseducated. They should ask their children every day about what they're doing in school. They should then write everything down. If parents notice inordinate amounts of time being wasted on activities not related to the curriculum, then their kids are at risk, too. Like the Gerties, parents stuck in other cult centers have a duty to intervene decisively.  The best way -- no, the only way -- is to

STARVE THE BEAST!

* http://truerestoration.blogspot.com/2009/03/interview-with-bishop-daniel-dolan-and.html?m=1

FAREWELL TO HARM

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see... Tennyson

After hearing nothing for quite a spell, we're suddenly flooded with e-mails about Our Lady of the Sun chapel way out West in El Mirage, Arizona.  Rumors are flying that the "priest" currently assigned there may be going to Virginia. And we have fresh accounts confirming much earlier stories about the lay leadership's active search for a replacement.

That's really no surprise. As we reported back in 2011 (click here), Big Don had bragged in a pesthouse newsletter, “we are very hopeful and confident that our relationship to [Our Lady of the Sun Chapel, Arizona] will become permanent” (a reference to the apparently once-discussed possibility of the lay board's turning over everything -- lock, stock, and barrel -- if the arrangement worked out). The board must have done its due diligence, for soon thereafter we learned it had decidedly rejected a crudely insistent demand for out-and-out control. 

After the harsh rebuff, the rector continued to play the crass hireling, probably partly for the fees and partly because he had nowhere else to house the "sisters" he'd sent out there. He couldn't have liked the situation in the least. You just know it had to stick in his craw that, according to a first-hand account we received, he was bested by a layman, a veteran lawyer, who couldn't be cowed with all that empty clerical swagger and bluster. It must have galled the rector exceedingly to think of all that money and merchantable real estate under the tightfisted stewardship of conscientious LAY PEOPLE -- a condition he naturally abhors. 

After four and a half years, IOHO, it looks as though the justly cautious lay board may never hand over the assets to Big Don. Using our mind's eye, we can envision how, as he nursed the viper of resentment in his bosom through each passing year of disappointed acquisitiveness, his resolve to strike back -- to retaliate for frustrating his plans -- must have hardened. First his lumbering, big $30-K plan* never got off the ground that year. Then his high-flying effort to take over the Arizona chapel crashed and burned, obliging him to remain a lowly hired hand of a lay board.  Unyielding lay opposition forced him to violate what seems to be his most sacred principle, viz. laymen have no right to control money and assets attached to their own chapel. Every time he figuratively outstretched his grasping paws for his servant's wages, he must've bristled with bitter, biting self-loathing. His cult followers' repeated inquiries about the status of the "permanent relationship" probably didn't make it any easier.

You don't have to be a a fortune-teller to divine it all. You just have to understand the surly nature of all these mammonite, clerical crud balls.

Now all this background along with the new whispers inspired us to hazard a not-so-wild guess at what he might have in mind for the recalcitrants at Our Lady of the Sun, who refuse to see the wisdom in forking over everything they possess to Big Don for his big-spending dreams. So, then, what will he do? It's a no brainer: He'll just pick up his marbles and go home, leaving the people hell-bound, without the sacraments.** You can almost hear him croak, "That'll show 'em, it will, it will! Let 'em buuuuuurn for eternity!"

But there's one problem with all our airy speculation: Although the rector can assign elsewhere the current "priest," who's his creature, what is he to do with the "sisters" who staff the "school" out there? We looked at aerial views of pesthouse property and couldn't see a building large enough to billet both the El Mirage muster and the Brooksville bevy at the same time. The current structure where the high-living "sisters" lounge about seems far too small in our eyes. If he wanted to bring the exiled "nuns" back just to spite the Arizonans, Big Don would have to build some kind of new convent. But that takes land and new construction, doesn't it?

Our question sent us online to look at any activity with Hernando County property near the pesthouse. Lo and behold! we found a possible candidate. It's a 16.5-acre parcel in the name of known cult benefactors.*** The purchase date was December 31, 2012 (about a year and a half after the humiliating rejection in Arizona). Most significantly, the records showed that just one day later,  January 1, 2013, the property was transferred to Queen of All Saints Chapel  -- the cult's umbrella organization -- for $0.00!

Could this be the location for a new convent, grand enough to lodge all the "sisters" in lavish style and luxurious comfort?  It just needs a building -- which may explain another set of rumors that came out of the Southeast concerning a big donation campaign on the Q.T. So the moment the cult masters announce the groundbreaking, it won't be a bad guess to predict an inevitable end to the rector's disenchanting temporary "relationship" with Our Lady of the Sun. Uppity lay people who don't know their place at the bottom of the cult food chain need to be taught object lessons!

The peevish prelataster may be planning to take these folks by surprise. We can imagine him gloating in his best Snidely Whiplash impression, 

"Boy, will they be sorry now! OOWAHhahahaha!" 

But we don't think they'll be surprised. Unlike the social outcasts/misfits he's been able to dominate up to now, the upper-crust, well-adjusted folks in El Mirage are a smart and savvy set. We'd bet they've already got someone with valid orders lined up to come in the day after Donnie's minions crawl out of the bright Western sun back to the shadows of the fetid swampland: There are many more priests around who can step in almost immediately.

The faithful of Our Lady of the Sun will be better off if it indeed turns out that we've correctly read the tea leaves. Had they turned over their lovely chapel with its considerable assets, the place would've been transformed into a full-fledged cult center, where snooping, ill-humored clerics and pampered religious transgressively intrude into the private lives of the faithful, demanding the laity serve them, cook and clean for them, and surrender their will to the cult master's whims; where vicious, backbiting fanatics spy on their neighbors on behalf of meddling clergy; where the in-crowd rich enjoy special treatment, exempt from the harsh strictures binding the rest; where women are chattel; and where childhood is smothered under the oppressive weight of bizarre, arbitrary restrictions more akin to ISIS than to authentic Roman Catholicism.

Then, after everyone had left, and the cupboard was bare, all that would've been left would be the nightmarish memories of the devastation the "permanent relationship" had visited upon a too trusting Catholic community -- a community unable to see how their desire to keep their money and property in their name should render them ineligible for pastoral care. They must've forgotten the iron motto of Tradistan: proventus cleri lex suprema esto.

Why not head 'em off at the pass, all you good folks at Our Lady of the Sun? Say adiós and good riddance before you're bushwhacked.  You'll be taking the first step toward returning to the Catholic faith you once knew but may have forgotten. As John Wayne once said, "Think about it, Pilgrim...Remember?"

* See our posts of April 23, May 22, and July 31, 2011, for more details. The promise of the plan is found here on page 7 of the pesthouse bulletin.

** Considering who ordained the current incumbent, they may not have had valid sacraments anyway, so they've got everything to gain if the cult master leaves 'em high and dry.

*** We also found a tangled web of LLC's and quit-claim deeds so complex that you'd need a battallion of forensic accountants to figure out what's really going on.

SUN HIMSELF CANNOT FORGET

Dark grows the valley, more and more forgetting:/So it were with me if forgetting could be willed./Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring./Tell it to forget the source that keeps it filled. Meredith

Last week, we read, with more than a little interest, a recent notice of underwriting opportunities at Angelus Press. One of the production projects for which the SSPX is soliciting support is A Short Critical Study of the New Order of the Mass, commonly known as "The Ottaviani Intervention." Our wish is that Santa, or at least some generous soul, will step forward with the $2,500 requested:  Traditional Catholics who don't read Italian or French are in need of a reliable, definitive English translation of this "classic critique of the New Mass."

Five years ago we lamented that the only readily available English version appeared to be that of Erroneous Antonius Cekada. In our devastating review of his troubled effort (click here), we exposed many of the same linguistic and stylistic shortcomings we found in his appallingly incompetent Work of Human Hands. At the conclusion our analysis of his shoddy rendering, we concluded:

All in all, he’s an unlucky and ungifted dilettante, whose every effort to appear learned blows up in his face. His lot is to entertain pretensions that will forever outpace his limited ability to perform.

Since that time, we've brought to light many, many more of the Checkmeister's deficiencies as a "scholar" (LOL). None, however, was more damning than our exposure of his perverse translation of an infallible teaching of Pope Pius XII. (See, for instance, our posts of May 11 and May 18, 2013, as well as our rebuttal/refutation of his flawed defense of one-handed orders, starting at article VI.) This catastrophic blunder is of a kind so far-reaching in its consequences that, once made, the perpetrator can never recover from it: The ensuing universal loss of confidence creates a permanent and irremediable disability.*  

In our personal and professional lives, all of us have lost faith forever in someone who spectacularly bungled something. Perhaps it was the heedless neighbor who squandered the family nest-egg on a dumb investment notwithstanding his wife's tearful protests and sound advice to the contrary; or maybe the boss whose mismanagement resulted in the collapse of a department; or possibly the classmate whose wildly misinformed guesses landed you in the principal's office for an expulsion hearing.

The world at large, too, abounds with many more examples of royal botches. In governmental affairs, think of George Tenet, "Baby" Bush's hapless CIA chief, who insisted that the evidence of WMDs in Iraq was a "slam dunk case." History will remember him -- and his boss -- with deep contempt. More obscurely, in the area of university scholarship, we have the case of poor old Prof. Tom Burns Haber. He never really regained his reputation after the brilliant critic John Sparrow exposed his incompetence as a text editor and as a writer of plain English. Many years after the exposure appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, this genteel, soft-spoken academic's pupils, who loved him for his kindness and decency, would still whisper about "that problem he had."

And so it is with Checkie Cheeseball, the Blunderer par excellence. Had he corrected his perverse translation after he was cautioned in charity, all his other howling mistranslations would have been forgotten by now. He could have continued his painful masquerade as a "gifted scholar and theologian." The errors, egregious as they may be, could have been blamed on "editorial oversight" or put down to haste, the unfortunate byproduct of a busy life laboring in the Lord's vineyard. In other words, Tony Baloney could still be basking in the (misguided) admiration of his fellow clergy, both inside and outside Tradilandia.

Now, however, as a result of that fatally perverse translation, he can never again feel the radiant warmth of TradWorld's begrudging esteem, or the hot-air hype blowing hard from the bleak spiritual desert called Tradistan. To be sure, the debased, degenerate cultlings still believe all the bunkum put out in Dannie's grubby "Bishop's (?) Corner." But let's be frank. The Cheeseball himself discounts the high opinion of illiterate though fawning culties. They're only worth his scant attention if they obey Dannie and buy his worthless WHH. Without 'em, he'd have no sales.

Brassy as he is, Awkward Anthony secretly fears that his fellow "professors" and the pesthouse "seminarians" laugh up their sleeves at him.  Their smirking reserve and behind-his-back giggles must sting more fiercely than the cat-o'- ninetails of a boatswain's mate. One of those "colleagues," Squirmin' Herman, a South American and hence the privileged beneficiary of good schooling who once studied classics at the university level, will understand better than the rector the enormity of Checkie's blunder. Hermie and the distempered, tightly-wrapped Scut the Prefect -- both ordained by Big Don, not by "One Hand" -- must roll their eyes every time the Blunderer shows up cracking wise and searching pathetically for their deference.

Other priests mock him, too, especially those from rival Traddie sects that once dreaded his smarmy pen. Today the former objects of Tony's hauteur snicker wickedly when anyone mentions the Cheeseburger's "scholarly credentials." You can get away with a lot in Sedelandia, but you can't save face after perversely mistranslating infallible papal teaching. Trad Nation won't let you forget.

It's a certain bet that the SSPX hasn't forgotten either. Although the severely challenged Blunderer has never once ruffled the society with his sub-adolescent name-calling, the SSPX remembers his ugly exit. It remembers what he wrote, too. It remembers the lawsuits. So now that Bonehead Tone's unforgettable and unforgivable blunder has been paraded before a sneeringly scornful traditional-Catholic community, the society is poised to issue a new, trustworthy version of "The Ottaviani Intervention." Their translation will drive his sorry effort off the bookshelves of everyone except the incurably depraved.  Say what you will about the SSPX, but they've got the people with the training and education to make an accurate translation and render it into readable, edited English prose.

Today the Checkster's voice is but a fading memory in the minds of the properly educated, who'll simply recall a cautionary tale of trust misplaced in a rank amateur.  You low-class Gertie rite trash, whose money underwrites Checkie's "scholarly" misadventures, can write him off, too. He's not the Sage of Southwest Ohio. Soon you, too, will have a dependable translation of the "Intervention." So go ahead, y'all: Give your cult-kicked backsides a break from those rough corn cobs: Consign Cheesey's pulp fiction to the outhouse, where it will, at last, be of some practical use.  

If anyone out there in cyberspace has a few extra dollars, he can help erase all remembrance of Checkie's whole unreliable oeuvre by calling Mr. James Vogel at Angelus Press (785-321-3615) and offering to underwrite the new "Ottaviani Intervention." This time you'll know your money was well spent.

*For that reason alone, you can be certain the Angelus Press would never simply re-print Checkie Cheese's mess.

"ALTAR" EGO

To puff and to get one's self puffed have become different branches of a new profession. Trollope

Our post on the cult center's privileged altar  (October 24, "Dead Reckoning") didn't attract many comments, but it sure as heck brought in a ton of e-mail traffic, mostly inquisitive or supportive. The cultie nasty-grams we received were the usual illiterate assortment of holier-than-thou recriminations, but one in particular does deserve a public answer.

Here's part of what the hysterical, pants-loathing Gertie gal spat:

You lie, Piss-trina! His Excellency Bishop Dolan has NEVER said there is a privileged altar at SGG. Before God I swear it...Produce the name of the woman you quoted or retract your accusation...Heed the voice of the faithful telling you to attack the Novus Ordo, or else take your calumnious web site down!

Well, to begin with, we'll never disclose the identity of our informants, so our outraged -- and forsworn -- fan of Dan can forget her first demand. However, since she was thoughtful enough to send us hate mail, we provided her with unassailable evidence of the truth of our report so she could change her testimony and take back her charge of calumny (unless a providential lightning bolt had already found its mark).

All of you out in cyberspace will also want to take a look at the evidence, too. It's found in middle of the 2nd page, column 3, of the SGG bulletin dated November 11, 2012 (Pentecost XXIV), under the heading WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT MASS STIPENDS: 

Any altar used by a Bishop for a departed soul becomes a privileged altar as that Mass is being offered. You may request the Bishop to offer your Mass for the deceased. 

(Oh, dear me! Look at those vanity caps -- and the attention-grabbing italics! Li'l Dan really wanted you to think he was something Big, didn't he? He also wanted you to know that he was open for business that November! For those in the chorus of cult-crazed creeps shrieking that we made it all up, click here to see the smoking gun.)

So now that that's settled (and settled for good), permit us briefly to explain why Dannie -- or any other sede bishop -- cannot enjoy a personal daily privileged altar as did cardinals and bishops in the good ol' days. (And it's not because of "One Hand's" possibly dubious sacerdotal ordination, either.)

Sede consecrations are, as sedes themselves admit, unlawful: sede bishops are never appointed by the Roman Pontiff. Their fitness is never proved in a manner determined by the Holy See. Insofar as they're consecrated without an Apostolic mandate, they're suspended according to the 1917 canon law by which sede cult masters insist everybody but themselves be bound. As a result, they're outside the institutional Church that concedes the privilege to its licit hierarchy. To put it simply, they're ineligible. It's like a belonging to country club: only dues-paying members have rights and privileges; anybody else making a claim is a trespasser.

From the way that 2012 SGG bulletin spins it, you'd think a bishop's enjoyment of a daily privileged altar is one of the degrees of power received in orders. It's not.  As the name implies, it's a privilege -- a favorable private law. It's acquired by direct grant, communication, legitimate custom, or prescription. However, in virtue of sede bishops'  outsider status, there's no way they can acquire the privilege, valid orders notwithstanding. In fact, they can't even steal the privilege. 

Cheeky usurpation of privileges always occurs when the self-aggrandizing ambition of narcissistic, untutored gutter trash exceeds the limits of their less-than-meager capacities. They're like a maggot that proclaims itself a horsefly and then tries to make the animal kingdom believe it's an eagle: The higher forms of life won't buy the laughable proposition, but the biting midges, anopheles mosquitoes, and dung flies do.

Why not advance a few more links up on the Great Chain of Being and stop believing all the ego-stroking absurdities hatched by the puffed-up (and puffy)  Bishop (?) of the squalid SW Ohio cult?

The added bonus is, there'll be a lot more money for your 401(k) -- or the kids' college fund (assuming, that is, you don't believe some sedes' article of faith that a college-education is demonic.)