AN OPEN LETTER TO BIG DON SIN-BURN — PAGE 1 of 3

Editor's Note: We received so many e-mails after a commenter last week disclosed "ridiculous" and "out of hand" school rules imposed at the swampland that we felt obliged to confront the rector through an open letter. Pages 2 and 3 will follow on May 7 and May 14.

His Flatulency
Swampland Pesthouse
Brooksville Cult Compound 00666-1313

Dear Don,

You don't mind our calling you "Don," do you? After all, it's not as though you really and truly belonged to the clerical state. You can strut and puff all you want with your bewitched cult supporters, but the Readers know you occupy the same status as lay men and women in Sedelandia, which is not the Church. In addition, you'll surely understand we can't address you as "Mister," weak as that honorific is, because you have forfeited all respect.

So "Don" it will be, knowing that the other names we use for you in private are unprintable (except our favorite, "gob of spit").

We write to give you the opportunity to set the record straight. Last week someone posted a comment about what normal people would consider to be outlandish rules for children, rules that the writer alleged were enforced at your swampland "school." Over the years, many people from different parts of the country have reported substantially the same nutty regulations.

But, quite frankly, Don, at first we couldn't believe such stories about any group that styles itself as traditional Catholic. If the accounts had been about, say, the Peoples Temple in Jonestown, Guyana, or David Koresh's Branch Davidians in Waco, TX, then, for sure, we would have believed the allegations. But about Roman Catholics? No way, we (wrongly) insisted.

Yet the same, or eerily similar, stories kept pouring in from all points of the compass.  In light of last week's disclosure, our readership has asked us to verify whether these wild narratives are true. You see, Don, the good Catholic folks in cyberspace can't believe it either, especially those who grew up before Vatican II. That's why we're trying to get the answer straight from the horse's — or, rather, that Palm-Sunday equid's — mouth, as it were.

In this letter, we'll lay out the alleged rules and practices that well-adjusted, cradle-Catholics find abhorrent. We're asking you (or your Clone), pretty-please with sugar and spice sprinkled all over, to confirm or disconfirm whether they reflect official "school" practice, no matter if they're written down or just barked orally to the cringing kids at the start of a school year. (We fully understand any reluctance to put some of this stuff in writing. Sheesh! There'd be a stampede to get out of any cult that subjected little children to so much insanity. You've probably got some bad memories from Michigan on that score.)

You may send your response to pistrinalit@gmail.com. We have your (and the Clone's) email addresses so we can confirm the authenticity of any reply. Moreover, Don, as an undeserved courtesy, we'll call you personally to verify that the response indeed came from you. If it is authentic, we'll post it to our scribd pages for the world to see (just as we posted the letter you signed in 1990 advising your nemesis "One-Hand Dan" about the dubiety of his priestly orders).

We are certain that, despite your intense loathing for us, you'll want to dignify this inquiry with a written answer. If the reports we transmit herein do not reflect your cult school's (schools') policies, then you'll want to deny them right away. The rules/practices as reported are outrageous and do merit condemnation. You may even want to disavow them outright and, in your inimitable bombastic style, anathematize any school administrator who would institutionalize such intrusive and, in some cases, dirty-minded regulations. You'll get that opportunity here on Pistrina Liturgica. We promise. (We're not sede "clergy," so you can trust us.)

On the other hand, Don, if these regulations and practices do represent approved policy, we're just as sure you'll want to confirm them. You can't be ashamed of embracing them if you permit their operation and enforcement, can you? Others may disagree with us, but we say that if the rules truly reflect your actual policy, we can't see your denying that they exist even if they're not written down and even if you know they might alienate unsuspecting new-comers. To do so would be an act of treachery to your own deeply held beliefs. And you wouldn't betray yourself, would you, Don?

We mean, if you did deny them when, in fact, they are communicated to students and are in force, you might provoke outrage from the 11 or so families that left the "school" when they found the rules intolerable. That, we're sure you understand, Don, would be disastrous for your fundraising efforts outside the tightly closed circle of the Big 3 cult benefactors. Why, it might result in a catastrophe like the 2009 $GG School Scandal.

Trad Nation, too, would be sorely upset if you didn't stand tall for your own rules. Good gracious! If Big Don won't walk the line, who will? Moreover, what would the few "seminarians" you now have left think if you didn't keep a close watch on that hard heart of yours? (BTW, how many "seminarians" still remain at the pesthouse? Four, is it? Maybe five?)

So, Don, we've culled the content from all comments, emails, and interview notes in our possession so you can examine them one by one. Since you claim to be an educator yourself, for your convenience, we'll organize them in examination format, because such an arrangement seems appropriate given the subject matter.

The first part of our test is a true-or-false section: before each statement we have placed a "T" ("true," meaning that you confirm the truth of the statement) or an "F"("false,"meaning you disconfirm or deny the statement).

Get out your #2 pencil, Don. You...may...begin...now! (Remember: no cheating, big boy.)

. . . . . . . . .

A. True or False (circle the letter that reflects your answer):

Don, is it true that...

T   F   1. Your "school" permits neither participation in outside sports activities (although you don't offer in-school athletics)  nor membership in outside clubs or organizations?

T   F   2. When kids (or at least the kids who aren't from your Big 3 donor families) break the rules, they are isolated, and other children are not permitted to talk to them, while these victims of your discipline are publicly humiliated by having to stand against the wall for the whole day with their offense written above their heads?

T   F   3. Your "school" does not permit the children's families to have broadcast TV at home?

T   F   4. Children must get permission from the "nuns" or the "priest" in order to use the Internet at home or go to the movies?

T   F   5. In one of your satellite operations, two adolescents who with parental accompaniment went to see a "Lord of the Rings" movie were expelled for not having secured the "nuns'" permission first?

T   F   6. Your "school" keeps the children so busy with excessive homework (assigned by mostly untrained "teachers"), choir practice, server practice, and drudge work outside the school that the heavy work load is breaking down the home family unit?

T   F   7. Boys and girls, including brothers and sisters in the sole company of their family, are not permitted to swim together?

T   F   8. The prohibition of mixed swimming applies even if the girls wear long board shorts and long-sleeved rash guard shirts?

T   F   9. A girl was penalized after being pressured to admit to one of the prying, Nosey-Parker "nuns" that they did not recite "family Rosary" at home?

T   F  10. Children must clean the work-shy "nuns'" living quarters? 

Editor's Note: Don's big exam will continue next week on page 2 of 3 of our open letter with section B, the long essay section. That'll be a real challenge for the rector.

DISORDERED ORDO IV

Hibernicis ipsis Hibernior ("More Irish than the Irish themselves").  Proverbial Phrase (adapted)

SGG is a graveyard of miscarried endeavors.

Everything to which the cult masters put their unskilled hands ends in red-faced failure. The rapidly decaying cult theater has never moved out of what was originally planned as a gym. The scandal-plagued SGG "School" only corrals the ill-fated offspring from a handful of woebegone families.

Dannie has never emerged as the "world-wide" leader à la Lefebvre he once bragged of becoming: unwelcome in France, uninvited to England, and unwanted in most parts of Mexico, all he can manage is to play a threadbare Santa Claus to a few marginalized, renegade enclaves in Tijuana and Argentina, who would disinvite him in a flash if he stopped bringing them the Gerties' confiscated dollars.

Among other mischances are the recent failed efforts to reclaim lost (and never deserved) prestige; Tony Baloney's public outing for his mistranslations, mistaken theology, and misunderstanding of canon law; and Wee Dan's hasty withdrawal from sale of both his error-stuffed "All Saints Calendar" and his famously inept ORDO 2016.

In short, nothing the cult tries works out. Every enterprise it undertakes is doomed.

Down-on-his-Luck Dan's unbroken record of failure should prompt the prelataster to ask whether it's morally right to charge money for defective products. Clearly, at this point, an injured Trad Nation recognizes the SGG "clergy" don't have the training, work ethic, resources, or native intelligence to attempt ambitious intellectual projects and expect good money in return for inevitably substandard work.

A just man would have had this interior monologue:

God forgive me! All of us vermin at SGG — the Finn, Lurch, Erroneous Antonius, Uneven Steven and especially me, the raggedy, maggoty Dirtbag — we can't deliver. (*sob*) Our meager endowments are incapable of realizing our outsized egos' immodest aspirations. My own seething id has brought ruin down upon me and Big Don, my despised rival here in barren Tradistan. (*sniff*) It's a miracle that people put up with us at all. In good conscience, we dare not even offer our shoddy products for free, they're so full of stupid blunders. Henceforth, we'll acknowledge our insurmountable limitations and endeavor to make reparation. (*gulp*)

Alas! that kind of graced introspection is beyond the attainment of a malformed, me-firster cult master. So this is where Pistrina comes into the picture. We've got the facts to prove it's time for these raging sleaze bags to close up shop and head off to the retirement village they've been lately scoping out on the sly. In short, the hour has come to take Dannie's dreck off the market for good.

For today's exposé of His Impertinency's empire of error, we're going to focus only on one sentence of Dannie's disordered ORDO 2016.  In it you'll find crowded into 21 words all the flaws we've been writing about: bad Latin, inept editing, unjust pretense, and alienation from Catholic tradition. The sentence is emblematic of everything that's wrong with SGG, and it alone would be sufficient to convict the cult masters of nonfeasance.

Under St. Patrick's Day (p. 30), Dannie's moron compiler inserts the following note, the content of which is attributed to two paragraphs from the Additiones et Variationes ("AV") fore matter of the Roman Missal (red indicates a grave goof):

Ubi Festum S Patricii celebretur pro re publica causa, cum magno populi concursu, possit celebrare una Missa solemnis ubi dicitur Credo.

The italicized words in the following literal translation will make it obvious to the non-Latinist that there's something very wrong with Dubious Dan's text:

Where the Feast of St. Patrick be celebrated for a matter public cause, with a great concourse of the people, one solemn Mass may be able to celebrate where the Creed is said.

Huh?!

Let's autopsy this rotten liturgical cadaver by taking a quick look at both blunders quâ blunders only. Our interpretation will follow.

GRAVE GOOF # 1

"For a matter public cause" (pro re publica causa) makes no sense because Dannie's brain-dead compiler didn't copy the original phrase correctly. The full phrase, as found in the Missal (as well as in many liturgical books), is pro re gravi et publica simul causa. The pinhead  skipped three out of seven words: that means 43% of the original was lost in transcription. (Way to go, Bozo!)

The full Latin phrase is a fixed rubrical formula (although occasionally in place of simul we find Ecclesiæ), and it means for an important object and at the same time for a general public interest. The Missal text refers to solemnly celebrated votive Masses wherein the Creed is recited.

GRAVE GOOF # 2

No one needs to be a trained grammarian to guess that the active infinitive "to celebrate" (celebrare)  is dead wrong. It obviously should be passive, "to be celebrated" (celebrari in Latin).

🎶 WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT, DAN-NIE? 🎶

Simple parablepsis cannot explain grave goof # 1. To be sure, a literate person might accidentally skip over several words when copying a long phrase. However, he or she would almost instantly know something was amiss because the miscopied text would plainly make no sense. Not to have recognized the error is a telltale token that the SGG numskulls do not understand Latin at the most basic level, a sign confirmed by the subsequent infinitive in the wrong voice (grave goof # 2).

The cult masters' ignorance of Latin poses a danger to the faithful.  The clown "clergy" may not understand what they're reading in Mass. During the silent canon, who knows how much of it they're skipping, tripping over, or misreading? (Remember the Skipper, that cretinous MHT "blunderkind" who forgot the consecration?) And when these simpletons quote theology, can you be certain they really understood the meaning of the text they're citing to keep you cowed and paying? And what if they miscopied it and then based their opinion on what they thought the mistranscribed (and no doubt misunderstood) Latin meant?

Troubling thought, isn't it?

This is not a problem that can be easily dismissed as petty nit-picking on our part. A priest's command of Latin remains central to the laity's spiritual welfare because basic competence in the language is essential in the Roman rite. Sound Latin is not an empty adornment, for without it, no man can function adequately in the Catholic priesthood, notwithstanding the validity of his orders. Souls in the "care" of the Latinless ordained are in jeopardy.

But more disturbing than ignorance of Latin is the note's wicked intimation that "One Hand" has jurisdiction. As you may remember from our remarks above, the substance of the Missal text, to which Dannie's note refers, speaks to solemn votive Masses (cfr. AV vii.3). According to J. O'Connell's The Celebration of Mass (1942),

A solemn votive Mass is one celebrated with extrinsic solemnity (i.e. a solemn Mass or at least a sung one, in presence of a large gathering ["cum magno populi concursu," as the Missal says at AV iv. 2, Ed.]), for a grave and at the same time public reason ["pro re gravi et publica simul causa", as the Missal says at AV vii.3, Ed.], by order, or with the permission, of the Ordinary of the place. (Vol. 1, p. 72, emphases ours.)

No matter what anyone tries to tell you, His Arrogancy is absolutely NOT the Ordinary of Tradistan. Neither Dannie nor any other wandering bishop possesses jurisdiction anywhere, not even in the confessional, except in danger of death. (And the reports of one-handed orders make Wee Dan's jurisdictional claims even weaker in respect to the tribunal of penance.)

As students of human nature, we Readers have to ask why Li'l Daniel included such a singularly odd, very-much-out-of-place note.  To tell you the truth, it's not actually a completely accurate reference to the content of AV — in fact, it has all the indicators of being a bungled patch job of bits and pieces from AV iv. 2 and AV vii.3 made to look like an authentic liturgical annotation. (Indeed, it stinks of special pleading.) Our next question is, Why are similar notes missing for other big-name saints' days, say, for instance, Pope St. Pius X on September 3, whose portrait appears on the cover of Dannie's incompetent ORDO 2016? ("For a Traddie, he's bigger than St. Paddy!")

Although we don't like guesswork, if you were to ask us to venture a conjecture, we'd say the purpose of this faulty note is to authorize Shanty-Irish Dannie to add the Creed in his own Mass on St. Patrick's Day, so as to impress his "cultitariat" with his deep knowledge (LOL) of the rubrics of the Roman Missal.*  Why, with a little effort, we can imagine his drawing the mob's attention to the appearance of the Creed in his Mass. And with a little more exertion, we see in our mind's eye the "Everybody's-Irish-on-St.-Patrick's-Day" cultling rabble wiping their greasy chops with the backs of their filthy paws and nodding spastically to each other in bestial wonderment at Wee Dan's exercise of his "powers" (LOL) to honor the Apostle of Ireland. ("That bee-ship is jes' a whole 'nother smoke, ain't he, Raylene Mae? Aaron goes raw!")

But remember:  "One Hand," a dubious episcopus vagans, has no brief to order or permit a solemn votive Mass with Creed for St. Patrick on March 17 — not even in the presence of a large gathering killing time until the beer kegs are tapped. It wouldn't make a bit of difference if pods of wheezing rite-trash scum were to jam their whale-sized backsides into the squalid cult center from transept to narthex, with standing room only in the fetid side aisles plus a packed, freezing cry-room of battered womenfolk whipping their unruly issue. His Disobediency still couldn't licitly say the Creed at such a swarming jamboree of genetic ne'er-do-wells: As the Missal says (AV iv.2), cujus rei judex est Ordinarius, "the Ordinary is the judge of that matter." And, as we've told you over and over, "One-Hand Dan" is NOT an Ordinary — a-n-y-w-h-e-r-e!

HOW CAN YOU STOP THIS CONSUMER ABUSE?

No one can count on Panhandlin' Dan to forego hawking his dead-on-arrival fiascos. The sociopathology of Tradistan demands that later this year he'll dig up the dry bones of his calamitous calendar and disordered ordo and put 'em on sale for the suckers. He thinks everyone will forget.

Let's tell His Deficiency he's mistaken.

Make sure you forward this post and all the others here, here, here, here, here, and here to as many people as possible, especially to your friends in Europe Latin America, and Australia/New Zealand. If we all get the word out about this massive failure, Dannie's dead ordo will remain stored in the SGG cult's charnel house of failure for eternity, of use only to the ghouls of the SW Ohio-Brooksville cabal and their scuzzy lackeys in California, Michigan, and Washington state. If Deacon Dan still feels the need to peddle liturgical advice to others in 2017, we suggest the following one-liner, which seems to us to embody his praxis:

Arbitrio tuo rem permitte.

(freely, in Cole Porter's words, "Anything Goes")

*As Dannie's own ordo shows, the great saint ordinarily doesn't get a Credo in his Mass. According to Rubricæ generales Missæ xi, he couldn't even get one in a so-called "chapel" that claimed him as patron and titular. (He wouldn't get one in a sede "church" either, since a "Mass center" is not a proper church [and, FYI, Mass centers aren't really chapels in the Catholic sense, either].)

SPRING 2016 MAILBAG II

There is the instance of that woman (the Lord is my witness) who went to the theater and returned from it with a demon. And so, in the exorcism when the unclean spirit was being resolutely harassed  for having dared to assail one of the faithful, it said: "And indeed I did it quite justly, for I found her on my territory." Tertullian

Editor's Note: Here's a little missive just for those doubters who don't think our cyber apostolate has had an impact.

Thanks to Pistrina Liturgica I am a former SGG "rite-trash" dupe, who now happily belongs to an SSPX chapel. I did not attend SGG regularly, only on important Feasts and Sundays for the "Big Show". You are correct when you say that SGG only appears Catholic. If you scratch the surface, it looks a lot like any Protestant or Conciliar church...When Dolan preaches he sounds like a Methodist minister... [and]  Cekada's breezy sermons are just like what you hear from a Novus Ordo presbyter... [T]he ongoing fundraising reminds me of a televangelist.... Everything they do feels "produced." In my humble opinion, this is as bad as their ignorance of theology, philosophy, and Latin...

We couldn't agree more.

Beneath the theatrical veneer, the whole SGG freak show is foreign to authentic Catholic sensibility and culture. It's expressive home lies somewhere between non-denominational and mainline American Protestantism. With all the flashy-but-trashy staging, the weekly cult spectacle reminds us of one of those battlefield re-enactments so admired by pot-bellied, goateed losers in their vain search for a meaningful life. The same spirit drives evangelicals with their birthday parties for Jesus on Christmas or their melodramatic Easter costume pageants. Mise-en-scène triumphs over ritual substance.

Dannie's Palm-Sunday donkey is a low-rent manifestation of vulgar, hyper realistic theater that upends the Latin liturgy's exquisite reductionism, where historical and religious content is compressed into minimal gesture and spare text. Brother Ass's starring rôle in SGG's campy parade of the animals is evidence that His Ostentatiousness has no affection for the Roman rite, which he seemingly believes to be in need of assistance from literalist special effects. (N.B. In poncing the liturgy up with another jackass, the Dirtbag doesn't gild the lily: that would demand a rudimentary esthetic instinct. Philistine that he is, Dannie just laminates it in plastic.)

Although "One-Hand Dan's" attachment to the histrionic locates his religious sentiments squarely within the non-denominational Protestant ethos, the liturgical anomy of establishment Protestantism supplies the morbid inspiration for his over-the-top practice. Recall only a few of the obscene innovations practiced at run-down SGG, to wit:

●The impious suppression of the Leonine prayers;
●Their replacement with faux-liturgical shout-outs to the saint du jour;
●The imposition of alien devotions, like the quasi-pagan "Baby Doctor Jesus";
●Dubious Dan's subversive revival of the reformers' "pontifical Missa cantata." 

Then, consider the following line from the 1932 "Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church":

Every particular church may ordain, change, or abolish rites and ceremonies...

Now you see why we say the informing spirit of SGG is definitely not Roman Catholic — unless you happen to think similar practices by Novus-Ordo parish liturgical committees render such irreverent novelties legitimate. The only distinguishing difference is that SGG prefers a nostalgic theme while the Modernists aim at being hip. The outward shape or coloring of "worship" is mere decoration for these people. Underlying the gimmicks of both SGG's superficial traditional Catholicism and Novus Ordite/Protestant revolutionary vandalism is the garish impressario's itch to be "creative," to stage, to entertain, to dazzle the senses, to generate box-office receipts.

Limelight Lovin' Daniel's spiritual affiliation with Protestant-inspired Novus Ordite showmen also betrays itself in his disregard for Latin, where it's trotted out with a wink and a nod for theatrical effect alone. Insofar as Deacon Dan thinks of himself as the patriarch of Tradistan, it's instructive to compare him in this regard to Bergie, his N.O. exhibitionist counterpart, who's also notorious for his indifference to the Church's sacred tongue.

At the time when Bergie and Donald Trump were talking' trash at the Mexican border (where Travelin' Dan frequently vacations), on the flight back to Rome, Frankie gave an interview where he tried to put The Donald in his place with an intellectual witticism tricked out with a Latin tag:

But thank God he [Trump] said that I'm political, because Aristotle defines the human person as "animal polticus." At least I'm [a] human person.*

Setting aside the fact that Aristotle wrote in Greek (so technically he defines man as a ζῷον πολιτικόν)  the problem is, in Latin, animal is neuter, not masculine. Bumbling Bergie should have said politicum.** As we've observed in the past, the sede cult masters have the same trouble with the super elementary notion of concord in Latin, viz., adjectives, adjective pronouns, and participles agree with their nouns in number, gender, and case. (For a fresh example of Dannie's persistent inability to grasp this fundamental concept of Latin grammar,  go to page 32 of his error-laced ORDO 2016, where at the bottom of the page he oafishly prints "in privato recitatione" rather than privata.)

Upon reflection, it's plain that the Bergomeister could just as well have trumped the Trumpster in the vernacular (either in Spanish or Italian or in his characteristic mixture of the two), without having to stumble on a faulty Latin calque of the Greek original. But, you see, he wanted to impress the supine news media with the appearance of a rare education.  Li'l Daniel puts on the same airs, and does so with the same immunity from criticism on the part of his cult followers. The difference is the secular Italian press knows Bergie's faking it, but out of convenience or connivance the journalists let him get away with his act. The star-struck Gerties, on the other hand, haven't a clue that Flamboyant Dan the Drama Man is only winging it.

Our correspondent's right: Once you sit in the front row of the beggars' opera sacrilegiously billed as SGG "Catholicism," you know it's an illusion — all smoke 'n' mirrors, props, costuming, lighting, greasepaint, and hammy grandstanding rooted in an alien creed on alien turf. Whatever lies behind that showy exterior, your soul's in danger.

Better get out before you're possessed.

* We transcribe Frankie's original remarks as follows:  "Ma grazie a Dio che ha detto che io sono politico, porque [Sic! The corresponding Italian word is perché] Aristoteles [Sic! The Italian form is Aristotele] define [Sic! The corresponding Italian verb is definisce] la persona umana come  'animal politicus.'  Al meno sono persona umana." Click here for the video.

** Begie's error is HUGE. The famous Aristotelian definition of man as by nature a political animal (Politica, 1253^a3) is so very common in Catholic theologians and philosophers (for instance, St. Thomas Aquinas,  ST I-II, 72.4: ...homo est naturaliter animal politicum...) that getting the grammatical gender wrong is virtually another proof of his alienation from tradition as well of his ignorance of basic Latin, defects he shares with another transparent poseur, "One-Hand Dan."

SPRING 2016 MAIL BAG I

Nearly all the evils in the church have arisen from bishops desiring more power than light. Ruskin

Editor's Note: Time is long overdue to share some email correspondence, the response to which deserves Trad Nation's attention.

Hey, PL. Long time follower, first time commenter. Your work is excellent but I have a bone to pick. Hope you don't take this the wrong way but all you do is tear down. You never build up, you never say how things can get better. Its all negative. Seems to me you need to talk SOLUTIONS or whats the use???? My Pop use to say everyone who complains has a responsability to fix a mess. What say YOU to fixing the mess caused by the "wandering bishops" you talk about!! God Bless.

Not to be defensive, but we have offered concrete solutions, for example, the detailed curriculum we proposed for training simplex, non-clerical priests as well as our systematic procedures for exiting the cults or establishing lay boards to keep rapacious "clergy" in line. In addition, our exposés of the cult masters' greed, bad behavior, and malformation are actually uplifting in that they help the laity come to their senses about these rotters with their self-interested intentions.

That said, we're willing to grant there's some substance to our correspondent's charge, at least with regard to solving the intractable problem of the orders of Tradilandia's episcopi vagantes. The problem of the cult masters themselves is easy: Don't fund them. Drive them out as soon as possible so we can all start afresh, cured of this darkling plague of money-madness, self-interest, inadequate education, and malicious pretense.

As a result of the above email, our editorial board has decided to post periodically about issues and themes related to the irregular bishops inhabiting Trad Nation U.S.A., with the aim of generating as much or more discussion on the comments pages than in the posts themselves. Assisted by a deep-thinking, well-informed correspondent, we're currently working through links exploring the question of traddie apostolic succession and authority, which will later become the centerpiece of this recurring conversation. In the end, we expect earnest traditional Catholics will be more able to begin rebuilding as soon as the cult masters skip Trad-Town, and Tradistan disappears like the latter-day, dystopian Atlantis it is.

But for this post, we'll start with something much more basic: assuring the integrity of episcopal orders. Before we continue, allow us to stipulate that Pistrina has no objection to the current lineages, viz., Thục, Fefebvre,  Méndez-González, etc. (Our concern with "One-Hand Dan" is the possible defect in his priestly ordination, not the lineage he claims.) Notwithstanding our own certitude, we acknowledge that other Catholics are not as sure, for none of the lines today is untouched by the tar brush of doubt. If these doubts are allowed to persist after the cult masters pack their carpet bags and leave Sedelandia for good, faithful Catholics will never cease their infighting. Tradition cannot afford continuing disunity: the stakes are too high.*

So, then, you ask, how would Pistrina fix this mess, and fix it soon, considering the cult kingpins are fast on their way out?

Easy-peasy.

Multiple lineages. Wandering bishops must possess as many historic lines as possible to render it very difficult or impossible for the survivors of the several bishop-led sects to impugn validity strictly on the basis of an episcopal line.

Unfortunately, when the cult masters head out into the sunset, they won't carry their misrepresentations with them.  The brainwashed laity who remain will still retain unfounded prejudices against other economically competing  episcopal lines. Unless these prejudices can be overcome, the laity may again be victims of remnant ecclesiastical freebooters who step in to fill the unpolished shoes of the quondam Pooh-Bahs of Cultilandia.

Multiplying lineage claims, thereby removing any pretext for laity to abandon their chapels solely on the slander of invalidity of episcopal orders, will reduce the opportunities for the disgraced cult masters' trouble-making successors to continue stirring up dissension. With fewer incentives to engage in "sheep stealing," there will be a lot more peace and a lot less heartbreak for those traditionalists who choose to remain outside the visible Church. In fact, the creeps with only one line will be at a significant disadvantage. (We'll take up the problem of licitness in future posts.**)

Securing multiple lineages is easier than it sounds. As we observed before, there are almost as many wandering bishops in America as there are wriggling maggots feeding on rotting road kill. The three or four commonly mentioned grubs are not the only games in town. The Readers personally know of at least four other vagi who possess amply documented orders that include Thục, Duarte Costa, Greek, Russian, and many other historic lines. Moreover, we have received assurances from at least one of these men that he's willing to consecrate or conditionally consecrate worthy candidates.

Multiple lineages will also make it impossible for anyone to claim a spiritual monopoly by asserting the relative superiority of his one line to the disparagement of a rival's. (Witness all the insinuations about Thục, Liénart, and Méndez.)  Such a leveling will break any superstitious hold over the laity: the faithful won't have to stick with an abusive manipulator out of fear of invalid sacraments elsewhere. All wandering bishops and sede "clergy" will have to tow the line or face the defection of those who feed, clothe, and house them.

But why wait for the cult masters to decide to leave on their own terms? If you're one of those trads who believes you must have a wandering bishop for confirmation or orders or holy oils, you can tell your one-lineage-wonder to take a hike today. There are multiple-lineage men who can provide what you want when you have the need. Just think of the savings in addition to the peace of mind knowing you'll be covered when it comes to validity!

Consider these benefits:

You won't have to pay for frequent, unnecessary, expensive vacations to sunny Mexico. — BREAKING NEWS: According to unconfirmed reports, Dannie's got another south-of-the-border adventure in the offing even as he's shaking down the Gerties for $11 K-$12 K! — You won't have to house and feed them. You won't have to do their daily household chores. You won't have to cart their savage pets to the veterinarian's. You won't have to listen to their wild demands that you to do your part in paying for their stupid mistakes. You won't be tormented by the nihilism of invented theology. Best of all, you won't have to put up with any more childish power plays.

With these parasites gone, you'll reap the benefits that true economy of scale brings. One man under a consultant's contract for the few times you require "episcopal services" can serve all of what was once Tradistan. Think what your chapel will be able to do with the thousands upon tens-of-thousands of dollars you'll keep for yourselves! (Especially when you can get rid of the" principal" who started this mess.)

Now that you've seen the light, don't delay. Walk up to these bums tomorrow and tell 'em to hit the road. Only make sure they leave all the pontifical gear your chapel bought for them. You can put some of it in storage until the occasion arises and sell the rest on ebay.

* The traditional movement is as much characterized by squabbles over lineage as it is known for its opposition to Vatican II. There's Thục's handwritten admonitory note to Lefebvre about his orders from Liénart, who "n'avait jamais crû à notre Religion" (= never believed in our religion); we have Checkie's smarmy attacks against Thục until he flip flopped when Dannie wanted episcopal orders; then there's the cultists' attack against Kelley's orders from Méndez, and the tit-for-tat counter attack against the Thục line, not to mention the general mudslinging about the Duarte Costa lineage. All this would be the subject of comic opera if we didn't have such cases as a priest denying last rites to a some people because they would not condemn the validity of a disfavored line.

** It goes without saying that sede rustlers have no business citing canonical irregularity as an incentive for leaving a chapel. That's like the pot calling the kettle black: they're all irregular, illicitly consecrated/ordained, and absolutely without any jurisdiction. 

SCHLEPPER'S CALENDAR

I deeme, thy braine emperished bee/Through rusty elde, that hath rotted thee. Spenser (Oxford edition)

Recently someone sent us a link to an online forum on the topic of traditional Catholic calendars. To our amusement, we found some posts praising SGG's  messy "All Saints Roman Catholic Calendar." Evidently these clueless valentines to Li'l Daniel were sent before our post of February 14, where we reported the calendar's abrupt withdrawal from sale, while noting its erroneous entry for the start of Daylight Savings Time. It took Dannie the Dummy three weeks to admit his goof:

I apologize if I got you up an hour late for Sunday Mass! (Some of you leave no time to spare, anyway, especially since we’ve mostly cancelled the cushion club.) Some years we get confused with Daylight Saving Time, but it is indeed next Sunday. These artificial jiggerings of the clock are hard to keep track of. But I hope there was no harm done. (Mar. 6 "Bishop's [?] Corner.)

Why Dimwit Dan-Oh didn't advise the Gerties earlier is anybody's guess. We'd given the mental midget plenty of time to repair this harmful blunder, but he chose to play dumb. Maybe he wants to punish the Gertrie genetic underclass who don't support him in the high style he thinks he deserves. Maybe he just can't get his act together.

Whatever.

Although the SGG calendar may be fine for the addled cult masochists, who don't really care as long as they feel degraded, it's obvious that real Catholics should be aware of its grotesque sloppiness. There's no sense in wasting money again on next year's mess, especially when there are so many better products available from traditional priests who actually know what they're doing. Therefore, in the hope that someone out there in cyberspace will share our observations online, we'll highlight a few more stupidities we found in this monument to editorial incompetence.

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SAINTS PRESERVE US!

Let's begin by exposing a shameful flaw in editing.

In cases where there is, say, more than one companion in martyrdom, calendar editors, for the sake of space, don't print all the names. (Well, back in 2012, one anally obsessive misadventure printed all the names, but it seems to have been a one-off attempt on the part of ill-advised dilettantes.)  Editors, as a rule, list the first saint's name and lump the others under the phrase "and Comp(anions)." (The Church's Kalendarium occasionally adopts the same practice, as for instance, St. Ursula with her many un-named virgin martyrs or St. Maurice with his numerous fellow Theban legionaries.)

Accordingly, on April 14, instead of printing "Ss. Tiburtius, Valerian, and Maximus, Mm," a pragmatic (and emotionally stable) editor prints "St. Tiburtius and Comp, Mm," saving quite a few characters. To gain additional space, many print the ampersand rather than spell out "and." (Regrettably, our version of Blogger doesn't permit us to type the logogram.)

The problem with the ineptly curated SGG calendar is that, in a large number of these cases, the "Bungling Bishop (?)" improperly prints the plural "Ss" instead of the correct singular "St."* Thus, on April 14, we find "Ss Tiburtius [and Comp]" (here he also forgot the liturgical suffix "Mm" after "Comp"!);  on May 3, "Ss Alexander etc." (without the post-nominal monarchical ordinal "I"); on May 12, "Ss Nereus etc."; on June 2, "Ss Marcellinus etc."; on June 15, "Ss Vitus etc." (again the suffix "Mm" is missing!); on August 6, "Ss Xystus II etc."; on August 22, "Ss Timothy etc."; on September 20, "Ss Eustace etc."; on September 22, "Ss Maurice etc."; on September 26, "Ss Isaac Jogues etc."; on October 9. "Ss Denis etc."; on October 21, "Ss Ursula etc."; and on November 10, "Ss Tryphon etc.";

Whew! Is Dull Dannie a loser or what?**

As you know, at Pistrina we're enquiring minds, so we'd like to take a guess at the source of this big boo-boo. Since so many of Dannie's and Checkie's blunders are the result of their ignorance of the Latin language, we thought we'd start by looking in that direction. Sure enough, Pistrina found a plausible explanation. The Church's Kalendarium, which is written in Latin, uses the plural abbreviation "Ss" (= sancti or sanctæ) for entries that list all the individual martyrs' names and for commemorations that subsume the others' names under the generic word socii ("companions").

Hence for August 22 and September 22, we find respectively Ss. Timothei, Hippolyti Ep, et Symphoriani Mm and  Ss. Mauritii et Sociorum Mm. Now, whereas the first example would be read in English as "(feast) of Saints Timothy, Hippolytus a Bishop, and Symphorian, Martyrs" (a direct translation of the plural), the second example cannot be read as "(commemoration) of Saints Maurice and Companions, Martyrs."

The reason is that in Latin the fundamental adjectival function of Ss. (sancti, -æ) before a series of names  is still strongly felt (i.e., "holy ones x, y, and z"), whereas in English saint(s) is felt as a noun. As a title, saint must precede a proper noun like other titles (e.g., Nurse Ratched, Doctor Strangelove, Mister Bean, Father Brown).    Therefore, in the August 22 commemoration, with its string of individual names, "saints" is correct Latin and English, for it works like "Messrs. Brown, Jones, and Robinson,"  "Doctors Frankenstein and Rotwang," and "the Misses Brontë." However, in the September 22 commemoration, the plural isn't idiomatic English, because "Companions" is not a proper noun. In Latin, however, since the felt meaning is "Holy Maurice and his [Holy] Companions," the initial plural "Ss." is used.

So there we have it! Dopey Dan might well have used the Kalendarium as his source, but because Latin is so foreign to him, he mindlessly copied the format without a thought as to its proper rendering in English idiom.

Now that's stupid.

. . . . . . . . . .

🎶"DOE, A DEER, A FEMALE DEER..."🎶

Admittedly, it's only a guess that the cult masters' trouble with Latin is the source of the class of errors we exposed above. His Deficiency may have been using inferior reference material in English. (How would he know the difference between good stuff and bad?) There is, nonetheless, another hideous blunder in the SGG calendar to document with near certainty the cult "clergy's" persistent difficulties with the sacred language of the Roman Catholic Church — difficulties that render them unfit to publish anything about worship and theology.

In Dorky Dan's "poetic" caption below the murky, annoyingly out-of-focus image for the month of June — it looks frighteningly like a rural Mississippi cross-burning rally — His Gaucherie writes:

We see the faithful gathered singing the Vesper hymn "Ut quant [sic!] laxis" in honor of this great Saint.

Only a Latinless cretin could have failed to spot that error. (It should read "queant.") But if at proofreading the "clergy" did not possess enough Latin to recognize the misprint — which in an over abundance of charity we'll attribute to the auto-correct function — there's still no excuse. This hymn for the Nativity of St. John the Baptist is of world renown among musicologists. (Click here if you'd like to see just how famous it is.) No Catholic priest with a rudimentary formation could have missed that howler. Impossible.

But, then, we're not talking about properly formed clergy, are we? 

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

Hard-working Catholics deserve more than a belated, insincere, after-the-damage-was-done apology in the cat-litter of the "Bishop's (?) Corner." His Errancy owes the faithful something more.

Lately Doofus Dan's favorite phrase seems to be making reparation. (Have you noticed how he uses it constantly?) In Dannie the Dunderhead's understanding, to be sure, it's religiously loaded code for the Gerties to fork over more money. But in its correct legal sense, to make amends for a wrong inflicted, it directly applies to His Incompetency.

Taking the SGG calendar off sale is not enough to redress the wrong incurred by selling such trash to trusting Catholics. The Mitered Moron must go one step further and never produce another calendar again. Furthermore, he must use his Santa-Fe vacation money to refund the purchase price to everyone who bought a copy of this disgraceful gambit aimed at passing himself off as a ponderous authority when in fact he's as light as air.

Write Dumbo Dan today, and tell him to do the right thing.

* In all fairness, Dim Dan isn't the only one with this problem. For instance, the Saint Andrew Daily Missal and Thurston's Butler are similarly mistaken when they employ the shorthand phrase "and Companions." On September 22, for instance, the poor Saint Andrew Missal is so confused it can't make up its mind. It starts off with "Commemoration of St Maurice and Companions," but switches to "Commemoration  of SS. Maurice and Companions"; then on the next page, it twice prints "Commemoration of SS. Maurice and Companions" before concluding with "Mass of St Maurice and his Companions." The correct style can be found in the old Benziger Bros. calendar in their translation of the Breviary or in the Kalendar of the Anglican Missal or Anglican Breviary, both of which were edited by highly educated men who were practiced masters of the English language, quite unlike any of the cult masters.

** Obviously he made a mistake, but our favorite imbecile managed to get the usage right on a few occasions, e.g.,  June 12,  July 18, and  September 19 (except at the latter date he printed a redundant "M" after "Bp"!). On October 7, "St. Mark, PC etc." only looks correct. He actually bungled it completely because the companions belong to St. Sergius (whom he completely ignores), not to Pope St. Mark!

And we thought Dannie liked to read the lives of the saints.

Pretense. All of it. Unadulterated pretense.