WOLVES IN SHEPHERDS' CLOTHING

Fine clothes are good only as they supply the want of other means of procuring respect. Johnson

As we were leafing through old files in preparation for the recent posts on the betrayed Michiganders at Saint Dominic's, we came across a letter that classically illustrates the wrong-headedness of trad attitudes toward cult "bishops."

In a pair of sniffy rebukes to a gutsy Highlander who spoke truth to Tradzilla, a misinformed Big-Don-brown-noser wrote in 2005:

The ordination of [the Skipper*] was a good reminder for all of us of the profound respect that is owed to our priests...The dignity of a priest demands us, as mere morals, to yield a respect that is not given to any other [sic!] layperson...You and certain others have not given [the Donster] the deference that his office deserves...It is not for the laity to pick and choose when a priest is owed respect and when he does not deserve it, for the dignity of his office is, at all times, present...In the eyes of the Church we are not equal to them. 

Oh, for pity's sake! Where to begin? There's so much that's wrong here.

We suppose we ought to start by reminding everyone (again!) that Tradistani "clergy," notwithstanding the valid orders of some, belong to a sect entirely separate from the Roman Catholic Church. They have no ecclesiastical commission, for they were ordained and/or consecrated without the Church's consent. In fact, their orders were conferred without authorization from any Christian body because Tradistan itself isn't organized as a confession; it cannot even be said to be confederacy of narrow, selfish interests.  It's a no-man's land of sharp-elbowed, sub-educated free-lancers who self-declare their election and then find some mitered moron willing to do it.

In the eyes of the Church, they're laymen just like us, albeit with the difference that some may have sacerdotal and some episcopal character. (Was our self-admitted, home-schooled apologist merely ignorant of English usage [and correct reference] when he insisted a "priest's" dignity "demands... a respect that is not given to any other layperson"? Or was his remark a tattle-tale Freudian slip?) When you get right down to it, the "priests" and "bishops" of Tradistan most closely resemble the recalcitrantly scandalous priests in the old days who'd been degraded to the lay estate — deposed from office, incapable of any position in the Church, deprived of clerical privileges, and hence ineligible for the singular deference accorded to clergy in good standing.

It's worth remarking that, unlike a deposed cleric of past years, the Tradistani lone wolves don't possess a title in the Church and don't enjoy an office in the first place. Any deference shown them as clerics, therefore, is grossly offensive to a well-bred Catholic. You see, the term office has a legal meaning. In the perfect and historical society of the Church (and, we might add, in imperfect societies elsewhere), an office has rights and duties, and the acts of the office are "objectively binding on the society."

When the Church installs someone, the office is thereupon divinely conferred. Without the Church's act of installation, the sole "offices" Tradzilla and the other scurvy episcopi vagantes exercise are the private ones defined in the documents of authority of the several insignificant enterprises they run under state or federal laws. No matter what they call themselves in their kiddie corporations, they absolutely, positively do not occupy an ecclesiastical office.

But our cult-addled letter writer's oafish error is understandable. The sede vermin do everything they can to pass themselves off as higher clergy. Chief among the cult kingpins' ruses is vesture. As soon as they're green lighted for consecration, they get kitted out in all the pontifical finery their cash-strapped little chapels can scrape together: rochets, pontifical crosses, ordinary cassocks with amaranth-red silk trimming and lining, mantellettas, purple choir cassocks with trimmings of crimson-red silk, silken purple birettas and calottes, heavy gold rings set with a large central amethyst, simars trimmed with amaranth red, etc. It's no wonder the illiterate culties mistake these vultures passing themselves off as peacocks for the real McCoy.

Yet, despite their flamboyant costuming, American sede "bishops" cannot, in that delicious papal turn of phrase, episcopali charactere præfulgent ("glitter in episcopal character"):  Insofar as their orders were obtained without apostolic mandate, they are not members of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. For this reason, a cheeky wag we know once quipped that they were consecrated "on the other side of the blanket."  Being illicitly impressed on lawless souls, their episcopal character is of necessity tarnished.

The practical import of all this is that the sedes are barred by positive ecclesiastical law from the use of pontificals.** Unfortunately, however, civil government, being indifferent or hostile to the sacred prerogatives of genuine churchmen, allows any Tom, Dick, or Harry who styles himself a bishop to dress howsoever he fancies, thereby facilitating the usurpation of others' legitimate entitlements — entitlements legislated by the Vicar of Christ.

One of the purposes of episcopal apparel is to signal to the faithful that the wearer belongs to the "princely hierarchy" of Christ's Church, subordinate to the Sovereign Roman Pontiff.  It also furnishes a visible warrant that the man so adorned has met the qualifications for the dignity of his office as determined by the Holy See, of which the most important are "good moral character, piety, zeal, prudence, and solid learning in theology and canon law." Moreover, pontifical habiliment assures the faithful that before his elevation, the wearer had been formed as a priest in an approved seminary, where he received properly supervised intellectual training under professors with advanced degrees from officially recognized universities or faculties.

No such signs and assurances attend the malformed, jurisdiction-less Tradistani adventurers illegitimately arrayed in the Church's regal garments. On the backs of these "wandering bishops," the once glorious raiment suborns blasphemous deception.

Therefore, clerical outfitters, at least those in Rome like Barbiconi, Gammarelli, I Sarti del Borgo, and, yes, the very down market Euroclero too, should refuse sell to any prospective buyer who does not possess an office in the Catholic Church. But that's hardly realistic. Under tradition-hating Frankie, business for ecclesiastical tailors hasn't been booming, to say the least. As a National Catholic Reporter journalist wrote in 2014,

On the streets of the ecclesiastical fashion district in the center of Rome, the mood is somber.... it seems [Bergie's] personal style, combined with the ongoing economic crisis, is having an impact on business. One store with an elaborate collection of clothing for cardinals, bishops and priests declined to speak to a reporter, while another proprietor conceded: "We are working less; the pope is a simple man."

And so it is that, as the nervous shopkeepers wait out what they hope will prove to be a short pontificate, they're more than willing to take, with a wink and a nod, the dollars of the flush-with-Sunday-collection-money sede impersonators.  (On spendthrift shopping sprees to the Eternal City, boorish trad wannabes have been known to load up on thousands of dollars of bespoke clerical gear.) Hence, like the unwitting purchaser of conflict diamonds, Roman tailors trading with U.S. sedes contribute materially to the misery of innocents — viz., the impoverished lay boobs of Tradistan, who consider these mountebanks in fancy dress to be honest-to-goodness bishops of the Roman Catholic Church.

As we all have learned from the cheerleading media, the Bergomeister shoots his mouth off a lot about relieving the poor and oppressed. So far it's been pure lip service and no action. Well, he can fix that right here and now. All he has to do is to issue a decree sanctioning tailoring houses that sell prelatical vesture to any American representing himself as a bishop, whose name cannot be found in the current Annuario Pontificio.

We're not concerned about the resultant financial distress for the Roman ecclesiastical outfitters. The revenue losses will be temporary anyway — Frankie ain't immortal. The greater good is to keep poorly educated, heavily-victimized U.S. rite-trash from being snookered any more than they have been.

Assured our cause is just, we herewith petition Bergie to promulgate immediately an apostolic constitution aimed at stopping sales of prelatical vesture to American phonies, say, by way of a motu proprio titled De quibusdam episcopis vagantibus qui nullis admodum Privilegiis Prælatorum propriis fruuntur.*** To help the old heresiarch get started, we'll even supply the first words: Plani obsiti Pontificalibus...  ("Impostors covered in pontificals..."). We'll be on pins and needles waiting for the rest from the Latin Letters Office in the Secretariat of State of the Holy See.

If Frankie steps up to the plate, Tradistani "bishops" will henceforth be obliged to earn respect in the same way their fellow lay brethren have to — by setting a good example, acting with charity, practicing humility, being reliable, listening and learning, taking responsibility for their actions, going above and beyond what's required, not focusing on themselves, controlling their emotions, acting discreetly, demonstrating integrity, honoring what they say, and refusing to bad-mouth others.

No longer will they be able to play dolly-dress-up and expect everyone to bow and scrape while putting out of mind the unseemly past and the by far nastier present.

SO, C'MON, BERGIE. STOP PICKING ON THE BLUE-BLOODED KNIGHTS OF MALTA, AND DO SOME REAL GOOD!

* For those who've only recently begun reading this blog: "The Skipper" is the imbecilic MHT completer who once skipped the consecration in a Mass, and then blamed the laity, accusing them of making him work too hard. And he's a reminder of the "profound respect" owed to an illicitly ordained "priest"? Give us a break, cultling!

** At best,  malformed sede petty chieftains might be suffered to wear priest's garb — provided your ecclesiology permits, in these terrible times, a priest to be ordained without incardination and dimissorial letters.

*** "Concerning certain wandering bishops who enjoy no proper privileges of prelates at all." A transparent adaptation of the descriptive caption to Pius X's 1905 decree INTER MULTIPLICES on prelatial privileges, dress, and insignia. In spite of the sedes professed adherence to Church teaching, they thumb their noses at the magisterium by unlawfully appropriating what is not theirs to have. On a more elementary level, the cult masters' usurpation of prelatical vesture not pertaining to their  condition in life is a transgression against a fundamental norm of Catholic decorum.

Several hundred years ago, St. Jean-Baptiste de la Salle wrote a little book on boys' etiquette titled Les règles de la bienséance et de la civilité chrétienne ("The Rules of Christian Good Manners and Civility"). In the chapter on apparel, he sternly counsels that, in outfitting himself, a man "have regard for his condition, because it would not be fitting for....a plebeian to be dressed as a person of quality" ("... ait égard de sa condition; car il ne seroit pas séant qu'un ... roturier estre [= être] habillé comme une personne de qualité," ch. 3, art 1, 1708). 

American sede low-lifes' dressing up as bishops of the Catholic Church is morally equivalent to a snaggle-toothed carnival freak's decking himself out in a Savile Row suit.