ALLWAY EEKGRAY OTAY IRTBAGDAY ANDAY

Editor's Note: Like a world-class diagnostician who can detect the presence of a fatal disease in the minutest aberrations visible to the naked eye, Pistrina continues last week's theme by revealing another "little thing" that gives the lie to the cult masters' decidedly wrong opinion of themselves as true heirs to Catholic tradition. 

That Latin was no more difficile/Than to a blackbird 'tis to whistle. Butler

Contrary to what others have written us in the last week, the Readers are definitely not opposed to aspiration. Indeed, aspirations, when accompanied by genuine achievement and hard work, lead to greatness in every arena of human endeavor. We do, however, object to abject failures or elementary successes shamelessly promoted as signs of a noble aspiration fulfilled. That's why we work hard to demythologize Dannie and Tony Baloney's fictional narrative that they embody the best traditions of the pre-Vatican II Church.

As a matter of principle, we don't have a problem with any priest's aspiring to match the highest standards of the past. And if he worked diligently to acquire the body of knowledge, skills, comportment, and ethos of pre-conciliar clergy, not only would we applaud him on the way, but we'd support him materially. Then, when he demonstrated after years of effort that he'd met or surpassed the standards, we'd be the first ones to laud and publish his achievement. Our enthusiasm would be honest, for it would be founded on the objective evidence of his performance and manner of life.

Above all else, such an aspiring cleric would inhabit entirely a Latin world of the mind. On all religious and liturgical questions, he would think in Latin and reflexively prefer Latin authors over those who write in the vernacular. He would mutter his personal prayers in Latin and strive daily to perfect his Latin composition. In reading Scripture and preparing a homily, he would exclusively use the Vulgate, never a translation, so that he could elucidate for the faithful the precise meaning of the text upon which he is preaching. In a nutshell, Church Latin would be his second nature.

One of our chief criticisms of the cult masters is that it's evident they don't live in a world totally informed by the Latin language, yet they (and their self-interested supporters) struggle to pretend they do. That may have been their aspiration 40 years ago, but, as our work has proved, they've failed to realize it. (These men just don't have the right stuff to begin with: it's not in their DNA.) It's important for the laity to know that without a complete Latin frame of mind, no cleric can ever claim to equal the best of the best of the pre-Vatican II Church, to being the real thing. Without complete mastery of the Church's Latin culture, it's all monkey see, monkey do. Like seeing a simian leafing through a newspaper, it's amusing to watch, but altogether a sham.

Most decent traditional priests know how far short of the mark of Catholic excellence they have fallen. While cleaving to the standard of the past as guide to their betterment, they are too conscious of their limitations -- and too honest -- to assert parity. They also realize that no sede today, especially an American sede, can hold a candle to the remarkably gifted, carefully selected, and generously trained priests of the past. (For such a cleric, we must look to South America and Europe.) Knowledgeable clergy outside the SW Ohio-Brooksville cult laugh themselves silly at Dannie's, Cheesy's, and Donnie's hollow self-promotion. The cult masters are demonstrably not the equals of the clergy of yesteryear, and that inequality starts with the non-Latin world they inhabit.

To the many we've already assembled on these blog pages, let's add yet another sparkling example of Dannie's alienation from the Catholic Latin world of the past:

On March 10, "One Hand" delivered a sermon on "Mass Math" to the pitiable, little cultling children. Preaching on the text of Mt 18:22, Dannie begins, "Lord, how many times should I forgive my neighbor if he offends against me? Up to seven times? No, up to seven times seventy times." A few minutes later he returns to the numerical expression, but this time it's changed to  "seven times seventy" or "490 times."

Already we hear the Close Loyalists of Dannie (CLODs) roaring that we're nitpicking over a small discrepancy between the expressions. We want assure them -- and our many fans -- that's not our aim here. Furthermore, we aren't quibbling over the fact that the initial quotation is a paraphrase of the Gospel text. Dirtbag Dan was simply adjusting his language for the unfortunate cult kiddies. No problem with that. You've got to keep your audience in mind.

No, our point is that if you were a Roman Catholic priest rooted in Latin, you could never say that the number of times our Lord commanded St. Peter to forgive an offender is 490.

By all means, we can see how an educated Protestant minister, with his faithful adherence to the Greek, might come up with that figure. The numeral in Mt 18:22 presents a well-known textual problem, and the form of the numeral as found in the standard Greek editions of the New Testament has duly elicited comment from standard scholarly reference grammars of New Testament Greek (v.g., Blass-Debrunner, Moulton, Robertson, Zerwick). In addition, we know that many translations note that the Koine figure may be rendered either "seventy times seven" or "seventy-seven times."

But we're not talking about Protestants or even Catholic clergy who ground themselves in the Greek text and the scholarly literature about it. Truly traditional Catholic clergy, even if they are competent in Greek, are different. They stand firmly rooted in the Latin Vulgate. In the case of Mt 18:22, they don't need to search outside the text. For, while there may be some doubt about the exact translation of the numeral in the Greek Matthew*, there is none whatsoever in the Latin: The Vulgate unambiguously reads septuagies septies, the numeral adverb meaning "seventy-seven times."

We'd agree that the TAN Douay-Rheims edition's "seventy times seven times" (the same as in the very first edition except for the archaic orthography) is so slavishly literal as to cause confusion in a modern reader. And we know that the Haydock edition of the Douay reads differently, printing "seventy times seven," like the King James version, and glosses the verse with "i.e., 490." Accordingly, we must infer that Dim Dannie has used in his sermonette two very different quantities, drawn, apparently, from different Douay editions without his even realizing the quantities are different!

(What a pea-brain! That kind of textual cluelessness probably deserves a separate post. These guys are not only ignorant, they're slow on the uptake as well.)

If Dannie did represent pre-Vatican II excellence as the cult PR insists he does, he would have first gone to the Latin text of St. Matthew, ignoring all translations. Finding septuagies septies, he would have instantly known without question that our Lord commanded Peter to forgive his brother up to 77 times, not 7 X 70 times (= 490). Seventy-seven times is the figure he should have told the cringing traddie tykes. If he had consulted the Haydock Bible (and we suspect he did), then he would have known not to accept either its figure or the annotated computation for the mathematically challenged.

But as we all have seen, Dannie cannot in any way be equated with the clergy of the past. His ignorance permanently impedes him from attaining the Latin outlook that adorned so many of the pre-Vatican II clergy. If he doesn't have Latin, then he can't possibly possess in full the other necessary characteristics of a Roman churchman.  Latin is the gatekeeper to the traditional faith. Without its perfect mastery, everything else you see is a tawdry façade. What we have in Tradistan is the mindless and awkward aping of tradition, not the real thing: it only looks authentic for a second.

STOP PLAYING MAKE BELIEVE: LEAVE THE CULT TODAY!

* The problem arises from the Greek numeral printed in critical editions of the New Testament. The absolutely literal translation of hebdomēkontákis heptá is "seventy times (hebdomēkontákis) seven (heptá)." The Greek adverbial for "seventy-seven times" is hebdomēkontákis heptákis, but grammarians and textual critics -- considering the allusion to Gn 4:24 (lit. in Heb.: "If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy and seven") -- regard heptá as a scribal abbreviation for heptákis.

However, in the Vulgate there's no such textual ambiguity. The Latin clearly reads "seventy-seven times." The Jesuit Zerwick has a nice summary of scholarly opinion in this matter (translation by J. Smith, S.J.; transliteration ours for those who don't read Greek):

159. (Héōs) hebdomēkontákis heptá (Mt 18, 22) is not «seventy times seven» , but «seventy seven times» ( = hebdomēkontákis heptákis) as the Vulgate rightly translates it here and in Gen 4, 24, where the LXX has the same imperfect expression. Since the Genesis text deals with vengeance, and Matthew's with forgiveness, it is very probable that the Gospel text intentionally alludes to the OT one (Moulton)...

In confirmation, we find in Robertson, "Moulton considers rightly that the passage in Genesis settles the usage in Matthew." Blass-Debrunner notes the "peculiar" Greek numeral in Matthew should be read "'seventy-seven times' (not 'seventy times seven')..." This is by far not the only instance where modern scholarship confirms the correctness of our Latin Vulgate.

Isn't it a crying shame that the malformed cult masters of Tradistan have neither the training nor the brains to mine its riches?

PRETENTIOUS? MOI?

The age demanded an image/Of its accelerated grimace,/ Something for the modern stage,/Not, at any rate, an Attic grace. Pound

Traddielandia knows how much Pistrina hates pettiness. Yet, as we've written so often before, it's the little things that disclose the true state of affairs.

Dannie the Dork and Checkie Cheeseball have clawed and scratched for decades to trick Catholics into believing they're equal to the pre-Vatican II clergy. Just as assiduously, Pistrina has spent almost a lustrum in demonstrating conclusively they're not even close to the old standard of excellence. (For that matter, they're not even close to the old standard of mediocrity.) Two of the preposterous myths we've solidly debunked are (1) that "One Hand" is a man of broad culture (LOL) and (2) that the cult masters know Latin.

As the "gift that keep on giving," His Pretentiousness  is ever supplying the Readers with fresh instances confirming his gross deficiencies in cultural literacy and the Church's sacred language. Last week, in his simpering "Bishop's (?) Corner," Li'l Dan revealed once again how far out of his depth he has waded and how downright alien he is to the world of bona-fide learning. Dannie's got to do more than name his feral tomcat after a painter in order for the cognoscenti to regard him as cultured: He's got to learn some basic facts, too.

So, now, to gild the lily of our already proven contention that Dannie is a poseur, not a connoisseur, here's today's first exhibit (emphases ours) of another unsuccessful attempt to appear learned:

The young lady who did such a beautiful job on St. Francis has also repainted Our [sic] Lady’s robe for the Pietá [!!], beautifully colored and shadowed. 

As every properly educated schoolboy knows, the term for an artistic depiction of the dead body of Christ in the arms of the mourning Blessed Virgin Mary is spelled Pietà, with a grave accent, not an acute, as His Fatuousness mistakenly writes. (Pietà is Italian, a parola tronca [accent on final syllable], requiring the accento grave.)  Most people with an interest in Western art are familiar with the correct spelling, even if they haven't studied Italian. In spelling the word with an acute accent as he did, Daniel the Dunce bears witness to his scandalously inadequate schooling. Admit it, folks: He's an embarrassment to the traditional Catholic world.

Our second exhibit for the day is Dubious Dan's sign-off line to the same edition of his squalid "Corner," to wit, "Laetare!"

Inasmuch as his message was for Lætare Sunday, the pint-sized posturer thought he was being oh-so-churchmanly -and-urbane in inviting the sad-eyed, distempered Gerties to rejoice when he quoted the first Latin word of the day's Introit. How elegantly à propos, right?

Wrong!

Laetare is a singular present imperative, but Dannie's addressing a plural audience, for Pete's sake! 

No one who really knows Latin -- we mean, someone who's really educated and has a genuine feeling for the Church's tongue -- could bring himself to write the singular laetare for a plural audience. The gross error is akin to a middle-class English speaker's writing, "they is" (no doubt the usual idiom at SGG): an educated person just couldn't make such a mistake. By second mature, a properly instructed soul would have, without thinking twice, written laetamini, the plural imperative. Using the singular form would never have occurred to him in the first place.

However, a university-trained cleric of taste would also know that writing laetamini in an informal message directed to the barely literate, head-scratching Gertie rite-trash would amount to insufferable pedantry. It's also more than likely that the few semi-literates who remain caught in the cult's deadly embrace might not be able to guess with any ease at the  precise relationship between laetare and laetamini. To be frank, normal traditional Catholics outside the cult couldn't be expected to make the connection either. (The same might be said of a very large number of traddie priests.)

What Dannie should have done was to have closed with the whole phrase Laetare, Jerusalem.* In so doing, he wouldn't have exposed to ridicule his ignorance of Latin. At the same time, he would have flattered the cultlings into imagining that they, under his one-handed control, composed the body politic of the messianic city, the mother of Christians. Granted, the conceit's utterly without foundation, but it would work at all levels, even though the apocalyptic "great city" Babylon is the more fitting analogue for Gertieville.

Naturally, he could have closed with the English "Rejoice"and communicated the same message without the discomfiting linguistic failure. That sensible option, however, wouldn't have promoted the false image he wants so painfully for people to swallow. In Li'l Dan's ego-centric world, pretense trumps substance.

Isn't it time for everyone to confront the cold, harsh reality that "One-Hand Dan" and the Blunderer as well as the rector are in no wise like pre-Vatican II clergy? The three are buffoonish characters in a seedy, melancholy burlesque.  The image they project is the grotesquely distorted reflection of a carnival fun-house mirror. Trad World is better off with its self-confessed ignoramuses than with these gauche pretenders.

They are definitely not the real thing. They aren't even big fish in a small pond. They're intellectual minnows in a vast, inhospitable salt-water ocean, where they can't last too much longer.

STARVE THE BEAST. GIVE YOUR WEEKLY CASH OFFERING TO THE DESERVING POOR IN YOUR COMMUNITY.

* We've anticipated that one of the malformed, logic-chopping close loyalists of Dannie (CLODs) is going to rush to his Missal and inanely argue that other verbs in the Lætare-Sunday Introit are actual plural imperatives, so Dirtbag Dan is justified in using the singular Laetare alone. Let's save the hopelessly miseducated some embarrassment with a brief explanation.

Three separate grammatical entities are directly addressed in the Introit, each one with a different imperative verb: (1) the personified city Jerusalem, (2) those who love her, and (3) those who have been in sadness. Jerusalem is bidden by a singular imperative, "rejoice"; those who love her are charged by a plural imperative, "come together (lit. 'make an assembly')"; and those have been in sadness are enjoined by the plural imperative phrase, "be glad with happiness."  Laetare, then, belongs solely to the grammatically singular vocative Jerusalem.

The Vulgate version of Isaias 66: 10-11, the source of the antiphon of the Introit,  does employ the plural form: Laetamini cum Jerusalem, "Rejoice [ye] with Jersusalem." However, the Introit Mass text is not taken from the Vulgate, which is based on the Hebrew version; it comes from the Itala (Vetus Latina), which is based on the LXX.

Accordingly, if your vanity demands you use the Roman Missal's form of the verb when addressing more than one person -- and if your vanity demands in addition that everyone know you're referencing the Missal --  you must then cite the entire phrase Lætare, Jerusalem, "Rejoice, O Jerusalem," wherein Jerusalem is vocative. Otherwise you risk exposure to public ignominy -- just like Dim Dan.

THE (CASH) COW'S GOING DRY

Business? It's quite simple. It's other people's money. Dumas fils


Inasmuch as Dirtbag Dan's March 8 "Bishop's (?) Corner" echoed the themes of last week's Pistrina post, we just had to follow up with some additional observations. As you may recall, a week ago we solemnly warned, "[t]he Gerties must surely be aware that the 'envelopes' will never be enough" to pay off this winter's "horrendous" utility bill.

Dubious Dan, we predicted with our usual spot-on accuracy, will come pounding on the door like a grubby repo man in search of overdue payments above and beyond the pittances in the envelopes.  He's got to cover the staggering cost to heat the poorly designed, shoddily built, and incompetently managed cult center or there'll be no holiday at the fashionable Bishop's Lodge in trendy Santa Fe this year.


And sure enough, in a frenzy of anxiety (and a dearth of politesse), Dannie the Dunner came a-collectin':

We missed you, but we hope you will not miss your weekly contribution. We will certainly need all of you to make up for any missed envelopes, and even some Lenten sacrifices to make the king’s ransom the Duke will be sending round to collect. 

The first "missed" in the quotation echoed the three (yep, count 'em: 1, 2, 3) occurrences of the same word in the previous paragraph: "But sixty or so of you were stranded, and thus missed Mass. We missed you. If you missed the Mass... " Dannie knows the Gerties are dumber than a box of rocks -- who else but a moron would support him, the Cheeseball, the McFaker, Lurch, and the Forlorn Finn? -- so he had to guarantee they got the point: Dannie missed their money! 

To make sure the cultling pinheads got his drift, His Neediness, you 'll observe, followed up with pregnant "miss" and then the impossible-to-misinterpret "missed envelopes." But Panhandlin' Dan knew better than to let the Gerties think they could get off the hook by turning in the envelopes that went missing in action during the bout inclement weather.


Oh, no, not by a scraggly hair of their double chinny-chin-chins will the Gerties get off cheap this year!

Dannie confirmed what we had already guessed: the "envelopes" won't be enough. The Gerties will have to make additional "Lenten Sacrifices" (translation: hand over even more of your money) to clean up his mess. The crass cynicism is heartbreaking. It's worse than selling indulgences: The cult masters can't manage the budget, so Dan tarts up a slimy bailout scheme in religious disguise to hoodwink the suckers. Reprehensible -- and you thought the Fed played fast and loose with peoples' money!


So all this leads us to the big question:

Where's Dannie's "Lenten Sacrifice"?


At the risk of repeating ourselves, why did His Prodigality buy an unneeded replacement organ in the middle of winter heating season? Why did he insist on vacationing recently in sunny Florida and radiant Mexico? All that wasted money could have relieved the cash-strapped Gerties from having to part with more of their precious savings in these tough economic times. Will Dannie promise not to spend a leisurely week at his and Checkie's favorite Southwestern luxury spa if the cultlings come through with the extra cash? We don't think so.


As we said last week, the old organ could have been updated, and it wasn't absolutely necessary to lead the retreat at the Swampland pesthouse (Big Don could've done it better anyway) or to confirm in Mexico, for that matter. The Gerties can't afford to indulge Checkie's dalliance "in seventh heaven with our new old organ" when they've got their own families to feed, clothe, and educate. And, as we've said before, there's a slew of traditional and valid bishops available south of the border.


From what we've recently read and heard, we think there just might be a real possibility that the Gerties won't be as forthcoming this year with a bailout. There's growing disaffection with the non-stop demands for cash. Dannie himself unwittingly gave us this sober hint of the Gerties' nascent resistance to further abuse:

We ran out of Lenten food last week, and Father [= the Forlorn Finn] has proven a most talented and creative vegan cook. He fed us “hamburgers” one night, and pasta and “meatballs” another, and all without the meat! Fr. Cekada was delighted by the vegan mayonnaise, and we were all charmed by many such small touches that make for a great meal. I am grateful for the relief, as I used to be terribly distracted during Vespers by the thought of what to feed the Fathers.

Let's imaginatively deconstruct this message.  First, to "run out of Lenten food" cannot possibly mean that the cupboards were bare and the mouse-infested fridge empty. That scarcity could've been easily remedied by a quick trip to the neighborhood supermarket. (Indeed, they must have had to do some marketing to buy either soy milk or tofu for the vegan mayo.)

Our guess is that, in an updating of  Lysistrata, the exhausted Gertie womenfolk have stopped supplying catered meals for these lazybones clerics, and Dannie's trying to shame them back into the kitchen. Without a doubt, the cult matrons are distressed that the meals they slaved over were put away half eaten as fare for rodents. (Kudos to that as yet unknown "Lysisdeipna" who first put her foot down and refused to be taken advantage of again.)


There's a very good lesson in this anecdote for the overworked cultling chattel: when it comes to eating or going without, these moochers are perfectly able to fix their own meals. There are usually four to five clerical louts loitering around, so no lay homemaker need burden herself by preparing a big feed for the malformed slacker ingrates. And if Li'l Dan had any organizational skills, he'd build a schedule of kitchen duties each month and thereby relieve himself of daily, last-minute worrying about "what to feed the Fathers" -- and himself!


Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope the Gerties are finally getting tired of incessant fundraising projects and other unreasonable demands on their time and personal resources. After all, these clerics are, at best, petits bourgeois, not upper-crust elites deserving of special treatment. The end of the slavish catering duties may spell the beginning of the lay revolt against the oppressive cult masters. We'll have to wait and see.


In the meantime, you Gerties who've missed offering tribute to the beast have Pistrina's permission to

rip those envelopes open and reclaim your money -- and don't answer the door when Dannie knocks. 

WASTE NOT, WANT NOT

Who could foretell this sore distress,/This irretrievable disaster/When first we met? Bridges

We're sometimes amazed at our prescience. Indeed, if we Readers were living in 17th century Salem, Massachusetts, we'd be hanged on the barren slope of Gallows Hill as necromancers: Every time we examine the rotting cadaver of Tradistan and conjecture about the cult masters' motives, out of their own mouths they themselves confirm our droll predictions.

Back on February 15, we reported on the proposed wasteful purchase of a replacement electronic organ for the sagging SGG cult center. Along with a commenter, we had speculated that a driving force behind the unneeded acquisition was Tony Baloney's unbridled appetite for a fancier toy. 

Sure enough, last week in his "Bishop's (?) Corner," Dubious Dan vindicated us. After informing the Gertie suckers of the organ's imminent delivery (!!) even though, apparently, all the funds haven't yet been raised, he proudly boasted that "a contented Fr. Cekada will soon be able to blast away once more at the console."

Do we know these scheming clowns, or don't we?!

To be truthful, it doesn't take the gift of second sight or a tarot deck to divine their intentions. With a little insight, anyone can follow the glaring arc traced by their luminous greed. They're simply parasites who co-opt other people's resources to feed their immoderate, insatiable craving for stuff.

Like peevish, calculating adolescent-tyrants manipulating cowed parents who've reached their wits' end, cult clergy cannot distinguish between malignant wants and real needs. And, more often than not, the objects they hunger for are less desirable than the psychological control that results when people surrender to their incessant demands. What drives their behavior seems to be an itching mania to possess and to dispossess at the same time.

The appearance of one outlandish demand is always accompanied by additional impositions. Notice how His Spendthriftiness didn't blush to couple the announcement of this latest act of wanton profligacy with a naked reminder for more cash owing to the Siberian weather visited upon SW Ohio: "Don’t forget those envelopes," he was quick to threaten the over-burdened cultlings.  "The heating bills will be horrendous." (The Gerties must surely be aware that the "envelopes" will never be enough: there WILL be another special appeal to pay off the fuel debt. They'll have to dig deeper: The chic, Southwestern Bishop's Lodge beckons like a desert Lorelei and won't be ignored.)

The prospect of high fuel charges for the record-breaking cold raises the important question of basic household management. Why didn't SGG's "pastor" budget the money to cover the costs? More to the point, why did His Incompetency buy the replacement organ in addition to vacationing in Mexico and Florida when he knew big heating bills were just around the corner?

No one's going to bail out the hard-scrabble, shivering Gerties when the Duke Energy bill nests like a monstrous, black bird of prey in their shabby mailboxes. They had to sacrifice to make certain they'd have money in the bank to pay the utility company. Many cultling families will have to cut back on small but coveted luxuries and longed-for vacations this year, so why can't Big-Spendin' Dan? The money he and Checkie are raising for that replacement organ -- $5,000 - $6,000 -- could have covered the obligation. And if more were needed, that could have come from the airfare and land expenses for the Dirtbag's two winter vacations. Why can't Dannie, that pontificulus esuriens, learn to live within his means? The faithful have to.

We're willing to wager that "One Hand" has experienced (or anticipated) some resistance to the organ purchase, for he found it necessary to add the patently defensive sentence, "The old organ really is old, and slowly dying." From what we've been told, Checkie could have frugally prolonged the life of the old instrument instead of purchasing a replacement -- and a second-hand replacement at that.  However, the Checkmeister, always in search of novelty and gratification, characteristically decided to pull the plug and withhold life support. Sound familiar?

On top of the new organ expenditure and looming heating bills, Deacon Dan informs us the rabies-vector vermin are back: 

The beasts have returned to our walls. Poor devils, I’m sure the cold drove them to it... Who could resist? Maybe a kind soul will bait the traps again and bear away the little invaders.

We remember Dannie's telling us a few weeks back that professional exterminators had been summoned to rid the crumbling cult center of the filthy, invading raccoons. Why can't the wildlife-control company be called back? Didn't they give a guarantee? If they didn't, isn't there enough money to schedule a follow-up visit? Deacon Dan had better do something quickly because March is still raccoon breeding season.

And why, may we ask, does someone else have to bait the traps? Why can't Lurch, Uneven Steven McFaker, the Forlorn Finn, or Tony Baloney help out a little? It can't be that hard to learn to set and bait a trap, and then dispose of the contents, dead or alive. We hear marshmallows are a critter favorite. There may be some left over from last summer's cult bonfire orgy, unless the army of mice settled in at the priests' quarters got 'em.

It's time for all high-flying Traddie clerics and prelatasters to come down to the real world to see how decent people live and work. Do yourselves -- and them -- a favor:

END THE WASTE. STOP GIVING TODAY. STARVE THE BEAST.

PLUNGING THE STRUGGLING SHEEP

One sickly sheep infects the flock,/And poisons all the rest. Watson


The vile cult masters have reached a new milestone in their boundary-crossing race to the bottom.  A little birdie has informed us how they've resumed with a vengeance their nasty efforts to alienate traditional Catholic faithful from chapels unaffiliated with Tradistan. Right now, these creeps are spreading the big lie that bishops who don't have the required training cannot ordain validly, hence the priests of other chapels are not valid. As a "service," they're offering to take over these chapels (and their weekly collections, no doubt).

Let's get one thing settled once and for all:

NO sede bishop possesses the academic qualifications for the episcopacy, which would have proved his fitness in a manner determined by the Holy See of yesteryear. (We know of only one, an advanced octogenarian, who might possibly have come tolerably close, provided an amused Holy See of the past had the whimsy to assign a vicar apostolic to, say, Al Capp's Lower Slobbovia.) 

In most cases, the current universal impediment to "canonical fitness" results from the overall intellectual mediocrity of the sede episcopate. However, the practical reason is that these wandering bishops have no means open to them (a) to acquire the solid learning in moral theology and canon law required and (b) to earn the necessary credentials from the right schools. Today, unless they lied on their application form, they couldn't secure a licentiate even if they had been blessed with brains, knowledge, and a basic formation.  Moreover, why would any traditional Catholic cleric want to attend the "approved" institutions to earn a credential, where most of the professoriate and the curriculum are Modernist?  

Along with all this nonsense about invalidity comes yet more foolishness about canon law's forbidding bishops outside the cult to exercise their orders.  Putting aside the important question of whether canon law is in effect during the vacancy, we point out that, as a matter of fact, ALL sede bishops technically have been consecrated unlawfully and, therefore, by positive law must not exercise their orders. No papal mandate has ever been granted for the consecration any sede prelate.

In strictly juridical terms, that means none of the undoubtedly valid sede bishops ought to exercise their orders, including the cult masters. (However, in the case of "One Hand," he should not exercise any orders except the diaconate, until he gets fixed.) The bottom line is that anyone who receives the power of the episcopacy never loses it. That means the validly consecrated bishops who operate outside the SW-Ohio/Brooksville cult are just like other trad prelates: they ordain validly, though not lawfully.

It's the usual double standard at work. Ask yourself two questions: 

Why is it that only those whom the cult masters regard as "competitors" must be held to the unattainable standards of canon law (which cannot be enforced anyway)? Why is everyone else, except the cult masters, under pain of nullity?

Dannie tells a French lay group to reject a young priest because he hadn't completed seminary training, yet ol' Deacon Dan "ordained" a man who merely "studied" independently (and later separated from the first priest who supposedly guided his "studies"). The cult masters recruit simple-minded lay people from other chapels by telling them that other bishops have irregularities, yet they refuse to re-ordain and re-consecrate "Dubious Dan." The Trio claims that rival bishops don't live up to the academic standards of the past, yet their own published works are filled with howling errors (especially in Latin), and some of their priests have committed catastrophic blunders at Mass or in the administration of other rites. (Think of the "Skipper" who forgot the consecration and the Frenchman who couldn't bless holy water without a spiritual crisis. Both were pesthouse completers.)

"Sheep stealing" has always been a melancholy fact of the degraded landscape of traditional Catholicism. What makes this recent outbreak so loathsome is the misinformation they're spreading. In the past, Trad clergy of all sorts raided neighboring flocks by marketing their chapel's friendliness, its flexibility or rigidity in moral matters, or its focus on the liturgy etc. Often there was more than a grain of truth in these aggressive campaigns. 

We Readers certainly can see how Catholics might want to leave the chapel of an asocial, screwball priest who's incapable of offering High Mass, saying the simplified Pius XII Mass of Palm Sunday correctly, or performing a wedding ceremony so that they might attend a chapel offering sound liturgical praxis and more stable clergy. We can even understand how the strategic use of innuendo could be used to persuade the faithful to go elsewhere. After all, where there's smoke, there's often fire, as everybody in Trad World has learned from painful experience.

However, the whipsaw hypocrisy of these latest transgressions against truth and decency takes the cake. These renegade "clergy" surely know they could be tarred with the same brush with which they blacken the names of hardworking priests and bishops outside their sphere of influence. Why, then, do they act as they do? Because their contempt for the laity over whose blank, crossed eyes they pull so much wool empowers them to disregard any threat of diminished probity within the cult.

The cynical cult kingpins are aware that intelligent, well-informed Catholics of conscience despise them. Therefore, they only press into service small-souled, shrill morons in hopes that those addled creatures will siphon off one or two other fellow-defectives. The cult masters long ago accepted that they'd never permanently capture clear-thinking, worldly-wise, independent-minded lay men and women who can spot a con-job from a mile away. (They don't want those people anyway; they're satisfied if they can attract them for the short term -- long enough to squeeze some money out of them before the poor dupes recover from their temporary madness and leave the cult in a rage.)

That's why the clerical sheep rustlers have to go a-raiding: they need the influx of new fly-stricken, daggy daft-lambs  to replace the strays who have finally gotten a whiff of the wolf slavering behind the masquerade. These victims learned the hard way that the beast isn't looking for souls to save -- it's looking for donors to shake down. When awakened laity no longer submit to fleecing, the cult masters need replacements to pay for the luxuries they consider their birthright. (It's a characteristic of grasping guttersnipes to consider other people's money their money.)

So be on guard against any sicko, shrieking former chapel members who come slinking around with a cock-and-bull story about invalidity and canonical unfitness. You don't need to be defensive.  Turn the tables on the lowlife trash: Ask why they're carrying water for malformed, lupine bishops and asinine clergy who themselves are canonically unfit or worse. Let them know that the cult clergy are living in glass houses, so nobody has any business throwing stones.

Then tell 'em to crawl back to their filthy lair so the beast can feed upon them.

BUT AT LEAST A GOOD CIGAR IS A SMOKE

Emergency Warning for your Wallet -- from the Editors: It's an arctic Lent in frost-strangled SW Ohio, and the cold-hearted cult masters are ravenously hungry for your money. Their latest scheme to separate you from your hard-earned cash is to sell you a crucifix along with St. Alphonsus Liguori's Way of the Cross for $20.00 (!!) so you can do the stations at home. Don't be a sucker. Just use a wooden crucifix you already have and print out St. Alphonsus's text from this site (click here); ask an undoubtedly valid priest to perform the blessing if you also wish to gain the indulgences. BTW, if you use the site we give, you can be sure of getting St. Alphonsus's prayers. The booklet shown on the SGG cult site is for the method of St. Francis of Assisi. (Maybe the cult kingpins will change the image as soon as they read this, so check it out asap here, right side, middle image. In any case, Pistrina's got a screen shot.)

Now for today's exciting post.....

Ignorance is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their dupes... 1st Baron Beveridge

We never tire of exposing how alienated from the authentic world of scholarship and the Latin language the malformed cult masters are. Together with dubiety of one-handed conferral of priestly orders, it's our favorite meme. Consequently, it's always a pleasure when others highlight the gruesome twosome's moronic errors.

To date, we've received five e-mails gleefully pointing out a Latin-spelling goof in the short letter "One-Hand Dan" addressed to seven of the priests who signed the September 1990 ad cautelam missive warning him of the fearful doubt stalking his priestly orders. Click here and go to page 5 of 5.  There you'll see the Latin term-of-art status questionis (sic!), lit. "state of the question or investigation," meaning the chief learned opinions concerning an area of inquiry. As our correspondents observed, the correct spelling -- the spelling of trained and true Catholic priests in the modern era (and of secular scholars from many different disciplines) -- is quaestionis, with ae (or the ligature æ), never e (as found in some medieval texts).

We can't imagine a first-year student's making such a blunder, let alone someone who intimates to Traddielandia that he was "canonically fit" for holy orders. It's rank amateurism at its worst: trying to impress with a Latin tag and then misspelling it! LOL

To complement the wry, critical comments we received about Dannie's orthographic boo-boo, we thought we'd share with everybody a much more serious lapse of academic good sense in the same set of documents. In his reply to the superior of the SSPV (page 1 of 5, 2nd paragraph, in the above link), Deacon Dan ruefully taunted, "...you and your clergy now trump up charges that I am doubtfully ordained and may not really be a priest. Suave conatum, sed havanum non datum. Nice try, but no cigar."

Despite a pronounced reek of what the French call latin de cuisine, we're not going to comment on the Latinity of the slavishly literal translation of Dannie's variation on the popular American expression "close, but no cigar" -- or is that Tony Baloney's smarmy voice we hear there? As a specimen of callow, adolescent snark, it's O.K., we suppose, especially with the jingling homoeoteleuton. (We must, however, vigorously protest suave.*) Nonetheless -- and this is crucial -- the effort does not rise to the level of mature academic wit, nor does it embody scholarly best practice.

A well-schooled, real scholar with a university-educated taste refined at an accredited graduate school would have first chosen a genuine and idiomatic Latin phrase -- preferably a notable one  -- that captured the sense of "nice try -- or 'close' --, but no cigar." He then could have offered the vivid, U.S.-pop-culture saying as the rendering for the Latin original. As a result, Wee Dan's rebuke would have sparkled with class, perhaps (dare we say?) even with professional élan.

As it stands, the riposte is merely crass and gauche, for literally translating 20th-century American, colloquial English into Latin results in a jarring anachronism, to say the least. There's no cross-cultural interplay and hence no wit. What we have before our offended eyes is a Midwestern-American vulgarian swaddled in a ragged beach towel, who insists that we believe he's wearing a toga. Not even close!

Let's show you what we mean.  First, for our many readers from abroad, "nice try (or 'close'), but no cigar" is a colorful way of saying almost, but not quite. It characterizes an attempt that comes near to succeeding but fails to attain the sought-after object. Right off the bat, without even recalling the texts of classical authors, we thought of the familiar Latin phrase proxime accessit, "he came very near [to winning the prize]."

The expression is found all over the Web and in popular reference books like Stone's Latin for the Illiterati , Ehrlich's The Harper Dictionary of Foreign Terms, and the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. In modern English, proxime accessit is a noun-phrase from the 19th century meaning a runner-up, i.e., someone who comes in second place for an award, a prize, or a scholarship, etc. It's perfectly classical Latin, for  the idiom proxime accedere is found in ancient authors.

If Dubious Dan (and his blundering wing-man) had been formally educated under credentialed professors, the Dirtbag could simply have changed the grammatical person of the verb to the second person singular (he was addressing his career-long nemesis, the louche and disapproving superior of the SSPV): "Proxime accessisti -- Nice try, but no cigar," with the American expression amplifying the Latin to drive home the truth that a failure remains a failure. A deliciously snide opportunity to tweak an intimidating adversary lost to an untutored nitwit!

Now, already from the deepest, dirtiest corners of Trad cyberspace we can hear snarling, bark-like, spittle-laced protests that Pistrina's sinfully beating up on the deliriously mediocre Ren and Stimpy of Tradistan, who can never recover from their severely deficient formation.

Cross our hearts! That's not what this is about.

We've already exposed the manifold and irremediable educational and cultural failings of Dannie and Checkie as well as those of that gas-bag Big Don. The issue is settled forever; even the cultlings (grudgingly) admit it. No, this is about something else. This isn't a futile exercise in dead-horse whipping:

It's a reminder to the innocent, traditional Catholic laity who aren't enslaved by the SW-Ohio and Swampland cult-cabal.

You see, the cash-starved cult kings have resumed trying to lure the faithful away from competing traditional chapels under the pretext that the priests and bishops of those chapels haven't the requisite training. That's why it's important for future innocent victims of their guile to know that Dannie, Tony Baloney, and Big Don don't possess the requisite knowledge and preparation either. 

So, then ... when the twisted, mammonite clergy dupe the next simple-minded, barely literate, low-life-trash-pot lay stooge into undermining a rival chapel by spreading the blundering "seminary professor's" misinformation about "invalidity" and "unfitness," the faithful can take it all addito salis grano ("with a pinch of salt"). 

More on the new, raging outbreak of "sheep stealing" next week.

* The word nice in the idiom nice try means "very good, well-executed, well-conducted, outstanding" (Webster's 3rd International unabridged) or "done with precision and skill, deft" (American Heritage Dictionary), as in "a nice bit of craftsmanship," "nice shot," "nice job," and, adverbially, "nicely done!" The sense of the word nice in those informal phrases is different from its sense in such utterances as "nice color," "nice perfume," "nice wine," "nice song," and "nice feeling" etc. because it's a different lexeme.

The underlying cognitive meaning of suavis, suave is agreeable or pleasant to the senses or to the mind and emotions. Suavis  is chiefly said of sensations -- touch, taste, sound, sight, smell and, by extension, the character of persons. An able writer educated at a real university knows you can't just look up the word nice in an English-Latin dictionary and pick the first gloss you see (or recognize):  you first have to know the sense in your own language before choosing the right Latin word to represent in translation the English meaning (assuming, that is, you also know what the Latin options denote).

That's all too much for the educationally challenged cult masters, who apparently have no notion of polysemy. No one should pay attention to what these ill-trained buffoons say about anything. They fell flat on their smirking faces 25 years ago, and they keep on stumbling over their ignorance today. The only difference is they've moved from blundering in Latin to bungling theology.