IT'S OK TO STAY AWAY

Let my people go. Exodus

We know many of you are in the same position in which we once found ourselves: You're tired of the antics and hypocrisy of the SGG-Brooksville cartel, but your family is reluctant to leave the Mass. You're afraid that by leaving you won't find another Catholic home. You're scared that if you leave to set out on your own, you'll lose your faith and access to the means of obtaining sanctifying grace.

We understand.

After looking for the Catholic faith and seemingly finding it, you're loath to start all over again, although you realize the traddie cults aren't really Catholic. You think that by leaving you'll return to a spiritual no-man's land where your recaptured faith will vanish. It's hard to imagine how you can nurture that faith on your own. Although you feel contempt and anger towards these wretched "bishops" and their despicably loutish "clergy," you're not ready to cut the cord. So, against the clear dictates of your will -- and perhaps against the  counsels of your conscience? -- you stay, hoping the situation will improve.

Tragically, it won't change. It will only worsen as the cult masters feel the increasing pressure. Sooner or later, if  you are a good person, you will have to leave. To remain is to endorse all this unedifying, sectarian, non-Catholic behavior.

Consequently, the first thing to do is  to accept that God wants you to distance yourself from these odious, pseudo-Catholic sects and cults. He will give you the strength and courage necessary, if you pray for those gifts. You're not a malcontent when you confess that the cults do not represent the Faith except in the most superficial ways.  You have been given a gift of discernment.

Your dissent is not, in and of itself, evil, as the cult masters would wrongly have you think. Just consider the Cistercians: without their pious dissent, the Church would have been poorer. And since the cults of Tradistan are definitely not the Church, your disaffiliation is surely an act prompted by grace.

You've witnessed for yourself that at times the traddie cults approach a false imitation of true religion, an abuse condemned by the Council of Trent. Accordingly, you must interpret as a divinely bestowed grace your nagging desire to escape these sectarian vices so contrary to the virtue of religion. Inasmuch as every day you see on display the cult masters' hypocrisy, obsession with money, self-interest, and mean-spirited schemes, you have your own personal confirmation that your desire to escape is sound and holy. In addition, there's the additional witness of this blog, which has thoroughly documented the cult "clergy's" ignorance, malformation, and un-Catholic behavior. Something in the nature of things corresponds to the doubts in your mind.

So what do you do?

Simple!

 Be your own Moses: set yourself and your family free from the bondage of the hard-hearted cult masters.

You'll find that breaking away is easy, if you do it in steps. First, cut your contributions in half or, better yet, make a token offering of a only few dollars. (Be sure you sit at the end of the pew and put the bills in a plain envelope so the ushers don't report you -- and so the Gestapo "clergy" can't identify you.) Second, don't volunteer to help, and only attend the cult's "Masses" on Sundays and days of obligation. Third, once you're comfortable with giving much less, stop contributing altogether. That's right: Don't give the filthy, grunting money-hogs a dime.

If you can afford it, donate instead to a worthy, well-managed charity of your choice. At the same time, if you can, attend Mass elsewhere on occasion, even the Masses of rival sects. (Ignore your "clergy's" prohibitions. They're only trying to corner the market.) Better still,  just stay home and say the rosary or recite the divine office. (The Sunday precept* -- and all canon law --  doesn't operate during sede vacante anyway, although perhaps it's useful as a form of personal discipline.)

At this point, if the cult-clergy haven't tossed you out for resisting their strong-arm efforts to separate you from your cash, you're ready to walk away from the whole mess --  the blood-spattered tales of Caravaggio, the cult's feral cat; the invention of new mortal sins; the denial of sacraments to you or your loved ones; the hypocrisy; the remorseless, never-ending fund raising; Cheesy's head-shaking, jaw-dropping ignorance; Big Don's galactic, but unjustified, arrogance; and Wee Dan's terminal fecklessness.

All gone forever.

No more threats and coercion from the pulpit. No more name calling.  No more scandals like that which occurred at SGG School in 2009. No more supporting financially the "principal" and his large family. No more underwriting the "schooling" of kids from just a few families. And -- this is important -- no more worry that you're offending God by assisting at possibly invalid Masses or confessing to possibly invalid priests.

When you walk away, you won't be alone. You'll have the act of perfect contrition as a consolation until you find an independent chapel with a valid priest unattached to the wolfish sede cult "bishops." Your faith will not only survive, it will grow -- even at home alone --once the noxious influence of the cult evaporates.

So start this Sunday. Start starving the beast, and take your first step toward a genuine Catholic life, the Promised Land of your holy wishes. The Japanese Catholics who survived the 1638 massacres kept the faith without clergy for some 200 years. You can keep your faith, too, outside the cults.

* We know that for many the precept of hearing Mass on Sundays and Feastdays represents a formidable obstacle to leaving a virulent cult center. While leaving is a decision for each individual conscience, we base our position on the 1942 study by Fr. J. J. Guiniven, C.SS.R., which teaches that "whenever there is a positive, objective doubt concerning the existence, force, extent, or cessation of the precept of hearing Mass, there is no obligation to attend Mass." For us, the law does not bind in the sede vacante. All we find locally are the repulsive  N.O. outrages, the patently repellent imitation-Catholic cults, and doubtfully valid priests simulating a Catholtic rite. Furthermore, we believe that assisting at the cults' Masses involves "a notable harm or danger to one's own goods of ... soul...[that] suffices to excuse one from the precept of hearing Mass." Putting it as simply as possible, since we have doubt about a fact whose existence would induce an obligation to attend Mass, then we are not subject to the doubtfully binding law because liberty is in possession. You may come to the same conclusions.

THE UGLY AMERICAN

At mihi, qui quondam, semper asellus eris ("But to me, you'll always be the ass who you once were"). Avianus, "Fable of the Ass in the Lion's Skin." 

Some followers of this blog have gotten the wrong idea. We're not opposed in principle to admiring the clergy.

As a matter of fact, there are many traditional priests -- and a few bishops -- whom we steadfastly admire: Properly educated priests with a zeal for souls, and bishops who lovingly "feed the flock of God...not for filthy lucre's sake, but voluntarily: neither as lording it over the clergy." 

But those good men live far away from the mean streets of dystopic Tradistan, U.S.A. The "clergy" who malignantly cruise those fearful byways -- particularly the "bishops," instantaneously transformed from low-life gutter trash to "men of God" simply by dressing the part -- merit nothing but contempt. But, then, you already know that. You remember we told you about the ridiculous self-styled "missionary bishop with universal jurisdiction" as well as the yellow-livered, quaking troll frightened of his own shadow who surfs the 'net all day long locked away in his office.

You also recall last summer's popular series "Travelers' Tribunal," which acquainted our audience with a gag-inducing smögåsbord of clerical misbehavior ranging from the grossly stupid to the emetically reprehensible. Anyone with a conscience and a sense of decency who read through those posts would find himself empty of admiration for the puny riffraff who pass themselves off as Catholic "priests" or as high-and-mighty "prelates of the S.R.E."

However, insofar as human beings are prone to forget, Pistrina would like to remind everybody again how unworthy of respect Tradistani "clergy" are. So, for your vacation displeasure, here's a little anecdote we heard from sources abroad:

When a member of the traddie nomenklatura made a little tour on the Continent, a couple originally from mainland Southeast Asia, as a gesture of humble gratitude for his visit, generously invited him to a local Indochinese restaurant. In a churlish rebuke to their kindness, it's reported the ill-bred, uncouth jackass badly disguised in clericals boorishly sneered that he definitely would not join them, cruelly adding, "you people only eat cats and dogs."

Any further comment on our part is superfluous. Like the Europeans who learned of this grim episode, American traditional Catholics, presented with such arrogance and incivility, must stand aghast in wincing horror. This piece of rotting sede garbage could buy everything Gammarelli's has in stock, but he'd still remain the gob of spit he was fated to be at his ill-starred birth. Doesn't this graceless cur realize how badly he reflects upon the mother and father who reared him? Probably not. That would require self-awareness and a rudimentary sense of decency.

The only suitable response is revulsion-- and a firm resolution to get out of the cult immediately. It's more than O.K. to stay away when such monsters of uncharity, masquerading as Catholic clergy, creep over the fetid wastelands of Tradistan.

If you consider yourself a Catholic, you have an affirmative duty to get out of any of the traddie cults now.

ORDAINING PRIESTS REVISITED

Very rarely will [Man] squarely push the logic of a fact/To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act. Kipling

Last week's post stirred up a lively exchange both in the comments section and by e-mail. Most e-mail correspondents (undoubtedly mouth-breathing SGG illiterati)  snottily -- and unnecessarily -- reminded us that anything we post about the validity of a simple priest as extraordinary minister of holy orders would be merely a matter of opinion. (N.B. They wrote this in spite of what canon 951 teaches! Perhaps their ignorant clergy-instigators are unaware of its contents.)

Long-time followers of this blog can testify that, of all people, we Readers are aware of the shortcomings of opinion alone, even opinions delivered by recognized authorities. As everybody knows (except cult-maddened freaks), Catholics cannot accept the validity of a sacrament solely on the basis of an opinion, no matter how intelligently proposed.

And while we Readers know that the idea of an ordaining-priest is more than mere opinion*, we argue in reply to the rabid CLODs ("close loyalists of Dannie") that, just as no right-thinking traditional Catholic can safely accept as a valid priest a man ordained by a simple priest (since the cultists insist it's merely an opinion that a priest can be the extraordinary minister of holy orders), so, too, no traditional Catholic, in light of Pius XII's  1947 Sacramentum Ordinis, can safely accept as a valid priest a man ordained with only one hand.

As we pointed out in our definitive refutation and rebuttal of Cekada's error-filled and unscholarly defense of one-handed orders, the Church has never decided the question of one-handed orders. All we have are a few stray opinions to support the validity of such a defective ordination. However, we do know for certain that where there is a question concerning the validity of a sacrament, Catholics must choose the safer path.

Accordingly,  just as we know that bishops provide the certain means for securing valid priestly orders, so, too, we know that re-ordination sub conditione provides the certain means of curing the defect of priestly orders conferred with one hand.

In light of all the corroborating testimony we've marshaled about Dannie's one-handed priestly ordination, it should be easy for the same savagely vocal cultists who e-mailed us last week to persuade His Deficiency to beg Big Don Sanborn to cure his doubtful priestly and episcopal orders. Wee Dan, in turn, can then fix all those men he's "ordained" and thereby put the minds of the faithful at rest.

The collapsing SGG-Brooksville cabal has to confront a hard conclusion and then act upon it: A "priest" ordained by a "bishop" whose priestly orders were defectively conferred with one hand must necessarily be more doubtful than a priest ordained by a simple, yet validly ordained priest. Why? Because (1) the notion of an ordaining-priest is much more than a mere opinion (it's even enshrined in canon law); and (2) sound theologians teach that one must be a valid priest before becoming a bishop. So if a "bishop's" priestly orders are in doubt, then his episcopal orders are necessarily so. As a result, for practical purposes, the faithful must consider all ordinations performed by such a "bishop" to be null and void. Therefore, traditional Catholics must avoid sacraments confected by the men he's "ordained."

It's now almost assured that something very wrong happened to one luckless, despised ordinand on June 29 in what's been hauntingly called l'été chaud de 1976. For the sake of innocent souls, the defect must be cured. The arrogant, ignorant, self-admiring clergy won't do a thing. It's up to the laity. Tell Dannie to get himself fixed -- in both his priestly and his episcopal orders -- or there'll be no more money.

Yes, His Defectiveness won't like it, and neither will loud-mouth Big Don. But what's more important? Li'l Dan's feelings or your immortal soul?


* Last week's challenge is particularly aimed at solving the question of jurisdiction, i.e.,  getting around the issue of that pesky apostolic indult.  If that can be settled -- and we're confident that imaginative Traddies can do it --  then the possibilities are limitless for rescue from the ravenous sede "bishops" of Tradistan and its environs. That pack of wolves has to be disbanded before more Catholics are hurt and impoverished.

CALLING ALL "THEOLOGIANS"

"Painters and poets have always had an equal right to dare whatever they please." We understand, and we beg this indulgence, and, in turn, we grant it. Horace

Of all the stomach-churning obscenities of America's sede wasteland,  there is none more indecent than the creepy wandering bishops of Tradistan and their cult-crazed bedfellows. They're a motley crew of malformed, ignorant, talentless, arrogant, money-hungry, hypocritical, contemptible louts. What's more, they're practically useless, as we pointed out in 2012 (click here).

They can't rule or teach; they aren't really needed for blessings; priests can confirm; and holy oils can be extended for quite a long time. Actually, when you think about it, these self-elected buckets of lukewarm puke have practically nothing to offer. About the only reason to tolerate the vulgar parasites seems to be for the purpose of ordination. (Although one quaking pipsqueak is too afraid to ordain.)

But ... what if some well-educated, traditional Catholic could make the case that, given the current crisis, priests can ordain?

Then TradWorld could be free of the scurvy rascals! That would be a real INDEPENDENCE DAY.

Now, before you mad-dog cultlings start snarling and snapping in inarticulate protest, you should realize that the idea is not at all preposterous.

The Jesuit Bernard Leeming wrote, "...it seems demonstrated that the Pope has given power to simple priests to ordain deacons and even priests."* Antonio Piolanti (born 1911), once rector of the Pontifical Lateran University and vice-president of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, also affirmed that a simple priest can be the extraordinary minister of orders if the pope gives him the power.** Moreover, Fr. Leeming tells us  that  Corrado Baisi's 1935 "book on the subject [of the extraordinary minister of sacramental orders] merits thoughtful consideration."***

All that remains, it seems, is for a bright, formally trained soul in Greater Traddielandia to come up with a plausible justification for getting around the sticky business of papal involvement. In any event, that shouldn't prove too great a challenge.  Sedeville has always been creative at justifying its opinions, what with its inventions of new dogmas and mortal sins together with a generously elastic application of the principles of epikeia, cessation of the law, necessity, excusing cause, etc. So why not exercise this creativity now in the matter of ordination?

For a starting point, we suggest this as-yet unknown, daring intellect might want to expand upon an idea from Big Don Sanborn's seminary rule (at least as he quoted it in a 2004 letter):

In these times in which the Church is deprived of a hierarchy endowed with jurisdiction, the Seminary makes no claim to possess an ordinary legal legitimacy, but claims to be only a part of the extraordinary continuation of the Church's mission to save souls. Since the priesthood is necessary for the salvation of souls, the existence of the seminary, as well as of the ordination of priests, is justified.

Couldn't a case be made, especially under the looming threat of  doubtful sede episcopal orders, that "[s]ince the priesthood is necessary for the salvation of souls," simple priests, as "part of the extraordinary continuation of the Church's mission to save souls," have been given the power, by reason of necessity, to ordain? Oh, sure, a lot of thoughtful groundwork will have to be done, especially with regard to powers in the moral, physical, and ontological orders. But, then, motivated sedes are really good at pulling out of thin air rationalizations for their bold-as-brass incursions, like the Blunderer's reasons for wantonly suppressing the Leonine Prayers. Why, in one instance, we've heard the claim that a famous but simple-minded episcopus vagans is a "missionary bishop" with universal jurisdiction!

Consequently, if these sorry unworthies can claim they're espicopal material, and if any idiot with bishop's orders will consecrate them but for the asking, then the laity shouldn't find it difficult to accept a closely reasoned, well-researched argument that the current ecclesial crisis, in the absence of a legitimate Roman pontiff, has endowed any undoubtedly valid priest with the power to ordain.****

The man or woman who comes up with a persuasive case will certainly deserve every Trad's gratitude. (And that of Trad priests as well! A lot of them are itching to do away with control-freak "bishops," especially with the one who won't let a young "priest" out West buy fast food.) Take our word for it, there could be no greater charity rendered to the faithful than to rid Sedelandia -- and even Tradistan -- of the intolerable plague of uneducated yet insolent "prelatasters." 

To that noble end, the Readers hereby establish what will become the coveted

PISTRINA PRIZE FOR EXCELLENCE IN IMAGINATIVE THEOLOGICAL TINKERING. 

There are two important caveats. Contestants will not be permitted to alter infallible papal teaching through perverse translation, as Phony Tony did in his error-scarred monograph "The Validity of Ordination Conferred with One Hand." Furthermore, inaccurate translations of theologians' opinions, as we have found passim in the Blunderer's œuvre, will result in immediate disqualification.

In addition to the winner's receiving a laminated copy of the medallion pictured above, Pistrina will publish the winning monograph on scribd.  The contest is open until a winner is selected. Send submissions to our email address above.

On your mark ... Get set ... THEOLOGIZE!

(If Checkie and Big Don can do it, so can you -- and anybody else.)

*Principles of Sacramental Theology (1956), p. 241
** I Sacramenti (1990), pp. 484-488.
*** Op. Cit. n. 117, p. 524
**** Of necessity, all Dolanite ordinati must be excluded until Dannie gets fixed and re-ordains them.

ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

COUNTERFEIT CATHOLICISM 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COUNTERFEIT CATHOLICISM 3

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

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

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

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

LITURGY DESERVING OF RESPECTFUL REJECTION

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

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

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

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

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

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

LITURGY DESERVING OF DISDAINFUL SQUASHING

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

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

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

Okay, we think we see his point.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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