"OF ALL THE WEEK'S THE UNLUCKIEST DAY"

Non decipitur qui scit se decipi. ("He is not deceived who knows himself to be deceived"). Latin Legal Maxim

In the days after Christmas, there went out an invitation from the $GG cult masters that all might attend a Friday, December 29, Requiem High "Mass," burial, and post-interment luncheon. Immediately below the address of the lunch venue, The Farm, "Cincinnati's Place to Have a Party," this shocking advice appeared:

Those who attend the luncheon may consider 

themselves dispensed from the Friday abstinence.

This horror may have landed in your inbox. You may even have waddled on over to scarf up some meaty fare. PL can understand why you went. From reading the announcement "All are invited," we're inclined to believe a free lunch was on offer.

Yet for us, that brief sentence substantiates every criticism we've ever leveled against the SW Ohio cult, justifying why we shame the degenerate laity who keep $GG on life support. Those 13 unholy words represent everything despicable about the ecclesiastical entrepreneurs who run the renegade operation.

Before we continue, we'll give a little credit to "One-Hand Dan": He's fully aware he cannot, in accordance with c. 1245, dispense anyone from the observance of fasts and abstinence — not individual cases, not a family, and certainly not a great concourse of people: Dannie's neither an ordinary nor a pastor and therefore has no subjects to dispense. In a similar vein, he's wary enough to realize that PL, other sites, and rival independent "clergy" would pillory him if he "dispensed." Nevertheless, he wanted the feed. So what did His Ambivalency do?

He innovated by playing fast and loose with language, that's what he did. None need parse too closely the words of the "dispensation" to conclude it's the attendees who dispense themselves, not Dannie:

"If YOU are arrogant and lawless, then YOU may dispense yourself from the Catholic law of abstinence, provided you do your pigging out on flesh-meat at the party house on Friday."

Looks like the Wee One's off the hook, although the ill-starred Gerties may not be.

A genuinely observant traditional Catholic attending the luncheon would not have given credence to the bogus "self-dispensation" from cult central. No attendee can claim to have broken Church law as a result of ignorance, for cultlings know "[t]he law of abstinence must be observed on all Fridays throughout the year, except those which are holy days of obligation outside Lent (c. 1252, § 4)."*

And if they can't recall the rule, they may consult their traditional Catholic calendar for its specific application.** Moreover, even the most debased Gertie knows Dannie is not the ordinary of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. Any pious, traditional Catholic bellying up to the buffet line was obligated to choose a lawful dish and reject the impious "self-dispensation." (Those with an informed conscience ought to have denounced it publicly and demanded its rescission.)

No Catholic possessed of prudent judgment can say the law of abstinence, owing to grave obstacles or impossibility, did not bind the meat-frenzied SW Ohio partygoers on Friday, December 29, 2017. In this day and age, most eateries bend over backwards to accommodate vegetarians; nonetheless, even if The Farm were a manic-meat-eaters-only zone, no soul in the SW Ohio cult would've suffered for declining to chow down at lunchtime on marinated fried chicken, tender and meaty baby-back ribs in barbecue sauce, or sliced roast beef in gravy. Sides like buttered corn niblets, dinner rolls, home-style gourmet coleslaw, and perhaps, if prepared without meat products, au-gratin green beans ("a cheesy treat") would've sustained them until the dinner bell clanged at home.

Whether the woebegone Gerties sinned is a question we'll leave for others to debate. For us, we lament the unfortunate lost opportunity for the laity to teach the malformed "clergy" a lesson in fidelity to ecclesiastical legislation. Imagine the edifying witness to tradition the assembled cultlings could have rendered had they obeyed Church law and refused to partake of flesh-meat at that Friday luncheon. Only the "clergy, " Novus Ordites, or any Protestants in attendance would've been left with their plates groaning with forbidden foodstuffs.

From all appearances, at $GG witness means surrendering to the seductive innovations of the cult kingpins: hang the law!

Out of curiosity, the Readers wonder how many Gerties attending the luncheon did have a pang of conscience, did feel what they were doing was wrong, did recognize the strangely worded "self-dispensation" was a crock. At least several, we'd say: there still do remain, you know, a few good souls who have reservations about everything happening down there.

Did they feel the secret guilt of rowdy schoolboys whose hearts tell them the headmaster should've enforced the rules? Almost a certainty. Did they feel the same schoolboys' contempt for weak-willed authority figures? We'd say so.  Did they quietly scorn the malformed "clergy" who wolfed down meat on that unseasonable Friday at The Farm?  Yes, they did.

But they didn't speak up, did they?

Well, what can you expect? How can you nurture a Catholic conscience in the jinxed cult? Acknowledging wrongdoing is a good start, though. Similarly, all of you in cyberspace reading this post —friend or foe of PL — must concur with the Readers there was no licit "self-dispensation" for the funeral feast at "the party barn." Nothing can excuse the transgressive notice in the $GG invitation. However, its content may be explained in two words:

FAKE CATHOLICISM 

* Prümmer, Handbook of Moral Theology, 497. 2.

** We don't have a copy of $GG's 2017 calendar, but we do have a copy of the 2006 edition, when December 29 also fell on a Friday. On that date, we find the whole-fish icon (= "complete abstinence"). The Readers presume the 2017 $GG effort was similarly marked. Perhaps somebody can confirm.

COMING TO TRY WITH HARD QUESTIONS

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose, new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Chesterton

Editor's Note: For this our final— and purposely brief — post of the 2017, we thought we'd pose a few questions rather than send up the customary end-of-year prognostications. We've already made enough predictions to last the whole of 2018. Today it's time to sit back, relax, and ponder satisfying, new possibilities.

In his December newsletter, "The Lowly Worm," the b.s. artist formerly known as Tradzilla, announced the date of the Kid's "consecration," with a promise of more information in the January issue. We can hardly wait to read what he has to tell us.

For instance, will we learn the names of the all-star cast? More importantly, will there be a co-consecrator or two?  And, if yes, who will he or they be? Whom will we find among the gawking spectators? Does Tony Baloney dare show up? Will we spy Dennis the Menace  in the pews? The reply to that last question will tell us much about cult policy under the new Boy "Bishop."

Earlier in the newsletter, the recovering Donster declared he expects to get clearance to fly internationally in late March.  (The cult masters do love their foreign junkets, don't they?) That's really interesting news! With the Kid as the headline act for the Holy-Week show, where in the world might "The Lowly Worm" be planning to go?

Merrie Olde England comes to mind. (Doesn't he owe some clueless Londoners a visit?)  Maybe he'll arrive in the Big Smoke for Easter Sunday. April 1, you know, is All Fools' Day. However, dear old Blighty isn't necessarily the only imaginable landing place for a mobile miter.

La Belle France is a strong competitor for his benefactors' travel dollars, particularly when you consider we haven't heard a peep about the "Roman Catholic Institute" for an awfully long spell.  Why, it's been radio silence since the big roll-out last spring.

Is the "Institute" dead in the stagnant swamp water, or will Don try to resuscitate it on the Continent? We've noticed his yammering about an "ordination" on French soil next summer, and he's shared with his readership that pipe dream to found a "seminary" (LOL) there. Could, therefore, "The Lowly Worm" be ready to move on to Europe, seeing that he's been made redundant in the Home of the Brave?

If he targets l'Hexagone, can we expect the B'ville retrenchment to begin before summer? And then can we hope to see the pesthouse shut down, the distressed building being put to other purposes, such as a school or convent? That would spare a lot of the élite's capital.

But enough of the Donster and the Swampland! Let's switch focus. PL doesn't want you to think we're ignoring the SW Ohio cult.

The nagging question we have here is whether "One-Hand Dan" might be penciling-in a tour to lusciously sunny México lindo around the middle of frigid February. The winter escape would occasion the perfect excuse to account for his absence from the B'ville sanctuary.  Think about it: How humiliating would it be to squat in the teeming peanut gallery while other, younger prelatasters, adorned with sound holy orders, pranced around in bespoke pontificals as Assistant Bishops!

But beyond the matter of his attendance, a much larger question looms: With Big Don effectively benched, how long, we ask, can $GG stay afloat in 2018? Last week's bulletin again reported a collection of under $4K (specifically, $3,351), not enough at any time of the year, but positively calamitous during the continuing arctic temperatures.

Insightfully, "One Hand" has been grousing about "part time Catholics" as well as the Gerties' cutting out before Benediction. (What pious Catholic wants to risk adoring bread?)  Furthermore, not a week passes without sob stories of ailing, dying, or croaked cultlings: To hear the Wee One tell it, they're dropping like dung flies in a noxious cloud of industrial pesticide. On one thing you can bet the farm: the dump can't continue as-is in the face of disappearing income coupled with the Grim Reaper's aggressive harvest.

Will the coming year see a major re-organization or some serious downsizing?

Be still our hearts!

. . . . . . . . . .

Well, that should be grist to the comment-section's mill until next week. If the answers to our questions turn out as we hope, 2018 will prove to be a very happy year, for the gold-digging SW Ohio-B'ville cult will fall flat on its misshapen face.  Meanwhile, guided by your renewed spirit, open your eyes, hear not the sect's cant, sniff the cultic stink, then bravely stand up straight on your new feet and make your resolution to

SAY GOOD RIDDANCE TO THE CULT IN 2018! 

PLAYING IT SUPER SAFE

If you do not repair your gutter, you will have your whole house to repair. Spanish Proverb

PL has boldly conjectured no expense will be spared, no ceremonial detail ignored, in staging Junior's 2018 "consecration," which has been slated for February 22. We always suspected it would be earlier in the year rather than later, but this date is much sooner than imagined: apparently no one's taking any chances with the Donster's ticker.

The transgressive occasion simply must be the most fabulous spectacle cult-addled cretins and lame-brained "clergy" have ever set their distended eyes upon! The power brokers have invited so many sede scum that we're tempted to call the event Tradnado. That's understandable: the Kid's got to make a lasting impression if he's to preserve the furiously contracting hermit kingdom following Kim Jong-Don's rushed departure from one-man rule.

The prospect of the approaching gala transition got us thinking deeply.

The Swampland party planners — the real bosses of fetid B'ville —must be as aware as the Readers are of the trumpeting elephant in the claustrophobic sede room:

Big Don's Liénart-spoiled priestly orders. 

The standard argument that wearing pontificals, using the Church's liturgical books, and performing the rite competently establish the presumption of an ordaining bishop's sufficient sacramental intention to confect holy orders may not entirely put at ease the vested interests bankrolling the subtropical fenland.

It is by no means inconceivable that a particular, highly motivated, unusually intelligent, and supremely self-disciplined enemy of the Church might do everything in his power to destroy her from within. And what better way is there than to compromise the validity of the sacrament of orders by making an act of the will not to ordain?

N.B. This case is far different from presuming every Masonic bishop always withholds proper intention, a proposition that's patently uninformed.  Our supposition derives from a prudent fear, based on cognitive psychology and life experience, that one radicalized, rogue bishop, aggressively committed to furthering the ends of satanic Freemasonry, might have made it a point to will not to do what the Church does each time he conferred orders.

Whether Liénart in fact harbored such diabolical resolve is impossible to determine with certainty based on the information currently available to us. But from what's been reported about the man, that frame of mind remains strongly plausible. The Liénart-line's threat to validity, then, while probably small at present, is not negligible. And who knows what complacency-shattering disclosures may be forthcoming? It seems, therefore, the safest path for the Boy-"Bishop's" protectors would be — on the off-chance that anything of substance regarding Liénart's fanaticism¶ should come to light in the decades ahead — to extract every sliver of doubt, no matter how slight it may seem at the moment.

To our way of thinking, it is unimaginable to believe the Kid's minders haven't given some consideration to assuring his "episcopal" orders are as bulletproof as they can be.† Right now, Junior's among the very few in Tradistan U.S.A. who have a reliable line for their priestly orders‡: Pierre Martin Ngô Đình Thục ➤ Michel-Louis Guérard des Lauriers (ordained priest 1931 by Rasneur)  ➤ Robert Fidelis McKenna (ordained priest 1958 by Cicognani).§

Between McKenna and the Kid, there's no Liénart-tinged interloper to impugn his orders'  validity. If you affirm Thục's consecration of des Lauriers was valid, then it's fairly certain the former professor at Le Saulchoir and the Lateran University didn't make any mistakes in conferring a valid "episcopacy" upon his brother Dominican.

As it stands today, if the Kid gets his orders only from Big Don, then doubts could arise in many influential quarters about his standing as a "bishop." Those of you who've studied our "Dubiety of Ordination Conferred with One Hand," know the more common opinion holds that when the priesthood has not been conferred, the episcopate cannot be validly conferred (p. 25). Thus if Achille Liénart purposefully intended not to ordain when he conferred orders, then Marcel Lefebvre was never a priest or a bishop and therefore never conferred the priesthood or episcopacy on anybody.

The Readers can't be the only ones who recognize there's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in the Tampa-St. Pete area to send the Liénart elephant of invalidity to a boggy graveyard ... to give the Clone a clean start in his "episcopal career" (LOL).  It's soooo easy, too: Just get a co-consecrator whose "priestly" and "episcopal" orders come from the Thục-des Lauriers-McKenna succession.

And where, pray tell, do you find such an animal? 

Well, if you want to search abroad, there's Geert Jan Stuyver, the "bishop" working with Francesco Ricossa at the Instituto Mater Boni Consilii in Italy. McKenna "ordained" him a "priest" in 1996 and conferred on him the "episcopate" in 2002.  Moreover, Junior assisted at Stuyver's "consecration." (Click here for a pic.)  If Stuyver were invited as a co-consecrator for the Big Show next year, he might deign to fix the Donster a couple days beforehand: that way, at the finale of the Big Show, there'd be four valid "bishops" on stage, not three (as long as "One Hand" didn't co-consecrate, that is). We're positive the rector wouldn't want to be the odd-man-out. How could he endure the snickers from all his enemies or from the Clone?

To be sure, the downside of this arrangement would be the public announcement of the Donster's reception of conditional ordination and consecration: in order to silence the whispers forever, the repair job is no good unless TradWorld knows about it. Then there'd be the matter of a public ceremony, for surely the head honchos would want more than matter and form done hastily in some moldy back room. Further, it would mean that all the bums Don's "ordained" in the past would have to be re-ordained sub conditione. And then there are all the confirmations to be redone.

But, hey, what's a little hassle when the prize is a lock on validity for the new Boy "Bishop"?

To be candid, we were reluctant to post our speculations. If the élite hadn't considered the possible challenge to Junior's validity, we didn't want to tell them how to make the Kid's illicit orders unimpeachable. After a few years, he might want to come roaring back on the trad scene, appealing to a sound lineage as an enticement to join his cult. However, we quickly dismissed our fears, for we honestly believe that once the Swampland enterprise closes in on itself, it will never venture out again onto the national or international sede stage as a headliner. 

Empire building was the fever dream of grasping Lefebvre-wannabes like "One Hand" and the "Lowly Worm."  Throughout his long, reticent apprenticeship — est et fideli tuta silentio merces — the Boy-"Bishop"-Elect has taken to heart the following lesson from the aging cult kingpins' grotesque failures:

A Sedelandia robust enough to vie with the SSPX or the FSSP is a hallucination to be put out of mind.

What a folly it is to pretend sede cur runts can give the big dogs of Traddielandia a run for their money. Junior will stay small in order to survive, well away from the spotlight. In his prudently self-imposed limitation, the Boy "Bishop" will cultivate the safe and secure virtues of settlement.

It's too risky out in the open.

^¶ Our use of this term is specialized: we've got in mind Eric Hoffer's (The True Believer) fanatic, who is vicious and destructive, content solely with the unified struggle for change leading to total upheaval.

^† For your consideration, we note that in 2001, Junior chose McKenna, not "One-Hand Dan," as his ordaining "bishop." The little piece of Noh theater where the invitations advertised the Kid as O.P., but on the Mass booklet distributed at "ordination" the post-nominal initials had disappeared, smelled to us like a maneuver to avoid wounded feelings. Maybe we're overestimating them, but the élite were too savvy back then to let the Clone be compromised by anything that smacked of invalidity. For this reason, we can't see why they'd get careless now when the stakes are so much higher. Anyone who's viewed the Donster's "consecration" video, where McKenna was forced to repeat a section, will acknowledge that validity's always been on their minds. Also, let's not forget that Big Don was a signatory to the September 1990 ad-cautelam letter to Wee Dan.

^‡ Unless Méndez fixed Kelly before his "consecration."

^§ Sources for ordination data:
http://www.cattolicesimo.com/2015/03/02/vita-di-mons-guerard-des-lauriers-di-don-giuseppe-murro/ and http://www.dailycatholic.org/mckenttt.htm.