Saturday, February 11, 2012

THE NOONDAY DEVIL


...daemonium meridianum, the most stubborn spirit to govern and guide that any man can meet, and the most perilous withal. Hawker

From the Desert Fathers to St. Thomas Aquinas, we stand cautioned against acedia, indifference in spiritual matters, "soulful don't-care-ishness." Yet in the Sede Vacante, we laymen remain uncaring of the dire effects of intellectual acedia, negligence in scrutinizing the scholarship and credentials of those clergy who lay claim to being our spiritual guides. How else can we account for our listless failure to reject out of hand Work of Human Hands -- that bespattered canvas of gaudily grinning errors---and the brazenly meretricious proposition that the Unacum market-cornering ploy is dogma. How else could we have listened to the nonsense that burbles forth from the pulpits of ill-formed MHT clergy, distinguished more for their blinding defects than for their illuminating learning.

We're not talking about the indolent acquiescence of the gullible and invincibly ignorant-- the witless wonderment of wan and sad-eyed Traddie women shrouded in their impossibly long, dirt-gathering calico skirts; or the surly aggressiveness of their pot-bellied and grim-lipped menfolk straitened by their seam-bursting, unlaundered polyester slacks three 0r four sizes too small. On the contrary, the Readers mean the educated and affluent Traddie minority, who would see the sham were they to awake from their inertia.

Without something substantial of the Church's intellectual tradition, the Traddie movement is nothing other than a cult. As the old ads used to say, Accept no substitutes. The un-credentialed Blunderer, "One-Hand," the rector, and other even more ignorant pretenders have no grounding in genuine Tradition. They are but a pedestrian re-imagination of the Church.
The problem will only get worse.

Just look at the shriveled and rotten fruits of MHT: One forgot the consecration at Mass. Another couldn't perform a burial service. A third was unable to bless holy water without an operatic mad-scene of self-doubt and embarrassing false starts. Today we have a fresh Lutheran convert from ultra-modern Scandanavia, who was fast-tracked to the priesthood. Next up is a Russian who was only received into the church when he entered MHT. Not only is learning flown away, but so is Catholic culture, the unspoken requirement of the priesthood.

In light of their scanty gifts, these purblind clerics are barely fit to offer Mass. No one need be a scholar to sense the sham so close to the surface. Why is it that so few laymen have detected these deficiencies in the manifest failures of the rector's completers? or in "One-Hand's" maudlin sermons? or in the Blunderer's howlingly laughably below-par effort, Work of Human Hands? The only explanation can be intellectual lethargy.

Pistrina invites the witted to wake up and shake off their sorrow about the intellectual good of the Church in exile. Refuse consent to a flight from the standards of good Catholic scholarship by condemning the Terrible Trio. Dispel your tedium. Subdue your turpitude by resistance to all these tempter-beggars disguised in grubby collars and shabby amaranthine robes. The Traddie movement simply cannot produce scholars or intellectuals. The rejects it possesses are only -- and just barefly -- fit to offer Mass and provide the other sacraments. Tell them so. Tell them to stop pretending and to get back to the basics. Demand they be silent until God raises better men. If they will not see that they can never be part of the Restoration, then

STARVE THE BEAST, STAY HOME ALONE, SAY YOUR ROSARY, MAKE YOUR ACT OF PERFEC T CONTRITION.

6 comments:

  1. Mr. Toth you are an intellectual snob.

    Holiness with scholarship is a wonderful thing and much to be desired. But holiness without scholarship will still save souls. However scholarship without holiness is tingling brass.
    Give me one Saint Joseph of Cupertino or St. Francis of Assissi and you can have all the St. Thomas of Aquinases you want and I will produce more citizens of heaven than you. And in the end isn't that what you really should want?

    Humphrey

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  2. I mean no disrespect, Humphrey, but your comment could be interpreted as saying something against St. Thomas, or implying that he was less holy than the others, could not convert as many as they could, etc. Carry on...

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  3. Eamon, you are correct. What I meant, of course, was the learning of St. Thomas and not his holiness. Perhaps I should have used Socrates in his place. The comparison I tried to make was between the efficacy of holiness without learning and learning without holiness. It seems that Mr. Toth is one dimensional in stressing scholarship. I maintain that one Holy Sacrifice of the Mass however poorly or inadequately it is said has more worth than one hundred dialogues of Plato. If priests are to be critiqued it should be on the basis of how well they represent Christ. That is their raison d'etre. I hope I have clarified what I meant.

    Humphrey

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  4. Learning is not an adornment to the priesthood: it is a requirement. Authors like Lahitton, Vermeersch, and Cappello have insisted that fitness for a priestly vocation is proved by sufficient learning so as to warrant the expectation that the man will sacredly fulfill his duties and obligations. Priests who cannot consecrate or who are unable perform basic rites or who invent new mortal sins lead no one to heaven, for they render their orders odious. The half-educated clergy responsible for the malformation of these unfortunates are themselves impediments to the faithful's quest for salvation as are the clerical buccaneers interested chiefly in earthly treasure and creature comforts. Had a few of these ne'er-do-wells possessed any of the natural gifts of the intellect demanded by the Church, they might have refrained from actions that drive the laity from the faith. Deep and sound knowledge is a representation of Christ, Whose infused knowledge extends to all that is the natural object of human cognition and to all that is communicated from God to man through supernatural Revelation. Since Christ's human nature assuredly possessed the perfection of knowledge, the Readers think that priests should therefore not be distinguished for their ignorance.

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  5. Agreed. Priests should not be distinguished for their ignorance. They should be distinguished for their holiness. In the hierarchy of priestly attributes holiness takes precedence over knowledge.

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  6. ...or at least for the probity of their lives, which not a few canonists set on equal footing with learning.

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