Help! I need somebody! Help! Not just anybody! The Beatles
Ed. Note: Our new series continuing the discussion of one-handed priestly orders features our answers to lively correspondents who have written to Pistrina in response its seven-part series begging the rector to save the Rev. Mr. Nkamuke's orders.
Like so many other adornments, the art of lucid exposition is yet another missing element in the Blunderer's skill-set. All too often, his hastily cast phrases and ill-wrought observations result in his listeners' or readers' wide-eyed, head-shaking bewilderment. Apparently he thinks it's not worth his effort to guard against misinterpretation of his scribblings. No better example of his unhappy insouciance can be found than in an email Pistrina received recently from one Quaerens Intellectum (N.B we had to code a few words since this is a family blog):
So far your team has rebutted or crushed most of "Tony Baloney's" arguments, with the exception of section V. I think I know why, because I can't figure the ☽@♍♄ (sic) thing out either! He says that Pope Gregory "prescribed an imposition of the hand (singular) to render valid an ordination that was invalid." But the quotation reads "the suspension of the hands." The Pope used the plural, not the singular. Plural and singular are opposites. What kind of fools does he take his audience for? Does he think we are so illiterate or gullible as to believe that night is day, right is left, up is down, falsity is truth, wrong is right, evil is good?We'll share with you the substance of our reply to the perplexed Quaerens Intellectum, but first, so you can see the whole context, we'll reproduce section V of the Blunderer's monograph, with the words our correspondent references highlighted. We printed the offending sentence in blue.
********
V. Gregory IX: Imposition of the Hand.
In a 1232
Epistle to the bishop of Lyons concerning the matter and form of ordination, Pope Gregory IX likewise used the singular (a
hand) to designate the imposition
that takes place in the ordination rite:
When a priest and deacon are ordained, they receive the imposition of a hand by a physical touch, by the rite introduced by the Apostles.
This also confirms what we presented in the
previous section: that the pope imposed one hand for ordinations in Rome.
But what follows
is equally significant:
If this shall be omitted, it must not be partially repeated, but at an established time for conferring orders of this kind, what through error was omitted must be carefully supplied. Moreover, the suspension of hands over the head must be made, when the prayer of ordination is uttered over the head. [Ed. Note: footnote 59 in the original contains the Latin Text for the preceding quotation: DZ 445. “quod si omissum fuerit, non est aliquatenus iterandum, sed statuto tempore ad huiusmodi ordines conferendos, caute supplendum est* quod per errorem exstitit praetermissum. Suspensio autem manuum debet fieri, cum oratio super caput effunditur ordinandi.”]
Note
that he has prescribed an imposition of a hand (singular) to render valid an
ordination that was invalid.
********
We grant that Gregory's succinct advice could prove problematic for a general reader, but bear in mind the Pontiff was writing to a bishop who was familiar with all the details of the ceremony and who didn't need transitional markers or explanatory phrases; the conjunctive adverb "moreover" (autem) is sufficient to indicate that imposition and suspension are two distinct ritual actions: the first being when the bishop lays both his hands on the head of each ordinand without saying anything (the matter defined by Pius), and the second when the bishop and priests hold their raised right hands extended over the candidates' heads (which, according to Pius XII, is not a continuation of the bishop's imposition).
The Blunderer (we protested), an alien to good pedagogy and serial argumentation, just didn't have the gray matter to comprehend the necessity of pointing out the two separate ceremonial gestures referenced. But in the Blunderer's defense -- yes, we are defending him here -- he's never been admitted to a real institution of higher learning where competent professors reprove the failure to elucidate, where daily course readings provide models for transparent expository prose, where remedial resources are available for the grossly under-prepared. Furthermore, he has no one to call upon from among his addled sede colleagues, who's remotely capable of insightful reading and critiquing for clarity.
A man trained in a real university would have known, almost by second nature, how to avoid misinterpretation. (Most high-school students learned that in ninth grade.) However, again, Tony is not the product of a sound educational system. He's been self-taught. He's had no competent mentors or associates with a privileged secondary education. Therefore, insofar as he's never been properly trained, such a failure of exposition is understandable (though not pardonable). It also explains why no one should ever pay attention to anything he says or writes. Leave that to the feeble-minded zombie-culties who pay through the nose for his and "One Hand's" bread and board and vacations.
A pity, but the sceptical Quaerens wouldn't buy our explication. He insisted the Bonehead was at the old game again of altering papal teaching while "shooting himself in the foot," and he abused us for trying to save Tone's bacon! ("You guys are $%`+#@+`♄☾ sedes in disguise trying to protect one of YOUR OWN!")
Well, this spirited and principled reply meant we'd have to go mano a mano with our good buddy Quaerens. But how? You all know how this blog eschews conflict and ill-tempered language!
That's where you come in.
We informed Quaerens we'd put the decision in your hands. Tell us (1) whether you think Quaerens is right, viz. that the Blunderer is brazenly mocking us by saying that when Pope Gregory uses the plural he really means the singular, or (2) whether Pistrina is right, viz. that the Bonehead understood the Pope meant two different liturgical actions, but didn't have the sense or skill to make his point clear as required of educated writers.
BUT WAIT!!
Before you vote, let's save some of our critics a little time. Many CLODs ("close loyalists of Dannie") are probably thinking as they read this that we didn't rebut Tony's section V because we couldn't.
Not so!
As we told Quaerens, we actually had rebutted section V in our May 11 post. You'll remember we dismissed the Blunderer's argument of interchangeable usage of hand/hands among the authors as irrelevant in light of the explicit direction of Pius XII's constitution Sacramentum Ordinis -- the only text that counts in the discussion. However, since we were impressed with Quaerens' enthusiasm for reading closely the words of arguments (though we think he's wrong), we shared with him our linguistic rebuttal of the Blunderer's implication that in some authors "a hand" means "one hand." The whole argument's a bit too technical to reproduce here in its entirety, but perhaps a précis will give you an idea:
But enough already, boys and girls!
We fear we may have lost some of you with that little excursus. Besides, the simple, direct, plain-as-the-nose-on-your face teaching of Sacramentum Ordinis -- viz. matter for priestly ordination = imposition of hands -- makes it unnecessary to appeal to recondite grammatical analyses. So let's get back on track:
Simply put, we need your....
Quaerens brightly disagreed, replying in customary, curse-encrusted Traddie-trash style:
You @$$%*!#$ are giving that ~`#{# - *^ - $%`+ too much benefit of the doubt. WAKE UP, JERKS! The only thing that refers to hand/hands in the second quote is "suspension of hands" and that's what the sede moron directs us to note! If he meant to refer to the "imposition of a hand" in the previous sentence, he would have left out the sentence mentioning "suspension hands." How dumb can you be, you dumb @$$/`~#$?Encouraged by Quaerens' animated response, we replied that Tony's error stemmed from his failure to see that Gergory's words could be misinterpreted by the mostly non-specialists in his audience (including sede clergy). He doesn't have the insight of a naturally gifted teacher. He also failed to see the effect such a misunderstanding could have on his authorial credibility in the eyes of a general reader. A schooled, thoughtful writer would never have written a sentence so patient of misinterpretation in that particular context; he would have forestalled it by appending another explanatory sentence or two, and omitting what the incisive Quaerens suggested.
The Blunderer (we protested), an alien to good pedagogy and serial argumentation, just didn't have the gray matter to comprehend the necessity of pointing out the two separate ceremonial gestures referenced. But in the Blunderer's defense -- yes, we are defending him here -- he's never been admitted to a real institution of higher learning where competent professors reprove the failure to elucidate, where daily course readings provide models for transparent expository prose, where remedial resources are available for the grossly under-prepared. Furthermore, he has no one to call upon from among his addled sede colleagues, who's remotely capable of insightful reading and critiquing for clarity.
A man trained in a real university would have known, almost by second nature, how to avoid misinterpretation. (Most high-school students learned that in ninth grade.) However, again, Tony is not the product of a sound educational system. He's been self-taught. He's had no competent mentors or associates with a privileged secondary education. Therefore, insofar as he's never been properly trained, such a failure of exposition is understandable (though not pardonable). It also explains why no one should ever pay attention to anything he says or writes. Leave that to the feeble-minded zombie-culties who pay through the nose for his and "One Hand's" bread and board and vacations.
A pity, but the sceptical Quaerens wouldn't buy our explication. He insisted the Bonehead was at the old game again of altering papal teaching while "shooting himself in the foot," and he abused us for trying to save Tone's bacon! ("You guys are $%`+#@+`♄☾ sedes in disguise trying to protect one of YOUR OWN!")
Well, this spirited and principled reply meant we'd have to go mano a mano with our good buddy Quaerens. But how? You all know how this blog eschews conflict and ill-tempered language!
That's where you come in.
We informed Quaerens we'd put the decision in your hands. Tell us (1) whether you think Quaerens is right, viz. that the Blunderer is brazenly mocking us by saying that when Pope Gregory uses the plural he really means the singular, or (2) whether Pistrina is right, viz. that the Bonehead understood the Pope meant two different liturgical actions, but didn't have the sense or skill to make his point clear as required of educated writers.
BUT WAIT!!
Before you vote, let's save some of our critics a little time. Many CLODs ("close loyalists of Dannie") are probably thinking as they read this that we didn't rebut Tony's section V because we couldn't.
Not so!
As we told Quaerens, we actually had rebutted section V in our May 11 post. You'll remember we dismissed the Blunderer's argument of interchangeable usage of hand/hands among the authors as irrelevant in light of the explicit direction of Pius XII's constitution Sacramentum Ordinis -- the only text that counts in the discussion. However, since we were impressed with Quaerens' enthusiasm for reading closely the words of arguments (though we think he's wrong), we shared with him our linguistic rebuttal of the Blunderer's implication that in some authors "a hand" means "one hand." The whole argument's a bit too technical to reproduce here in its entirety, but perhaps a précis will give you an idea:
Impositio manus does not have to be translated "imposition of a hand," where the indefinite article is usually understood as individualizing the noun. Instead of reading manus as a grammatical singular, we can read it as what Otto Jespersen called the generic number. We may then translate the phrase by the definite article with generalizing force: "imposition of the hand," which is something quite different from the Blunderer's sense of "imposition of a hand." (Our translation's akin to the adherent noun phrase "hand-imposition.") In this case, the singular's individualization becomes less important semantically than the representative idea. As an illustration, classicists and readers of Tom Brown's School Days may recall Virgil's triste lupus stabulis, "a baleful thing [is] the wolf for folds," which is a generic assertion about a whole class, not one individual.**
But enough already, boys and girls!
We fear we may have lost some of you with that little excursus. Besides, the simple, direct, plain-as-the-nose-on-your face teaching of Sacramentum Ordinis -- viz. matter for priestly ordination = imposition of hands -- makes it unnecessary to appeal to recondite grammatical analyses. So let's get back on track:
Simply put, we need your....
....HELP to decide who's right. Please use the comment section to vote for either explanation #1 (the Blunderer's dumber than a box of rocks) or #2 (the Blunderer is a lousy writer and teacher).
* Our 1957 copy of the 31st Latin edition of Denzinger printed in Barcelona omits this repetition of est (because it wasn't necessary). The additional word is probably just another instance of a faux "scholar's" sloppiness.
** Not to belabor the point, but even the indefinite article can itself designate no one individual in particular as can an anarthrous plural: the sentences The dog is vigilant, A dog is vigilant, Dogs are vigilant can assert a general trait of the family Canidae.
* Our 1957 copy of the 31st Latin edition of Denzinger printed in Barcelona omits this repetition of est (because it wasn't necessary). The additional word is probably just another instance of a faux "scholar's" sloppiness.
** Not to belabor the point, but even the indefinite article can itself designate no one individual in particular as can an anarthrous plural: the sentences The dog is vigilant, A dog is vigilant, Dogs are vigilant can assert a general trait of the family Canidae.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeletePistrina endeavors to reply to all correspondents, and to educate them when necessary. An attack based on what we consider a false reading serves no purpose for us, so we will work to correct it with the same Christian charity we devote to exposing the Blunderer's errors.
ReplyDeleteAs to your invocation of the canonists and theologians in favor of one-handed priestly ordination, we answer (once again) that they only offer an opinion. To be sure, their eminence raises their opinion to the level of a rebuttable presumption, but we have overcome it with competing arguments. Accordingly, they remain mere opinions, not conclusive presumptions.
No one is obliged to accept without reservation an opinion of a theologian, although we are bound to give it a hearing if the proposer has sufficient standing in virtue of his reputation and the quality of the oeuvre. We must never forget that they, too, can err or, worse, be misquoted or mistranslated.
Let us give you an example from the Blunderer's article. In Appendix I, the Blunderer quotes Palazzini-De Jorio (the two who wrote the phrase "No one doubts the validity...," which we previously deconstructed). There we read in the third paragraph of the 'Solution' the following (single quotation marks used to mark italics in the original):
"However, the extension of one right hand is held [by 'Sacramentum Ordinis'] to be a 'continuation' of the imposition of hands."
Yet in the constitution 'Sacramentum Ordinis,' Pius XII teaches the contrary:
"...but there is no continuation of the same imposition by an extension of the right hand." (Deferrari's translation; the Latin is "...non autem eiusdem impositionis per manus dexterae extensionem continuatio...")
What are we to make of this? The Pope says one thing, and the "learned professors" are quoted as teaching the exact opposite! The Blunderer does not provide the original Latin text, so from his monograph alone, we don't know whether Palazzini-De Jorio were in error or whether the Blunderer made an error in transcription. The bottom line is that most traditional Catholics will not be able to resolve the dilemma. Therefore, they should ignore everything the Blunderer writes on this subject and on anything else and demand that "One-Hand" receive conditional orders or that the rector himself ordain the Rev. Mr. Nkamuke in Brooksville.
Can I vote for #1 & #2? If not, how about a #3 - sending this whole mess back to Tony & ask him to further 'splain it all to us just what he did mean to convey to us? Obviously Tony's a slow, very slow, learner and maybe he needs another chance to more fully 'splain himself. Of course, maybe I'm giving him more credit than he deserves in that he's not a slow learner, but a hopeless blunderer, but at least give him another try at this. You know, like in school, if you fail a grade you have a chance to repeat it.
ReplyDeleteYou're right. The Readers should have added "all of the above" plus your brilliant #3. Bonehead Tone's got a whole lot of 'splainin' to do (as well as a lot of krectin'), so he deserves a second act. We suggest that he wait until we've completed this new series on answers to emails so that he can incorporate the additional corrections of blunders that the Readers will reveal in the coming weeks.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that with a second shot, he'll only make new errors. Perhaps he should just write 2000 times "I WILL NOT WRITE ANY MORE BECAUSE I DON'T HAVE THE RIGHT STUFF."
#1, #2, #3 and #4: One-Hand, the Reptile and the Blunderer should all be defrocked, the Pesthouse dissolved and the cult's centre in Ohio closed down. Further, the Blunderer should be forbidden to publish anything at all, at least untill he attended High School.
ReplyDeleteThis would solve pretty much every problem, especially those in connection to Holy Orders.
Amen.
DeleteReally, Craig? Now you're creating fake accounts so you can pat yourself on the back?
DeleteOh well, it's your life. Have fun playing with your imaginary friends.
Sorry, Buster Brown, but we don't need to create correspondents -- or critics of Bonehead Tone. And we aren't the only ones with a classical education, either. Your remark is a good indication that you CLODs are getting very worried about the resonance our posts continue to have with the faithful. Did "One-Hand" or the Cheeseball put you up to this?
ReplyDeleteBut if thinking that we must manufacture additional critics of the feckless Blunderer and Doubtful Dannie soothes your cult-addled brainlet, then, by all means go for it. However, you yourself know the comment's genuine, and no amount of hysterical whistling in the cemetery will change that fact.
Why don't you go back and hide in your shoe? Maybe you can stop your ears against the din of condemnation against the Terrible Trio. You'll never stop the mounting disenchantment as more and more Trads see these poseurs for what they really are.
I for one have a serious disenchantment with the sedevacantist clergy as a whole. It makes my blood boil that supposedly Dolan was not ordained and that the sede clergy decided to pose the question in 1990 only after the SSPV implosion. Those nine priests were motivated to challenge Dolan's orders solely from political considerations. If they knew in 1990 they knew in 1984 and 1978 etc. How come Dolan's situation was never rectified before 1990 if there was a defect. Archbishop Lefebvre's status (conferred by his priests and lay followers) as an impeccable bishop with flawless judgment doesn't explain this lapse adequately.
DeleteWhat does explain it is the haphazard lackadaisical approach to the seriousness of priestly orders by both Archbishop Lefebvre and Dolan. Richard Williamson was ordained in the same ceremony as I recall and has never been subject to the same questions Dolan has. If Lefebvre was so upset about the one hand why didn't he rectify it or at least command Dolan to allow him to rectify it. I understand that many NO priests who saw the light about Tradition were conditionally ordained by Abp Lefebvre so it's not like the Abp Lefebvre wasn't willing to fix anything like this. If Dolan was conscientious he would have approached Lefebvre.
So where does this leave me as a layman. As someone who confessed to Dolan repeatedly in the 1980's, was I really absolved? I like to think the whole principle of epekia would apply but I don't know. What I do know is that I didn't confess to a priest but to someone who may have been conning me. His colleagues kept quiet about it which makes me suspect and distrust them. Who wouldn't find such treatment infuriating?
My friend, you don't need to be infuriated by this situation. In fact, I think you answered your own question early on by saying that certain priests challenged Bp. Dolan's orders only on political considerations. In fact, as you say, the situation was never "rectified" by a re-ordination, and Abp. Lefebvre never insisted on rectifying this ordination. Furthermore, Bp. Williamson was presumably "suffering" under the same "doubt", and yet no one has ever brought this up about him. And finally, Abp. Lefebvre, despite being known to be careful about the sacraments, never saw the need to redo any of the ordinands of this ceremony.
DeleteThere is one explanation — and only one that I can think of — that explains all these facts. And that is ... that maybe none of the clergy take any of this seriously anyway? Maybe they all opened their Capello and Regatillo and started reading and saw that this was an invented problem — and that it was concocted for political reasons. Which means it's a waste of time even to discuss. If they had had a true doubt of conscience, certainly they would have asked to be re-ordained. But Bp. Dolan and Bp. Williamson both didn't bother — and Abp. Lefebvre didn't either. Because they weren't concerned. And maybe they weren't concerned because they were priests and not laymen like the layman who writes this blog, and as such they know they get their theological knowledge from theologians and not laymen writing internet blogs. And they couldn't find a single theologian who was concerned by the thought of one-handed ordination, as Fr. Cekada said in his article.
One last thing. If this problem was invented for political reasons in 1990, do you think MAYBE it's being concocted for POLITICAL REASONS now? Just maybe?
And please don't be disturbed about your previous confessions. Whenever a Catholic receives absolution, that absolution absolves him from all of his mortal sins, including any which, by some defect, may have not been absolved in a previous confession. And generally speaking no one needs to re-confess any sins from a previous confession unless that confession was *certainly* invalid, which we don't have here. You can look all this up yourself in Fr. Heribert Jone's "Moral Theology" or any other work on moral theology you prefer.
Hope this helps!
There is so much wrong with Anonymous 8:17's advice, it's hard to know where to begin. We'll try:
DeleteFirst of all, some seminarians from Winona had heard the account of the '76 ordinations, and one at least was cautious enough to seek conditional orders. Second, the archbishop did nothing further because someone hastily told him that one-handed orders were OK. Third, just because a penitent sought absolution in good faith doesn't make a confessor's dubious orders less doubtful. Fourth, the nine priests did have true doubts of conscience, for they urged Dannie "ad cautelam to stop saying Mass, hearing confessions, and administering the sacrament of Extreme Unction until this problem is solved."
Whatever the motivation for the 1990 letter -- politics or the realization that one-handed orders are doubtful in light of Pius's constitution -- "One Hand" himself should have sought conditional orders, perhaps from his consecrator, in order to remove all doubts forever and to set at ease the minds of so many of the faithful. Instead, he relied on the shoddy work of the Blunderer and his erroneous translation of a papal teaching.
"First of all, some seminarians from Winona had heard the account of the '76 ordinations, and one at least was cautious enough to seek conditional orders."
DeleteThis is a gratuitous assertion offered without proof. What is gratuitously asserted may be gratuitously denied. Since I have no way to know whether this is true or not, I'm not even going to respond to this one.
"Second, the archbishop did nothing further because someone hastily told him that one-handed orders were OK."
So the Archbishop was satisfied with what he heard. Maybe he read Capello and saw there was no problem after all. Maybe he should have read this blog and seen that Capello is wrong, and so is every other theologian that anyone seems able to dig up who even mentions this question. I guess Abp. Lefebvre should have thrown all his manuals in the trash and made Craig Toth his only source of theological knowledge.
"Third, just because a penitent sought absolution in good faith doesn't make a confessor's dubious orders less doubtful."
I didn't say it did. I said the penitent need not be concerned about his state of soul. The original post seemed concerned that either he might be in the state of sin, or he might have to re-confess sins from his past previously confessed to Bp. Dolan. But neither is true. Any sacrament subsequently received in good faith from a valid priest would put him in sanctifying grace, even if Bp. Dolan's absolutions were invalid. And he doesn't need to re-confess any sins previously confessed to Bp. Dolan because the obligation to re-confess sins only exists when they were *certainly* not absolved. It's not *certain* that Bp. Dolan isn't validly ordained. Therefore it's not certain his sins weren't absolved, and he doesn't need to mention them again.
"Fourth, the nine priests did have true doubts of conscience, for they urged Dannie 'ad cautelam to stop saying Mass, hearing confessions, and administering the sacrament of Extreme Unction until this problem is solved.'"
I don't think nine priests signed that letter, but let that go. They worked with him in the apostolate for over a decade before this even became a problem, which happened coincidentally after they had a disagreement with him. Besides, the letter doesn't say they thought his ordination was doubtful anyway. It just said he should stop distributing the sacraments until they got it straightened out. Of course they had questions about it, but that just means they had questions, not that they had decided they thought it was doubtful.
"Instead, [Bp. Dolan] relied on the shoddy work of the Blunderer and his erroneous translation of a papal teaching."
Maybe he should rely on an anonymous blog instead of the shoddy work of Nabuco, Capello, Regatillo, Palazzini-de Jorio, Aertnys-Damen, and every other theologian who has ever addressed this question.
There is no gratuitous assertion. We know of the fact with absolute certainty, and we have the the text of a notarized, eyewitness affidavit. That's enough for us. We're not asking you to believe us. We're merely countering your foolish assertion with what we know to be a fact.
DeleteThe nine priests did indeed sign the letter. And, BTW, the priests did say in the letter "we must hold your ordination to be dubious, unless evidence can be brought forth to show that the one handed ordination is certainly valid." The Blunderer did not bring forward certain evidence; at best, an overly generous reading would conclude the evidence is only likely, a standard short of the certainty demanded by the 9 priests. (N.B. That's not our reading: there's too much doubt based on Pius's explicit direction.) Get an anonymous e-mail address and send a request to pistrinalit@gmail.com, and we'll send you the PDF of the original letter with the signatures and the statement.
We'll say it for the last time: No matter how eminent the theologians are --and we have never said their work was shoddy, only Tony's treatment of it -- it's still theological opinion, so the question is definitely not settled. Go back and read what we wrote.
As an aside, what's surprising about your comments is that you do not address the fact that Bonehead Tone altered the words of official papal teaching. How does that square with your thinking? Doesn't it make you the least bit suspicious?
The point I attempted to raise was that none of these sede priests are really and truly acting like an "alter Christus". Think of the innumerable trad controversies since the mid 70's, the main theme of said controversies was bickering priests. What was the underlying theme behind the primary one was that some priest wanted to be king of the mountain and when that failed to pass there was a split. When I heard the laity opine privately as to which priest was right oftentimes I heard the theme music for the soap opera "Dynasty". If I seem ridiculous that's because it is deliberate on my part. The laity, God bless them, thought serious earth-shattering theological matters were being discussed. In fact, as I said earlier all of these disputes were political turf battles nothing more. So soap opera drama applies.
ReplyDeleteNo one can act or pretend they are something they are not 24-7. It's too hard. Eventually even if only for a second they reveal their true selves. Dolan and Cekada have their ongoing imbroglio with the Ramolla/ Eamon Shea fallout: Fr Eugene Berry SUED a church (Our Lady of the Angels in Arcadia California) to make him their pastor: a really lurid story about Fr Denis mcMahon that Matt Abbott published in 2007 or 2008. Some really horrible stories are being told about Immaculate Conception under Fr Jenkins and Greenwell on cathinfo.com. Where there's smoke there is a fire. Who wouldn't recoil from such men?
The future of traddie land lies in the FSSP and ICK, they are best and most sane of a lot of really bad options among the clergy.
FSSP & ICK have their problems too, of what I agree is a lot of bad options. Then we have the smattering of bad, &/or questionable, independent priests, that we're starting to see more & more of - sprouting up like mushrooms in these dark days. I'm not a home-aloner -yet! - but I do honestly see the day coming ......
ReplyDeleteMay God have mercy on us all, for the days are getting darker & more vicious.
There's nothing wrong with home alone if the alternative means putting your soul in the hands of captious, money-grubbing, and ignorant priests and bishops. We do agree, however, that the future of Traddielandia lies elsewhere. For all their problems, the FSSP and ICK may well be worth a try, as long as you proceed cautiously. There's no point in leaping from the frying pan into the kettle. In the meantime, there's always the act of perfect contrition, and good spiritual reading is always just a click away.
Delete