If one were to go and search for a definition of hypocrisy, he would be hard-pressed to find a better definition of it than what was contained in an e-mail response that an SGG parishioner sent to someone recently. I mean – we’re talking textbook definition here; we’re talking right on the money! Let me explain.
In Daniel Dolan’s Bishop’s Corner column in the SGG Church bulletin of Sunday, February 27, where Dolan was using the recent death of long-time SGG benefactor Bernie Brueggemann to further his own private agenda, he told -- among other lies -- two “biggies”: first, he made the following absurd claim: “In the last year of his life, Bernie more than once expressed his wish to be buried from St. Gertrude the Great.” Then he added, “He was buried instead from Immaculate Conception, although he once so opposed this group’s scandalous inception in 1989, as to forbid discussion of the very subject in his home.”
First off, Bernie Brueggeman spent the last year of his life (and more) at St. Albert the Great Church, not SGG, and therefore couldn’t possibly have told Dolan (or anyone else at SGG) about his “wish” to be buried from there. He (and all his children) had already left SGG in disgust well prior to that. Secondly, Bernie and his daughter Mary went to Immaculate Conception Church quite often – every First Friday in fact. Hence, Dolan’s claim that Bernie would “forbid discussion of the very subject [IC] in his home” is just a bald-faced lie. One of Bernie’s sons, incensed at such lies, set the record straight, sending out an e-mail to several people, and calling Dolan’s claims “bullshit,” as a previous article on this web site noted.
As it turns out, one of the people to whom the Brueggemann e-mail was sent apparently forwarded it to some of SGG’s parishioners, among them a woman who replied with the following: “Hello (xxxxx), How sorry we are that you have forwarded to us an E-mail containing foul language unbecoming of any Catholic. Please don't send more of this type.” This parishioner went on to say: “I do not wish to enter any argument with his family, but Bernie did tell me in a telephone conversation a few months after the very sad split that he wanted to be buried from St. Gertrude the Great church.”
Lady, it was bad enough that you compounded Dolan’s lie by saying that it was you instead of him whom Bernie told about wanting to be buried from SGG – nice of you to take the rap for your mendacious pastor, though. I guess you forgot to read his words in the Bulletin. But, it’s in your quip about the “foul language” where your monumental hypocrisy really shines through.
Using the word “bullshit” is “unbecoming of any Catholic”?? Yeah, right! And I guess that Lotarski’s boys corrupting their younger classmates with obscene hand gestures is not; or showing them pornography on the school computer is not; or a Lotarski boy impregnating a fellow female classmate is not; or your pastor and his assistant trying to get a fellow priest deported is not. For God’s sake, woman! Where is your conscience?! How can you have the unmitigated hypocrisy to say what you did?
I am not surprised that she did, though. After all, she’s just emulating what Anthony Cekada did back around Christmas ’08 when he condemned Eamon Shea for his use of an “anatomical” metaphor for courage. It is always the hypocrite’s “high ground”: to condemn someone for “unbecoming” language while ignoring the truth of what they say. The Pharisees did it to our Lord, so why should she and Cekada be any different?
But, to relieve her of some culpability, I might add that she couldn’t help saying what she did: chalk it up to cult mentality. The SGG parishioners have been conditioned for years to blindly obey their fearful masters and to overlook their every transgression (of which there are scores). That is why Dolan and Cekada can get away with just about anything, and still get unbending obedience from their sycophantic flock. However, much of the flock have awakened from their cultish stupors, and have left, leaving only the hard core to contend with their lot.
Of course, she ends her e-mail with more sanctimonious hypocrisy: “Rather than spend time and energy on these E mails, let’s pray for the repose of the soul of a good man. Many of us have been recipients of his charity, prayers and edifying example. This and not feuding should be his legacy.” Well, my dear, you should have read your pastor’s bulletin again – how he used Bernie’s passing to further his own agenda. Or go back to the unsubstantiated lies of his apology sermon of November 15, 2009, and listen to it again. Or read Anthony Cekada’s School Dazed, and tell me that “feuding” was not his legacy.
Get real, woman! Let me close by giving you a little remedial catechism lesson: The use of calling a spade a spade, whether it be with our Lord’s Aramaic for “vipers” or someone’s short Anglo-Saxon for “bovine by-product,” is not a sin. Calumniating someone from the pulpit is a sin. Corrupting younger children with pornography is a sin. Fornication with one’s fellow student is a sin. Deliberately trying to get an innocent person deported is a sin. And lying about the deceased is a sin. And -- oh yes -- hypocrisy is a sin.
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