You Can’t Fix Brain-Dead

The “beatitudes” and “pearls of wisdom” covered in Lay Pulpit’s last article are philosophical gems of the first stamp that should warm the gizzard and tickle the cerebral cortex of even the most profoundly mentally-challenged traddie (and stimulate the regurgitation reflex in the rest of us).  Perhaps one day these “pearls” will be emblazoned in bronze, gracing the lobby of Sanborn’s Swampland Sanitarium (aka MHT Seminary) – or perhaps gracing the rolls of paper found in certain of its rooms (where they will be seen more often – and put to better use).

But such proverbial “pearls” are just generalizations.  They are no good unless accompanied by specific blueprints for action.  The well-equipped traddie must be armed with more than glowing platitudes; hence, we are here to help -- in any way we can.  Lay Pulpit has come up with an absolutely stupendous list of strategies/tactics that will help the brain-dead weather any storm that threatens to enlighten his intellect or contaminate him with moral rectitude.  If you’re championing some shady cause, or find yourself losing an argument because you have lied your way into a corner, these are some handy tricks that you can use to worm your way out.  Okay, ready?  Here we go:

1.    The “Denial” Tactic.  This is your first line of defense: simply deny everything – even if you have “lied yourself silly.”  Chances are that your opponent won’t remember the lies you told before; you can just deny having said “such-and-such” – and then pray that your opponent has “amnesia”!  This, by the way, is the defense that “Pamela” used against “Ted” (aka “the ‘Peregrine’ defense”) in their celebrated e-mail exchange.  But, of course, it didn’t work for her, so she had to go to her second line of defense, the….

2.    The “Tangent” tactic.  When one gets proved wrong -- especially with one’s own words (as “Pamela” was), then the thing to do is to change the subject, or attack some “tangential” issue.  “Pamela” tried this (read the whole article), but was eventually flushed out of her (to quote her idol, Dr. D) “hidey hole.”  This is a good tactic, but – alas! -- a temporary expedient, for it too inevitably gets “found out,” necessitating changing the subject yet again (and getting “found out” yet again), until one eventually has to resort to….

3.    The “Take toys, go home” tactic (aka the “stonewall” tactic).  In this ploy, one simply “grabs his toys and goes home,” tail between legs, slithering all the way.  “Pamela” used this as her “last stand”; she said that she had “no more time for this sort of thing,” and simply “signed off.”  This tactic is also known as “SSSS” (Slammed Shut Sphincter Syndrome), wherein the combatant assumes an “anal” posture and refuses to argue or dispute further, and simply “slams shut.”  This tactic is fraught with ignominy and embarrassment – but, nonetheless, it “gets the job done.”  Besides, “he who lies and runs away, lives to lie another day!”

4.    The “Pretend, Maybe It’ll Go Away” Tactic.  This one is a kind of hybrid of the “denial” and the “take toys/go home” tactics, wherein one not only denies, but pretends that his faux pas has never taken place.  Dr. D employed it when he removed his hatchet-job article (on Petko) from his website (and has never again referred to the fact that he had written it) – and is now hunkered down in his “hidey hole,” pretending that the “smoke” on this (and his ordination) will go away.  The former pastor of SAG (St. Albert the Great Church) also employed this tactic, when he betrayed and then left his parish, absconded to Germany, and set up shop there, pretending that all of his former chicanery had never happened.  This tactic, although seemingly effective, is still a temporary ploy, because it “catches up” with its perpetrator in time – especially if Lay Pulpit keeps bringing it back to the surface!

These tactics are known by a variety of names, but they all boil down to the same thing, following the same sequence:  first, try lying; then, when that doesn’t work, attack (and/or lie about) something else; then, when you run out of those “tangents,” grab your toys and go home – and then “keep a very low profile.”  If this sounds all too futile, take heart, because there are other “tools” or “trump cards” in the brain-dead traddie’s tool belt.  Here they are:

1.    The “Calumny and Detraction” Card.  This card, also referred to as the “traddie ‘race’ card,” is one that the brain-dead can use to stop (or at least deflect) someone’s attack on whichever guilty cult-master the brain-dead is trying to defend.  One simply has only to holler “calumny” or “detraction,” and the “attacker” will be stopped dead in his tracks.  Apparently, one cannot expose the misdeeds of another – no matter how heinous those deeds are – if it is seen as “hurting the wrongdoer’s reputation.”  No matter that the wrongdoer may have destroyed someone else’s reputation (or may have done real material harm to another), he is nonetheless entitled to his reputation – especially if he is “a man of the cloth” – which brings us to the next “card,” the….

2.    “Alter Christus Immunity” Card.  This card states that “men of the cloth” are “Alter Christi” (“other Christs”), and therefore no one is allowed to “touch” them -- to criticize them or any of their actions: a kind of ecclesiastical “diplomatic immunity.”  This card works for a great multitude of traddies; and the more brain-dead the traddie, the better it works.  Clerics of any stripe (excepting Bp. Petko, of course) are considered “sacred” – “off limits” to any sort of criticism or even “confrontational behavior.”  For instance, Tony Cekada used it quite effectively (or so he thought) against any criticism of his handling of Schiavo – especially when it was a woman who was being “confrontational.”   And, of course, anyone who dared speak out against all the scandalous goings on at SGG was guilty of this sort of sacrilege as well.  For those brain-dead zombies still at SGG, this was (and still is) a most effective deterrent to any “disrespect” leveled against their cult-masters.

3.    The “Shoot the Messenger” Card.  This classic trump card, although a brainless one, is still widely used – especially by “first-timers” who have not the savvy to come up with anything more “original.”  They seem to delight in “knowing who their adversary is” and then “exposing” him by referring to him by name – all the while completely ignoring the message that the adversary is presenting.  Apparently, they think that one will be “embarrassed” at being “found out” – and that this will somehow make him “clam up” and refrain from speaking out again.  For the brain-dead, this gives them a “cat-that-swallowed-the-canary” sense of triumphant euphoria.  Unfortunately, the use of this card usually ends up with its user embarrassing himself; plus, his “sense of euphoria” is all too often erased when the “adversary” turns out to be a cat-swallowing shark.

4.    The “Profanity” Card.  Another classic: this card is also one of those “low tech” weapons used by the unschooled to “disqualify” arguments because of “improper language.”  If one uses words such as “bullshit,” he is automatically condemned as being “not Catholic” – because this is a “bad word,” boys and girls!  It’s the proverbial “aw shit” that wipes out the hundred “attaboys” -- where one “four-letter word” can cancel the beneficial effects of Aquinas’s Summa Theologica.  The use of this card was effectively illustrated in a previous Lay Pulpit article, where it also showcased one of traddieland’s finer traits: hypocrisy.

All of the foregoing tactics have been employed by the likes of Cekada and Droleskey, and even by lower life forms such as “the Neanderthal” (SAG’s former pastor) – all to no avail.  They have all brought their bean-shooters into battle, only to be met by laser-guided howitzers.  One would think that they’ve had enough, but they “keep coming back for more.”  It’s almost as if they’re taking a correspondence course in masochism, and they must keep taking the exam over and over again!

Every now and then, too, one of their inept apologists – the “pawns” in their chess game -- comes in to “run interference” for them (“Simply Catholic,” “Introibo,” or some other encephalic paraplegic), and each gets mowed down by withering machine-gun fire (an M-60 will do; one doesn’t like to waste his “howitzer” on minor nuisances).  They are the “flies” (hanging around the cult-center outhouse) that occasionally need to be swatted.  We thank them, however, for we need do a little “pest control” now and then (and we thank the cult-masters for providing the steaming heaps that attract them).

The truth is, traddieland has become a wasteland, where truth is despised and hearsay and rumor are taken as gospel, and where the innocent are condemned, and the guilty are worshipped as heroes: Anthony Cekada’s travesty on Schiavo was condoned (or even defended) by SGG’s parishioners, his pathetic “WHH” was hailed by them as a “masterpiece,” and the sick goings on at SGG were ignored by them as if they had never happened.  Yet they (and especially their “St. Albert’s” spinoffs) can nail an innocent bishop to a cross – a man who, to this day, is still shunned by many as “damaged goods” or some sort of “leper” (although, mercifully, this misconception is dissolving, as more and more people see and recognize the truth about the vicious hatchet job that Droleskey did on him).

Too many traddies, too, are looking for some cheap, magical way to get to heaven, following their cult-masters’ pharisaic, letter-of-the-law formulae for “finding that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”  The trouble is, the cult-masters (and sanctimonious pulpiteers like Dr. D) get the “gold,” while the sheep get the “rainbow” (or some other mirage).  And speaking of “Dr. D,” it’s time to put those rumors about his becoming a priest into their proper perspective.  First of all -- according to many eye witnesses, including a woman who goes by the moniker of “Peregrine” – he is a priest (she witnessed his ordination by Slupski).  But priest or no priest, the relevant point to seize here is that “a Roman collar does not turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse.”  He is still a beggar who panders boring, sanctimonious swill for money – and a liar to boot.  His becoming a priest will not rehabilitate him; it will only serve to make him look even more ludicrous and irrelevant than he already is.  It is time that this loser starts making an honest living instead of catering to the brain-dead with his sanctimonious drivel.

Actually, it’s high time that ALL of traddieland’s losers get real jobs – and stop peddling Droleskeyite sanctimony, Dolanesque ostentation, or the false scholarship of arrogant, condescending know-nothings like Cekada.  Traddieland has become a place where “seminaries” are little more than “puppy mills,” turning out simplex simpletons who forget how to make holy water – or forget the words of the consecration (or where, in Slupski’s freak show, any Tom, Dick, or Harry can be made a priest – in the confessional – with no seminary training whatsoever required).  Traddieland, in short, has made itself the laughing stock of Catholicism.  It is a sick joke, except that it is not funny – it is a tragedy.  It is an embarrassment.  In short, it is not Catholic.

But these hucksters cannot function unless empowered by willing, obsequious fodder who provide the fuel for their machines.  The peasants who give their hard-earned money (and labors) to them in return for “pageantry” must learn to, first, close their pocketbooks to the cult-masters – to “starve the beast” – and then close their minds to them.  They must come to realize that the hucksters are just giving them “the show” instead of the substance.  Until that happens, traddieland will not be (or become) Catholic.  It’ll just be a futile charade of “pontifical nostalgia,” syrupy sanctimony, and wishful thinking.

But, lest the reader get the wrong impression, not all traddies are unwitting victims of their cult-masters; many are willing accomplices – co-conspirators – who know exactly who and what their hireling shepherds are.  This is certainly true at SGG, where people are fully aware of what has gone on there, but who (literally) don’t give a damn: they must have their “show” – and they’ll overlook anything and everything to get it.  The same is true for the remnant “SAG” crowd, who backed their pastor’s (and Dr. D’s) cowardly attack on an innocent man, but who are themselves too cowardly to admit it (and, so far, not one of whom has come forward to apologize to the man, either publicly or privately).  They have tried to assuage their guilt by changing their name to “St. Therese” – but it won’t wash.  A leopard cannot change its spots.

When will “traddieland” come clean?  Probably never, for it is “a ship without a rudder” (actually, more like amusement-park “bumper cars” with no steering wheels, going every which way, and getting in one another’s way).  There is no hierarchy to govern it and “keep it honest.”  There are too many self-appointed “fly-by-nighters” plying worldly agendas -- preaching “heaven” but practicing hedonism -- making (and breaking) rules as they go along, and preying on gullible parishioners with narrow minds and fat wallets.  And, in spite of the aforementioned plea for traddies to “starve” the cult-masters, it seems that this folly will continue.  Practically speaking, until some sort of restoration happens (or until God “steps in”), the parasitic cult-masters will continue their blood-sucking, until both they and their hosts inevitably die.  So, until that appropriate remedy materializes, one must hope for the best, prepare for the worst – and pray that God will spare us in the trials to come.