The Bottom Line

Daniel Dolan and Anthony Cekada have always had a knack for hanging themselves with their own words.  No matter how much they try to camouflage their true motives, they seem to get themselves into trouble every time they open their mouths.  Last week’s Pulpit article noted how Dannie exhorted SGG’s parents to get their children to “clean up after themselves” for “crumbs left in classrooms”; yet in the same breath, he mentioned “cups of coffee spilled in the school wastepaper baskets.”  When he wrote those words, he didn’t realize that kids don’t drink coffee.  He was so hell bent on “disciplining” kids that he missed that small but important detail. 

But that’s just another example of how Dannie’s hypocrisy betrays him, just as it did back in the 2008-09 “school scandal” days, when one schoolboy was cruelly beaten just for missing his homework, while the school principal’s sons got no punishment at all for their blatantly immoral behavior.  It always is a source of wonder to this writer how Dannie can “wax poetic” every Guardian Angel Sunday about “protecting our innocent children,” when his actions have so often proven otherwise – especially during those dark “school scandal” days of 2008-09.  Guarding our children?  He might as well have been talking about the fox guarding the hen house!

The foregoing is certainly a lucid (and typical) example of Dannie’s trademark hypocrisy; but what perhaps best illustrates his arrogance and vanity -- and what has had more far-reaching consequences – is his behavior concerning his doubtful orders: his one-handed “ordination” by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.  Some time after that, nine of Dannie’s colleagues, all priests, wrote a letter, urging him to "stop saying Mass, hearing confessions, and administering the sacrament of Extreme Unction until this problem [his doubtful orders] is solved." 

Of course, we all know what Dannie did: rather than heed the advice of those nine priests, he ignored it, and instead commissioned Anthony Cekada to craft a “defense” of the validity of one-handed orders – a “defense” that has since been dismantled, piece by piece, in a series of articles in Pistrina Liturgica.  In its refutation, not only did Pistrina do a thorough job of disproving Phony Tony’s arguments; but it also emphasized, over and over again, what Dannie should have done – and what the Church has always prescribed -- in his case: take the safe route, and get conditionally ordained (as Pistrina just recently re-iterated in a response to another reader’s inquiry regarding the same subject).

We at Lay Pulpit would like to “re-iterate” on this as well: not to attempt to match (or augment) what Pistrina said about the theological aspects of the case (which we haven’t the expertise to do), but to offer some additional remarks to Pistrina's regarding Dannie’s failure to “take the safe route.”   That is what is so disturbing about Dannie: not that his orders are doubtful, but that he didn’t take the simple, painless route of conditional re-ordination to remedy the situation.  This, more than anything else, showcases Dannie’s monumental arrogance and vanity.

Rather than heed the advice of those nine priests, and rather than have the humility and good sense to submit to conditional ordination, he chose instead to take the arrogant, “stone-wall” route: get the even more arrogant Tony Baloney to “legitimize” his doubtful ordination by concocting his bogus “validity” argument.  In doing so, this not only exposed both Dannie’s (and Tony’s) arrogance, but also the latter’s incompetence: Tony’s monograph was a pathetic mish-mash of faulty logic, mistranslations, and fabrications.  It went unchallenged for years, until, by happy accident, one of Dannie’s boot-licking apologists (one “Introibo”) -- miffed by recurring Pistrina hints that “Tony’s tome” was flawed – challenged Pistrina to provide proof of its allegations.  Pistrina took up Introibo’s challenge; and a series of articles providing that proof ensued.

Not only did the articles totally demolish Tony’s “defense,” but “comments” sent in to rebut those articles (posted by Introibo and others) were also “totally demolished.”  It is ironic that these comments – designed to weaken Pistrina’s arguments, actually strengthened them – and correspondingly made Tony’s position look even worse – and Tony has Introibo to thank for setting it all in motion!  Actually, many of those comments were sent in by Tony himself (albeit anonymously), so he had himself to “thank” as well.  Thus, Tony’s arrogance (and ignorance) only served to make him look even more ridiculous – and to a wider audience.  So, Tony’s (and Dannie’s) arrogance only succeeded in compounding their problems – and in reinforcing again that old adage: “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when at first we practice to deceive.”

Besides exposing their arrogance, this -- more importantly -- betrayed their lack of good will.  A truly good person would have had the moral rectitude (and good sense) to realize the grave consequences of having questionable orders, and would have unhesitatingly done the right thing in the first place – that is, take the safe course of conditional ordination. But they are NOT good men.  They willfully rejected that course.  Instead, Tony set himself up as a “canonical scholar” (contradicting both papal pronouncements and official Church teaching on the subject), and went on to postulate on the “validity of one-handed orders” (as if he had the authority to do so).  Why did he and Dannie choose that path?  Pride, that’s why: their monumental pride prevented them from doing otherwise.  They could not admit that they were wrong, so they “weaved their tangled web” – and, in the process, dug themselves an ever-deeper hole.

That is the worst part about Dannie’s dubious orders: NOT that they’re doubtful, but that he refuses to admit that they are.  He and Tony both knew it “going in”; but they willfully chose to ignore the warnings of nine priests, to deny it, and then to concoct Tony’s “validity” scheme to justify that denial.  And then, even after Tony’s pathetic fiction has been thoroughly discredited, they continue in their denial.  Why?  Well, for one thing, because cultists can never admit that they’re wrong – that would tarnish their “infallibility” mystique with their culties.  Just as Tony will never admit that he was wrong on Schiavo, he nor Dannie will ever admit that they were wrong on this.  But another reason that they’ll never admit it is that they don’t have to, as long as they have a critical mass of gullible suckers to fall for their bluff and bluster -- and to support them.  

As long as that happens, they really don't care what the rest of the world thinks, because the “bottom line” on Dannie and Tony is that they’re all about themselves – about M-O-N-E-Y; and they've probably already got enough "salted away" (in one of the several bank accounts that have been set up) to keep provide them with a comfy retirement.  So, after their heir apparent takes over the reins, Dannie and Tony can take their nest egg and disappear into the Desert Southwest sunset -- and then let SGG’s next huckster fleece what’s left of the flock.