Who Are You Trying to Kid, Donny?

Some years back, one of the bible-thumping TV evangelists – Oral Roberts -- told a TV audience that, unless he raised $8 million by that March, God would “call him home.”  Well, we’re happy to report that “Brother Roberts” did not die.  But his cheap, shameless plea DID.  In his greed, Roberts thought that his obsequious followers would respond to such extortion – but they didn’t.  It seems there was a limit to even their gullibility.  His shameless ruse, in the long run, probably cost him more than the support he was seeking – but such are the wages of greed.

Now one would think that such mercenary ploys are a thing of the past – but are they?  Just this past month, the rector of Florida’s MHT Seminary has been whistling the same sort of tune.  Donald Sanborn, who has been hinting for some time about “expansion,” had this to say in his latest Newsletter:  “The seminary is at its absolute capacity this year. At this writing, we cannot take anyone else. We will not ordain anyone until June of 2016, when two are slated for sacred orders. Things may change by the end of this academic year, but already we have to raise the idea of adding on an addition to this seminary.  We also need to address the expanding costs of the seminary as the number of seminarians expands.”  “It is absolutely necessary,” he continues, “for the survival of Catholicism during this Modernist crisis that this seminary continue to function. If the lay people are to preserve their Catholic Faith, they will need well-trained Catholic priests. If they do not have them, they will sink into error, heresy, and moral corruption.”

First off -- as Pistrina pointed out – if seminary-trained priests are necessary for “the survival of Catholicism,” then why did Big Don have a priest with no seminary formation accompany him to Europe, when he had his pick of several seminary-trained priests to take along?  But, even laying that argument aside, one might also ask another question: why is “expansion” really necessary?  According to MHT’s September newsletter, the seminary currently houses eleven seminarians. Looking at the facility (click here), it is hard to imagine that it can accommodate only that many.  Even a conservative estimate puts the under-roof square footage at more than 12,000 (not including the church and the front structures flanking it on either side) – over 1000 sq. ft. per seminarian.  That is about the same square footage as the average three-bedroom home.  Even allowing for classrooms (and for Big Don and his faculty staff of three), MHT’s campus is an extravagantly huge complex for a student body of that size.

Why is it that a single seminarian needs that much room to live?  It is reported that each MHT seminarian has own room with its own private full bath.  Compare that with the average traddie family who lives in that three-bedroom home, where six (or more) people typically share one or two baths.  [In some cases, traddie families of ten or more have had to share a single bathroom.]  Now Donny, tell us again, why is it that you expect those folks to do that, but not your seminarians?  Why is it that, what you routinely expect your parishioners to do, your seminarians cannot do?  Why is it “absolutely necessary for the survival of Catholicism” that each seminarian have a private room (with bath) to himself? 

Besides, we hear that -- of late -- “capacity” is not really that big of an issue.  Rumor has it, “as of this writing,” that the seminary is NOT “at its absolute capacity this year”: that one of your French seminarians – after three years at MHT -- has bolted, and that another is contemplating doing the same.  More importantly, whether the rumors are true or not, it is ludicrous to claim that physical expansion is a prerequisite for “the survival of Catholicism.”  Donny, you are beginning to sound more and more like Oral Roberts.  Is God going to “call you home” if you don’t get your way?  Is Catholicism going to perish, or “sink into error, heresy, and moral corruption,” if you don’t get your “expansion”? 

We think not.  The truth is, Big Don is once again blowing smoke.  Like those TV preachers, he is an empire builder consumed with his own self-importance.  And, like Oral Roberts, he is overreaching his step in his greed.  If the presence of “well-trained priests” were really necessary “for the survival of Catholicism,” how then is it (as one of Pistrina’s readers pointed out) that Japan’s Catholics survived for over two hundred years without a SINGLE “well-trained priest”?  How is it that they did not  “sink into error, heresy, and moral corruption”?  Yet how is it that SGG, which (supposedly) DID have “well-trained priests” (from Big Don’s Florida puppy mill), lost half its parish to scandal back in 2009?

But even if they did have well-trained priests (which they don’t), Big Don -- like Dannie -- is not interested in well-trained priests, but in providing a cushy life for himself.  He and Dannie are cut from the same mold: both like to put on elaborate “pontifical pageantry,” both like to go on expensive “apostolates,” and both are connoisseurs (and collectors) of expensive ecclesiastical trinkets.  In short, they both crave la dolce vita – and both are everlastingly asking their followers to donate to their respective financial sinkholes.  And, coincidentally, both have lost their biggest benefactors: Donny’s, who underwrote both his Michigan and Florida operations, stopped bankrolling him some years ago; and Dannie’s biggest benefactor took his money and ran after the 2009 SGG school scandals.  Such are the wages of greed.

Big Don’s complex in Florida, like those “crystal cathedrals” of the TV preachers, is just another bastion of hucksterism and hypocrisy.  And, like Dolan’s SGG, it’s a caricature of Catholicism, designed to impress -- and exploit -- the gullible.  Both Donny and Dannie try their best to scare people into believing that they’re “the only game in town” – but their histrionics are starting to wear thin.  Many are now seeing them for what they are: a bunch of “ecclesiastically challenged” amateurs, dressed up in fancy digs, who really don’t know what they’re doing (as “Uneven Steven,” Donny’s latest “darling of the moment,” so embarrassingly demonstrated recently on Restoration Radio).  They're starting to see that the MHT-SGG consortium is nothing more than a bunch of pompous parasites who are impressing -- and kidding -- NOBODY.