Coming Apart at the Seams?

Editor’s Note:  Many of our regular readers will notice that, last week, we published a “special edition” of Lay Pulpit.  Normally, we post only every other week; but lately, Dannie has been sticking his foot in his mouth so often that we figured we had to comment on it while it was still “fresh” -- hence, the “special edition.”  Well, that’s still the case.  We will, in fact, be posting every week for the next few weeks until we get “caught up.”

Dannie Dolan’s August 23, 2015 Bishop’s Corner was the usual mishmash of syrup and sanctimony, with all the usual buzzwords and phrases; but one anecdote in particular betrayed an undercurrent of acrimony and desperation in Dannie’s tone: his account of SGG’s “Fatima Rosary Procession for Peace,” held ten days earlier.  Dannie started off by saying that “We drew a good to average crowd for the procession, and were blessed with fine weather that evening.”  First off, his use of the phrase “good to average crowd” seems a little odd to us.  What is “good” and what is “average”?  Is “average” better than “good,” or vice versa?  Was Dannie just trying to put a “positive spin” on “mediocre” – or even “sparse”?  And if they were “blessed with fine weather that evening,” shouldn’t the attendance have been somewhat better than “good to average”?

At any rate, Dannie went on to mention that some of his Gerties “passed out explanatory leaflets about what we were up with a Rosary procession, to some of the local restaurants.”  According to Dannie, one of them “willingly took quite a few leaflets,” while at another, “The mushroom pizza hostess was too busy seating patrons to focus on prayers, but she did let us leave a few leaflets.”  And yet at another, “Starbucks froze us out, the three women there neither willing to hear about the procession, nor to take any leaflets. Orders from “corporate” probably. They are One World people all the way.”  Apparently, because Starbucks didn’t put out the welcome mat for his culties, “They are One World people all the way,” and their actions were the result of “orders from ‘corporate’ probably.”

After lambasting these establishments for their “insensitivity,” Dannie then directed his vituperation toward the entire community: “West Chester was having one of those municipal boondoggles on that Thursday evening, blaring unbearable music(?) at passersby, in the name of Summer entertainment, doubtless. The noise was truly hellish, but the Devil could not have been pleased at our heavenly music as we prayed the mysteries of the Rosary aloud. Fair enough. We won.”  So, a local community trying to hold its own summer celebration – as countless communities across the country do – is “unbearable” and “hellish.”  Well, Dannie, did it also occur to you that boys watching porno flicks on SGG’s school computer is a lot more “hellish” than loud music?*

After denouncing these folks for having the audacity to hold their previously scheduled event while he was trying to upstage them with his rosary procession, Dannie – like a street urchin who has just bested his opponent in a game of “King of the Mountain” -- triumphantly proclaims, “We won.”  You won what, Dannie?  Did you challenge these people to some sort of “I’m holier than thou” contest?  Or was it an Amish fashion show?  Or was it because you (like the Pharisee in our Lord’s parable) said more prayers than those debauched, shameless “publicans”?

Did it ever occur to Dannie that these people were holding an event that was planned long before he decided to grace them with his presence, that it was on their turf, and that he and his troupe were not invited?  And did it ever occur to him that he and his Gerties, many in neo-Amish garb, looked a bit “out-of-place” in that venue – and that his presence there probably made about the same impression as a hot dog stand in Tel Aviv?**   The fact is, Dannie could have easily (and more appropriately) held his procession at SGG, which has a quite adequate campus, and where he could have been spared the distraction of “hellish” music and other “worldly contamination.”  

Did Dannie not realize how “odd” that he and his entourage looked there in the middle of a community civic celebration?  The answer is that Dannie didn’t care what the West Chester folks thought; he was only interested in what his culties thought.  He knew that, to the latter, he appeared as a “selfless victim bearing public humiliation "for the greater honor and glory of God.”  To their gullible, cult-cleansed psyches, this was “holy.”  This was “the real thing.”

But it’s NOT the real thing.  It’s not even close.  It’s about looking holy, not being holy.  Like everything else Dannie does, it’s “all about the show.”  Dannie can come several miles to bring his “holy spectacle” to West Chester, yet he wouldn’t walk across the street to give a dying Terri Schiavo a glass of water.  If Dannie were really holy, he wouldn’t have written off watching porn and animal torture videos as “boys will be boys.”  Dannie’s a fraud.  He’s a fake.  He is the classic example of that Pharisee in the parable, who says: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people -- robbers, evildoers, adulterers -- or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.”  He’s a hypocrite.***

Dannie’s lashing out at these people in West Chester just because they decided to have a community get-together is, at best, grossly uncharitable.  And, at worst, it’s downright acrimonious.  Of course, Dannie has always felt the need to “play the victim” -- to blame some outside “oppressor” for SGG’s troubles.  For instance, in the past, he’s blamed the local electrical utility (Duke Energy) for SGG’s high heating bills, and a local HVAC outfit for high air-conditioning repair bills – but now he’s venting his wrath on whole communities – on anybody and everybody – and his attacks are more vicious.  

Frankly, we think that Dannie is a man whose mind is deteriorating.  A little later on in his ‘Corner, he reported: “The Lourdes grotto was beautifully decorated, and its pond (temporarily) repaired, and the fountain spouted blue water for our Blessed Mother!”  Yep, you heard right: Dannie had the grotto pond dyed blue!  (Dannie, are you going to dye it red on St. Valentine’s Day, green on St. Patrick’s Day, and purple during Lent?)  Then, later on – and for no apparent reason -- Dannie remarked that “There were a couple of piglets in the parking lot, but I don’t think there was any liturgical connection.”  Well, Dannie, we don’t think that there’s any “connection” between your neurons, either!  We wonder why Dannie decided to throw in this little “tidbit” for his readers.  Perhaps he’s exhausted his supply of remarks about baby bunnies, and he’s starting on baby pigs now?

At any rate, we think that Dannie is starting to go “bonkers”: first, he lashes out at a community’s celebration as “hellish,” then – with gleeful self-satisfaction -- reports about turning the grotto pond water blue “for our Blessed Mother,” and finishes up with an undecipherable remark about “piglets in the parking lot.”  Wow!  How’s that for “detached neurons”!!  We also wonder about Dannie’s remark that “Bishop Sanborn politely inquired if any animals figured in the ceremony.”  (Perhaps Big Don, too, thinks that Dannie’s “wiring” isn’t all connected – or at least thinks that Dannie has an unhealthy “animal fetish”!)****  Is Dannie “coming apart at the seams”?  We think so.

We think, too, that he’s getting desperate.  Little by little, his Gerties are abandoning him; and he’s “pulling out all the stops” to get them to stay.  But the problem is, the more desperate he gets, the more BIZARRE his attempts at “sheep retention” are becoming.  Pretty soon, he’ll be blaming the whole world for SGG’s troubles; and his anger and wrath will manifest themselves in even more “hellish” ways.  We suggest that, when Dannie and Tony finally retire to their resort in the desert southwest, they’d better find one that is equipped with a psychiatric ward.

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* Perhaps, too, Dannie considered them “hellish” for “inappropriate attire” as well (shorts, “sleeveless” blouses, “body piercings,” etc.).  The irony is that most Gerties wear shorts when they’re away from the cult center anyway; and enough of SGG’s younger set have "inappropriate body piercings" that Dannie has resorted to putting out a ban against them (as a recent Pistrina article noted). 

Also, it is curious that Dannie referred to West Chester’s celebration as a “boondoggle.”  Coming from Dannie, this is a bit like “the pot calling the kettle black,” isn’t it?  Dannie himself is the undisputed MASTER of boondoggling, with his mid-winter junkets to Argentina and Mexico – not to mention, his (and Tony’s) going “away for a rest” just recently (to Santa Fe, as we suspected).  These people in West Chester, regardless of what Dannie had to say about them, were at least paying their own way.  That’s more than one can say for Dannie!  And, as far as their event being “hellish,” it is Dannie’s uncalled-for comments about it that are hellish!

** Now Dannie (or one of his boot-lickers) might contend that we are “ridiculing” religious processions.  We are not.  We remember with fondness the “Holy Name” parades of past years, where every parish in the community came together in a city-wide celebration.  These parades were well-planned, well-organized, and well-coordinated with community authorities so that they did not coincide or clash with other events.  They did not superimpose themselves on somebody else’s celebration, as Dannie did (nor were they dressed in Neo-Amish garb).

SGG, as we said, has a quite adequate campus, where they could have held their procession (and they could even have used the adjoining street for part of it).  But Dannie, being Dannie, had to superimpose himself and his entourage on the main community, in the middle of their celebration, in order to maximize his procession’s “spectacle” value.  We know that Dannie, like the Pharisee in the parable, is doing his rosary procession to glorify himself, not God.

*** Dannie and the Pharisee are surely both hypocrites.  But actually, next to Dannie, this Pharisee is a “cherub.”  At least he “fasts twice a week”; whereas, Dannie pigs out on “copious quantities of beef” when he’s in Sunny Mexico during Lent; and he doesn’t “give a tenth of all I get” but “takes all that he can get.”

**** Big Don’s “polite”(?) inquiry about whether “any animals figured in the ceremony” seems to indicate that he is less than thrilled with Dannie’s morbid preoccupation with animals of late -- and we wonder if he is having second thoughts about Tony too.  Between Dannie’s bizarre ramblings about feral cats shredding baby bunnies and Tony’s inept attempts at “scholarship,” we wonder if Donnie is beginning to see them as more of a liability than an asset – and is “rethinking” his association with them.