"False Advertising"

For those of you who read Dannie’s ’Corner on a regular basis, have you ever noticed how often he interjects a phrase such as “when I was passing by the grotto one day, saying my divine office,” or “as I was walking one day, saying my daily rosary,” or some other such phrase as that?  “Name-dropper Dannie” is always interjecting such phrases into his ’Corner, giving the impression that he spends most of his days in prayerful contemplation.  Sometimes, he even pretends that his pet cats are in on the act: “We were saying some morning prayers on St. Stephen’s day, the cat [Caravaggio] and I, when he noticed something and jumped down from my lap.”  (Click here.) 

And even when he’s away from the cult center, Dannie likes to give the impression that he’s always praying – such as the time he went to a shrine (near sunny Santa Fe, New Mexico, of course): “’Why stand ye here all the day idle?’ I thought of Septuagesima’s Gospel the other morning myself as I was saying my prayers in front of the oldest shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the United States.” (Click here.)  Here again, we wonder how much “praying” Dannie was really doing.  And how is it that he had to go to that particular shrine (near Santa Fe, his favorite “getaway” spot).  There are plenty of shrines that are a lot closer to SGG – where Dannie’s “prayer” would be just as “efficacious.”  Could it be that Dannie’s “saying [his] prayers in front of the oldest shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe” was just an attempt to justify wrangling a boondoggle out to sunny Santa Fe?  We think so. 

In a great many of his ’Corners, it turns out, Dannie tries to put on his “prayerful contemplation” act.¹  And that’s just what it is: an act.  How do we know? Because, if Dannie were really “prayerful” and “contemplative,” he wouldn’t have to be trumpeting it to all the world – that’s how.  A truly good and humble person doesn’t have to advertise that sort of thing – nor does he.²  He doesn’t try to play “holier than thou” – like the Pharisee in the parable -- and broadcast his piety for all to see.  He doesn’t do it for public notice or adulation.  He does so privately, disinterestedly “offering it up” -- without publicity or fanfare.

In fact, if one is a truly good person, he does not need to tell anyone at all.  God sees it; and if He knows, that’s all that matters.  If one is truly good, it shows through in his actions.  But Dannie’s actions don’t send such a message – so he must resort to “advertising.”  Like the Pharisee in the parable, Dannie “says all the right prayers.”  And like that Pharisee, he talks about being good; but how “good” is he really?  How does he really treat his fellow man?  What about Schiavo?  What about those SGG school kids brutalized back in 2009?  What about those people to whom he has refused the sacraments (“disqualified” because they were “Novus Ordo,” or because they visited an “unauthorized” chapel)?  Those are the things that really define Dannie – but that he would like to forget, because they don’t fit into his “advertising” scheme.

But Dannie’s “advertising” doesn’t stop there.  One of Dannie’s biggest advertising campaigns is for his “school.”  Here again, if the school were really that good, it wouldn’t need to be “advertised” – and it would be full to overflowing.  Neither is the case.  SGG’s school, built to accommodate hundreds of students, has barely over a dozen.  Yet Dannie “plugs” it on a regular basis, boasting about the “excellent education” offered there. But in the school’s thirty-odd year existence, the number of its high school graduates (other than the “principal’s” children) can be counted on one hand – with none of whom achieving academic distinction of any sort.  The “school,” any way one looks at it, is a proven failure.  (Click here, here, and here for more on the “school.”)

Perhaps, though, the biggest, most blatant bits of misrepresentation of which Dannie is guilty are his pretending to be an “expert” on rites and rubrics, and his portraying Tony as a “scholar” and a “theologian.”  These claims are even bigger “laughers” than those made about the “school.”  Here again, if Dannie truly were an “expert” (and Tony a “scholar” and “theologian”), they wouldn’t have to keep advertising that they are (and singing each other’s praises on a regular basis) -- and they would have real credentials to back up their claims – WHICH THEY DON’T.  In their efforts to promote themselves, Dunce-cap Dannie and Tinhorn Tony have been caught over and over again, making one bungling error after another, to the extent that no one in TradWorld takes them seriously anymore.  The only people who fall for these two amateurs are their gullible, hard-core loyalists.

And gullible they have been – but, even more than that, apathetic and indifferent.  That is, they really don’t care.  Unless they have been living in a total vacuum, they would have heard at least something, for instance, about what happened back in 2009.  And if they haven’t read about the many documented cases of Dannie’s duplicity and hypocrisy that have been brought to light since then, they would’ve at least heard about them by word of mouth.  (And even if they didn’t, these people – if they had any brains at all -- should have seen through Dannie’s affected sanctimony and all the rest of his “false advertising” – and should have figured it out by now.)  

But they won’t – because they don’t care what Dannie is, or how he’s treated his fellow man, as long as they get their “show.”  Some of them, with full knowledge of what kind of a worm Dannie really is, try to “excuse” themselves by saying, “Well, I’m only going there for the Mass; I’m not ‘supporting’ them.”  Well folks, by going to their “Mass,” you are supporting them!  You are giving these lepers a legitimacy that they neither deserve nor have, and you are enabling them to mislead and exploit others – and in doing so, you become their accomplices, sharing moral accountability with these imposters for what follows.  This is especially so for those Gerties who at one time left SGG, but later returned -- because they know better.  They know exactly who and what Dannie and Tony are. That’s why they left.  They left for valid reasons, but returned for an invalid one: “the Show.” They placed “the Show” above their principles.

We have listed, in this article (and in many that have come before it), myriad examples of Dannie’s “false advertising.”  But for those who think that this is “not enough” – or, for those who think this is “ancient history” (and that Dannie is “rehabilitated” since then), they need only look at what happened just a couple of months ago -- yet another dose of Dannie’s “false advertising”: the funeral for the woman sacristan who died recently.  Not only did Dannie pay her his usual disingenuous “lip service” for needlessly sacrificing her life for the cult, but he also issued a phony “dispensation” (from Friday abstinence, because her funeral was on a Friday). (Click hereand here for more.)  How many more “doses” will it take before his Gerties face the hard fact that Dannie is not “rehabilitated”?   How long will it take for them to wake up and see that Dannie really doesn’t care about them?

The “good news” is that many have already woke up, especially in 2009 – and especially those youngsters back then who, unlike their gullible parents, saw through Dannie’s duplicity, and left. But the bad news is that many of those same youngsters became so disillusioned with Dannie’s “Catholicism” that they lost their faith.  (Click here.)  Gerties, don’t let this happen to you – but especially not to your children – before they become disillusioned too.  Your children are just as perceptiveas those back in 2009 were – and remember too that, as their parents, youare responsible for their souls.  Don’t let them become disillusioned as well, just because youfell for Dannie’s “false advertising.” 

Wake up, Gerties, and come to the realization that Dannie is not out to save your souls, but to empty your wallets.  Wake up -- before it’s too late for both you andyour children.

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¹ And, as we said earlier, he often likes to pair his “prayer contemplation act” with one of his “cat” stories.  That way, he can appear “cute” and “holy” at the same time.  Just this past Quinquagesima Sunday, he commented in his ’Corner, “Puccini woke me up at 3 AM the other night, wanting to play. Well, that’s the Devil’s hour, so I admonished him and said a prayer to St. Michael and went back to sleep. ”Firstly, we have a hard time believing that Dannie ever said that “prayer.”  And we wonder too, with all of this prayerful concern about “Puccini,” why he never offered any similar “prayers” for all those baby bunnies that his feral felines mangled and gulped down.  (Perhaps he was too busy snickering, and couldn’t quite get himself into a prayerful mood.)  If you ask us, we’d say that Dannie’s fanciful musings about his cats are not so much “cute” and “holy” as they are bizarre and deranged – and that Dannie belongs not in a rectory, but in an asylum.  

² And, by the same token, a truly good person doesn’t – without any provocation -- publicly slander an innocent person such as Abbot Leonard Giardina (as the Checkmeister did – click here), nor does he clandestinely call a chapel in Lawrence, Massachusetts, to try to torpedo the ordination of an innocent candidate (as Dannie did – click here).  No matter how much the dastardly duo try to pass off their sanctimony as sanctity, their malicious mischief always betrays them.  They will always be Tradistan’s shining examples of Pecksniffian hypocrisy. They will never project true goodness – because they haven’t any.