Of Sweet White Midwestern Pastry

Your Deaconette probably doesn’t need to rise in defense of Taylor Swift. But on behalf of women everywhere, she does take offense when another woman is referred to as a “Pop Tart” by a pathetically profane prig that prelates have pitched from public ministry.

Ms. Swift’s accomplishments are considerably more than being exiled repeatedly from seminary formation due to poor behavior; thence to being exiled from low-level mandarin in one of the Vatican’s more arcane and now-disbanded sinecure offices for reasons shrouded in mystery and eventually incomplete graduate studies; thence to being exiled from the Diocese of Oscar Meyer, Wisconsin for shocking abuse of trust. For one thing of direct comparative measure, Ms. Swift actually has earned a doctorate (Fine Arts, honoris causa, New York University). Though Deaconette finds much admirable about her, she will allow that perhaps Ms. Swift is not fully the platonic ideal of a role model to Catholic girls. Then again, Ms. Swift was never sacramentally consecrated in alter Christus as witness to them, but the 4P was.

One need not like Ms. Swift’s music, though if one doesn’t, your Deaconette will ask whyever not? Artists of every genre have clamored to work with her, running the gamut from Andrew Lloyd Webber to T Pain. There must be something in her voluminous output that one can find to one’s highly differentiated auditory enjoyment. Perhaps she is an acquired taste. Acquire some taste.

On to answer the question that the Petty Poseur Pushed from the Pastoral Center posed with his put-down. Ms. Swift took advantage of her spotlight on the jumbotron at Sunday’s bowl game to entertain the crowd by chugging a beer with her friend. “What sort of company does this pop tart keep,” asked Florida Man. “Pop tart” is a bit mean when coming from someone who increasingly resembles Poppin’ Fresh minus the smile. He provided this picture.

It isn’t actually too hard to answer generally: personal and professional close friends and family. Nor is it specifically. In this photo, we see hip-hop artist Isis Gaston, professionally known as Ice Spice, standing beside her friend and producer RIOTUSA, another professional sobriquet. (Entertainers do that sort of thing. Deaconette is acquainted with a guy named Jorge Mario who is professionally known as Papa Francesco.) Seated next is Ashley Avignone, a designer, stylist, and longtime friend to Ms. Swift, who is seated at center. Here is perhaps a less retouched likeness of Taylor and Ice Spice from the same event.

That’s multi-awarded actress Blake Lively to the right. Also reported as sharing the box with Ms. Swift were Scott and Andrea Swift, her parents (Mrs. Swift here seen above Ms. Swift’s shoulder). Others attending in the same luxury box were Travis Kelce’s parents Donna and Ed Kelce, his brother Jason Kelce and sister-in-law Kylie Kelce, and his longtime friend Aric Jones. Also not depicted above but reported as in attendance, multi-awarded recording artist Lana Del Rey.

Ms. Swift spent Sunday evening with strongly-bonded families, her own and her boyfriend’s, and among friends who have impressive career accomplishments. Also, it would seem, whom have genuine affection for each other. Jealousy is not a good look on a priest. You could have career accomplishments and professional associates who truly like being with you, too, 4P. Do get started on that before retirement.

But don’t call people misogynistic slurs, John Todd, in your vain attempt at ridicule. It is beneath your dignity as a human. And if you have something to say about a young lady’s appearance, say it plainly and without malice.

“Having called together the multitudes unto him, he said to them: Hear ye and understand. Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man nor woman: but what cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man. She that chuggeth a beer before the multitudes does not defile herself … Are you yet without understanding? Do you not understand, that whatsoever entereth into the mouth, goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the privy? Dude, have some more beers and you will understandeth the sooner. But the things which proceed out of the mouth, come forth from the heart, and those things defile a man. Or a woman.” Matthew 15, some apocryphal parts interpolated.

A Good Old Hippy 60’s Sing-Along to Celebrate Traditionis Custodes

From The Great Cuhlio™, Deaconette’s C’s official parahymnodist:

Once upon a time Mass was in Latin
Without the stupid handshakes, or worse the hugs.
Remember how there was no blasphemy–
except my litany for converting internet thugs?

Once upon a time, Mass was in Latin
Without the stupid handshakes, or worse, the hugs.
Remember how there was no blasphemy–
except my litany for converting internet thugs?

Those were the days my friend!
Why did it have to end?
We’d mince and prance forever and a day!
Our pope would wear red shoes!
We’d fight and never lose!
Though we are wrong, we’d surely get our way.
Wah wah wah wah wah…

Then a new conclave went rushing by us,
and some Argentine demoted Cosplay Ray;
If by chance we’d meet in the first class cabin,
We’d sigh with one another and pretend to pray.

Those were the days my friend!
Why did it have to end?
There’s racism we still need to downplay!
We know Trump couldn’t lose!
It must be those perfidious Jews!
What did that prayer ever even say?
Wah wah wah wah wah…

Just tonight I stood outside Gammarelli;
Nothing seemed the way it used to be.
In that window I saw a strange reflection:
Was that moping fat guy really me?

Those were the days my friend!
We thought they couldn’t end!
We’d exorcise fair elections as highest Godly praise!
Defend traddy bishops the libs accuse–
What could they mean, child sex abuse?–
Those were the days, oh yes those were the days!
Wah wah wah wah wah…

Now the not-quite-Pope’s repealed Summorum,
Because our behavior was so renegade.
Oh, my friend, we’re older but no wiser,
For in our hearts the centuries are all the same.

Those were the days my friend!
Why did they ever end?
We’d wear a pistol and a pompom hat!
We’d excommunicate the Democrats!
We’d blog the food that made us fat!
Those were the days, oh yes those were the days!
Wah wah wah wah wah…

A Consummation Devoutly To Be Hopped

From the digital land where a Portly Priest Packs away the Pilsners, a lament: the Abbey of Achel has lost its last monk, and thus the world is poorer by one officially Trappist label of potent potables.

The remedy is clear. The Cistercians of Belgium must attract some new priests. Alas, Belgium is hardly a hotbed of Catholic fervor and people inclined to be of the Strict Observance are few indeed.

One doesn’t even need to speak Belgian to vow to silence in Belgium.

If only somewhere in the world was a beer-loving, beer-promoting Rigid Priest with a repeatedly averred inclination to knock about an antique post-Reformation palace with a grand neo-Gothic church in the countryside. Ideally one who’s often been told that the spiritual good of others, if not himself, depends urgently upon his discernment of his true vocation to keeping silence. One at loose ends and in recent need of a new apostolate and new town. Where could we find such a man? Think of the birds one could feed, if not the lambs. It ain’t the Carthusians, but your Deaconette will gladly compromise.

Reasonable, but Unreasoned

By the words of the Gospel, may our sins be blotted out.

It turns out that, as Deaconette has many times said here, blogging is not a ministry. Nor is the pre-eminent political issue of our time to be used as the sole litmus test of one’s Catholic voting identity. Nor should clerics “be publicly voicing overt and purely political opinions regarding individuals, parties, election results, the current news cycle, nor engaging in ad hominem attacks.” And with that quote, she draws your attention its source, a remarkable letter from Bishop Donald S. Hying of the Diocese of Oscar Meyer Madison, Wisconsin. You can read it in its entirety online. We know it’s one hundred and one percent correct because we’ve been frequently told of His Excellency’s extra-most-bestest-ness by the Sacred Person whom His Excellency is contradicting.

The typical method of sermon construction in the Catholic churches of North America, illustrated.

It is on that last of the Bishop’s points, i.e. ad hominem attacks, Your Deaconette wishes to expand. And at the risk of repeating herself, she has many times said here something else — that the curriculum for your basic rad-trad priest (and aren’t they all just so, so basic?) does not seem to include fundamental precepts of logic and formal argument. Bishop Hying didn’t clarify, either, and it makes your Deaconette wonder if the good bishop does indeed know the difference between an ad hominem and an insult. An insult, which is an instance when something unkind is said about another person, is of its nature an attack. To make a case for your point of view is to argue, and in so doing one commits the logical fallacy of argumentum ad hominem by making the case about a person, rather than that person’s ideas. Consequently, ad hominems are far more sly and subtle than a mere insult: they are insults used in place of evidence to support a deduced conclusion.

Consider an insult by the Puttering Proprietor of Pithy Porcelain which he often quoted when the subject of Mr. Obama arose. The 4P was fond of repeating that “every word he [Mr. Obama] says is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.’” The author of that witticism was novelist Mary McGrory. By it, she was challenging the truth of playwright Lillian Hellman’s somewhat autofictional career as a memoirist when Hellman recounted her life among literary icons of the twentieth century, including Ernest Hemingway and Dashiell Hammett. More than that, McGrory was entertaining, with humorous hyperbole about the extent of Hellman’s mistruths, while a guest on The Dick Cavett Show television program.

Deaconette is certain the 4P knew of the hyperbolic nature of this insult. It is unkind to call someone an inveterate liar, even when it is demonstrably true of them. You’ll note, though, that while Ms. McGrory confined her remarks to things which Hellman wrote, the 4P expanded it to the entirety of Mr. Obama’s speech. Was he being only humorous? No, Deaconette contends he was expanding the insult into the territory of argumentum ad hominem: any statement by the then-President of the United States could be dismissed without consideration as untrue. Such an argument suggests that because a person has said or done something contemptuous or fallacious once, all other statements or actions by that person cannot be considered good, right or true.

That is wrong. Consider Martin Luther, whom many neo-Montanist Traddies would like us to believe is presently attending The 2021st Annual All-Perdition Lot Casting Competition and Baby Pig Roast at pit number three with an apple stuffed in his mouth, as punishment for not getting proper approval to use thumbtacks on the notice board. Was he wrong to thereafter pen the lines “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, ein gute Wehr und Waffen?” No. Even Catholics can find spiritual consolation in The Bulwark Never Failing.

Deaconette remembers a North Carolinian bishop who had two stock sermon-saving magic tricks he would pull out of his miter in case he had to (sometimes even unexpectedly) preach. One was titled “And then s/he died in my arms,” and the other was titled “And then Mother Teresa said to me.” Possibly the most unsafe place to lie down in the world was in a bed attended by the friendly embrace of Bishop Bill; countless multitudes died in his arms over the decades. His wide-ranging privileged hearing of the dying wisdom of a holy soul was the flip side of the ad hominem coin, called the appeal to authority. It attempted to imbue unremarkable platitudes just remembered as the deacon read the Gospel with the sanctity of one of life’s most holy moments. Likewise, his anecdotes of an unusually loquacious Mother Teresa of Calcutta — whom, to be fair, he did know somewhat well — were similarly encyclopedic, if banal, and were oddly untinged by her experiences of India and Croatia. At the time, Mother Teresa was considered an unassailably saintly living exemplar of Christian life; today we understand she’s a mere canonized Saint and thus, she wasn’t at all saintly.

So many Catholic homilies are rushed affairs with little intellectual merit. Shocking? Well, your Deaconette cannot tell you how many Sundays she has heard the words, “This morning as I was finishing my coffee,” immediately following the words “Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.” She thinks it’s at least a month of Sundays. It therefore be-cloven-hooves us to be alert for poorly constructed and fallacious arguments, since we hear so many of them at Mass — and for our own spiritual edification, no less. In any given Sunday Mass homily from clergy ranging in goodness from devoted to debauched you’ll hear ad hominems, a circulus or three, red herrings, ad crumenams, hasty generalizations, false dichotomies, straw men, and slippery slopes. Learn what those are and your ears will prick up so often in the pews, you may be forgiven by heaven for playing Angry Birds instead of listening to the dressy dude at the pulpit. Learn what those are, please; they are your intellectual self-defense.

Deaconette commends Bishop Hying, again, on his wise letter to his diocese. His urgency was clearly motivated by a Prevaricating, Prattling, Politically Presumptuous coffee mug salesman who’d been naughty for a very long time. But even in the good bishop’s letter, Deaconette spots numerous informal and formal errors in logic, and that’s a shame. Perhaps traditionalists will return rhetoric and composition to its honored place in seminary formation. Let’s not wait for that, though; the rest of us can demand an end to lazy sermonizing as if our souls depend urgently upon it. Perhaps they do.

Through the intercession of St Teresa of Calcutta, patron saint of unchallenged and unrepentant charlatans, may Almighty God grant the renewal of His gifts of Confirmation to you, that you may bind up the broken of His clergy, with a gag if necessary, in the Name of ✠ the Creator, and of the Redeemer, and of the Sanctifier. Amen. Please put away Angry Birds and stand for the creed.

Septic Fistula

From the final volume, minus indexes, of the Still Newer Catholic Encyclopaedia, as yet unpublished and likely to remain so due to declining demographic support for such a publishing enterprise:

Zuhlsdorf, His Reverence John Todd. The Unreconstructed Neoplatonic ideal of a failed priesthood. Converted from Lutheranism and shortly thereafter applied to priestly formation with, inter alia, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. Dismissed from seminary studies by a series of formators due to serious psychological aberrances and antisocial behaviors and not, as he claimed, for being too conservative. He persisted in applying for priestly formation until he found a non-American sponsor without the pesky psych battery entry requirements, one also willing to overlook prior reports. Was ordained in 1991 by the late Pope “Saint” John Paul II of happy, or call it mixed if we’re honest, memory for the suburbican Roman Diocese of Velletri-Segni. Never took up a permanent priestly ministry to his home diocese. Served as a very minor official in a relatively abstruse and unimportant Roman dicastery, and then for reasons shrouded in mystery and graduate studies, did not. Upon returning from Rome to central Wisconsin, that hub of academic inquiry into patristics, he “worked on his degree” for a decade or so without achieving it, and established a blog which, in the words of his bishop, Mons. Vincent Apicella, “combines arguments of faith and morals with photos of birds, Chinese food, and aircraft seats, as well as boasting about a firearms license, [and] speaks for itself… I do not see what theological or scientific credibility he [Zuhlsdorf] can have.”

The blog was nevertheless widely read, especially by an outspoken pseudo-heretical subset of the American Catholic laity noted for their neo-Valentinianist beliefs in the primacy of worship of the Divine Being over the emulation of the Divine Nature. Significant achievements of his blogging career included harassment of Catholic academics at Hofstra University resulting in his ban from that campus; harassment of officials of the Leadership Conference of Catholic Women resulting in his ban from attending their annual gatherings as a journalist; harassment of papal commission appointee and veteran naval officer Prof. Phyllis Zagano q.v.; instructing his coterie on the necessary disposition to pray for the death of Pope Francis while simultaneously avoiding sin; and an extended personal and ugly vendetta against Rev. James Martin SJ,. q.v. Inspired several parody blogs, notably one “Father D’s What Does the Priest Really Do All Day” and “Deaconette C’s Blog.” Was eventually pressed in 2014 into special ministry for the Diocese of Madison to its angriest Catholic laity, the Tridentine Mass (sic) Society of Madison.

Such was his non-rôle when he was caught in early 2021 broadcasting via his Chinese food blog and other social media, n.b. falsely, that he had obtained the permission of the local ordinary, Mons. Donald Hying (D. Madisonensis, q.v.) to exorcise demons in connection with purported and non-existent fraud in the best-audited federal election ever conducted in the United States. In fact, Zuhlsdorf had been granted permission to recite prayers of exorcism in connection with the global SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, which he characterized with pejorative epithets such as “The Wuhan Devil,” “COVID-1984,” and “plandemic,” doubtless also not what Mons. Hying had in mind in extending such faculties. Following a revolt on the seat of the United States government by supporters of the discredited election fraud conspiracy theory, Zuhlsdorf’s nefarious activities were brought to light by leading Catholic intellectuals whom he had relentlessly antagonized, including Martin, SJ, supra and Tony Arnett, q.v. After conducting a brief inquiry and holding an audience with the reprobate priest shortly thereafter, Mons. Hying announced an ostensibly mutual agreement whereby Zuhlsdorf “will relocate from the Diocese of Madison to pursue other opportunities,” but did not mention if any of those opportunities include long-term psychiatric care and/or medication.

Edited by Rev. F. McButterpants, S.J.

Deaconette suspended this blog in the hopes of allowing Bishop Hying time to rectify Father Zuhlsdorf’s ills in the Bishop’s then-new see of Madison. She didn’t expect it to take so long, but she congratulates him on his wise pastoral care. She considers Father Zuhlsdorf’s lengthy career as having come to its inevitable fruitless fig tree crossroads. Her work here is done, for the nonce at least. Let us be vigilant but hope that Father Z’s stone-cold, shriveled, little black soul may by recent events be prompted to blossom into something worthy of meeting its maker before the biological solution to his ministry prevails over his eternal rest.

ON THE ROCKS: Cocktails at Bishops’ Conference Belies Church Suffering

A bishop is a middle-school CCD student who grades his own pop quiz.

Catholics4Change

By Kathy Kane

Dear Bishop Senior and Bishop McIntyre,

We have crossed paths over the years but have never formally met. I considered introducing myself in the hotel lounge at the Marriott in Baltimore. I chose not to because I couldn’t trust myself not to recreate the scene of Jesus in the temple with the money changers. I might have overturned a table, sending glasses of Cointreau and Johnny Walker Black Label into the air.

I’m one of the mothers from the Philadelphia Archdiocese who traveled to Baltimore to stand with the survivors outside of the hotel during the Bishops’ Conference. We also attended the Conference in November. We call ourselves the “Mom Squad” and we support the victims and survivors who have literally saved our children by exposing the issue of clergy abuse to the world.

Voices Carry

Your group of bishops did not notice us when you arrived…

View original post 1,411 more words

ACTION ITEM! Deaconette C calls for help for a justly imprisoned priest

Deaconette firmly believes Father Gordon MacRae is where he belongs, much as did his jury. It also appears to her that the State of New Hampshire and the Diocese of Manchester, inter alia, concur. If your views are colored only by “These Stone Walls” and an over-zealous Catholic conservative press, she invites you to take a closer look into Father MacRae’s disturbing history.

That stipulated, Deaconette reminds us all that it is a corporal work of mercy to bring comfort to the imprisoned. If in your charity, to turn a phrase from a Pelagianistic Proto-Post-Pharisee, you are inclined to add funds to Father MacRae’s telephone account, do so.

Source: ACTION ITEM! Fr. Z calls for help for a wrongly imprisoned priest

Nunilo and Alodia? You Ladies Busy?

The Pompous Patronless Protégé, Ph.D. (probably not) Pending (and postulants to these posts, please be apprised at this point that that prat is pegged “the 4P” in these pages)  is perennially perusing the papers in pursuit of pieces portraying the perpetration of profanations by professional primitives as proof positive of Islam’s privations in terms of peace. Though the crusades are long over, Prester John the Chickenhearted seems to think that dramatic incidents of political violence committed by a shrinkingly small but hugely dangerous few can be extrapolated to impugn the loving nature of over a fifth of the world’s people. Believe his hypothesis, and Deaconette C will believe if you do that somewhere along the line, over a fifth of something was involved.

All Around the Deacon’s Bench

Apparently, the Priggish Porker of the Pantywaisted Patriarchy dipped into the Journal of Feminist Geography and found its contents confusing. One should never expect to understand a graduate level research paper before one has taken the basic survey course. Please, 4P, have a seat and we’ll begin.

Welcome to Feminist Geography 101. I’m Irrev. Prof. Deaconette C. I realize many of you were expecting Professor Socrates, but I’m afraid he lost his bid for tenure. Although he was eminently well-qualified for Pontifical University faculty on the basis of his superannuation of retirement age, his criminal record and his stated preference for young boys, the department ultimately decided that someone who has no Ph.D., no publications, and who actually admits he doesn’t know anything is better qualified for the diocesan curia. He’s now the co-adjutor bishop. So I’m here instead.

The P.R. Consultant Calls it “Optics,” Holy Father.

Pope Francis kisses a statue of baby Jesus as he leads the Christmas night Mass in Saint Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican December 24, 2016 (AP photo)

When children are concerned, if choosing to lead the Church in a grand symbolic gesture it is wise to consider all the angles of… shall we say interpretation?