An Overview & Plea

Heartfelt thanks to Hobbledehoy, who has done a masterful job in the original thread to expose the perilous agenda of the Toth-Gebel-gαye-Hall group.  As usual, people with little or nothing to contribute to the substance of the matter have cluttered things up and/or derailed the topic, so this is an attempt to get back on track.

A brief overview: When Fr. Ramolla was unjustly expelled from St. Gertrude the Great church in November 2009, the above named persons, along with many others, rushed to his defense.  More importantly, they worked hard to establish St. Albert the Great church and St. Anthony of Padua chapel, under Fr. Ramolla's pastorship.  This was the Catholic response to an absurd calamity brought about by the behavior of Bp. Dolan and Fr. Cekada.

But this was apparently not enough for the little group, so they felt compelled to launch a campaign to "destroy Dolan, Cekada, and Sanborn."  We assume they were motivated by the desire to remove some of the evil that inevitably seeps into God's Church.  Tragically, however, they chose shockingly base tactics, more worthy of demons than of Catholics.  Their notoriously vile websites (VoVwatch, Pistrina Liturgica, RCcorner, LayPulpit, etc.) seemed to compete with each other on which could spew the most vulgar bashing of their intended victims whose numbers grew to include anyone they perceived as opposing their ultimate agenda.  Not content with exposing facts, which evidently failed to "destroy" their targets, they resorted to clever ridicule, hideous mockery, and outright vicious calumny.  And despite their feverish efforts, they have still failed to destroy their targets.

As Hobbledehoy explained, it appears that their ultimate goal is to transform the Catholic Church into a non-Catholic institution under the absolute control of the laity.  Rather than parishes having lay boards that assist with the financial and material management of the church, their goal is to have the clergy completely subordinate to the lay boards.

When Father Ramolla, whom they first championed, took immediate action and dismissed a member of the clergy whose behavior was a danger to the parishioners and seminarians, he transgressed their fundamental premise by acting as a real Catholic priest rather than as a lowly employee who cannot move without consulting the lay board and obtaining their permission.

As a result, the Toth-gαye-Gebel-Hall troop is feverishly working to destroy Father Ramolla and replace him with other clergy who will compliantly serve as their sacrament-dispensing puppets.

HOW TRAGIC !   At this time more than ever the Catholic Church desperately needs intelligent and energetic soldiers of Christ who pour their hearts and souls into building up the Body of Christ.  Yet here we have intelligent and energetic persons claiming to be Catholic while tearing apart the fragile remnant on earth.

Craig:  Everyone acknowledges your academic abilities and clever writing.  But rather than wasting time on destructive diatribes, which may give you some kind of sadistic pleasure, why not use your gifts to build up the few existing oases of Catholicism?

Jim:  Your first letters to SGG parishioners were beautifully written and inspiring.  How could you sink to such vulgarity and dishonesty on the Lay Pulpit?  That is not the way to persuade people to seek the truth and correct errors.  You can do so much more for God by keeping to the high road.

Janet:  You are a firebrand eager to defend the Church.  In the past, clergy have voraciously devoured your generous resources, and it's understandable that you want to prevent such clerical abuse in the future.  But locking the clergy in an iron cage is not the solution.  You know from experience that there are no perfect priests, and sooner or later they all have failings.  We have to do the best we can to keep them on the path of holiness, by our prayer and gentle reproaches, not by whips and cages.

Father Hall:  You have been taken advantage of and suffered terrible mistreatment by other clergy, and it's understandable that you are inclined to go along with the idea of absolute control by lay boards.  Yet you surely know that the laity are just as weak and fallible as the clergy, so it is preposterous to hand over to them the rightful role of the clergy.  I pray that you will once again turn your efforts to supporting what few chapels we have, even though they may be somewhat flawed.

Readers on the CathInfo forum:  Please let's all pray harder than ever during this time of Lent that the Holy Ghost will lavish His Gifts, especially wisdom, piety and fortitude, on His poor bedraggled little army on earth.  Amen.

It seems you have made a highly accurate assessment of the situation.  When you get betrayed, or feel betrayed (even when in reality you were not betrayed) by those you have looked up to it hurts.  You expect more from them than what you witness.  And when these heroes of the movement are, at the very least, negligent in the extreme when it comes to the souls of children in their school and systematically ignore your complaints for years and years and years there is a tendency to want to lash out.  You get hurt and being tired of all the ignoring of the very real abuses you stand up, valiantly, against them.  But when things do not go according to your plan or as quickly as you like you move from taking a courageous stand against clergy that allow abuse to go on and systematically ignore legitimate complaints to wanting to take vengeance or to make them hurt as much as they hurt you.  

God has a plan for all.  Say your part and then move on and let God deal with it.  I wish I followed this advice in the past and recently.  For example I recently offered an olive branch to someone who hurt me and was then hurt by me.  This was someone who, from afar is thought to be the epitome of what it means to be Catholic, can do no wrong type.  This person refused to have anything to do with me and did not take the opportunity I gave this person to show an ounce of humility or to be the slightest bit gracious i.e. Catholic in their response.  A good Catholic would let it go.  As no one owes me their friendship.  But what did I do.  I responded in kind so I could have the last word and hurt that person as much as they hurt and disappointed (needlessly in my opinion) me.

One or more of the people above could be doing the same thing.  And they have a public forum to do it on.  I used this forum to hold Kathleen Plumb accountable after talking with her privately, but my motives were not entirely (or perhaps not even half-way pure).  I wanted to force her into answering why she only presented one side of the story while banning another good Priest from even being mentioned in her paper.  I believe that motive was good as far as it went.  But I also looked up to her and thought VERY highly of her so when she brought the issue up two weeks later after I just let it go I was blatantly honest with her.  Even then I do not think my motives where impure and I thought I was doing the right thing even though I had pretty much realized she was not going to grant the valid points I made but rather ignore them as she did.  

But then I came here on this site, perhaps with the same motives of Jim and such who did write very well and with the right motives on SGG initially.  Perhaps I wanted to "get her back".  Perhaps I wanted people to start asking her questions about it.  Perhaps, and probably, I wanted to hurt her like she hurt me.  But what I am saying is that is not the Catholic way.  It is good to apologize as I do but a true Catholic Saint in the making does not put himself in a position to where he has to apologize, he does the right thing and avoids the wrong things from the start.  

Lay people using and controlling Priests for their own agendas is nothing new as Tom shows what happened in this country over 100 years ago in the following article:

http://christorchaos.com/BetterLivingThroughVoting.htm

The article is not about secular elections but in the Catholic Church in America before "Vatican '2'".

He does not mention the current circuмstances but I am sure the past sheds light on the present situation with Father Ramolla.  Saying the situation is very sad is an understatement.  There will be many clergy in Hell but the same goes for us, especially people who act like Jim seems to be acting and people who act as I have acted who think we are true Catholics.

Quote from: SS

You are changing the subject. This isn't about me, it's about your apparent contempt for the Traditional clergy ...

How is that apparent ?  I've been critical of specific events of which I have personal knowledge. You make the claim of a general contempt, yet you can't give any examples?

I think your constant bashing of the SGG is a prime example.

And you didn't address anything else I said.

Quote from: SJB

Quote from: SS

You are changing the subject. This isn't about me, it's about your apparent contempt for the Traditional clergy ...

How is that apparent ?  I've been critical of specific events of which I have personal knowledge. You make the claim of a general contempt, yet you can't give any examples?

I think your constant bashing of the SGG is a prime example.

And you didn't address anything else I said.

No, SS, you said the trad clergy in general. There is no evidence of this because I've never done it. Unless you think SGG is the Church, they are just a very, very, very small element in the trad world.

I wasn't addressing everything you said, just this one erroneous statement.

Quote from: Elizabeth

I am still trying to understand the concept of a lay-controlled parish/church.  Was this a stated goal, or was it tossed around in the heat of the moment?

Also, are you sure this is the goal?   It makes sense in a way, but then that would mean that the lay controllers are no longer traditional, wouldn't it?  Is there some established precedent for this in the dusty books?  Or do you believe this is more of a subconscious urge?

What I'm trying to say is, it just doesn't sound possible.  I could see this if these were brand new converts, but these are middle aged souls who have been around the trad movement for years, right?

Elizabeth, in the course of the original "Cloaks and Daggers" thread, Hobbledehoy did explain how the group explicitly explained and promoted the lay-controlled parish/church, especially on RCcorner and Pistrina.

You are absolutely correct that the lay controllers would (at best) be no longer traditional Catholics.  Let's pray that the strange zealous activity of T-G-G-H reflects only an abysmal lack of wisdom and understanding, and that they will soon come to their Catholic senses.

In order for this to be correct, the assumption must be that we are operating under normal circuмstances, which simply isn't the case. The entire reason for the trad resistance is the crisis in the Church and absent this crisis, there is no possible reason for any traditional group to even exist, be they a lay group or a group of clergy.

The SSPX under Archbishop Lefebvre sought to incorporate many independent chapels controlled in a variety of ways under one SSPX banner. In that case the lay-controlled property was surrendered voluntarily to a real organization with a structure. SSPX isn't the Church, but neither are they a one man band corporation with no structure and no rules.

Perrigrine, the idea that a lay-controlled mass center (and I'm speaking of the property) renders the laity as "no longer traditional Catholics" is the sort of stuff one hears from neo-caths regarding the traditionalist resistance. Catholics do not operate outside their diocese.

But guys like me who have been around in the trad movement for a long time have seen what happens in lay-control chapels, and some of us predicted that everything would go south nearly right away, which of course it did. Once you let the lay-control genie out of the bottle, there's no putting it back in.

Been around a while, Canute? I've seen what happens in chapels controlled by one-off corporations controlled by bad clergy, and things go south for the laity, both in loss of faith (especially in young adults) and loss of property.

Lover of Truth: Thank you for the good illustration of our normal human reaction to having been personally deceived, misunderstood, contradicted, wounded, etc.  Even when our primary goal may be to defend the truth and protect others from harm, we often lash out uncharitably against those who have offended.  I'm as guilty as anyone, and apologize to those I may have hurt due to my lack of charity.  It's hard to fight, even for the glory of God, without getting crazed by the taste of blood.

My object in this thread is to expose the campaign to establish a non-Catholic lay controlled church, and plead with the instigators to redirect their talents and energy to building up the Church instead of tearing it down.

To Cupertino and Canute:  You consider (or pretend to consider) the immediate campaign being addressed as an extension of all that occurred prior to the November 2009 blow-up, and you wish to use this thread to continue the unending debate on who-did-what then.  Perhaps you can ask Matthew to re-open the "Ode" thread, since everything was already said there.  Re-hashing it here serves only to derail this thread.

Thank you for this kind note which means alot to me.  I hope you are not dissappointed if no one complies.  It seems hate is an addictive habit and that they will not rest until God puts them to rest.  Misery loves company.  What helps me when seeing people that no better to continually act in a vicious maner and are are as bad as we think they are is that Justice shall be served and vengeance is the Lord's.  We want all to be saved but there is a sense of justice when those who get away with things in this life are punished by the Just and Merciful God in the next.  

LOT:

Justice shall be served and vengeance is the Lord's.

No doubt.

Of course, one always hopes that this means his side wins.

  :kick-can:

Canute:

Number 2 is the main point of disagreement ("What did happen?") along with the question of "How to assign blame?" How to answer either of those will never be resolved on this forum.

Yes, you are probably right, but I'm not so sure assigning blame is needed as much as making at least one of the organizations whole again.  But this is looking more and more like a Humpty-Dumpty ending.