http://www.catholic.com/newsletters/kke_060919.aspA DECLINE AT THE OTHER END OF THE SPECTRUM
He may be "on the road," but he will not be mistaken for Charles Kuralt.
Thomas Droleskey, his wife, and their four-year-old daughter "now live in their motor home" as he "travels the nation to give lectures in behalf of the Social Reign of Christ the King and Mary our Queen." It was not always so.
Once a political activist, Droleskey ran for lieutenant governor of New York on the Right to Life Party ticket in 1986. In 1998 he opposed Sen. Alfonse D'Amato in the Republic Party primary and received 37 percent of the vote. In between he was active in other political races.
From 1992 to 2000 Droleskey wrote for "The Wanderer," the most conservative of the four nationally-circulated weekly Catholic newspapers. From 2001 to 2003 he was a contributor to "Latin Mass" magazine.
During most of these years he worked as an adjunct professor of political science at Long Island University. As a side venture he produced a small-circulation newsletter called "Christ or Chaos." It was replaced in 2004 by a web site of the same name:
www.christorchaos.com.
Along the way, Droleskey also replaced his opinions.
When he ran for political office he was styled a political conservative. When he wrote for "The Wanderer," he was a religious conservative. By the time he wrote for "Latin Mass," he was a Traditionalist Catholic. Later, when he wrote for "The Remnant" and "Catholic Family News," he was identified with their more strident form of Traditionalism. He has left all that behind.
Now he writes for nobody except the few who visit his web site, where he posts, every day or two, essays of yawning length. Two weeks ago, for example, he uploaded six articles totaling 66,000 words--enough text to flesh out a book of 240 pages.
His September 9 essay was about "Joseph Ratzinger." Droleskey refuses to call him "Pope Benedict" because he doesn't believe that he is a pope. To Droleskey, who recently revealed himself to be a sedevacantist, the last real pope apparently was Pius XII, who died in 1958. (Droleskey was six at the time.)
Droleskey insists that "Joseph Ratzinger is a Modernist. He has been a Modernist throughout his entire priesthood. ... Joseph Ratzinger is an enemy of the good of souls. ... An enemy of the good of souls is an enemy of God Himself." This is why Benedict XVI should not be considered a pope at all, says Droleskey, and this is why Droleskey now is on the fringe of the fringe.
It is not clear how he makes a living. He no longer teaches. He no longer writes for periodicals that once might have paid him (very modest) stipends. For two years he promoted his Christ the King College, but it never got off the ground. First it was going to be a real brick-and-mortar school, then it was reduced to a web-based distance-learning school, and then, last July, it was closed down for a lack of students.
The main page of Droleskey's web site leads off with an appeal printed in big, red letters: "We still need donations. Please make one if you support this site and your means permit you to do so. Oh, pretty please, we really do need more than a little bit of help right now!" He can't be getting much support this way.
Droleskey tours the country in his motor home, giving lectures. He was scheduled to speak two Sundays ago at a sedevacantist church in Ohio. Over the next month he is scheduled speak at five other venues of the same stripe. In none of them can he hope to turn up a large crowd. There are not many Traditionalist Catholics in America (they may not constitute even one percent of the Catholic population), and there are far fewer sedevacantists, just a few thousand in all. It is for this latter group that Droleskey now writes and speaks.
Once he was able to get the attention of a third of New York's Republican voters. Now he struggles to get anyone's attention. It is not likely that many of those voters would recognize the candidate of 1998 in the itinerant essayist of 2006. What happened?
It's hard for me to say, not knowing Droleskey and having read only a sampling of his essays. In them there may be clues, perhaps even a well-hidden full explanation--though I doubt it. Sometimes all we can say is that whatever happened happened. A man changes his mind, changes his allegiances, changes even his faith (though he may think he has stood firm while all else around him has been changing).
Droleskey is a bright man. His having taught at a college shows that he has intellectual skills. Although his current writing suffers from logorrhea, I recollect thinking well of his long-ago articles in "The Wanderer." He has the courage of his convictions, as shown by his having devoted countless hours to political campaigns that had not even the remotest chance of success.
Some readers will ask, "If Droleskey is so marginal and can influence so few, why bring him up? Why not ignore him?" Partly because his is not a unique case--other people, also bright and diligent, have taken similar journeys--and partly because I can't help but feel for a person who so clearly wants to take the right path and who so clearly has missed it.
In my years in Catholic apologetics I have known or been aware of more than a handful of talented people who squandered their talents by becoming more Catholic than the pope. Droleskey is not the only one and is not the best-known one. I have mentioned others in earlier E-Letters, and I have mentioned them--and I mention Droleskey now--because orthodox Catholics are far more likely to be swayed by arguments made by people at that end of the spectrum than by people at Joan Chittister's end.
Topic: Karl Keating on Droleskey (Read 962 times)