The Tapeworm Letters, #8

“My dear Hollywood,

• The draft of your Common Ground homily is satisfactory in some respects, but quite obtuse in others. Your rhetoric is by and large much too timid - I chalk that up to your inexperience as a priest, while presuming that it does not spring from any lingering guilt!

• You see, dear boy, the secret to our success is boldness. Our orthodox enemies have grown smug, fat and lazy from constantly wrapping themselves in the mantle of tradition, or what is left of it, and so are easily outmaneuvered and outwitted. While they are lulling themselves into utter torpor reciting their Offices and Rosaries, we, the Swamp Foxes of the Church, are fully awake, always devising the next subversive scheme, the next power grab, the next “liturgical time bomb” (as one of our enemies put it so well) with which to establish our Counter-Tradition. Audentes fortuna iuvat!

• Yet, if we face facts honestly (a scenario which, ordinarily, we should avoid like the plague), we must admit that all our efforts to date have produced only isolated bits and pieces of our new mansion. Bernardin, Pilarczyk, Mahony, Weakland, de Chardin, Kung, Rahner, McBrien, Chittister – they and countless more valiant warriors have given us a wall, a ceiling, a room…but who has laid the cornerstone of Counter-Tradition? Even Ratzinger has failed us! Here is a man who, as a Prince of the Church, gave us the Counter-Syllabus, but did he follow up with the cornerstone? No! He quietly tip-toed back into the camp of the enemy! He did the same thing when he ascended to the Throne. Look at his first appointments: Levada, Neiderauer, Wuerl – a perfect score! But then what? Like a pendulum, he swings back into orthodoxy. We cannot count on him.

• My young apprentice, we don’t need someone who swings both ways - we need our cornerstone. And that, I say without hesitation, is your vocation!

• Lest you, in your relative innocence, fail to grasp the true scope and enormity of this task, let me clarify what I mean by the cornerstone. I mean that our position must be formulated so that it can be inserted into the teachings of the Magisterium, be pronounced ex cathedra, appear in the next edition of the Cathechism! No more being thwarted by “pastoral” Councils, or “theological speculations,” or “ethical nuancing,” or the like. If our way of life is sacred, if the Word become flesh is an affirmation of our bodies and our instincts, then must it not become irrevocably enshrined in the sacred deposit of faith?

• While we are temporarily indulging ourselves in this dangerous scenario of facing facts honestly, I now admit one more thing: I have written you an entire missive yet failed to offer a single specific comment on your draft! I hope that my abysmal performance serves as a lesson to you – but there is still something important you may take away from my failings. That is, the passion with which I have addressed this subject should have infected you and inspired you to imitate it, to carry it forward, to stand upon it and elaborate.

• This passion is the very thing your homily is missing, for if you are not a passionate revolutionary, then a successful revolutionary you shall not be.

Your affectionate Shepherd TAPEWORM”

• MISCELLANEA CATHOLICA

+We already knew your true colors, Father Thomas Reese. No need to remind us of your infidelity.

+Now that the media kangaroo court has tried and convicted SSPX Bishop Williamson and our Holy Father, has anyone been wondering why the Jews (or more accurately, the Zionists) have been acting like Muslims? Is this hair-trigger hysteria over the Holocaust now the Zionists’ equivalent of perceived slights against the Prophet Mohammed?

+Speaking of Zionists, our readers may be interested in this website: http://jewsagainstzionism.com/. In fact, they may be VERY interested in it...

+We applaud and support Archbishop Pilarczyk in his criticism of the University of Cincinnati’s descent-into-the-gutter program known as “Sexploration.” However, we should point out, Your Excellency, that it is difficult to speak with authority when you have a long and disturbing history of abusing, misusing, or failing to use that authority on this very subject – in your own back yard.

• MISCELLANEA AMERICANA

+Frank Sinatra +Der Bingle +Lena Horne +Judy Garland +Tuxedo Junction +Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B