NOTE: This is one of a continuing series of blogs on the current situation in our West Chester, Ohio parish.
THE GERMAN prof at my old diocesan seminary often helped our small group of conservative seminarians to resist the schemes of the modernist majority. Several times when we went to him for advice, he pointed out that our many enemies were not acting separately, but all coordinating their efforts towards the same end: our demise.
And he’d warn us in German: Diese’ alles hängt zusammen — it all goes together.
This particular phrase came to mind in connection with the campaign of calumnies, lies and distortions that has been conducted against our church and school over the past year.
The first sorties were launched with a round-robin e-mail begun on Christmas Eve by the Prophet of the Last Days (“PLD”). (See my previous post, “School Dazed.”)
The charges got wilder and wilder, as disgruntled ex-parishioners and various Internet cranks piled on. PLD eventually found a permanent home for this virtual unreality circus on the web site of a man who believed that Cardinal Siri of Genoa had secretly been the Church’s real pope.
By summer 2009, attacking St. Gertrude the Great (our church, school, priests, principal, students, etc.) — and with the vilest calumnies, lies and distortions possible — had become a major Internet industry.
A few of the attackers tried to disassociate their calumnies from the viler sliming going on, but (as Sergeant Friday used to say on Dragnet), “Put ‘em in a bag, shake ‘em up, and they all come out the same.”
Initially in Fall 2009, the staff members here at St. Gertrude the Great who were agitating for various changes in our school (Fr. Ramolla, Bernard Hall, and one other teacher) likewise took pains to disassociate themselves from the slimier stuff that PLD and company were spreading around.
When we discovered their double game and fired them, however, they showed their true colors at once.
Mr. Hall now operates on Fr. Ramolla’s behalf an anti-St. Gertrude’s attack site that recycles most of the calumnies of PLD and company. This site is now separate from Fr. Ramolla’s mission web-site —lest those lay followers of his with more sensitive consciences, no doubt, become too revolted by the claims made on his behalf.
But Fr. Ramolla’s lay followers should not be deceived. It matters not which lies on the anti-SGG menu you choose to believe or disbelieve. They are all of a piece, and all serve one goal: To destroy the church that you loved.
It all goes together.