Diabolical Confusion

A View [Not] From The Pew
by Gerry Hunter

From the Desk The Undersecretary for Ecclesiastical Subversion

My Dear Dogwood,

Reading your last dispatch for New Westminster has, once again, left me wondering whether or not any of you young fiends will ever become competent tempters. You report on how the pesky vermin in the seven parishes have turned to a faithful Episcopal follower of the enemy for oversight and direction as if it were some kind of triumphant turn of events. Presumably, you were trying to cover up your own abject failure to overcome these pitiful non-entities and induce them to get with the program. Well, nephew, it didn’t work. Not only have you failed to enforce the “10-10-80” directive, the numbers are utterly appalling. There they are, close to a quarter of the Enemy’s followers in the tradition under attack, and coming together at a rate of 98% overall to take steps to protect their allegiance to Him. Liars, thanks to our efforts, still figure, but the results you are producing are undermining our most accomplished spin-doctors. And you, incompetent twit, don’t even realize the gravity of the situation.

The “10-10-80” principle is a vital part of our plan. The first “10”, as you should have remembered, is the ten percent we favour. The second “10” is the faithful opposition, and the “80” is the complacent remainder who have been induced, by whatever means, to just go along with whatever happens. Thanks to your incompetence, the second “10”, the critical number that must never exceed its decreed level, is now utterly out of control. If you had done the math, and realized that 98% of over 20% makes that figure over twice what it should be, you would not have sent me in such a load of rapturous drivel about chaos and confusion in your last report. Not only are there too many faithful, the complacent are vanishing! Now though it might ordinarily be fine to have them leave the target expression of faithfulness altogether, in our present campaign it leaves the tormenter of the faithful with fewer resources to continue his work, and could cost him credibility. One prominent parish in a well-off neighborhood reports giving is down by 50%. Did you leave that out of your last report in hopes I wouldn’t find out? Well I did, and it all goes to demonstrate that you are making an utter mess in using one of our most potent weapons – confusion, one of the lynchpins of our strategy of attack.

We had taken great pains to set this up. Consideration of their own human feelings and emotions had to take precedence over the truth that the Enemy has so unfairly made known to those miserable bipeds. When the tormenter ratcheted up the browbeating and coercion in 1999, he espoused, “Change is achieved when the "mind of the faithful" - the 'sensus fidelium' - is ready to accept a new practice or belief. The consensus of the faithful does not have to be universal or unanimous for change to happen locally. That is, we don't need to have the agreement of everyone everywhere. But it would need to have the strong support of the local church, that is, the diocese.” Now it was bad enough that all that could be mustered from a rigged synod gathering three years later was 63%. That was about as successful as managing to deal a pair of threes from a stacked deck in a poker game. What, the lowrarchy is eager to know, were you about when you didn’t stop the tormenter’s provincial corporate superior from dismissing the 98% vote of the troublesome parishes as a mere expression of preference? How can we keep up a “sensus fidelium” façade when twice the percentage of the Enemy’s faithful our 10-10-80 plan permits express near unanimity and it gets dismissed as less meaningful than a biased 63% figure? And worse yet, more parishes have come together to contribute to that disgusting display of faithfulness than have asked to have unions blessed. I know the vermin are stupid, but you, infernal nitwit, seem to have started to emulate them.

Another important part of our plan was to have “love” be confused with feelings and emotions to separate it from the Enemy, and make it seem as if it had survived the fall. The tormenter stated, in a Toronto speech in 1996, “Even the creation stories in the Bible suggest the same thing. Eve was given to Adam as a companion, according to Genesis, because it was not good in the eyes of God that Adam should be alone. Companionship, mutual love and comfort, the need to care for and sustain the creation itself as co-stewards with God - these are the first reasons given in the Bible for human sexual identity.” This bit of scripture twisting (notice how it omits the Enemy’s bid to be fruitful and multiply) got the whole center of attention shifted from the Enemy’s purposes in creation to the beings He created. This shift was important to us, but you managed to let the tormenter’s provincial corporate superior blow it. However could you let him say, “Well, the church can’t decide who gets married. The government, the provincial government, controls marriage. And when clergy marry people, they do so as agents of the provincial government, licensed agents.” I know the 80% are just cannon fodder for our purposes, but with one prelate trying to lead them down a certain path in relationships, and his superior saying that even marriage is none of the organization’s business, is it any wonder they are holding onto their money, or melting away?

This confusion is in the process of becoming very serious. It’s confusing the side that we favour. It was fine that the tormenter’s adherents were noticeably absent when the Enemy’s followers of many traditions gathered to pray for the family last February. And it was also fine when the revisionists had nothing to say to discourage the thoroughly secular humanist government types (the ones they seem so eager to emulate) who are out to utterly destroy that dastardly institution, the family. But on both occasions one of the priests from the Enemy’s camp was there to lead the prayers and defend the institution He created. I will expect a full plan from you on what to do about letting the tormenter and those with him come off as human centered and indifferent to the family, while the Enemy’s leaders are becoming visible champions of that dreadful entity. We want confusion that keeps people complacent or cowed. You are giving us confusion that makes the masses disappear. And, dear nephew, you can be sure you will pay for that!

Next there’s your handling of that Northern Prelate’s meddling. First off, you made the tormenter look bad when not only didn’t you stop him from saying that no parishes would leave if he sanctioned blessing those so-called unions, and eight did, and now also when he had proclaimed that no prelate would come to the aid of the Enemy faithful within his territory, and one has. But how do you compensate? By more misdirected confusion, you incompetent twerp! We want to keep considerations on corporate matters, with a false spirituality of self to replace the beliefs the Enemy’s followers have received, and protected for centuries. But you have done nothing to prevent the whole thing from degenerating into a crass, corporate power grab by the revisionists, with no spiritual component to their effort. The faithful point to revealed truth, and the tormenter and the rest of the revisionists get all litigious.

What do you hope to accomplish by only succeeding in having the two sides exchange lawyers’ letters? And such pathetic letters from the revisionists! Let’s start with that Chancellor’s missive. You were so asleep at the switch when you let him write, “Although Bishop Buckle maintains there is what he labels a "critical pastoral situation" in the diocese, his actions serve to exacerbate any difficulties rather than heal,” that you might as well have let him come right out and admit that there was indeed a problem that he had no desire to have solved. And the tormenter’s letter of threat to the faithful clergy was no more helpful. Not only did his statement that “The actions of the Vestry Meeting are therefore null and void” in the parishes further rip apart the “sensus fidelium” façade. It set up those peaky faithful clergy to expose the spiritual bankruptcy of the tormenter’s position in their reply. And your job, impish imbecile, was to make sure the spiritual façade was maintained. It also gave rise to circumstances that let the world see that the dolts in the pews are not just passive followers of these pernicious presbyters, but really have the bit in their teeth. (If the current world situation didn’t leave us with a shortage of reserve tempters, rest assured, you’d be recalled forthwith for correction. If that troublesome fellow Peter had seen you in action, he’d have characterized us as wet alley cats, not roaring lions.)

So then, what are we to do to salvage the mess you’ve made? As badly as you’ve compromised it, we still have to rely on the weapon of confusion. First off, the tormenter usually puts out some kind of seasonal missive when the faithful vermin commemorate those despicable events, the crucifixion and the resurrection. I will hold you personally responsible for making sure that this year, if he produces one, it will be a positive contribution to the recovery of the kind of confusion we can use to our advantage. It’s time to re-erect the spiritual façade. And before you start about his track record on those utterances as an excuse for failure, know that you can still be called upon to answer for those past gaffes, too.

Second, I want to see a comprehensive plan for what to do when the national prelates gather in their house next month. No matter what the tormenter does, whether he slaps down the pesky presbyters and asks for support in protecting corporate norms, or he goes after the meddling Northern Prelate, or something else, you had better come up with something that will ensure that no one perceives him as a mere corporate bully, who is manifesting spiritual bankruptcy. Never mind whether he is or he isn’t, your task is to make sure it looks optically correct. This gathering is mightily confused about what its purpose is already, and we want to ensure that it remains so. We cannot take even the slightest risk that faithfulness will assert itself in that body. There, confusion must reign.

Third, and lastly for now, we’ve heard nothing from anyone, in his own country or beyond, in support of the meddling Northern Prelate since the faithful vermin have accepted his offer of help. You will be responsible for seeing that things stay that way, no matter what. And it’s no good using that requirement as an excuse to just let things drift along, either. Something has to happen, the way that 80% group is dwindling away. His Disgrace the Secretary himself has just torn a strip off of me about the outcome of an analysis session he convened. Let me assure you that if the solidarity of the Enemy’s followers, and the melting away of the indifferent continues, the peril will be extreme. The Enemy may be content with faithful remnants, but He has a history of using them to effect. We, in contrast, want volume in our deliveries to Our Father Below. So do something effective, and make sure that all of our façades remain in place.

And remember. Hell not only expects the impossible; it DEMANDS it, or else.

Your affectionate uncle,

Tapeworm

© 2003 by Gerry Hunter
All rights reserved.