Some of you managed to squeeze out polite interest in perhaps seeing more entries from the private diary of His Excellency Most Reverend F. Atticus (“Fatty”) McButterpants. You are kind.
Keep in mind that I have no idea when they might show up. When they do there is the challenge of transcribing his crabbed and rather puerile handwriting. Pages are photographed by the mole. Sometimes there are gaps in the dates. You get the idea.
Anyway, here is one that came in a while back. It’s a little dated but nevertheless instructive.
It helps to know that “Fr. Tommy” is Fatty’s long-suffering, trad-ish-leaning priest secretary, driver, factotum who is on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
June 3rd 2022
Dear Diary,
To relieve the stress of all this Vos Estees thing dumped on me by my predecessor, good ol’ “Feel The Byrne”, I ordained two guys as transitional deacons. Luis and Butch are great guys. They could be good priests if Luis can ever learn enough English, and Butch lasts at least five years before he dies. He’s old enough to be my dad, damn it.
Fr. Tommy’s sweet grandma, who keeps sewing those weird vestments for him (black ones?), came up to me after the ordination and whispered to me something like, “you need some wimpies.” I had no idea what she was talking about. Maybe hamburgers? Fr. Tommy said she said “vim pay”. He showed me a picture of a “vim pay” on his phone and tried to explain what they were for but I wasn’t really listening. They look like some kind of thing people can throw what they pay into these instead of into those collection baskets. “vim pay” like pay pal?
Follow up….
July 17th 2022
Tommy’s gran sent me two wimpies. They are like long towels. My coat of arms are on them. Why? I don’t know. Nice of her to do all that work. I hope to god she doesn’t do it again. We have plenty of collection baskets. I unfolded them and left them hanging across my desk for a few minutes while I went to find Sr. Randi, and dang it if Chester didn’t drag them off and tear them to shreds in record time. He peed on them too, of course. So much for that.
In our traditional Roman calendar, Sunday is Quinquagesima, Latin for the symbolic “Fiftieth” day before Easter. This is one of the pre-Lenten Sundays which prepare us for the discipline of Lent.
The Pro Chess League is fired up.
Francisco12 on Card. Koch, Prefect for Christian Unity, makes observations about the SSPX: “Thank you for sharing this, Father. An intriguing interview. I, too, would love to see such a dialogue take place.…”
