The National Catholic Register portal reports that the conciliar auxiliary “bishop” of Albany, Mark O’Connell, misplaced his episcopal ring — a symbol of his purported office — only to discover it six weeks later at the bottom of a bag of Utz potato chips, retrieved by a fellow “priest” rummaging for a snack. The “bishop” had spent weeks wearing an unidentified ring from the diocesan archives, joking about St. Anthony’s failure to find his golf balls, and planning a trip to Rome to commission a replacement. The article presents this farce as an uplifting human-interest story, concluding with the flippant spiritual lesson to “keep your prayers to St. Anthony sincere — and always, always check the bottom of the chip bag.” This grotesque trivialization of the sacred episcopacy, recounted with bureaucratic levity by the neo-church’s own media, exposes the utter evaporation of the supernatural sense and the reduction of the hierarchical priesthood to a naturalistic administrative function.
The Profanation of the Episcopal Sign: Signum Fidei Reduced to Junk Jewelry
The article treats the episcopal ring — the seal of fidelity to the Church, the symbol of the bishop’s nuptial bond with his diocese — as a mere personalized accessory, a “deeply personal masterpiece” valued for its goldsmith craftsmanship, its inscription (Invenimus Messiam), and its sentimental origin. Nowhere is there a whisper of its theological gravity: the ring signifies the bishop’s participation in the apostolic mandate to guard the deposit of faith, to sanctify, teach, and govern in persona Christi Capitis. Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas, teaches that Christ’s kingship demands public veneration and obedience from rulers and citizens alike, for “His reign encompasses not only Catholic nations… but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ”. A true bishop bears the ring as a sign of this authority, ex opera operato, not as a bauble to be lost in a pantry.
The conciliar “bishop” O’Connell admits he “cooks his own dinner” and washes his hands in “soapy dishwater” — a domestic vignette that underscores the secularization of the clerical state. The Syllabus of Errors (Pius IX, 1864) condemns the proposition that “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (Error 55) and that “The civil government… has a right to an indirect negative power over religious affairs” (Error 41). But here we see a deeper separation: the separation of the sacred minister from his sacred character, the reduction of the ordo to a lifestyle. The ring slips off in the kitchen sink because the man wearing it no longer lives in the sacrarium of his office but in the mundane world of snack bags and dish soap.
The Linguistic Level: Bureaucratic Banalization of the Sacred
The Register’s prose is studiously lightweight: “quiet panic,” “Cracker Jack ‘Miracle’,” “Ghost of Bishops Past,” “brand-new spiritual discipline.” The scare quotes around “Miracle” betray the author’s own incredulity; the phrase “spiritual discipline” applied to checking a chip bag is blasphemous irony. The “bishop” himself “chuckles” about wearing a dead predecessor’s ring — an unidentified ring, at that — for six weeks. Unidentified. He does not know whose signum he bore. This is not pastoral humor; it is sacrilegious indifference. The ring is not a costume prop. Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code (cited in the Defense of Sedevacantism file) declares that an office becomes vacant ipso facto by “public defection from the Catholic faith.” While O’Connell’s loss of the ring is not canonical defection, it is a signum of the defection already consummated by the conciliar sect: the loss of the sensus catholicus regarding the sacred hierarchy.
The “bishop” jokes that St. Anthony “can’t find everything because he can’t find my golf ball.” This is not the language of a successor of the Apostles; it is the language of a functionary in a paramasonic structure. St. Pius X, in Lamentabili Sane Exitu, condemns the Modernist error that “Faith, as assent of the mind, is ultimately based on a sum of probabilities” (Prop. 25) and that “The dogmas of faith should be understood according to their practical function, i.e., as binding in action, rather than as principles of belief” (Prop. 26). O’Connell’s quip reduces the intercession of saints to a probabilistic utility, a celestial lost-and-found service — and even that fails for golf balls. The supernatural order is mocked by its own putative ministers.
The Theological Level: The Empty See and the Invalid Sign
From the perspective of integral Catholic theology, the critical fact is not the lost ring but the invalidity of the consecration that bestowed it. The Defense of Sedevacantism file establishes, via Bellarmine and Canon 188.4, that a manifest heretic ipso facto loses all jurisdiction and cannot hold office. The conciliar “bishops” are consecrated in the novel 1968 rite of Paul VI — a rite stripped of the essential form and intention for the transmission of the fullness of the priesthood, as demonstrated by Archbishop Lefebvre’s own doubts and the subsequent dubia of faithful theologians. Even if the rite were valid, the “bishops” publicly profess the heresies of Vatican II: religious liberty, false ecumenism, collegiality subverting papal primacy, the new ecclesiology of Lumen Gentium. By Bellarmine’s principle — “A manifest heretic cannot be Pope… a non-Christian in no way can be Pope… he cannot be the head of something of which he is not a member” — they are not members of the Catholic Church, therefore they cannot be its bishops.
Thus the ring O’Connell lost was never a true episcopal ring. It was a theatrical prop in a neo-church pageant. The “nine rings” in the Albany archives, worn by dead conciliar “bishops,” are equally devoid of sacramental reality. They are relics of a schism within a schism, as the framework identifies the Lefebvrian and indult structures. O’Connell wearing an “unidentified bishop’s ring” for six weeks is the perfect icon of the conciliar sect: anonymous, interchangeable, untethered from apostolic succession, a persona ficta rotating through a bureaucratic office.
The Symptomatic Level: The Neo-Church as Naturalistic NGO
The article’s framing — “inspire and uplift,” “human-interest story,” the managing editor’s bio highlighting “EWTN radio’s Morning Glory” and a family in New Jersey — reveals the neo-church’s true nature: a religious NGO producing content for donor retention. The Syllabus condemns the error that “The teaching of the Catholic Church is hostile to the well-being and interests of society” (Error 40) and that “Catholics may approve of the system of educating youth unconnected with Catholic faith… primarily the ends of earthly social life” (Error 48). The Register’s story is pure earthly social life: a lost ring, a snack bag, a chuckle, a trip to Rome for shopping. There is zero reference to the Cross, to sin, to grace, to the Four Last Things, to the Missa propitiatoria, to the regnum Christi.
Pius XI in Quas Primas instituted the Feast of Christ the King precisely to combat “the secularism of our times, so-called laicism… the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations”. He warned that “when God and Jesus Christ were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” The Albany “bishop” and his Register chroniclers have removed Christ from the very symbol of his vicarious authority. The ring is not a sign of Christ the King; it is a “golden seal of office” made by a friend’s father in Italy, inscribed with a personal motto. Invenimus Messiam — “We have found the Messiah” — but the Messiah is absent from this narrative. Only the chip bag remains.
The Masonic Signature: Trivialization as Ritual Mockery
The False Fatima Apparitions file details the Masonic operation of “psychological operations against the Church,” including “symbolism of dates” and “mass optical manipulation.” While the Albany incident is not Fatima, it bears the same signature: the ridiculization of the sacred. A “bishop” loses his ring in a bag of Utz potato chips — a mass-produced, branded snack — and it is found by a “priest” rummaging for stale chips. The “miracle” is a Cracker Jack prize. The “spiritual discipline” is checking the bag. This is liturgia daemoniaca: the inversion of the sacred, the substitution of the profane for the holy, the reduction of the mysterium tremendum to a viral anecdote.
The “bishop” plans a trip to Rome to “buy a new ring… perhaps the same one.” Rome — the See of Peter, occupied by the usurper “Leo XIV” (Robert Prevost) — becomes a shopping destination for replacement regalia. The Cum ex Apostolatus Officio of Paul IV, cited in the Defense of Sedevacantism, declares that a heretic’s elevation is “null, void, and of no effect” even if “uncontested and by the unanimous assent of all the Cardinals.” The conciliar “bishops” are null; their rings are null; their “dioceses” are fictions. The Albany “bishop” is a layman in a purple shirt, playing dress-up in a paramasonic theater, and the Register applauds the show.
Conclusion: Ichabod — The Glory Has Departed
The Prophet Samuel’s mother named her son Ichabod — “The glory has departed from Israel” — when the Ark was captured (1 Sam 4:21). The episcopal ring is the Ark’s miniature: the sign of the covenant, the pledge of fidelity, the seal of the Holy Spirit. When a “bishop” loses it in a potato chip bag and the neo-church’s media celebrates the recovery as a feel-good story, Ichabod is written on the walls of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Albany. The true Church, ecclesia militans, endures in the catacombs of Tradition, where bishops (validly consecrated in the pre-1968 rite, holding the integral faith) guard their rings as they guard the deposit of faith — non in saccis patatarum, sed in corde (not in chip bags, but in the heart). The conciliar sect has lost the ring because it has lost the faith. Quidam autem dixerunt: “Non est hic Deus.” (Some said: “God is not here.”) The chip bag testifies: Verum est.
Source:
The Bishop of Albany, His Missing Ring, and a Bag of Potato Chips (ncregister.com)
Date: 15.07.2026