THE TAOS TATLER.

To my loyal readers: your host has spent considerable time and sums recently attempting to move the Tatler blog to a carrier calling itself Bluehost. Unfortunately, all attempts understanding the elaborate and arcane features of Bluehost have resulted in failure and frustration. Your Tatler, therefore has decided this modest blog shall remain with the barebones, but free, spinoff from WordPress it presently occupies.

Sometimes ’tis best to leave well enough alone.

Bickerstaff

P. S. The last dealing with the Bluehost people will be attempting to get money back from them. No doubt the attempt will be unsuccessful, but conscious dictates doing so, even if futile.

Back in 1978, twice-Harvard graduate (College and Business School) John LeBoutillier published a book titled “Harvard Hates America,” in which he encountered, to put it in the author’s own words 40 years later,

a sense of inbred superiority where many people — teachers, administrators and students — thought they were smarter and therefore better than “regular” American people. These people were condescending and often demeaning in their views of traditional Main Street Americans. The thinking was, “I am so damn smart that I am here at Harvard while most Americans can’t hold a candle to my brains.”

50 years later, one may safely claim Harvard still hates America and has been joined by the Ivy League and most institutions of higher learning. The hatred of the left in the academy has spawned a movement by the radical left to end this country as we know it.

Also 50 years later, the scales have at last fallen from Pentagon eyes. For many years it has sponsored training courses for armed forces officers at Harvard and the other Ivies. Lately that has meant, according to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, officers being “Harvardized,” returning from their studies at Harvard, et al., spouting left-wing, anti-American rhetoric, making them unsuitable for combat.

Not quite the Manchurian Candidate, but give these America haters the time and latitude and they will succeed. The Pentagon is certainly a choice target of our internal enemies and it was wise to ax these programs, though it’s a pity it wasn’t done years ago, after LeBoutillier’s Harvard Hates America was published. Unfortunately, no one in the Pentagon possessed the backbone or desire to do it until now. Thank you, Mr Secretary.

Thanks to GR

From the Vatican News:

St. John Henry Newman inscribed in General Roman Calendar St. John Henry Newman inscribed in General Roman Calandar

Pope Leo XIV has inscribed St. John Henry Newman, Doctor of the Church, in the General Roman Calendar, with his optional memorial being on October 9, announced the Dicastery of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in a decree released on Tuesday, February 3.

The 19th-century English-born former Anglican priest, who converted to Catholicism and then became a Cardinal, was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 and canonized by Pope Francis in 2019.

Read it all here.

When reading the item above, this blogger wondered if there might be a patron saint of Catholic converts and was surprised, at first, to learn there is none. Further thought revealed however that a patron saint for converts is unnecessary, as they do only what the Church prays all non-Catholic Christians will do, though for some it is not easy and others, regrettably, impossible.

Making the decision to embrace the full Catholic faith is a decision only the individual can make, by divine inspiration and his free will alone. It cannot be forced upon him. Just the same, if St John Henry Newman cannot be the convert’s patron saint, he should well serve as inspiration to those considering whether or not to make the most important decision of their lives.

Above you see the Episcopal Church of the Resurrection in East 74th Street. Were someone to step into that church during the mass, the first thing he might notice would be real English being spoken, as compared with any Catholic church in the US. Alas, Resurrection is only a catholic church, not a Catholic church. Were it to be the latter, paradoxically, the mass would be celebrated in the dull, uninspired English resulting from the Vatican II reforms [sic] of 1962, along with other dumbing-downs in our Holy Mass, i.e, the celebrants facing the wrong way, the removal of altar rails, and the ghastly, pop-like music, to name but a few.

The Church of the Resurrection still uses the beautiful prose of the Book of Common Prayer, written by the gifted heretic, Thomas Cranmer, using Shakespeare’s English, and adopted by the Church of England and later, the Episcopal Church.

I was a parishioner at Resurrection until one day at mass I reluctantly decided, despite the superior celebrations of it at Resurrection, our Lord could only be found in the Holy Catholic Church. My conversion was quite a few years ago, but I do not regret it. It was the only choice, Deo gratias.

A priest friend who, like your Tatler, is a convert from the Episcopal Church, was allegedly asked shortly after embracing the full faith if there was anything he missed from his former church. His prompt response: “the mass in English.”

If anyone were to ask your Tatler similarly, the equally prompt response would be, “music of the mass,” for it is hardly a secret how dreadful the music is in most Catholic churches (though not all of them).

There are three Catholic churches in the small town of Taos. It may be safely said, every Sunday the three compete in a tight race to the bottom, such the cacophony is inflicted on the faithful. Silence would be sweet music to the ears of this convert.

What a pity most Episcopal churches these days, while offering decent music offer little else, save bad theology rife with political correctness.

Addendum: some real church music here.

From NPR  (where else?)

Bishop Rob Hirschfeld [image below] was one of several community and faith leaders gathered in Concord, N.H., for a vigil for Renee Macklin Good just days after she was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis.

“I’ve asked [clergy] to get their affairs in order to make sure they have their wills written,” he said, “because it may be that now is no longer the time for statements, but for us with our bodies to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable.”

Those of a certain age may remember a far different Episcopal Church, which came to being as an offshoot of the Church of England. When this blogger was a boy the Episcopal Church was the society church. The church of presidents and captains of industry. The church to which half the signers of the Declaration of Independence belonged. The church once described by a wit as “the Republican party at prayer.”

Those days are long gone. The Episcopal Church over the last 50 years has mutated into a shallow political institution that embraces every left-wing cause that sprouts up, particularly those that have found favor with the media and well-placed members of the radical left. It should therefore come as no surprise the church’s membership has dropped every one of those last fifty years and continues to drop.

NPR, however, is taken in by dolts like the Right Reverend Hirschfeld, who personifies the contemporary Episcopalian when, with exquisite self-importance, urges on his colleagues the proposperous suggestion they”write their wills,” in the expectation of their coming martyrdom. It’s not at all a stretch to imagine those idiots seeing themselves as 21st century equivalents of the early Christian martyrs. Regardless their motives though, they exemplify the elitist institution claiming to be church where fewer than one percent of American church goers belong.

Candidate for martyrdom and canonization, the future S. Robertus Cervimontanus.

Addendum:

On this post it should have been mentioned (though the post shall remain unchanged) that the Episcopal Church has, even in this present day, clerics that are pious and godly, as well the parishioners to whom they preach. Your Tatler can attest to that because he was a parishioner at some of those churches before swimming the Tiber. The further back in time, the more Episcopalians, lay and clergy, you  find that fit the description immediately above.

_________

h/t Prof. William J Tighe

The posting above was prompted by this story.

House, feds probe to unravel mystery of ‘Squad’ Rep. Ilhan Omar’s skyrocketing wealth: ‘It’s not possible’

The House Oversight Committee is probing “Squad” Rep. Ilhan Omar’s skyrocketing family wealth after a $9 billion Somali social services fraud scandal exploded in her district, The Post has learned.

“We are investigating all politicians potentially connected to any of this [fraud] in Minnesota. You can read between the lines,” said a law enforcement source.

Unlike the Biden administration, which took no apparent action, Team Trump is “on top of it,” the source said.

The most galling thing about Omar’s sudden wealth is it most probably came from we the people, the taxpayers. Investment frauds are bad enough, but their victims at least decide for themselves whether or not to risk their capital. Tax payers have no say in what’s done with their dollars.

Which is why scoundrels like Omar are so loathsome. Go get him, Mr President.

The Vatican Apostolic Library, long seen as the center of Catholic scholarship and biblical study, now echoes with the alien cadence of the Islamic call to prayer. Father Don Giacomo Cardinali, vice prefect of the library, casually announced a recent decision that chills the soul of every faithful Christian. The Vatican has opened a dedicated prayer room for Muslims within its own walls.

Let that sink in.

Indeed, let that sink in. Our Holy Catholic Church would be better off if she stopped accommodating other religions, many of which hardly return the favor, with some having a history of behavior toward our Church that is the antithesis of accommodation.

If Muslims wish to pray at the Vatican, let them be directed to a nearby mosque. Here’s one in walking distance.

Thanks to WJT

A friend writes:

I look forward to the provision of a Rosary space in Mecca.  

This breathtakingly naive gesture of the Holy See is an abject surrender of the Faith, the sort of useful idiocy that must quietly amuse astute Muslims.  When the Saracens tried to take possession of Rome in 846, at least it was not at the invitation of Pope Sergius II.  Various unconvincing attempts to explain away the Papal kissing of the Quran in 1999 seem to be getting recycled for this latest gesture. So far, such gestures have not put the mullahs in a happier frame of mind about the Holy Trinity.