THE TAOS TATLER.

[A note from your Tatler: Illness and competing interests have kept this blogger away from his cell phone keypad (yes, that is what all this nonsense has been written on for years). Recovery, finding more time, and the urgings of loyal readers, has encouraged me to take another crack at it. To ease my way back, this posting shall have nothing to do with religion or politics, but even when those subjects return (be assured, they will), there will be occasional pieces on a subject dear to this blogger, music–real music that is, not the ear-shattering popular stuff that has virtually supplanted beauty in that art].

Sir Clifford Curzon, 1907-1982

One of the great pianists, who nevertheless is unknown to a surprisingly large number of serious music lovers, was Sir Clifford Curzon (1907-82). I discovered him years ago, when doing battle with the Liszt Sonata (a battle decisively lost). I wanted to hear how a real pianist played the work and my favorite record store in Boston had only one recording of it, Curzon’s, which was the first time I had ever heard of him. After listening to only a few minutes of Sir Clifford playing that monster opus,  I was bowled over, not only by the pianist’s artistry playing a work that can sound like exhibitionist trash to those lacking it, but also his staggering technique, equal or greater than many other well-known pianists, who perhaps, owing to Curzon’s unassuming appearance and manner, overshadowed him.

A life long Decca artist, the company has re-released and remastered Curzon’s complete recordings, including some never released because, owing to the artist’s severe self-judgement, declined to approve them. Decca was wise after Curzon’s death to go ahead and release them anyway. Whatever the artist’s objections were, I cannot hear them, so I certainly doubt the critics can.

If you are a serious lover of the piano repertoire, give the recordings of Clifford Curzon a hearing. You will be well impressed.

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apa­thy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property—either as a child, a wife, or a concubine—must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

Churchill,W.,The River War, Vol. I, pp. 248-49, 1899

Remembering The New Yorker of old’s droll headline to a spacer filler with amusing items from Blighty, There will always be an England, read below the disturbing item suggesting that soon there will  no more be an England. The item is taken from Gavin Ashenden’s journal New English Catholic and is well worth reading in its entirety. It gives us a hair raising account of results from the recent elections in Britain.

Here’s a number that should shock us all in its implications. It spells the end of the shape of British politics as we have known it.

In 2019, 86% of British Muslims voted Labour. This week, it was reduced to 33%.

This is not a swing, it’s a collapse. Actually, it’s a veto.

Indeed it is, and it gets worse. Continuing:

In 2019, 86% of British Muslims voted Labour. This week, it was reduced to 33% . . . and the votes didn’t go to Reform. They went to pro-Gaza independents — that’s another name for Muslim candidates, euphemistically rebranded. They also went to the Greens because there’s a red-green alliance with them, and to a network of Muslim community candidates.

And they have one message for every mainstream party in Britain:

Cross us as Muslims and we, the Muslim voters, can and will remove you.

Labor is on the way out and is being replaced by Islam at an alarming pace, and Ashenden reminds us, “Hitler was able to take power in democratic Germany with just 12% of the popular vote being committed Nazis.” Unless non-Islamic voters (there are too few real Christians in Britain today to matter) by organizing, rallying, and campaigning against these ill-liberal newcomers, Britain is doomed to become the first Islamic state in Europe since the Emirate of Granada in southern Iberia was defeated by forces of Catholic Isabella and Ferdinand; this in the signal and ironic year of 1492.

May God save the King

Special and grateful thanks to Professor William Tighe and Fr George Rutler, both of whom over the uears have provided much valuable fodder for this blog.

Wherever the Mohammedans have had complete sway, wherever the Christians have been unable to resist them by the sword, Christianity has ultimately disappeared. From the hammer of Charles Martel to the sword of Sobieski, Christianity owed its safety in Europe to the fact that it was able to show that it could and would fight [italics added].

Theodore Roosevelt; Fear God and, Take Your Own Part, 1916

While there may not have been a great deal of Muslim hegemony in the States during the 23rd president’s administration, there was plenty of it abroad, enough to involve US forces, particularly in the Philippines, to which the president refers.

Roosevelt was concerned enough about Muslim infiltration in the United States, that in his Immigration Control Act of 2007, which he had sponsored and signed, he included expanded laws prohibiting polygamy and he made specific references to the restriction of Muslim immigration to the US.

The most prescient words in President Roosevelt’s statement above is his indirect prediction of what is now occuring in out in Western Europe. The European states, by not fighting the influx of Muslims, in other words, contradicting what President Roosevelt had cited them for in 1916, are seeing what he had seen in other countries that had chosen not to counter the Muslim influx: the continuing increase in their numbers. In time, Western European states will come to regret their liberal stances on immigration for all.

History shows whenever Islam becomes the predominant religion in a state, competing religions like Christianity and Judaism are banned and forced out, their adherents forced  by the sword, or to convert.  Additionally, the freedoms for which we take for granted will be restricted or banned entirely.

Theodore Roosevelt had it right 110 years ago. We had best start heeding his words again soon.

Thanks to Lorin Hart

Your Tatler played the Mass Sunday and is relieved to report I still have a pulse and am relatively conscious. In fact, I now look forward to the next engagement on so-called “Ascension Sunday.” One handicap that quickly revealed itself was a parishioner nearby who, with the best intentions, sang loudly, boldly, and was so tone deaf she could not come within a country mile of the notes I played. The solution was simple: turn the volume up to the highest setting on the electronic instrument I was playing and drown her out. (Surprisingly, there is no pipe organ in this ancient church, though there might have been in the past, so I bought a small portable instrument for the church that has a few “stops” sounding surprisingly like the real thing.)

I did hear a few grumblings about there being no Spanish hymns, but happily, our new young pastor (this is his first church) is adamant there be no Spanish hymns at the 10 am mass; the 8 am mass is for the Spanish parishioners (who nonetheless are all fluent in English), so I do have support from the top.

I played a little Bach before the procession and several people told me afterward how much they enjoyed it. Thus, in my own little way, I am helping to improve how we offer our praise to Almight God. There is no expressing how gratifying that is, Deo Gratias.

Breitbart reports Brandon Gill (R-TX) grilled abortion advocate and scholar* Jessica Waters on her “favorite method” of abortion, during a Thursday hearing on Capitol Hill.” Oddly enough for such an abortion enthusiast, Miss Gill declined to answer all questions put to her by Congressman Gill. Undeterred, Congressman Gill pressed on, identifying the oft most methods of liquidating fetuses and explaining in minute detail how it is accomplished.

To this blogger, the simplest reason Professor Waters declined to respond to Congressman Gill’s queries is that she knew she was trapped, with no way out. Nothing she said could make her look good and, to quote the old adage, not by Franklin, Lincoln or Twain, but containing those still wise words: it’s better to remain silent and appear the fool than to speak and remove any doubt.

In Prof. Waters’s case, however, she appears far less a  fool than an active supporter of cold blooded murder.

*Scholar in Residence, American University Washington College of Law

***

Thanks to Fr Rutler

George Ault: Bright Light at Russell’s Corners

The apt pairing above is not this blogger’s creation, rather a good friend of his, who posted it on his Facebook page, whence I cribbed it (with permission). Little needs to be said of the two individual masterpieces, save perhaps their greatness permits a synergistic relationship that creates a third work of stunning appropriateness.

E. E. Cumming’s minimalistic, yet intense devotion to Christ, nonetheless deeply moves this traditionalist Catholic. George Ault’s paintings may appear only representational at first (or “precisionist,” as a critic might say with a hint of derision), yet becomes fuller, richer and rewarding the longer one peers at it and others by the artist. Ault, in this blogger’s eyes, is one of the greats who only now, after his death, is getting the attention he deserves.

I congratulate the creator of the third work of art.

Thanks to James Uebbing

The following was originally in an email from Fr George Rutler, and is posted below in its entirety.

The mutilation of the crucifix with a sledgehammer has elicited apologies, replacement, and punishment of the offenders by the Israeli government. The selective outrage over this by armchair critics of Israel, has no equal in the virtual silence of so many who ignore the thousands of actual beheadings of Christians and destruction of cathedrals and churches by Muslims. At the same time that  the plaster crucifix was desecrated, 54  living Christians were beheaded or mutilated in Nigeria, there was virtually  no response matching the heavy breathing of virtue signalers in the Western media who published photos of the broken crucifix.  Yet this iconoclasm by an offensive Israeli soldier who already is in jail along with an accomplice, is being exploited by commentators for whom the beheading of the 22 Libyan martyrs and countless consequent martyrs, are inconvenient contradictions of the narrative which translates Islam as Peace. When our Lord spoke of the pearl of great price, he did not mean pearl clutching.

Thanks to William Tighe

Yesterday, 19 April, was the Feast of St. Expeditus – patron saint of procrastinators.  I put off posting about him till now.

He was a Roman soldier and is so depicted, also holding aloft a sign or cross with the word “HODIE” on it (“TODAY”) and stepping on crow, which makes a noise that sounds like Latin “cras… tomorrow”.

Who wrote this?