THE TAOS TATLER.

And the king answering, shall say to them: Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me. (Douay-Rheims Matthew 25:40)

By now the appalling story of two teenage lads in Mountain View, California, is well known. They were classmates at a local Catholic High School, St Francis, and when younger applied an acne remedy to their faces, causing them to turn black (dark green, really)

Regrettably, and no doubt foolishly, the two boys took selfies of themselves at the time, and eventually those photos got around, causing a furor.

That act resulted in their lives becoming a living hell for several years. Every single leftie in a vast radius, whose mission is to keep a constant vigil on all those whose personal activities are suspect, no matter how innocent, took notice and the screaming fest began. For when a white man is caught in blackface, no exculpatory explanation is sought nor needed, they are guilty, quod erat demonstrandum.

These were the kind of people, some even brother Catholics, that these poor kids had to endure for their silly mistake. They were ejected from the high school football team and shortly afterward, expelled altogether from St Francis High, ruining their chances of getting into a decent college. CBS Austin reports Saint Francis Principal Katie Teekell, brave soul, she, even had the nerve to tell the students’s parents the expulsions were for “optics,” rather than “intent.”

The sorry saga continued for several years, the details of which will not be related here, except to report that the situation, after litigation, has been resolved, with the school ordered to pay $1 million to the two families, plus refunding them $17,000 in tuition payments.

The only comment this blogger cares to make is to heap scorn on the spineless administrators at St Francis High School. Perhaps it is hopeless naiveté, but that cowardice is all of a piece one associates with public schools, not Catholic, where scripture is presumably read at least occasionally, and a sense of justice might have prevailed in this deplorable incident. Was it too much to hope the administration of St Francis High could have shown some spine and stood up for their young charges, instead of immediately surrendering them to the wolves of leftist groupthink?

Late word: the school is considering appealing the award. Shame.

A recent post on X

[Q]: Mr. President, Russian drones hit a maternity hospital in Ukraine overnight.

"You'll be seeing things happening," Trump's remark on Russian drone attacks in Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/CddyloRcnJ

— Polymarket Intel (@PolymarketIntel) July 11, 2025

I suspect we will.

h/t Instapundit

From Fox 11 Los Angeles:

In a statement, San Bernardino Bishop Alberto Rojas announced a “decree dispensing from the obligation to attend Sunday mass.”

The decree allows parishioners who are unable to attend Sunday mass or masses on holy days of obligation “due to genuine fear of immigration enforcement actions” to be “dispensed from this obligation.”

This seems like a pointless gesture, intended more for the garnering of applause from liberals than anything else.  Catholics are indeed required to attend Mass on Sundays and holy days, and it is a grave sin not to. However, as the Catechism makes clear, if there is a serious cause forcing you not to attend Mass, then you are excused. Bishop Rojas is surely aware of that, so this decree of his seems more of an attention-getting stunt than anything else.

The Catechism states:

2181 The Sunday Eucharist is the foundation and confirmation of all Christian practice. For this reason the faithful are obliged to participate in the Eucharist on days of obligation, unless excused for a serious reason (for example, illness, the care of infants) or dispensed by their own pastor. 119 Those who deliberately fail in this obligation commit a grave sin.

Bishop Rojas makes no mention of the fact that those who cannot attend Mass because they are dodging the immigration authorities are breaking the law, not only for crossing our border illegally, but for evading justice. His Grace said in an interview with ABC News:

There is a real fear gripping many in our parish communities that if they venture out into any kind of public setting they will be arrested by immigration officers.

However, the Catechism says:

1899 The authority required by the moral order derives from God: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.”

It appears then that Bishop Rojas is encouraging the continued flouting of the law by giving a pass to the illegals in this country. On the other hand, and this is only speculation, how many illegals attend Mass? They are lawbreakers and they know it. This blogger has rarely heard of people outside of the law regularly attending Mass, or any other church services.

Public libraries’s purpose is lending books and providing a quiet and comfortable space to read them. Research libraries also provide extensive resources for study and researching.

Now another service is offered by many public libraries, especially in urban locations: homeless shelters. Many may argue that most urban areas already have facilities for the homeless, offering services far more suited to their needs. Some disagree however and they are not whom you might expect.

Zac Bissonnette in the Free Press:

I was excited about the Mandel Public Library when I moved to West Palm Beach . . . Fodor’s Travel had named Mandel the fourth most beautiful public library in America.

Then I started going there . . . In the new books section, a guy yelled into his phone that he’d been kicked off the bus for arguing with a driver. Other homeless people slept in chairs and snored; the smell made you hold your breath.

Between 2012 and 2019, according to the Institute of Museum and Library Services, visits to the Mandel Library declined 27 percent, and total circulation—the number of items, including e-books, borrowed by library patrons—fell 26 percent.

Who are the culprits responsible for making libraries unusable for those who simply want to read books in peace? Professional librarians, who consider their purpose providing space for people who have no interest in reading, researching, studying, or bathing, as equal, or more important than those who wish to use libraries in their traditional sense.

Librarians, you see, are mostly public service, unionized employees, who, in general, regard the middle-class conventions of manners, decency, and courtesy with disdain. Read what the American Library Association has to say about the homeless in their libraries.

People experiencing poverty or homelessness constitute a significant portion of users in many libraries today and this population provides libraries with an important opportunity to change lives. As the number of poor children, adults, and families in America rise, so does the urgent need for libraries to effectively respond to their needs. Access to library and information resources, services, and technologies is essential for all people, especially the economically disadvantaged, who may experience isolation, discrimination, and prejudice or barriers to education, employment, and housing.

Oh dear, we’ve heard that before, the same leftist claptrap preached by those on the left. They simply adapt the party line to whatever their particular situation, and rattle it off as fact. No doubt, they feel ever so virtuous for their devotion to the oppressed homeless, but it comes at the expense of serving their middle-class clientele, and those striving to be. It’s a well-worn tale.

The Church of England’s deterioration into a burlesque parody of itself may be measured by the day. Virtually no one attends services anymore, and ineffectual priests and bishops of all different kinds of sexes, preaching socialism and other twaddle, are driving away those few stalwarts still found in the pews (their pulses really should be checked now and then).

A friend’s recent letter in the Wall Street Journal describes the remains of the C of E in excruciating detail.

–Reprinted by permission

This blogger still struggles with the notion a Pontiff in the Holy Catholic Church would tell a bald-faced lie, in this instance Pope Francis’s blatant prevaricating to his bishops concerning Usus Antiquior, the Latin Mass.

What is especially troubling is approximately 80% of the bishops in the Church these days were appointed by Pope Francis, who presumably chose them because they, in general, shared his views on important church matters, including the celebration of the Latin Mass.

Yet, if the reports are accurate, when the bishops were asked in an internal Vatican poll if Pope Benedict’s loosening of the restrictions on TLM should be reversed, two-thirds of them, presumably many of Francis’s picks, replied they were satisfied with the way things were, that no increased restrictions were needed. The bishops cited what any TLM celebrant or pew sitter could have reported, churches where TLM was celebrated were seeing greatly increased attendance by young people, a critical need in today’s church.

So the question asked by no doubt many Catholics is, why did Francis in effect tear up the results of the Vatican poll and go ahead with his 2020 moto proprio Traditionem Custodis, considerably restricting TLM in churches, later adding even more restrictions, then, unfathomably, claim he was simply complying with the bishops’s requests?

Pope Francis lied, but the real question is why? Was he so pig-headed that he decided he knew best and the hell with the bishops? It sure seems that way, and speaking of hell, it also seems to this Catholic convert, not only did Francis sin, but a mortal sin if my understanding of the Catechism is correct, which states in part on the subject,

1859 Mortal sin requires full knowledge and complete consent. It presupposes knowledge of the sinful character of the act, of its opposition to God’s law. It also implies a consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice. Feigned ignorance and hardness of heart do not diminish, but rather increase, the voluntary character of a sin.

As much as I did not care for Pope Francis, I pray he confessed that transgression before his death, lest he suffer the grievous consequences in the afterworld.

There has been substantial buzz lately about whether or not Pope Francis was truthful when justifying his cancellation of Pope Benedict’s motu proprio, Summorum Pontificum, which substantially loosened restrictions on the Latin Mass. Francis, with his Traditionem Custodis, made the celebration of TLM far more difficult, and with his later additions, it became nearly impossible.

Francis insisted he made his changes to Benedict’s motu proprio at the behest of the bishops, whom he claimed were polled and by a large majority desired it, claiming that TLM was causing disunity in the Church and that action against it was needed.

Now, a respected Vatican reporter, Diane Montagna, writing in Substack, reports that the claim the bishops were opposed to TLM by a large majority is exactly wrong, that with Benedict’s easing up on TLM restrictions, the bishops were not only seeing far greater numbers of young people in church, but they were showing greater enthusiasm for Holy Church as well.

So was it a simple mix-up, the bishops’s wrongly claiming to be opposed to the Latin Mass? Not at all, according to reporter Montagna, who quotes an official Vatican report on the matter:

“[T]he majority of bishops who responded to the questionnaire stated that making legislative changes to Summorum Pontificum  would cause more harm than good.”

The overall assessment directly contradicts, therefore, the stated rationale for imposing Traditionis Custodes and raises serious questions about its credibility.

…

Furthermore, the text clearly shows that Traditionis Custodes disregarded and withheld what the report said about the peace Summorum Pontificum had restored, and turned a blind eye to a “constant observation made by the bishops”— that younger people were being drawn into the Catholic Church through this older form of the liturgy.

The official report is long and thorough, but it’s understandable, given the seriousness of the claims against Pope Francis. Montagna’s reporting of only a small detail from it though, reflects more than a little poorly on the integrity of Francis.

Pope Francis not only had the report, but according to reliable sources, literally snatched a working copy out of Cardinal Ladaria’s hands during an audience, telling him he wanted it immediately because he was curious about it.

If Francis did satisfy his curiosity, then it looks as if he just plain lied when claiming he was complying with the bishops’s wants.

I wondered rhetorically in a post not long ago if Francis not only disliked TLM, but its celebrants and those attending it as well. It looks as if I may have accidentally been onto something.

The big question now is, what, if anything, is Pope Leo going to do about this messy situation?

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Thomas Jefferson, et al.

Your Tatler has written much (maybe too much) about rich elites who harbor socialist yearnings, in particular as they relate to their cuddly-commie mayor-to-be Zohran Mamdani. Readers then must forgive this blogger for re-opening the subject, at the risk of beating it to death. Happily, Akhī Zohran will only be mentioned in passing. This time the leftist millionaire elite hails from your Tatler’s hometown of Greenwich, Connecticut.

Meet John Cooper, of the well-to-do neighborhood of Rockridge, in Greenwich. There isn’t a do-gooder lefty cause this man hasn’t endorsed, and to top it off, he harbors deep antipathy for the United States of America, at least judging by the letters he bashes out from his digs in Greenwich to various local newspapers.

Cooper shares the attributes of so many of the New York elites who supported Zohran Mamdani, the likely next Mayor of New York. Yet he lives in one of the richest neighborhoods in one of the richest towns in America. Whether he worked for his money or had his money through inheritance is immaterial. One should think he might show just a little gratitude for his good fortune of living in America. Yet he recently had a seemingly endless letter published in a Greenwich paper in which he blasts this country, including the obligatory attack on you-know-who in the White House. We will spare you most of the fellow’s truculence, save for the last paragraph,* in which he displays all the maturity of a spoiled child, not someone having even a few years up on this blogger.

I am beyond ashamed to be an American today and fear for the lives of so many people I know and care about. Therefore, I cannot think of closing this with “have a Happy 4th of July”, without feeling sick to my stomach.

*Those wishing to read this fool’s entire letter, no doubt written in crayon, are welcome to visit my brother’s blog, For What it’s Worth, to which I am indebted, sort of, to learn of the depressing subject of this post.