(Note: it has been.)

The Times reports the Israeli military confirms a photo (above) of an Israeli soldier smashing a crucifix is real.

The headline above was posted upon first reading the accounts of this dreadful incident and meant we should be mindful of how Israel’s leaders and military handle it. To be honest, I expected the worst. Also, to be honest, I was wrong,

PM Netanyahu and the Israeli Defense Force were immediately on top of the matter and confirmed it, condemning the wrong doer in no uncertain terms and promising he would be severely punished. The IDF later announced it had identified the culprit and were in pursuit of him. Presumably, he will be, again, as promised, severely punished.

In short, the response, so far, to the smashing of the Christ statue has been as the headline urged.

h/t James Uebbing

This volume originally belonged to the late John Harlborg, a good friend whom I miss, and a Catholic convert like I.

In the New York Post, read the horrifying account of a young father who was beaten to death early in the early morning by a band of thugs on the mean streets of Chicago.

According to the Post, Chicago police “seek to question four persons of interest who have eluded capture in the crime-ridden city for two weeks.” There is no doubt, in time, the Chicago police will catch up with these killers, but the question is, what will happen to them when they’re caught. The answer is, nothing much, for a long, long, time. Their cases may eventually find their way to a courtroom, where their court-appointed lawyers will plead not guilty for their clients, however much evidence there may be against their clients. They then will use every available legal trick to prolong their cases as long as possible, seeking  postponement after postponement. In time, this will result in a plea bargained, comically light, sentence of a few years imprisonment, then it’s back on the streets for the perps to continue their criminal pursuits.

Mind you, that is a best-case scenario. Charges could be dropped for some technicality or other, or the perps might simply jump bail and disappear.

This is not justice. It is the complete breakdown of our criminal justice system, and it is plaguing not only Chicago, but most big cities in America. A century ago in our country, capital murder cases were resolved far quicker in the courts, from a few days to a month or two at the most. After conviction, the prisoner would sit in a jail cell for a year or two, then it was off to the electric chair. The switch was thrown and justice was dispensed.

In contrast, while the State of Illinois only recently banned capital punishment in 2011, the last time it put to death a murderer was in 1962. Similarly, most other states have banned capital punishment, decades after it was last applied.

What the problem boils down to is, most state governments no longer take crime seriously, regardless of what their politicos might say on the campaign trail about being “tough on crime.” If this lax attitude toward brutal crime, like the one described above continues, most Americans will become fed up with their governments and take matters into their own hands, returning to the 19th-century, Old West methods of justice. It will be ugly, but no doubt effective.

Time to dust off Old Sparky?

A friend writes:

Vatican II – The Second Spring of the Church: at start of the Council there were approximately 1300 Sisters of Charity of New York. Today there are 127, average age 87.

Included in the note was a link to a sensitively written story in The New York Times (subscription required) on the end days of the Sisters of Charity. This venerable order was doing well until a disruption occurred which has led to the eventual end of the Sisters of Charity and many other orders. That disruption was the Second Vatican Council, beginning in 1962 and ending in 1965, with its goal being, ironically, a “new spring” that would modernize and revitalize the Catholic Church.

The Times, in telling the experience of one nun, Sister Michael Maureen, tells of the pivotal event that has led to the decline of her order and others.

Then the world cracked open. Vatican II upended the old rigidities. She exchanged the habit for secular clothes — the order’s call was to be among the people, not above them — reclaimed her own name, moved into an East Village walk-up surrounded by the counterculture.

Which strikes this blogger as turning these devoted women, who up till then had lived their lives for God and and Holy Church by displaying their devotion to God by helping to ease the lives of the unfortunates of this world, into secular activists, taking a role in the social upheavals and protests of the 1960s. Though I am sure these venerable women would deny up and down this transformation of their places in Christ’s Holy Church, it certainly gave the appearance of it and made their lives less appealing to girls and young women who might have been considering a life of devotion to our Lord.

While not taking anything away from social workers, the Sisters of Charity and other orders are unique in their quiet and total devotion to our eternal God, not just to the temporal evils of our time on earth. The loss of these devoted servants will be a great loss to Catholic Church.

Pay attention, there will be a short quiz later on His Holiness’s statement.

‘Sport must keep the
human person at its
center…Sport, when it is lived authentically, does not remain merely a performance,’ he said. ‘It is a form of language, a story made of gestures, effort, waiting, falls, and new beginnings.

*As The New Yorker magazine of old might have headed the above.

Posted byAnthony Chase FountainApril 8, 2026Posted inUncategorized

A great scandal broke many years ago when it was revealed some of the largest and most  well known charities in this country were anything but charitable, spending most of their receipts on salaries, administration costs, and, ironically, fundraising.

One large, well known charity, the Catholic Church’s Mother Cabrini Health Foundation (MCHF), has escaped such charges as it is a well run institution where most of its donations go to the intended recipients. That is not to say however, that MCHF is free from scandal, but it has so far not received the attention it should.

There is for instance the salary paid to MCHF’s Chief Executive Officer, Greg Mustachiuoluo. 

Based on available tax filings for the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation, where Msgr. Greg Mustaciuolo serves as Chief Executive Officer, his reported compensation has been: [1] $839,030 in reportable compensation, plus $86,340 in other compensation (2024 data). $713,802 in reportable compensation, plus $84,724 in other compensation (2023 data). [1] Background Before leading the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation, Msgr. Mustaciuolo served as the Vicar General and Chancellor of the Archdiocese of New York, overseeing day-to-day operations and a team responsible for managing combined revenues of over $415 million. [1, 2, 3]

To be honest, the enormous compensation paid to MCHF’s CEO is similar to CEOs at other top charities. What should raise eyebrows though is the full name and title of the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation’s CEO: Monsignor Greg Mustachiuoluo. This  Catholic priest is currently paid $839,030, plus an additional $86,340, for a grand total of $925,370 for running a large, albeit respected charity.

If Holy Church would only pay all her priests similarly, recruitment difficulties to the priesthood would become a thing of the past.

Addendum

For those wishing to know more about Msgr Greg  Mustaciuolo and MCHF, a recent announcement from Cardinal Dolan will provide far greater detail concerning both.

A ridiculous anti-Catholic scandal is bigger than we thought.June 5, 2025

Another billion dollar scandal, perpetrated by a slob.November 16, 2022Liked by 1 person

High treason and piracy in DCJuly 25, 2025Liked by 1 person

Posted byAnthony Chase FountainApril 8, 2026Posted inUncategorized

Published by Anthony Chase Fountain

The Tatler of 1709 was founded by Jonathan Swift, aka Isaac Bickerstaff. The Taos Tatler was founded by ex-New Yorker Anthony Fountain in 2018, in the same spirit, he hopes, as the original. Please send mail to taostatler@gmail.com. View more posts

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Ranchos de Taos, NM

From the Washington Post:

Pope Leo XIV plans to personally carry the wooden cross through all 14 stations of the Way of the Cross at the Colosseum on his first Good Friday as pontiff

‘I think it will be an important sign because of what the pope represents, a spiritual leader in the world today, and for this voice, that everyone wants to hear, that says Christ still suffers,’ Leo told reporters this week outside of the papal retreat at Castel Gandolfo. ‘I carry all of this suffering in my prayer.’

The Catholic Church is not a democracy, thanks be to God, but in the six decades of the modernizing of worship, via the mass and other rituals, and eliminating those like that which Pope Leo restored today, have any of the opposition been consulted on it? Was the laity ever consulted on the dumbing down of worship? Has anyone, of high or low ranking ever asked, is this necessary?

So, on this Good Friday, grateful thanks to Pope Leo’s seeming answer to that question. May God bless and preserve him.

*****

No more blogging until next week. My grateful thanks, a pious Good Friday, and a Happy Easter to my readers.

Related somewhat to the post below, yesterday evening I listened to the reissue recording seen above for the first time in several years. It was one of the few recordings I had the privilege of producing while at  Sony Music. It was to mark the 50th anniversary of the release of the original LP recording in 1964. It still is deeply moving. Politics aside, the assassination of President Kennedy was a great tragedy for the entire nation and it was most fitting that a Requiem Mass be celebrated for him, even though the 1962  reforms (sic) had already been in place.

The mass was celebrated in the “Extraordinary Form,” or as we lay folk call it, the Latin mass, and it was likely the last of its kind after the reforms of Vatican II. Richard Cardinal Cushing was the celebrant and intoned in his own inimitable manner. The musical forces for the Mozart were considerable: the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Erich Leinsdorf, and top soloists and choirs from the area.  The Requiem was performed in a manner rarely heard these days, with orchestra and chorus far larger than any Mozart knew, but it hardly matters. With the 1800 attendees in the vast Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston’s South End, it was entirely appropriate and few could not have been moved. All modesty aside, I am proud to have been associated with the remastering and re-releases of this extraordinary musical and liturgical document.

The image is taken from Instapundit.

Glenn Reynold’s blog Instapundit is the granddaddy of blogdom, which your Tatler has been reading from the dawn of the Internet. His blog is a reliable source of news because Reynolds, a law professor, is scrupulous about what he posts, and thus they can be relied on for truthfulness.

This morning Reynolds posted an item on Instapundit an item with a report the Latin mass, or the”Extraordinary Form,” is taking off in leaps and bounds, especially among young Catholics. Presumably this is because as Catholics they find Novus Ordo hopelessly inadequate in expressing the majesty and awe of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist. Its bland and insipid everyday English falls far short. That is hardly the case with the Latin mass and its ancient legacy. It is, to use the word  correctly, awesome.

Holy Church however will not likely budge on the Latin mass being restored to its former place in worship anytime soon. That being the case, this blogger has an admittedly unorthodox (pun intended) alternative to today’s mass. Since my early days as a Catholic (not all that long ago) I’ve long urged instead of using the weak and insipid version of the mass we use now, the Church should simply filch the 1662 Church of England Book of Common Prayer, or its counterpart in the US, the 1928 Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. Those two sources contain some of the most beautiful language in English. Naturally, much adaptation would be required of either source to conform them to Catholic teachings, but the Anglican mass/service is essentially the same as the Catholic mass. Using adaptions of the Book of Common Prayer would restore what was lost in reforms of Vatican 2 and beauty and awe would once again be brought back to our worship.