Your Tatler watched a corker of a picture last night, 1957’s Sweet Smell of Success, starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, both of whom give the performances of their careers. One notable feature of this picture is there is not a single character with whom one may empathize, they are all simply awful people, but somehow utterly compelling as well, which obviously owes to the superlative acting of their creators.

Another marvelous feature of this movie that is at once grim and beautiful is the gorgeous photography by the legendary cameraman, James Wong Howe. You could probably turn the sound all the way down and still get thrills from just the watching, but then, in addition to the beautifully taut dialog, you would also miss Elmer Bernstein’s wonderfully fraught score.

Looking back at the New York of 1957, and your Tatler thinking of his post of a couple of days ago, it becomes obvious when watching this picture there was as much sleaze in the City 65 years ago as there was four years ago when your correspondent fled. The only defense he can muster when making this admission is to suggest the New York of 1957 offered a better class of sleaze.

***

A postscript: some of the scenes in Sweet Smell of Success were shot in the legendary 21 Club, which perished during the idiotic COVID shutdown, along with many other fine and wonderful New York institutions.

21 held particular appeal for your Tatler. Whenever his Hollywood grandfather had business in New York, upon arrival he would usually head straight to Jack & Charlie’s (as it was known then), he, like so many other theater and movie people, regarding that splendid speakeasy as his base. What a sad and pointless loss.

(The companion question to the one above so far remains free from controversy.)

From Breitbart:

ROME — The editors of the Wall Street Journal have published a searing indictment of Pope Francis, insisting he has undermined the Church’s moral authority by pandering to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The case in point is the Vatican’s renewal Saturday of its secret agreement with the CCP on the appointment of bishops in the country, which since its inception in 2018 has resulted in the ordination of just 6 bishops, despite some 36 vacant episcopal sees.

***

Pope Francis, “who is so critical of the U.S. and capitalism, is silent on China,” the essay asserts . . . Indeed, during his nearly eight years as pope, Francis has carefully avoided doing or saying anything that could be construed as criticism of Chinese leadership, including the CCP’s crackdown on Christian churches, its brutal suppression of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, and its horrific genocide of Muslim Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region.

Just who does this man serve? It seems he revels in being the contrarian, taking the opposite tack of that expected of a pontiff.

Bickerstaff is tempted to ask another well known question, this one posed by Henry II. He will however leave off, lest he receive an unwanted visit from the authorities.

With thanks to GWR.

Relating to the post below, which concerns make-believe Catholic universities, a reader has sent Bickerstaff a link to a piece that concerns make-believe Catholic personages. Written by Fr. Jerry Pokorsky in Catholic Culture, it starts off with a bang by citing Luke 18: 9-14.

(Note: Bickerstaff takes the liberty of  quoting from the King James Version rather than the modern translation Fr. Pokorsky uses. It was the only Bible he read up until becoming a Catholic and he simply cannot bring himself to part with it.)

And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:

Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.

The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.

I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.

And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.

I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

After those ringing and damning words, what better phoney-baloney Catholic for Fr. Pokorsky to start with then our Pharisee in Chief,

President Joe Biden

President Biden has announced that if Democrats win the House and Senate in the midterm elections this November (2022), the first bill he would send to Congress would codify the so-called abortion rights established by Roe v. Wade.

• He promised he will be “appointing judges that respect foundational precedents like Roe.”
• He rescinded the pro-life Mexico City Policy, which ensured that foreign aid would not go to organizations that perform or refer for abortions.
• The Washington Post called Joe Biden a “president who has been called the most pro-transgender in history.”
• Retired Archbishop Chaput said Biden “is not in communion with the Catholic faith.” The archbishop added that “any priest who now provides Communion to the president participates in his hypocrisy.” Biden attends Mass, receives Communion, has met with the Pope, and has received Communion at papal Masses.

While hardly necessary, but just the same  adding splendid emphasis to our President’s hypocrisy, Fr. Pokorsky then adds simply,

“Joe Biden identifies as a devout Catholic.”

The good Father then gives us several more pretend Catholics, all of whom will be familiar to readers of this blog.

You best read the whole thing.

With thanks to GWR.

From Crisis Magazine:

In a perhaps little noticed recent scandal from the University of Notre Dame . . . a professor of the Keough School of Global Affairs has offered and promoted abortion access to Notre Dame students, despite university policy and Indiana law. This includes helping students procure Plan B aborticide pills and referring students to other abortion services. Professor Tamara Kay bragged about her efforts to refer Notre Dame students to abortion resources at an event called “Post-Roe America: Making Intersectional Feminist Sense of Abortion Bans.” 

(Here’s a handy tip. Whenever you come across someone who uses the neologism “intersectionality” in a serious vein, you may safely stop reading. Rest assured, everything that follows you have read before: utterly predictable and arcane leftist cant, seeming as if it were generated by collectivist phrase-generating software.)

But we digress. The author of the piece in Crisis, Thomas Shaffern, asks a perfectly reasonable question concerning the heretical professor above and, sadly, has a perfectly reasonable answer.

Q.

How did we get to the point where the most prominent Catholic university in the United States employs, and probably will not fire, such a person?

A.

The answer seems a simple one. Notre Dame cares more about being just another elite university as opposed to being an elite Catholic university. The administration at Notre Dame is far more concerned with receiving compliments from The New York Times than receiving compliments from Catholic families who sacrificed to send their children there. 

And that about sums it up for all major Catholic institutions of higher learning in this country. The obvious answer to those families desiring a Catholic education for their children is to give a wide berth to those formerly Catholic behemoths and patronize instead the smaller colleges, a splendid example being Wyoming Catholic College (full disclosure: your Tatler is a supporter). That institution and others similar to it haven’t chosen to drop their missions as the biggies have.

So boycott the biggies like Notre Dame, Georgetown, et al. They have been hollowed out and these days, happily, there are superb smaller Catholic colleges that are filling the void.

The leader of the free world.

From Fox News:

President Joe Biden touted that his administration is looking get rid of the “junk fees” that make roomier airline seats more expensive and thus “unfair” to “people of color.”

From the Daily Caller:

EXCLUSIVE: Hungarian Foreign Minister Says Ukraine-Russia War Would Not Have Happened Under Trump

We need to hear more talk like this.

The foreign minister of Hungary, Péter Szijjártó, in part, blamed the current war between Ukraine and Russia on President Joe Biden in an exclusive interview Wednesday with the Daily Caller. He argued that if the 2020 election had played out differently, there would be no war.

***

So, you know, what we are definitely sure about is that if your presidential election had played out differently in 2020, this war would not have broken out. As much as I can be sure about things that didn’t happen, I am pretty sure that this would have been the case because we are currently, globally speaking, we are currently lacking leaders. President Trump was a real leader. 

Sadly, what we got in 2020 were three incompetents, incapable of dealing with either foreign or domestic matters: a president entering headlong into advanced senility, a mentally deficient vice-president unable to put even two words together that make sense and last, an alcoholic house speaker engaged in a vigorous horserace with our president to the very same destination as his.

Your Tatler’s money is on the President-Speaker competition ending in a draw.

And will never go back.

New York City subway shove suspect Lamale McRae, 41, has been charged with attempted murder, assault, reckless endangerment, and harassment for shoving a man onto the subway tracks in Brooklyn.

McRae, 41, has a long record of run-ins with law enforcement, including attempted murder when he was only 16 years old. According to a report by the New York Post, McRae served 20 years in prison for the attempted murder.

Your Tatler’s family had a presence in the City for over three-and-half centuries. No longer: sad, but leadership of late has been hellbent on destroying New York and is succeeding quite nicely.

Coal dust still on his face.

A coal miner at shift’s end rushes straight to a Kentucky Wildcats basketball game to be with and watch with his son.

This story is gaining traction and well it should. From Louder with Crowder:

The Kentucky Wildcats hosted their annual “blue-white scrimmage” when a father and son caught the eye of Coach John Calipari. The father, a coal miner, sat there with his face still covered in coal dust while his son looked excited to be at the game and with his dad.

The boy’s mom was there as well.

My amazing husband started his day at 4:45 am that morning and worked all day. Then drove straight to the arena to meet us and enjoy the game with our son! We are truly blessed with such an amazing man, and beyond thankful! We love our coal miner.

They are truly blessed, and it gets even better. The Wildcats’s coach happened to see the photo above and wrote as follows on Twitter.

At the risk of going on and on (aw, the hell with it, we’ll take that risk and besides, it’s our blog), your Tatler’s father (yes, he actually had one!), while not a coal miner (he worked on Wall Street), would rise every morning before dawn, eat a rushed breakfast, then walk briskly to the station to catch the morning train on the increasingly dilapidated and unreliable New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad to Grand Central. Thence the express train to the Financial District, where he would work long and, no doubt, often tedious hours until day’s end, at which he would go through the whole process again in reverse.

Despite being exhausted, after dinner Dad would take a good amount of his time to read to his four boys before retiring to bed and doing the whole thing again the next day.

This is, or was, nothing unusual; it’s merely a tale of a father who loved his children and whose happiest moments were being with them, especially, in our case, reading to us. The man in the photo though is no different, save for immaterial circumstances. He simply loves his son, wants to be with him and obviously will stop at nothing to make that happen.

May God bless fathers everywhere.

With regard to a pro-abortionist on the Vatican payroll . . .

David Warren fires both barrels.

But the truth is more desolating. There is no practical prospect for a recovery of any sort. And while God has worked miracles in the past, and the faithful may actually hope for Christ and His Angels to suddenly rescue us, this cannot be expected. There is, I think, little supplicatory prayer in secret, and what is offered in public has diminished radically.

It is in this light that I tend to be bored by the latest proposals or trends in apologetics, or other evangelical efforts. Where they have any chance of working, God bless them, but evangelizing we must do ourselves, not depend on external missions.

Mariana Mazzucato, pro-abortion economist.

From the Catholic News Agency.

Pope Francis appoints pro-abortion economist to Pontifical Academy for Life.

One of the newest members of the Pontifical Academy for Life appointed by Pope Francis is an outspoken advocate of abortion rights, having recently shared her opposition to the overturning of Roe v. Wade on Twitter.

***

In his 2020 book “Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future,” Pope Francis described Mazzucato’s work as “thinking that is not ideological, which moves beyond the polarization of free market capitalism and state socialism, and which has at its heart a concern that all of humanity have access to land, lodging, and labor.”

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition.

It doesn’t get any clearer than that; there’s no wiggle room. So why does the grossly offensive opinion of an abortion enthusiast make her worthy in the Pope’s eyes of appointment to the Pontifical Academy for Life, who holds views so hideously contrary to the very name the institution itself?

One can only suppose Francis finds this woman’s views on matters such as land redistribution so eminently attractive he is willing to overlook the teensy-weensy matter of her hearty endorsement of the murdering of babies in and out of the womb.

God save our deeply troubled Holy Catholic Church. We certainly cannot look to the pontiff, who obviously has far more important things on his mind.