THE TAOS TATLER.

It’s been said the Catholic Church in Ireland is in a particularly dreadful state. Here is vital evidence of that.

Laura Perrins in the Catholic Herald (UK).

What is more important, appeasing the atheist Catholic-haters on twitter or saving souls? It seems that for the Bishop of Kerry, Ray Browne, it is the appeasing of atheists. The Bishop has abandoned his priest Fr Sean Sheehy who last weekend in St Mary’s Church in Listowel Co. Kerry, Ireland had the temerity to give a homily warning about sinful behaviour. 

Fr Sean Sheehy condemned such sinful acts as abortion and sexual acts outside marriage, both same sex and promiscuity, as well as transgenderism. Fr Sheehy said, “What is so sad today is you rarely hear about sin, but it’s rampant. And we see it, for example, in the legislation of our government. We see it in the promotion of abortion. We see it in this lunatic approach of transgenderism. 

It’s easy to guess what happened next.

The homily prompted walk-outs at the church and was posted to twitter so the usual pile-on began . . . Mainstream media gave its own incorrect version of events, which was that the priest was condemning homosexual and transgender people, as people . . .  In fact, what Father Sheehy condemned is sin itself.

Well then, Father’s bishop, the Most Reverend (as it were) Ray Browne, after becoming aware of the ruckus, was terribly unhappy indeed and posted the following.

“I am aware of the deep upset and hurt caused by the contents of the homilies in question delivered over the weekend. I apologize to all who were offended.  The views expressed do not represent the Christian position. The homily at a regular weekend parish Mass is not appropriate for such issues to be spoken of in such terms. (Emphasis added.)

One wonders, where should sinful behavior be discussed then? A church supper? The annual outing? The Christmas pageant? The blessing of the animals?

Ah, of course! How silly of Bickerstaff not to to grasp it immediately: in these times, the proper venue for discussing sinful behavior would be the church school, the younger the charges, the better. No doubt the good bishop will attend to it, now that he’s hung his errant priest out to dry.

With thanks to WJT.

Michael Fitzgerald of Liverpool has just received the red hat. Judging by a brief email interview in Catholic.com, we shouldn’t expect much original thinking from him, not by 21st Century standards, anyway. His bailiwick is, essentially, the rubric of “a need for Islamic ecumenism.”

Bickerstaff prays he may be forgiven for asking a simple question here: Why? Islam has been a sworn enemy of Christianity since Muhammed walked on this earth. To suggest otherwise with boilerplate like “we should prudently engage in dialogue with them and work together for moral values and justice and peace” accomplishes nothing. The two institutions’s morals–or “values” as we must call them these days–are poles apart and that cannot be changed without one of the two being eradicated. To believe differently is naive at best.

Yet naivité is exactly what the Cardinal displays when answering the question: “what should every Catholic know about Islam?”

His answer?

That Muslims believe in one God, and since there is only one God, they believe in the same God as us. They have a high idea of this God which excludes incarnation, so they do not believe that Jesus is the Son of God. This is the main difference between us.

Interesting default logic there. This writer suspects there are more than a few Christians and Jews who would not only disagree with that syllogism, but be deeply offended by it, with good cause.

The Cardinal goes on to give equally silly and illogical answers to other questions, at one point quoting from Paul VI’s Lumen gentium, to no great enlightenment.

Wouldn’t it be lovely if Cardinal Fitzgerald and others, e.g., the Pope, would divert some of their energies from “dialogue” with emirs and concern themselves more with the present deplorable state of Holy Church? Islam is strong and growing. The Catholic Church is neither. Making overtures to Muslims will not improve matters for the Church one whit.

Not going there.

Steven Crowder reports a fellow whom he generally holds in low regard, Bill Maher, nevertheless made an astonishing statement on his podcast to a guest, Republican bad boy and rock ‘n’ roller, Kid Rock, that was hardly apposite of his hard left beliefs.

I would be a very bad parent right now, because I would fight. We would be very aligned on this, a lot of this. I would be a very bad parent because they would be doing things in the school that I didn’t think was appropriate.

Not from either side or point of view. The subject itself. They are five. Can we just do blocks and the sky is blue before we get to drag queens?

At which point Kid Rock leaned over to Maher with outstretched hand and said: “Welcome to the Republican Party.” (Mahre declined the invitation to grasp that hand.)

Hardly a tectonic shift and Mahre in the past has made iconoclastic comments concerning excesses of the radical left, but in this instance, listening to the tone of his voice one senses he is genuinely upset over their unrelenting smothering of little children with the cynical and horrific transgender/drag agenda.

A throwaway remark or maybe, just maybe, a signal from a prominent Democrat that party leadership has finally built a political edifice so rickety and unstable, a substantial number of its members would prefer not to find themselves in it.

We shall know soon enough which of the two it is.

Bickerstaff wonders how many have bought these thinking it was one item, only to be surprised it was another.

The story changes daily.

No one except the Pelosis seem to have any idea what happened that infamous early Friday morning in San Francisco, when Nancy’s husband’s Paul had his head cracked open with a hammer by a drug-addled nut job. And the Pelosis’s account of it keeps permutating, with law enforcement obligingly doing same.

We will probably not glean the truth what occured that morning until Speaker Nancy wields far less power than she does now (which could actually begin happening next week). In any event, a kind reader continues sending your Tatler the latest speculations on what took place. This one is particularly good, pointing out the ever increasing contradictions concomitant with the ever increasing accounts what happened.

Some excerpts:

I think if we were more careful, though, the most we’d be entitled to say would be Mr DePape was apparently in the home possibly demanding to see the Speaker — exactly how he got in isn’t explained, and this is the first mystery. The Speaker is third in line for the US presidency, as well as quite wealthy. We would expect a state-of-the-art security system, likely with cameras outside if not inside as well.

***

L:et’s move to the second level of hinky.

‘House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s elderly husband made a desperate 911 call early Friday from a bathroom in their multimillion-dollar San Francisco mansion, likely saving him from the deranged man who beat him with a hammer, authorities said.’

Wait a moment. In this version, a deranged maniac has just invaded the Pelosi home, threatening 82-year-old Paul with a hammer — and quick-thinking Paul, remembering his Boy Scout training, asks to use the bathroom? As I envision a home invasion and the sort of deranged maniac who’d do such a thing, his answer would be along the line of “bleep bleep bleep, motherbleep, bleep bleep, get on the floor!” No bathroom pass would be forthcoming, no matter how urgent the call.

Nevertheless, according to this narrative, the deranged maniac allows Paul his bathroom break, whereupon the plucky guy picks up his cell phone that had been on the charger.

And so it goes, one inconsistency follows another. One must really read the whole thing in order to take to take in the sheer magnitude of the ludicrousness of it all.

We willl close with one of the many outlandish tweets posted about this incident, which owing to the ever increasing fabrications issued by Team Nancy, really doesn’t seem so outlandish at all.

At this point, with the continuing hilarity of the past few days, that tweet is evincing in your Tatler the feeling of cold, rational truth.

With thanks to WJT.

UPDATE: hoo, boy, it gets even zanier.

.UPDATE 2: and zanier and zanier.

Better to bury it in landfills, just as we did 50 years ago.

Of all people, after decades of claiming otherwise, Greenpeace has finally fessed up not only is there no benefit from recycling plastics, it is actually harmful to the environment. This, as reported by the excellent John Tierney at City Journal.

Unfortunately, as Tierney writes, Greenpeace being Greenpeace their proposed solution is even worse than the failed recycling programs we’ve been putting with for so many years.  “It proposes finally to ‘end the age of plastic’ by ‘phasing out single-use plastics’ through a ‘Global Plastics Treaty.’ This is a preposterous goal—imagine ‘phasing out’ disposable syringes . . .”

The best part of Tierney’s piece though is his rhetorically asking why environmentalists worldwide are so hell bent on making our lives miserable. His answer is novel but entirely believable.

The best explanation I’ve come up with is that plastic bans are a revival of the sumptuary laws formerly imposed on the lower classes by monarchs, nobles, and clergy. Those laws forbade commoners from owning certain kinds of clothes, jewelry, furnishings, and other products. The restrictions consistently failed to achieve their ostensible purpose of reducing “unnecessary” spending, but sumptuary laws endured until the Enlightenment because they reinforced ruling-class power and status. An English countess could display her superiority by wearing a dress with silver stripes that were illegal for women of lower rank. Spanish prelates and Portuguese monarchs proclaimed their moral virtue and political authority by forbidding the masses from owning clothes, curtains, and tablecloths made of silk.

California’s law forbidding hotels from offering disposable plastic toiletries is a gratuitous annoyance for travelers who’d like a little bottle of shampoo, but it enables the state’s politicians and environmental groups to exercise power and pretend to be saviors of the planet. The pretense is so ridiculous that even Greenpeace will eventually abandon it—but once again, that could take a few decades. The rest of us can start today.

Indeed we can and it can be done. Here in Taos the enviros pushed through a regulation requiring supermarkets to use paper bags instead of plastic. Wisely, however, it was given a six-month trial, at the end of which the vast majority of residents were so fed up with paper bags ripping and bottoming out, especially during rain storms, they clamored and got their plastic bags back. This user and undoubtedly many others actually recycle those plastic bags by using them as waste basket liners–just as we did before they were banned. That won’t satisfy Greenpeace of course, nothing will, but it works just fine for this writer.

He doesn’t pull his punches.

That establishment is right to regard him as a threat. For its guardians require strict conformity in dispensing their twisted gospel of “diversity” if they are to maintain their power and perquisites. Open the door just a little, let just a little sunlight in, and pow! The magic spell that made it seem OK to say that men are women, that “climate change” is a threat to humanity, that COVID is a peril on the same plane as the Black Death, or that BLM and Antifa were justified in burning down our cities—suddenly that spell is broken, and so is the hold over the narrative that these new guardians of conformity had enforced.

The second thing to bear in mind is that the establishment will not sit idly by as Elon Musk challenges their narrative. Everything about Musk is an insult to the coddled, low-testosterone consensus that has been ruining America this last decade through the promulgation of its dependency agenda.

Kimball has no equal in social commentary.

Bickerstaff inherited some antiques a while ago, among them a New England tall clock (above) made by an anonymous maker in the 1850s or possibly much earlier. After some pricey repairs and cleaning of the works by a superb clockmaker in Los Alamos, it now keeps extraordinarily good time, requiring at most a miniscule adjustment every couple of months or so.

Inscribed in pencil on the inside of the door giving access to the pendulum and weights, there are several names with dates, presumably those of the clock’s former owners. One of them, more clearly written than the others, is “John C. Carleton Vershire Vt Feb 14 1857.” Naturally, an Internet search had to made of the fellow, which didn’t revealed that he was a farmer, fought in the Civil War and likely was taken prisoner at Harpers Ferry.

There was however one wonderful find concerning Mr Carleton, located on the University of Vermont website (unable to copy link). Bickerstaff decided it had to be shared, which he does below.

The left has far greater facility with anti-Semitism, as well sending phony-baloney hate mail to their own.

The media will play this incident up to the hilt until the fraud is revealed. It will then disappear without a trace.