THE TAOS TATLER.

As the English bishop complained to his Catholic counterpart and friend: “We send you our best and you send us your worst.”

For some reason your Tatler is on the e-mail list of St Thomas Church in the City of New York (Episcopal), this despite having quit that congregation long ago, before there even was email. The reason for his quitting was the gleaning over time the absolutely superb liturgy and music at St Thoms were as devoid of spirituality as most of the musicals playing on Broadway three blocks west.

Still, despite the writer’s eventually perceiving the exquisite services at St Thomas as more glitzy than godly, the church did seem at the time, in addition to preserving the beauties and formalities of Anglican worship, maintaining a reasonably traditional and conservative point of view (not withstanding some unpleasant rumors circulating about its rector), this, while its parent the Episcopal Church was already spiraling into madness.

Not having thought about St Thomas, Church for some time, an email received this morning surprised and though only glanced at, seemed to affirm the church was still holding the line against the radical changes going on all around it in the Episcopal Church. Herewith is the entirety of that email, such as your Tatler thought it was.

Not long afterword your Tatler received an email from an old friend, Invicta veritas, who received the same email from St Thomas’s, but had scrolled further down than your Tatler and found the following.

Oh.

Perhaps it’s appropriate here to point out there are former Anglicans who forsook the gorgeous liturgy and music of their church for the insipid mediocrity of modern Catholic worship, and, more important and without going into detail, at great personal sacrifice to themselves and others. Nonetheless, when revealed to them the Holy Catholic Church, despite its manifest shortcomings these days, is the one true Church, they chucked it all and swam the Tiber. The Rev’d Dr Luigi Gioia seems to have lost sight of this enormous truth in his desire for marriage in violation of Church teachings,

It should also be pointed out, ice cream does not take the plural.

Not audiences, but artists and administrators.

This is getting so tiresome. Your Tatler was notified the excellent Taos Chamber Music Group, a first-rate ensemble made up of members of first-rate orchestras, was giving a performance in the superb recital hall of the Harwood Museum in Taos. This particular program was gratifyingly original, Sounds of  Shakespeare, with off-the-beaten-track repertoire, as seen below.

This sort of program your Tatler jumps at and he eagerly clicked the “buy tickets” button. He was about to go ahead with a purchase until he saw the dreaded and depressing advisory: Masks required.

Ah, well, too bad, this music lover will not be attending Sounds of Shakespeare, nor any other Taos Chamber Music Group concerts this season or those following. Isn’t the TCMG or the Harwood Museum aware one can go into nearly every store and restaurant in Taos and see nary a mask? Are they not aware that even though the Berlin Philharmonic and Met Opera still have mask requirements, they are flagrantly ignored?

Insisting audience members still wear masks long after the vastly overrated COVID virus has run its course shows not only arrogant disdain for the audience, but reactionarism as well (it’s not just found on the right, you know) by TCMG and the Harwood Museum.

What a shame: your Tatler had been of the mind supporting this superb ensemble above and beyond ticket sales. That will now not be happening, thanks to the idiotic mask requirements. How many other potential donors, one wonders, have made the same decision and how much has it cost the Taos Chamber Music Group?

Cleansing themselves by being yelled at.

Kathleen Anderson of The Political Insider has uncovered a new trend among white upper class liberal women of Canada (a trend that will most certainly make its way south), who are looking for new ways of self-flagellation (metaphorically, of course) to assuage their guilt being born the wrong color.

The latest fad takes the form of a lunch or dinner given by one of these unhappy gals for her friends, at which a couple of well paid women of color berate the ladies for their intrinsic racism as they dine on soufflés and a very decent Chardonnay.

Don’t believe it? Watch this excerpt from a documentary called “Deconstructing Karen.” (Warning: this stuff is painful to behold. You might save yourself the bother and save a lot of time by simply watching the video beneath this one.)

The CBC used your money to create a documentary called 'Deconstructing Karen' where white women listen to a black woman tell them how racist they all are.

Defund The CBC.pic.twitter.com/OlCbX5ptT3

— Harrison Faulkner (@Harry__Faulkner) September 26, 2022

Seeking the dead among the living.

From the Daily Mail:

‘She was clearly on top of his mind:’

White House says Biden, 79, looking for dead Republican Rep. Jackie Walorski was ‘not all that unusual’, says Americans ‘understand’ and insists it wasn’t a mistake in utterly ludicrous defense of blunder.

What mind?

Or: If he had a mind, there was something on it.–P. G. Wodehouse.

UPDATE: Related thoughts here: Lost in Space.

Why is the fox in the hen house?

As Russia threatens to use nukes against the U.S. “if the West attacks Russian territory,” a disturbing story has come out in recent days detailing the recruitment of over a hundred Chinese scientists who had worked at the nuclear research lab at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to bring whatever they may have learned back to China.

Certainly that’s disturbing enough, Russia loading up on nuclear techies, but it raises some even more disturbing questions: What were a hundred or more Chinese nuclear scientists doing in our Los Alamos labs doing to begin with? How long have they been there? How much access do they have. Last, who was responsible for the ill-considered decision allowing scientists from a nuclear rival to come work in the heart of our research facilities?

Sheer folly (to be polite about it).

Infanticide, or negligent homicide,if you prefer.

From the Epoch Times;

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday signed into law a package of abortion-related bills, some of which immunize women and doctors from criminal and civil liability for what critics have called infanticide.

And further down:

A lawyer from the American Center for Law and Justice has said the inclusion of ‘perinatal death,’ which extends to 28 days after birth, will mean the law immunizes women and doctors from liability if an infant isn’t given medical care after being born alive during a failed abortion so long as the doctor notes that it was ‘due to’ causes “that occurred in utero.’

In other words, if the baby suffers from a life-threatening defect incurred in the womb, it’s okay to ignore it for 28 days after birth and hope the kid dies from it. If not, well, something will have to be done about it. How long will it be til that “something” is euthanasia, surely on or near the top of the left’s agenda to be legalized? Not only will it make it possible to dispose of unwanted babies, but also unwanted adults, particularly the elderly. After that, it’s open season on those deemed unwanted. Your Tatler has a vague memory of something like that occuring in central Europe 80 or so years ago.

Putin is getting desperate.

A brutal 18th century practice returns, impressment.

h/t GWR.

Fasten your seatbelt.

53 years ago Fr Josef Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict) gave a series of speeches in which he spoke of the future of the Holy Catholic Church. He made it clear though he would not–could not– make hard predictions what was to come, quoting Augustine: “Whoever believes that the church is not only determined by the abyss that is man, but reaches down into the greater, infinite abyss that is God, will be the first to hesitate with his predictions.” He did intimate however there could be major changes ahead.

We do not know whether or not Ratzinger had the German Church in mind when making those speeches so many years ago, but he may have had a notion what was to come much later, taking the form of the recent actions by Germany’s cardinals, bishops and laymen’s ruthless campaign, via their so-called Synodal Path, Their rejection of Church teachings on sexuality, women’s ordination and, perhaps the most radical, the rejection of episcopal authority (and who knows what else) are nothing short of jaw-dropping.

Are we to interpret those extraordinary destructive acts of the German Catholic Church (with Belgium following suit) a foreshadowing of the end of the entire Catholic Church? Not if we believe our Lord’s promise to Peter. What it does mean is Ratzinger may have called it correctly so many years ago when suggesting the day may come when Holy Church will have to remake herself.

From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so it will lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, it will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. Undoubtedly it will discover new forms of ministry and will ordain to the priesthood approved Christians who pursue some profession. In many smaller congregations or in self-contained social groups, pastoral care will normally be provided in this fashion. Along-side this, the full-time ministry of the priesthood will be indispensable as formerly. But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. In faith and prayer she will again recognize the sacraments as the worship of God and not as a subject for liturgical scholarship.

As for the hedonistic breakaways from the Catholic Church, some may survive, most just barely, and the rest meeting the fate of those in this long, long list of protestant denominations. Eventually Holy Church will grow ever stronger.

h/t LCH and WJT.

The Sino-Bullies are at it again.

From the Catholic News Agency:

Cardinal Joseph Zen and five others stood trial in Hong Kong on Monday for failing to properly register a fund to provide legal aid to pro-democracy protesters. 

The 90-year-old cardinal and retired bishop of Hong Kong arrived at the court in West Kowloon on Sept. 26 using a cane to walk. He was arrested in May along with other democracy activists under Hong Kong’s strict national security law.

In addition to Zen, who has been free on bail since early May, several others have been charged for failing to apply for local society registration for the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund between 2019 and 2021. 

True, the Cardinal is free on bail and even if officials order a guilty verdict, he will not have to serve time, but these actions against him are nothing more than bullying harassment by the Chinese government of an old man trying to save the last shreds of democracy in a land that once enjoyed full freedoms.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis, the Biden in the Vatican, seems far more concerned with getting a renewal of an agreement with the Chinese government concerning the appointment of bishops or somesuch, an agreement that will prove as binding as the one the British signed with the Chinese government guaranteeing the preservation of democracy in Hong Kong 25 years ago.

Probably the real reason the Pope’s lack of concern for his cardinal in Hong Kong is personal.

Zen has been one of the most outspoken critics of the Vatican’s agreement with China since it was first signed in 2018, calling it,’an incredible betrayal.’

Weak men don’t like strong men who disagree with them. So far the only Vatican response was issued after Cardinal Zen’s arrest, nothing since. To the pontiff’s credit however it contains a blistering threat.

The Holy See has learned with concern the news of the arrest of Cardinal Zen and is following the development of the situation with extreme attention.’

Boy, that’ll scare ’em.

h/t GWR.