The late Tom Lehrer figured largely in our family when I was growing up. We had all his records and memorized a good many of his songs.
One of Lehrer’s most notorious songs was his infamous Vatican Rag. Many people were deeply offended by it, but not I. Of course, when first hearing it, I was decades from embracing the fullness of the faith, but now, as a Catholic, I still don’t find it offensive, simply hilarious, for this reason.
If you listen to not just the song alone, but to Lehrer’s spoken introduction to it, as well (he introduced nearly all his songs that way), you will quickly understand Lehrer was satirizing not the Catholic Church or the Mass, but rather the post-conciliar reforms [sic], which were as deserving of ridicule when introduced as they are today. Listen to the lyric of Vatican Rag, you will not hear errors in the text, Lehrer is correct on his details. It was the just-introduced Vatican II reforms he was ridiculing, as he makes clear in his introduction. I loved the song long ago, when an Episcopalian, and still love it, even after embracing the full Catholic Faith.
Listen to Vatican Rag yourself and see if you don’t agree with me. Yes, it is outrageous, but outrageous isn’t necessarily offensive.
On a cool, wet June morning on the Left Bank of the River Seine, cheerful throngs of young adults are padding along the streets with packs on their backs. They are converging on Saint-Sulpice, the bulky 17th-century stone church that dominates the Saint-Germain neighborhood of Paris. From the giddiness of the kids, you might think there was a pop concert planned in the large square in front of the old church. Non.
“We’re here to pray,” says Cyriaque, 25, who came to the capital from the country’s southwest. “It will be fun.”
One thing inspiring about pieces of this kind is that young Latin Mass enthusiasts have developed their affinity for it mostly on their own. There have been few priests or higher that encouraged their interest in it and, especially after Francis became pope, churches where Usus Antiquior was celebrated became even fewer and farther between, save for in certain big cities, New York in particular, and their number was decreasing, not increasing. Even today, perhaps as a memorial to the late Pope Francis, archbishops in two states recently severely restricted the celebration of TLM. Happily, with the large and increasing number of young people embracing the old Mass, the two archbishops, who seem to loathe it, are finding themselves sailing in the wind, with the tide carrying them in the opposite direction.
Pope Leo seems to be approaching the TLM matter cautiously, not wishing to rush things, which is probably wise. A sudden decision to allow once again the free celebration of the Latin Mass could cause as much upheaval as its proscription over half a century ago.
Still, things appear to be looking up for the Latin Mass. We’d best be patient now.
Interesting, hopeful news regarding Usus Antiquior, the Latin Mass, as reported in The Catholic Thing. They have posted a video featuring veteran EWTN reporter Raymond Arroyo, who is
joined by canon lawyer Father Gerald Murray and TCT Editor-in-Chief Robert Royal to unpack Pope Leo’s surprising decision to grant a rare exemption to the ban on the Traditional Latin Mass for a Texas parish—and whether it signals a broader shift.
Since your Tatler embraced the full faith of the Catholic Church 17 years ago, coming from the rich Anglo-Catholic tradition of the Episcopal Church, I have been praying for full restoration of the Latin Mass. To put it simply, what the 1662 (or 1962) book of Common Prayer is to Anglican worship, the Latin Mass is to Catholic worship. It must be restored and this bit of news coming from Texas is most encouraging.
Note: there is also in this video an outrageous account of a sex-offender priest somehow landing a job in the Vatican.
Ladies and Gentlemen, there is still a long way to go. Pray for Holy Church.
Your Tatler turns a ripe (overripe?) three score and ten soon, and as is common among doddery old men, I have been thinking back to the major events occurring in my life. One that stands out lately is the Watergate scandal, which brought down Richard Nixon’s presidency 51 years ago.
Watergate is brought to mind owing to the present scandal brewing in Washington. Surprisingly, I have yet to hear any quid pro quo references to Watergate by Dems, seeking to deflect attention from the present morass, but the likely explanation is, unlike Watergate, which received non-stop coverage from the media, this present scandal, unsurprisingly, receives scarcely any attention at all from the usual media suspects.
With Watergate, other than Democrat leadership accomplishing their single goal of attaining the head of the Baptist, via the forced resignation of hapless President Nixon, little else was accomplished. Vice President Gerald Ford, an honest and decent man, assumed the presidency and things returned to normal relatively quickly, though the Republicans did suffer losses at the polls for a few cycles.
With Watergate, President Nixon may or may not have been aware of plans for a band of bungling Cuban-American burglars, hirees of the so-called White House Plumbers, to break into Democratic headquarters and dig around for secrets to use against the Republicans. The burglars were quickly caught, tried, and convicted.
The present scandal is far worse. There is increasingly strong evidence, with more added everyday, that President Barack Obama conspired with his cohorts, holy terror Hillary Clinton, his closest advisors, and all the major intelligence agencies, to severely discredit the newly elected President of the United States, Donald Trump, by planting false evidence that he was in league with President Putin of Russia; that his loyalties were divided. As a result, President Trump’s first term was greatly hampered by his having to defend his integrity every day, and fend off accusations that he was Vladimir Putin’s puppet. It lowered his reputation so badly that when he ran for re-election, he lost to the least qualified presidential candidate in our country’s history, Sen. Joseph Biden.
Already seriously hampered by dementia, which only got worse, this country was instead in the charge of dubious shadow characters hand-picked by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. They did much damage, beginning immediately by having Biden remove all barriers from our borders, opening our country to millions of miscreants from Latin and South America, The Dem’s obvious plan was, after granting the illegals quick citizenship, to reverse the party’s decline by making them voters With more Dem votes, the more Dems elected [sic] and with the millions of illegals as voters, the party could well have had a solid, veto-proof majority in both Houses of Congress for years to come.
To judge the efficacy of the Obama, Clinton, et al conspirators’s plot against Donald Trump, one need only compare the President’s successes in his first term with those of his second term. Now that he is free from the sea anchor imposed on him in the first term he is on fire, accomplishing more, whether you approve of them or not, in his first half year than in his entire first term, much of it reversing the damage done in the Biden administration.
That measure of difference in Trump’s performance is the measure of damage President Obama’s sabotage of Trump’s presidency caused. It does not seem out of line for your Tatler to refer to Obama’s, Hillary’s, and their co-conspirators’s evil actions as anything less than a coup d’etat, albeit a slow one. They must be tried for treason.
A figure from New York City’s past, Curtis Sliwa, is running for mayor and was considered an also-ran until now. NY Post columnist Charles Gasparino provides the details but the upshot is, with the other candidates looking so dismal, Sliwa stands out by comparison and, with a 22% approval rate in a recent poll, stands a good chance of winning in a four-way race. Once regarded as somewhat the buffoon, Sliwa may now be regarded as a serious candidate.
Sliwa is not an extremist, as Gasparino explains, only, shall we say, out of the mainstream, which he has been for decades. As the founder and head of the Guardian Angels, he is no radical and holds generally sound opinions.
Charles Gasparino:
Ever the showman, [Sliwa] once staged his own kidnapping to drum up publicity.
He was once really kidnapped and shot three times, allegedly as payback for repeatedly attacking the mob for drug dealing.
He should be applauded for that.
He will cut taxes and eliminate swaths of government, like the city’s education bureaucracy that does a horrible job educating kids and does a good job employing loads of bureaucrats.
Sliwa’s pro-business policies are why he insists it “behooves” the fat cats . . . “to treat me with a modicum of respect. I am here to support small and medium-sized businesses, as well as the Fortune 500 guys and gals who pay the bulk of our taxes.”
You don’t hear many New York politicos talking like that.
By default, Sliwa has become a viable candidate for mayor, and with a grossly unsatisfactory choice among the major candidates, he might just pull it off.
Update: a friend writes that Sliwa has been married four times and keeps fifteen cats in his small studio apartment. Admittedly, that is a little unsettling, to say the least.
ABC News reports Muslims are contributing to socialist Zohran Mamdani’s New York mayoral campaign in far greater amounts than expected, but for obvious reasons. All well and good, we should all contribute to our preferred candidates with our time, our money (if possible), and our votes. Democracy in action, etc.
Mamdanì is now the leading candidate for mayor in New York and if the past is any guide, candidates in the City (and other left-wing havens) who promise the sun, moon, and stars and more (see the candidate’s website) usually do well in local elections. If Mamdani, with his existing edge, also gets a good portion of the 9% Muslim vote, he stands at a better-than-even chance of becoming the City’s next mayor. In addition to his already extravagant promises, will he, like most other candidates in past elections, heap special, and costly, favors on his own people? It will be interesting to find out, from 2000 miles off.
Not earthshaking, but a gentle reminder of the humanity of our latest pope, who took time out of his day recently to pay a visit to the Poor Clares of Albano Laziale.
Pope Leo XIV made his first “getaway” from Castel Gandolfo to visit the Monastery of the Immaculate Conception of the Poor Clares of Albano, located within the Papal Villas.
After celebrating Mass Tuesday morning in the chapel of the Carabinieri station in Castel Gandolfo, where he is staying during his vacation, Pope Leo headed to the nearby monastery, where he was warmly welcomed by the nuns.
Since most popes visit the Poor Clares at some point or another, the explanation for Leo’s presenting such an agreeable appearance while visiting has more to do with his personality than the facts of his visit. He was certainly graciously and gratefully received by the Poor Clares. Perhaps, his being an American and a midwesterner at that, contributes to his personality, so unlike that of his predecessor. Whatever the explanation, Pope Leo XIV has the makings of a superb pontiff.
Let us pray that our Leo, along with his pleasant demeanor, also has the stamina and sheer willpower in the years ahead to deal with the forces of mediocrity pervading so much of the church, waiting to be removed, and letting what is beneath shine anew. In this blogger’s heart, Leo is the one to do it. Pray for him.
In an earlier post, this blogger wrote of the ordeal suffered by two teenagers, who were expelled from their Catholic high school, because its administrators mistakenly believed they had worn blackface four years earlier. Their excessive punishment owed to liberalism run amok in the Church over the past 50-plus years, doing untold damage to traditional worship and beliefs.
In a short but gratifying essay by Msgr J Batule in the Catholic Thing, titled, The Decline of Liberal Catholicism, he writes of the heartening decline of liberalism among the young men coming into the priesthood.
Msgr Batule writes:
[C]hanges are apparent in the pulpit, at the altar and in the Confessional, and in the classroom where there are parishes with elementary and high schools. In contradistinction to the examples I used from my first assignment, Holy Hours are regular occurrences in many parishes now, Pre-Cana presentations are more apt to point out not just the incongruity but the sinfulness in cohabitation, and, relatedly, that marital chastity is not attained so long as contraception is practiced.
Even Holy Church, alas, is vulnerable to political trends ex ecclaisiam, so it is gratifying to see her moving away from the fairly common, if absurd, beliefs among the previous generation of the clergy.
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.
Fox TV
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.
THE TAOS TATLER. 