THE TAOS TATLER.

.@Pontifex blesses a block of ice at Vatican CLIMATE CHANGE event. pic.twitter.com/gk9J2OVmVf

— Sign of the Cross (@CatholicSOTC) October 1, 2025

Your Tatler was disappointed at first with the election of Robert Prevost as pope and expressed that disappointment in a none-to-complimentary blog post. In time, however, Leo XIV gave small, but encouraging signs that he might be the reformer pope for whom many Catholics had been praying. Alas, those small signs have proved to be just that, and nothing more.  Leo may be, at best, a status quo pope, content with the way things are, with no desire to ruffle the waters.

Adding to the disappointment of those desiring true reform in modern Catholicism, it looks as if Leo is susceptible to quackery, having fallen for one of the great frauds of our age, so-called “climate change.” He recently opened a conference of the Raising Hope Conference, an organization composed of liberal do-gooders, and firm believers in the pseudo science of climate change. To open the conference his holiness, bizarrely blessed a large inanimate object, in the shape of a large block of ice from Greenland, though l have always assumed ice is fungible,

What is disappointing about all this is, church liturgy is in such ill repair at present, many worshippers wish the pope would devote more time to its repair, and less to silliness like blessing oversized ice cubes, not to mention climate change. So far, in Leo’s reign, he seems to be relatively unconcerned over it. That is a shame, as the history of the Holy Catholic Church is so glorious in that regard, one would hope he would tackle the matter. Not to be, sadly. The mediocrity of Catholic worship shall continue for some time to come. Our desire for orthodoxy has yet to be answered.

A friend writes:

I unworthily propose a prayer for Pontifical blessings of ice cubes of various sizes in times of Climate Change. It may be used in time of global cooling as it is frozen, or in time of global warming as it melts.

Almighty God by whose sovereign breath frost is given and running rivers have been made solid (Job 37:10),  and whose Providence hath gendered the hoary frost of heaven (Job 38:29): we humbly thank Thee for having cast ice like morsels when climates cool, and for turning that same ice in time of warming verily to limpid water that doth quench the thirst of wild asses (Psalm 104:11): forgive our selfish pride for making ozone to change the face of soft waters into waters that are hard, and hard waters into waters that are soft. From shrinking pole to expanding pole  may all living creatures join the ice and snow in  blessing Thee (Daniel 3:69) whose only Begotten Son was able to walk on water that was not frozen, and with whom there is no variableness neither shadow of turning (James 1:17). Amen.

President Trump addressed the UN yesterday

The hard working diplomats at the United Nations undoubtedly were bracing for the worst while awaiting President Trump’s address yesterday, but they couldn’t possibly have forseen what they heard. Trump was in fine fettle, not in the mood for mincing words. He let them have it and it was wonderful to behold. The full address is above, but please allow a cheerful observation by your Tatler.

The United Nations was flawed from the start by having Josef Stalin involved in its founding. He saw it correctly as an instrument of job preservation, his, and the expansion of his soviet empire. He was the only world leader who, with soviet realism, saw a future United Nations in those terms and little else. He was able to conform it to his will and his successors did likewise. The naive United States and most other countries, on the other hand, sent delegates who really believed in the UN’s ability to preserve and create peace. Silly asses.

Here is a list of successful United Nations “peace keeping missions” to prevent hegemony and force warring parties to cease and negotiate:

Donald Trump has shared millions of Americans’s skepticism of the UN. He brought that skepticism to 46th Street and First Avenue yesterday and shared it with world leaders. As the BBC reported it so succinctly, “Six years ago Trump’s UN audience laughed at him, this year they were silent.”

by Shannon Gallagher Prior

It has been [two weeks] since Charlie Kirk was taken from us in such a brutal way. If your heart still feels heavy, let it be. We weren’t made to witness an assassination in real time and then return to “business as usual.” Grief is not weakness. It is proof of love, of conscience, of being alive to what matters.

Some have even called his death “ironic” because he defended the Second Amendment. But there is no irony in violence, no wit in tragedy. The only reason such cruelty feels acceptable is because too many surround themselves with people who normalize it. Mockery may feel safe in that echo chamber, but it doesn’t make it right.

Charlie stood for truth and liberty, and his death does not silence that. It makes it resonate louder, a reminder of what courage looks like in the face of darkness.

—

A society that mocks virtue prepares its own collapse–attr Plato

The author is the Tatler’s niece. Posted by permission

Your Tatler doesn’t tarry much at Facebook these days, but I was alerted to a post by Fr Peter West, an estimable man and an estimable Catholic. The list he compiled, posted below, speaks for itself (res ipsa loquitur) and requires no commentary. None is offered, save for thanks to Fr West.

You may find Fr West’s original list here.

‘Drugs’ found at NY seminary actually priceless relics of Brooklyn’s Saint Raphael

NY Post: “Drug-sniffing dogs swarmed St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary last week when cops were alerted to possible illegal narcotics that had spilled out of their special container on the scenic, tree-covered campus,  WABC reported.”

It turns out it was a seminarian who took the relics for smack, instead of the American saint, St Raphael, who died in Brooklyn in 1915. The poor fellow will likely have a tough time living living this down among his fellow seminarians. Still, there was no harm done and Father Michael Nasser used the occasion to do a good deed.

“We got to meet the K-9 units who came out here for a special prayer and blessing and allowed us to thank them for all they do for us at the seminary and the whole community,” Nasser told WABC.

All dog lovers should heartily approve of Fr Nasser’s worthy act.

Kids, don’t try this at home without an adult present . . . oh.

(A newly commissioned mural at St Patrick’s Cathedral opened to the public yesterday.)

h/t GWR

Someone please inform our Catholic leadership.

The excellent journalist and artist Maureen Mullarkey, whom all reasonable people should read, has posted on her website Studio Matters, a fine essay about the aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the likeable and earnest founder of the conservative advocacy group, Turning Point.

In prose both clear and lucid, she describes how Kirk’s assassination has been the long-awaited catalyst that has, at last, transformed millions of Americans’s attitudes from resigned complacency into genuine anger, with reaction against the increasingly violent, left-wing activists infecting this nation, and a host of others. The awakened citizenry, in this and other nations, are finally standing up and firmly informing the radical left, we will no longer meekly acquiesce  to your thuggery, nor pay the least heed to your sycophants in major media who, like a cancer, have taken over most of it. Already, some of the overpaid newsreaders have been cashiered, or have quit their cushy jobs. These newly unemployed rich are taking it about as well as a toddler having his favorite sucking toy snatched away from him, while simultaneously needing a diaper change.

Mullarkey singles out for criticism perhaps the most useless organization in the Holy Catholic Church, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (the USCCB). You will not find in our Holy Church a more ineffectual bunch of wimps, who go about wringing their hands, speaking platitudes and little else. Lately they are half-apologizing for the increasing terror attacks on the good people they ought to be lionizing, such as the late Charlie Kirk, who, though not a Catholic, vigorously promoted our Catholic morals. Instead, the brave souls of the USCCB, following Kirk’s brutal murder, issued a milquetoast response in which they expressed, again,  their abhorence of terrorist violence. Your Graces, just how many observant Catholics would you hazard are comforted by such uninspired, banal words?

Your Tatler’s disappointment was compounded Sunday by the words coming from the pulpit by our new pastor, who up to now has impressed by his cleaning up the considerable liturgical detritus left behind by his predecessor. What did we hear? A statement sounding as if it were dictated to be read by all priests in New Mexico by our yet-to-resign Archbishop of Santa Fe. In it, we heard, of all things, an abhorence of violence, but zero reference to Charlie Kirk’s murder. To be fair, I like our new pastor, but his fear of going out on a limb was a disappointment. Reverend Sir, you are far better than that, and  capable of far better, by a wide margin. I pray for you because you and other priests are on the battleground.

98 years old and still working.

Blomstedt is the subject of an Australian Broadcast Corp report about him, with some memorable quotes. Excerpts:,

“I’m not so naïve that I think everybody goes out of the concert hall after a Bruckner symphony saying, ‘I won’t do so many bad things tomorrow. I’ll treat my wife nicer.’

“But to experience the order and beauty of great music brings the listener in contact with something that is greater than himself, something that is meant to be perfect and beautiful and positive, and this is one of the greatest blessings of great music.”

Retirement is not a question of age . . . it should be flexible. I just love the music so much that I just can’t give up. There are always things that I want to learn. I’m happy for the results we get now and then, but I’m not really satisfied. Satisfaction lies in the hope of even better possibilities in the future, and I want to take all those chances.”

He ends by quoting Robert Schumann.

Schumann said: ‘The task of the musician is to send light into the depths of the human soul’. Light in the darkness — all of us, each of us, have a dark room in our soul. It could be illness, or disappointment in life; we all have something. You need light in this darkness and music can do that better, than any other art.”

Blomstedt is an observant Seventh-Day Adventist, but Catholics and all others can learn from him, especially musicians.

The incident leading to the apology by Office Depot was detailed in yesterday’s New York Post. Specifically, an Office Depot employee refused a customer’s request to print a poster consisting of a photo of the assassinated conservative activist Charlie Kirk and an announcement of a vigil to mourn his death. The employee claimed it was “propaganda” (so what if it were?). The customer shrugged off the rejection and went over to the local Fed-Ex, which was pleased to print the poster gratis.

The brass at Office Depot, when learning of the incident, apparently became apoplectic and fired the employee responsible.

It’s too early to see this incident as a turnaround in the corporate culture, but it certainly can be seen as a hopeful sign.

The responsible employee; not someone you’d want to meet in a dark alley, no?

The slain Charlie Kirk, a truly righteous and godly man is seen in the video above, politely mopping the floor with a college woman (with purple hair) on her knowledge of scripture. As one would expect of the late Mr Kirk, whose young life was cruelly snuffed out a few days ago, he debated the young women with courtesy and respect and ignored her many unneeded reminders that she was a Catholic.

Her ignorance of scripture was an embarrassment. Still, this is not the fault of young Catholics like her, it is the result of their lazy and sloppy instruction. This is a common problem in the Catholic Church.

Since my conversion, I have found, especially among young Catholics, that many of them have insufficient knowledge of scripture and church teachings. I was blessed when catechized, as it took place at the Church of Our Saviour, Fr Rutler’s church. Two eminently knowledgeable young men led the weekly classes, at which we read, or were assigned to read, all or most of the Catechism. Occasionally, we were even tested and given  writing assignments. The classes met weekly for seven months, until Easter Eve, when were received (all of us made it, happily) into the Holy Catholic Church, a memorable and happy day for me.

Whatever your religion, though, we must pray for the repose of the soul of the good and pious Charlie Kirk. Also we should pray for his widow and two young children.

As for Mr Kirk’s murderer, may God have mercy on his soul.