Tea at Trianon: Putting the Pope above the President...

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, March 23, 2007

Putting the Pope above the President...

...Which is what some conservatives need to do. Meanwhile, in Germany, the banning of Muslim veils is being used as a pretext to strip teaching nuns of their habits. Read all about it here. Share

3 comments:

Anonymous said...: Well I knew that was coming! Any laws that restrict religious expression can so easily be turned on us at a the drop of a hat (er, veil). Which is partly why JPII was always so outspoken against such laws, regardless of which religious group was being targeted.; March 23, 2007 at 11:44:00 AM EDT
elena maria vidal said...: Yes, it turns out he was right.; March 23, 2007 at 11:53:00 AM EDT
Anonymous said...: There was the uproar over the passage of a law regarding Muslim headscarves in France a few years ago.; March 23, 2007 at 4:42:00 PM EDT