Tea at Trianon: Miracles at Lourdes

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

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Miracles at Lourdes

Here is an article by Father Stanley Jaki on the miracles at Lourdes and a skeptical doctor.

Catholic doctors can be sure of two things: One is that the Church will always be most careful about certifying miracles. She has to certify them because every process of beatification and canonization depends, among other things, for its favorable outcome on the Church's approval of at least one miraculous healing obtained through the intercession of the person to be beatified or canonized. That approval puts therefore the very infallibility of the Church on the line. The Church will not be overawed just because the doctor, who states that medical science cannot explain the healing, happens to be a Nobel-laureate. The Church will show extreme carefulness, because in doing so it simply cares for that supernatural vitality of hers of which miracles are the most palpable signs. One, however, needs not only a physical but also a spiritual sort of palpitation, to detect those miracles.
Share