Tea at Trianon: Chastity vs Consumerism

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

Monday, June 25, 2007

Chastity vs Consumerism

Chastity is not only a witness of the world to come, but it can be a way of taking a stand against a society of consumerism, where people are seen as commodities. An NOR article says:

Given that our society has been overwhelmingly converted to an ethic of indulgence, chastity is not merely a type of dissent, it is a form of economic subversion. In a consumer society, chastity is a profound form of Christian witness and social protest. The chaste person refuses to participate in the degradation of sex and the degradation of the human person it implies. He proclaims himself the master of his desires rather than a slave to them. His life bears witness that a fully human existence consists not in a hedonistic pursuit of pleasure, but in a higher calling to a life of discipline and self-sacrifice -- in other words, to a life of loving and serving others. Admittedly, there are those whose chastity is more prudery than protest, more naïveté than non-cooperation. But chastity need not be rooted in immaturity. For a person with a strong social conscience, chastity is a mature response to a great evil. It is a form of rebellion. It is a virtue that undermines the very foundations of a culture based on selfishness and greed, and begins to build a new one based on self-emptying love -- the love which Christians know as the kenosis of God. Share