Tea at Trianon: The Future Belongs to Those Who Love

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, June 10, 2007

The Future Belongs to Those Who Love

Rorate Caeli quotes Pope Pius XII:

The future belongs to the faithful, not to the skeptics and the doubtful!

The future belongs to the strong, those who hope and act firmly, not to the timid and the irresolute!

The future belongs to those who love, not to those who hate!

The mission of the Church in the world, far from being finished and theoretical, finds new challenges and new enterprises.

The charge which Providence has given you at this crucial hour is not that of reaching a weak and cowardly peace with the world, but that of establishing a peace for the world which is truly worthy of God and of men.

Beseeching this peace - which mankind cannot reach with its own strength - of divine mercy on this poor, tormented, tortured earth, is a duty which all, Pastors and faithful, must fulfill with ardent fervor, especially in this month dedicated to the Heart of the Divine Redeemer. Share