Tea at Trianon: The Gift of Christian Education

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

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

The Gift of Christian Education

Our Holy Father Pope Benedict recently commented on the priceless gift of a Christian education:

"Educating in the faith is by no means easy. ... [Today] there is talk of an 'educational emergency.'

"We could also say that such an emergency is inevitable. In a society and a culture that too often make relativism their creed, the light of truth slowly disappears and people end up doubting the goodness of life and the validity of the relationships and responsibilities that constitute it."

"Hence," the Pope continued, "education tends to be reduced to the transmission of certain abilities or know how, while seeking to fulfill the new generations' desire for happiness by cramming them with consumer products [that provide only] ephemeral gratification. Thus both parents and teachers are easily tempted to abdicate their educational duties and no longer even understand what their own role, or rather the mission entrusted to them, is.

"The Church's commitment to educate in the faith […] takes on, as never before, the additional value of being a contribution to helping the society in which we live escape from the educational crisis afflicting it." Share