Tea at Trianon: Will the Latin Mass save civilization?

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, July 10, 2007

Will the Latin Mass save civilization?

Charles Coulombe has a brilliant article putting modern liturgical developments into the context of history at large. To quote:

The truth is that the Catholic Church is a bellwether for the health of Western Civilization in general—a sort of canary chanting in the coal mine of culture. On the one hand, events within the Church cast their shadow on the rest of the Christian ecclesial bodies. This author has ventured, for example, into formerly beautiful Anglican and Lutheran churches, only to find them sacked by their clergy in similar manner to the depredations suffered by Catholic parishes in the past four decades. Upon enquiring about the reason for such artistic purging, he has often been told—“oh, because of Vatican II!” While he understands that this a misreading of the Council common in Catholic circles, he has never been able to understand how it could have any relevance to other denominations. Share

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: I have a friend who is an Anglican Priest, who is in Love with the Church, I mean The Catholic Church. he is a step or two away from becoming a Catholic himself. he is fed up (to my understanding)with the theology which inhabits a Church that allows bishops to be gay, and Bishops who rent out the cathedral for rockstars birthdays.
He wrote me yesterday and told me he is going to start saying mass in latin in his church on weekdays, wearing vestiture from before Vatican II. His church was the site of my own daughter's marriage, where I say a banner to Our Lady prominently displayed. Anad all this in an Anglican communion church. What can one say when this fellow prefers to be more Catholic than Catholic? The problem is thus, many of our young priests do not know Latin any more than they know Spanish, and the older ones grown used to this councilar laziness are unwilling to return to latin. Yet we will have two Masses, to two different groups of people, one anglophone and one Hispanic. Two parishes.
Latin is the unifier.

Deo Vindice
de Brantigny; July 10, 2007 at 11:03:00 AM EDT