Tea at Trianon: Fr. Stock

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

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Fr. Stock

Laudem Gloriae has a post on the brave German priest who ministered to condemned prisoners during WWII.
SEIGNEUR ! Nous te rendons grâces
pour ton serviteur l’abbé Franz STOCK
que tu as envoyé pour rapprocher
deux peuples déchirés par la guerre.
Apôtre de ta Charité et Messager de ta Paix
Il a été porteur du réconfort et du pardon
dans les ténèbres de la violence et de la haine.
Par son ministère d’évangélique espérance,
par ses témoignages de compassion humaine,
il a été un infatigable artisan
de la Réconciliation franco-allemande.
Pour que son exemple demeure à jamais
présent et agissant dans nos deux Peuples,
et qu’il rayonne à travers l’Europe et le Monde,
nous demandons avec ferveur à ton Eglise
que l’Abbé Franz STOCK soit reconnu
“Apôtre de ta Charité et Messager de ta Paix” Share