Tea at Trianon: Miscellany

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, February 18, 2008

Miscellany

Here are links to various articles which I came across this morning when perusing the internet.

Fr. Mark Kirby has returned from Ireland with anecdotes, as well as a reflection on the Transfiguration.

To seek the Face of Christ is to place all one's trust in Him. It is to await from Him all that one needs. The contemplation of the Holy Face of Jesus
— exorcises the fears that paralyze us spiritually;
— frees us from anxiety and fills the soul with peace;
— purifies us of our sins and opens us to an infusion of grace;
— glorifies Our Lord because He desires that we should discover on His Face the glory of the Father (2 Cor 4:6), and the secrets of His Heart.

Terry Nelson offers some thoughts on priestly vestments. And today is the new feast of St. Bernadette in France.

Our Lady understands well that life on earth is indeed “a vale of tears”, as we say in her prayer, and the Blessed Virgin knows that “nothing the world affords comes from the Father.”- (Jn 2:16) The Blessed Mother also respects man’s free will, and she recognizes that man’s tendency is for good, hence the Blessed Virgin has compassion on our feeble attempts at charity, as well as our longing for love, no matter how disordered. Therefore, as she explained to Bernadette, she seeks to correct our mistaken notions of fulfillment when she told the saint, “I cannot make you happy in this world, but only in the next.” That is not to say our life on earth is joyless at all, in fact, living according to the commandments and loving God is the only source of genuine happiness on earth, as Jesus taught us.

Daniel Mitsui discusses the secret Christians of Japan, who would face indescribable tortures if discovered.

Here is a compelling review about Ruth Scurr's biography of Robespierre, Fatal Purity. (Via The Western Confucian) To quote:

Madame de Stael wrote of Robespierre in 1789 that "his features were mean, his complexion pale, his veins a greenish hue". His body language was also suspect: according to a contemporary "he never looked you in the face". This is probably because Robespierre was already wholly absorbed by his inward vision of the new state and its total democracy, a vision with which he entirely identified. When the Bastille fell on 14 July that same year he commented that "the will of the people" had sanctioned it. Yet among all the fervid activity of those months and the many other articulate voices clamouring for change, he stood out, catching the eye of Mirabeau, the one man with the personality and the influence to save the monarchy, who said of him: "That man will go far. He believes everything he says."

Mere Comments has a post entitled "The Oprah Club," with the following astute observation:

Mere literacy has no value in itself. It is worthy only as the servant of virtue. The virtues of Oprahism, however, appear to be subordinate to, and ordered by, the prime virtue of self-realization and self-actualization rather than that of finding the self by losing it in sacrificial service to others, subject to the will of God. Its heroes tend to be Prometheans injured by, and in defiance of, the Traditional Moral Order (let us all weep for them a bit), lap-christs for the entertainment of silly women. Oprahism, to be sure, is chock-full of "virtues," but the order in which they are placed relative to one another in the scheme of the whole makes the phenomenon a veil of evil.