Tea at Trianon: Training for the Traditional Mass

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, June 2, 2008

Training for the Traditional Mass

Progress is being made, slowly but surely.

Cardinal George, the archbishop of Chicago, said this about a five-day Traditional Latin Mass Training Workshop for priests and seminarians hosted last week by the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius in conjunction with the Archdiocese of Chicago.

Hailing from all over the United States, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Lithuania, Italy, and the Philippines, the participating priests and seminarians stayed at the campus of Mundelein Seminary to attend a hands-on workshop on the celebration of the extraordinary form of the Mass of the Roman rite held at the Cardinal Stritch Retreat House.

In a letter to those who attended the event, Cardinal George said: "Charged with proclaiming Christ's universal call to holiness, the Church wishes to foster a love for the sacred whenever her people gather to worship God as he wants to be worshiped. In order to better serve Catholics who wish to worship according to the 'forma extraordinaria,' ample and ongoing catechesis in this form of the Mass must be available. This can only be achieved if, first of all, priest and seminarians are prepared to serve this need.