Tea at Trianon: Outrage in Connecticut

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, March 11, 2009

Outrage in Connecticut

Anthony Esolen discusses the unconstitutional bill in Connecticut which threatened to infringe upon the freedom of Catholic citizens. It has since been tossed out but the fact that such a bill was ever introduced is not a good thing. To quote:

I'd heard about this bill from chatter on the Internet, but it was so outrageous I thought I'd give it a few days to die of shame before I bothered to comment on it....The bill would, essentially, remove from the jurisdiction of the pope and the bishops of Connecticut all authority to establish and to manage Catholic organizations, including parishes themselves, which would instead be directed by state-mandated councils of thirteen laymen. The bill contemptuously declares that the clergy would in no way be prohibited from the free exercise or teaching of their faith -- when in fact that is precisely what the bill is designed to do; indeed it serves no other purpose at all than to make the laity the paymasters and the directors. Sneaking in the corner we find that relegation of religion to the private and sentimental and ultimately ineffectual and irrelevant that our juridical and legislative betters devoutly wish to be the case....

In any case, the battle is here. And it is not a battle for my Catholic Church alone. It is a battle for all the churches, and for the soul of this republic: we will either have the free exercise of our faith, without being pecked to death by courts and bureaucrats and addled lawmakers, or we will be wards of the state, like old ladies allowed to hug our stuffed animals in a nursing home. And here I have a vision. Bishop Martino of Scranton shows me the path of our counterattack. If the Freedom of Choice Act passes, he has recently said, and if it means that Catholic hospitals will have to provide abortions or contraception, then he will shut down the three Catholic hospitals in Lackawanna County immediately and board them up. The county -- no, the commonwealth itself could not sustain the loss of those hospitals. It would be an instant crisis; and it would have to be done, or freedom of religion would die....