Tea at Trianon: The Magdalene

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, April 6, 2009

The Magdalene

Mary Jo Anderson offers a reflection.

Mary of Magdala is an example that the modern world urgently needs, an example of true sorrow for sins. That her story has been appropriated by modern sexual libertines under the guise of "feminism" is all the more witness to her actual life of penance: Why else would the dissident gaggles work feverishly to rehabilitate the penitent in their image? It is because a penitent woman cannot be tolerated by modern feminist ideology....

During the Middle Ages, one's bishop might assign a pilgrimage as penance for a grave public offense. While no public penances remain (were I bishop, the things I would order for our Catholic politicians!), we would do well to make some act of real contrition for the good deeds left undone, for any undue grief we have caused, for failure to speak up when evil is tolerated or even legislated, for lack of gratitude for all that we have.