Tea at Trianon: The Secular Inquisition

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

Sunday, April 18, 2010

The Secular Inquisition

The Pope-hunters are out for blood. (via Serge)

It's worth asking why otherwise fairly intelligent thinkers get so dementedly exercised over the pope and the Catholic Church. What exactly is their beef? What are they objecting to? Very few (if any) of the pope-hunters were raised Catholic, so this isn't about personal vengeance for some perceived slight by a priest or nun. And despite their current lowdown, historically illiterate attempt to equate a priest fondling a child with a state's attempt to obliterate an entire people – under the collective tag 'crime against humanity' – the truth is that some of these pope-hunters don't really think child abuse is the worst crime in the world. In 2006, Dawkins criticised 'hysteria about paedophilia' and said that, even though he was the victim of sexual abuse at boarding school, he would defend his abusive former teachers if '50 years on they had been hounded by vigilantes or lawyers as no better than child murderers'. Yet now he wants to put abusive priests on a par with genocidaires.

Also, while of course one incident of child sexual abuse by a priest is one too many, it simply isn't the case that the Catholic Church is a vast, institutionalized paedophile ring wrecking the lives of millions of children around the world. One pope-hunting columnist describes the Vatican as an 'international criminal conspiracy to protect child rapists', yet the facts and figures don't bear that out. If these anti-pope crusaders really were interested in justice and equality, there are numerous other, even worse crimes and scandals that they might investigate and interrogate and try to alleviate.

Yet despite the lack of any obvious, sensible reason why they break out in boils at the mention of the words 'Benedict', 'priest' or 'Catholic', the pope-hunters' campaign has acquired a powerfully pathological, obsessive and deafeningly shrill character. It is screeching and emotional. It talks about 'systematic evil' and discusses the pope as a 'leering old villain in a frock'. It uses up almost all the intellectual and physical energies of men and women who consider themselves to be serious thinkers. What is going on here?

Some good points made HERE. Share

2 comments:

Julygirl said...: I was surprised to see an article in the Washington Post titled "5 Myths about the Catholic abuse scandal", defending Pope Benedict, and the so called pervasiveness of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.; April 19, 2010 at 8:02:00 AM EDT
elena maria vidal said...: I saw that. I am glad there is some responsible journalism.; April 19, 2010 at 8:24:00 AM EDT