Tea at Trianon: The Americanist Heresy

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

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

The Americanist Heresy

Christine of Laudem Gloriae reports on how the American way often diverges from the Catholic way, contrary to what most Catholic Americans may think.

[T]he liberty of thinking, and of publishing, whatsoever each one likes, without any hindrance, is not in itself an advantage over which society can wisely rejoice. On the contrary, it is the fountain-head and origin of many evils....Whatever, therefore, is opposed to virtue and truth may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law.

--Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei
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2 comments:

Mercury said...: I'd add that Pope Leo made is clear that he was not condemning the American form of government and way of doing things per se, but rather applying those things in places where they shouldn't be (i.e. religion and morality).

Some people like to claim that any American who does not want to see the US system replaced by a monarch is an Americanist heretic.

And besides, none of the Founding Fathers nor anyone through the 19th century and even up through most of the 20th thought that freedom of speech meant the ability to publish whatever kind of smut one wanted to, or that freedom of religion meant a complete sanitizing of the public sphere from religion, etc.; December 6, 2011 at 1:31:00 AM EST
elena maria vidal said...: Excellent points. Thank you!; December 6, 2011 at 7:04:00 AM EST