Tea at Trianon: Carmelite Monastery Assaulted

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, January 9, 2012

Carmelite Monastery Assaulted

Pray for the nuns in the Congo. It sounds like a terrible time.

A group of youths assaulted the Carmelite Monastery of Kananga on November 28th. Political elections were ongoing in the Democratic Republic of the Congo at the time.

Taking advantage of election day, the hoodlums decided to assault all the monasteries in the area. They first went to the community of sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary where they were stopped by police guarding the convent.

After that, they approached the Carmelite Monastery (Saint Enfant Jésus). Police stationed at the door called two other policemen that were guarding the Theological Seminary of Kananga, which is near the monastery, but despite the four-man guard, the police were not able to stop the bandits from entering the monastery. (Read entire post.)