Tea at Trianon: Madonna in Poland

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, July 30, 2012

Madonna in Poland

Young Catholics in Poland are protesting the rock star's blasphemy.

As the Polish news agency KAI reports on Friday the Catholic student organization "Crusade of Youth" has asked the Warsaw city council to ban the show. They accuse Madonna among other things, of blasphemy. 45,000 Poles joined Friday's protest agains the student organization of the concert.

Meanwhile, three Catholic priests called on the faithful to pray for a cancellation of the show. The concert was the main aim of Madonna's, to mock God and Christianity, according to a joint appeal by the Rev. Andrzej Grefkowicz and Pawel Wiecek Robert Pajak and the Jesuits.[Really?] Previously, the Catholic Association of the Journalists of Poland, Madonna had turned against the appearance of the new National Stadium. The spokesman of the Polish Bishops' Conference, Jozef Kloch does not wish to take a position in the dispute. (Read entire post.)