Tea at Trianon: St. Maria Goretti: The Child Victim

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, July 8, 2012

St. Maria Goretti: The Child Victim

Fr. Ray Blake speculates on sexual abuse in the past.

The Church honours virginity in both its male and female saints, it isn't just a matter of "spiritual integrity" but physical integrity too, the two go together. There is a tendency to saccherinise such saints but St Maria had resisted Serenelli previously. She was the victim of child abuse, she resisted, her "no meant no". I cannot help thinking that one of the reasons for her popularity was that there was an undercurrent of sexual abuse within within Italy at the time.

St Jeanne Vianney at various times during the year rails against village dances; times when young people might find themselves alone together. Padre Pio takes the same stance, as do many Irish sermons of the early 20th century. Abuse, we know generally takes place within the family or extended family, I can't help wondering whether devotion to her was a rather discreet way of talking about sexual abuse.

I remember some years ago talking to a woman whose Polish mother had involved all her children in abusive sexual practices, she, a sociologist and counselor, was convinced that in rural societies, especially isolated ones such practices were "normal". I don't know. (Read entire post.)