Tea at Trianon: The Church Belligerent?

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, August 6, 2013

The Church Belligerent?

Allowing oneself to be possessed with a critical spirit will destroy the spiritual life. To quote:

Those who constantly challenge and criticize cannot be taught. They may be able to pick apart goofy catechesis and spot liturgical abuse from a mile away. But they cannot learn, because they never stop questioning, criticizing, picking things apart. The criticism results in a cynicism borne (ironically) of a zeal for truth. If we refuse to trust anyone, then we set ourselves up as our own personal magisterium. And we have a name for that: Protestantism.

Further, the constant criticizing quickly becomes just complaining. And there is plenty to complain about. So we sit around and swap anecdotes about how bad Mass is at that parish, and how bad that school is, and what bishop so-and-so did or didn’t do…and so on. We may be dead right on every point. But so what? At the end of the complaining, have we become holier? Have we grown in the interior life? And what attitude have we fostered in those around us?

Some of our greatest saints saw similar, and worse, crises. Yet they did not leave us an example of complaining. The hallmark of Christians is charity, not churlishness. The pagans were moved by the Christians: "See how they love one another"—not "See how they complain to one another." (Read entire article.)

julygirl said...: Pedagogy gone astray. Some people are desperate to show how much they know, or think they know, and amaze all the rest of us.; August 6, 2013 at 7:41:00 AM EDT