Tea at Trianon: How Far We Have Fallen

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

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

How Far We Have Fallen

From The Eighth Way:

If there's no God, there's no heaven. If you live as if there's no God, then you live as if there's no heaven. The net result is the same. Either way is a life doomed to be bereft of hope for the future glory promised to those who repent and believe in the Gospel. One without this hope is bound to seek happiness only in transitory goods. In other words, one is relegated to live a life seeking those things which delight only the senses. Man's spirit is neglected; it atrophies and dies....

A simulacrum of hope has become a weak replacement in the lives of so many people. Since there is nothing to look forward to after this life, or if we live as if there is nothing to look forward to after this life, then we end up simply seeking those goods we find laying about us. The great good of fulfillment has been replaced by the limited goods of satiety and pleasure. The great good of immortality has been replaced by propagation. The communion of persons has been replaced by casual encounters. In short, heavenly bliss has been replaced by sexual promiscuity.

This isn't simply a case of falling prey to our baser human inclinations. No, the pagans did paganism with far more panache than we could ever muster. We've fallen into a far worse state than our former pagan ways. We've reordered the heavenly and the infinite to the earthly and the finite. We've aborted our hope. We've placed our salvation in our sexuality. (Read more.)