Tea at Trianon: Internet False Prophet

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

Friday, March 20, 2015

Internet False Prophet

A must-read. From Mary Victrix:

Mothers used to tell their children that too much television would turn their brains into jelly. In some ways the Internet, including the Catholic Internet, has become the digestive tract of hell. If there is anything anti-Christic going on right now that needs to be outed on the Internet it is the Internet itself.

I understand people are suffering and afraid. I understand they feel left out to dry by their leaders. There is real suffering, anxiety and fear—and good reasons for it. And in times like these there are also those who will cash in on people’s vulnerabilities.

Extremists dodge the logic of the faith. They either submit every jot and tittle to personal analysis and declare their contingent opinions to be metaphysically necessary, or they make squishy and gratuitous assertions to be accepted without question because of some personality or prophet. But the logic of the faith is the Cross, and it is this logic that stands in the brink of historical crisis. It rises above both human calculation and the claims of seers, precisely because it is the fundamental evidence of the deposit of faith. It judges mere reason and private revelation, not the other way around. The Cross is our victory not our ruin. The fear mongers are never right. The Apocalypse is not about making people afraid, it is about giving the martyrs hope. (Read more.)