Tea at Trianon: The Love of Chastity

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

Thursday, April 2, 2015

The Love of Chastity

An interview with author Dawn Eden in The National Review:

The media and their advertisers press on us from all sides, trying to sell us on no-strings sex and voyeurism, instructing us on how to objectify ourselves and others. “Sex sells” used to be a catchy adage, but at this point, we as a culture have become sated with sex. It has become a drug just like any other drug, giving a temporary high that leaves us lower than we were before. Fulton J. Sheen called this state of disillusioned satedness “black grace” — a kind of “fed-upness” that could open the way for the “white grace” of conversion. In my experience, there are many, many people who have bought into the lies of the sexual revolution, seeking love through sex, only to experience the darkness of this black grace. If the truth of chastity is presented to them in its fullness — as a way to learn how to truly love and be loved — then they will be open to hearing it. If they then begin to implement it in their lives, they will be transformed. I know, because that is what happened to me. (Read more.)