Tea at Trianon: The Return of the Pagan Gods

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, June 3, 2015

The Return of the Pagan Gods

From the Catholic Thing:

Or how about the Harpies? Dante had them as the spirits populating a forest in Hell, where they make people suffer. They are vicious vindictive creatures and are equipped with razor sharp talons. Today’s harpy culture revels in calumny and detraction.

No? Look at the sharp attacks on Archbishop Cordileone or Cardinal Pell. But there are many more examples. You constantly see people viciously attacking each other verbally and saying the wildest things on TV. It gets audience share, to be sure. But calumny is still a sin, the sin of saying things that are false. And detraction is still saying things that might be true, but that should not casually be put into words.

Or how about this, which you can find even on Wikipedia: “In the Hebrew Bible, the site [Gehenna near Jerusalem] was initially where apostate Israelites and followers of various Ba’als and other Canaanite gods, including Moloch (or Molech), sacrificed their children by fire (2 Chr. 28:3, 33:6).” Appropriately and prophetically, Gehenna came to be a name for Hell. Those ancient practices have been recovered in the modern sacrifice of kids to satisfy the needs of adults. (Read more.)