Tea at Trianon: The Early Church Was the Catholic Church

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

Monday, July 20, 2015

The Early Church Was the Catholic Church

From ChurchPop:

Chief among the intellectual appeals stand the towering figures of the Early Church Fathers. Christians who lived, and wrote, some of them contemporary with the writings of the New Testament. Many of them, in the earliest Fathers known as the Ante-Nicene Fathers, were taught themselves by the apostles.

It was the strong appeal and clear theology of these, some of the earliest and most foundational Christians, that contributed strongly to my intellectual conversion to Catholicism. To do anything otherwise, I’ll argue, would be utterly foolish.

I’ve written before, in a tongue-and-cheek article, that a surefire way to avoid becoming a Catholic is to avoid, altogether, reading from the Church Fathers.

The reason is simple. If you do venture a risk at reading the ancient Church Fathers something becomes alarmingly apparent fairly quickly in the history of the Church: the clarity of some very, particularly Catholic doctrine.

Take two examples: the Eucharist and Baptism. (Read more.)