Tea at Trianon: Catholics, Be Confident!

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

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Catholics, Be Confident!

Now is not the time to be embarrassed about the faith. From Aleteia:

The Western world has changed the definition of marriage for the first time in history to have no intrinsic connection to the bearing and rearing of children. We decided that sexual morality that says “No” to anyone’s sexual desires is a form of repression and that insisting on the age-old definition of marriage is bigotry.

It is a very powerful temptation for Catholics to see the evolution of marriage as the consequence of a new enlightenment about sex. But consider the cultural changes that preceded our decision to redefine marriage:

- First came the sexual revolution that fulfilled none of its promises and left many lives a wreck.

- Second came a nationwide STD epidemic in which Americans every year contract 20 million new cases of just eight sexually transmitted viruses and bacteria and even the AIDS/HIV epidemic is making a comeback. (Read more.)