Tea at Trianon: The Great New Martyrs

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, August 24, 2015

The Great New Martyrs

From FaithZette:

The Islamic State is wiping out Christian communities that have existed in the Middle East for many hundreds of years, an outspoken Catholic priest said Tuesday on “The Laura Ingraham Show.”

The Rev. Benedict Kiely, a Vermont priest and founder of nasarean.org, lamented that the bloodletting proceeds unabated while Americans are consumed by a football scandal involving New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and an Olympic icon’s gender switching.

“We need to know that our brothers and sisters are suffering greatly while we’re concerned about deflated footballs and Caitlyn Jenner and triviality,” he said. “The world seems to be ignoring it.”

ISIS has steadily expanded territory from the ashes of Syria and Iraq. In those conquered lands, it has imposed one of the harshest and most literal interpretations of the Quran, the Muslim holy book. The group has carried out beheadings of infidels, forced nonbelievers to convert or flee, and sold young girls into sexual slavery. (Read more.)