Tea at Trianon: Bringing Christ to the World

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, September 7, 2015

Bringing Christ to the World

From The Campion:

No longer do we have to obsess over protecting ourselves from an evil that lives outside of us. The Jews had not received the gift of the Holy Spirit in Baptism and so their fear of evil was certainly reasonable and justified. Jesus has defeated that evil and given us the power to overcome it. No longer do we wash our hands when we come home from the marketplace in order to purify ourselves. Rather, Jesus is calling us to be, in Him, a fount of purity for the cleansing of the secular marketplace. He wants us to imitate him and walk fearlessly into places (both physically and culturally) that contain evil influences with total confidence in His power to overcome. Judaism is inherently defensive in its posture to the rest of the world. Christianity puts holiness on offense. Christ wants to take over culture and he wants us to be the agents of this conquest.

I’m not saying that don’t have to know ourselves and be careful about near occasions of sin. What I am saying is that I think Jesus is challenging us to consider what our fundamental posture is to the world outside of ourselves: Is it defensive and fearful? Or is it confident and on the offense for the Kingdom? The Gates of Hell will not prevail against us, He told us (Matt 16). That’s an offensive statement. It means that the enemy will not be able to withstand our attack, not that we’ll be able to endure his (as most people strangely interpret that passage). The Church is an army on the march, not a fortified castle! (Read more.)