Tea at Trianon: False Love in a False 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

Friday, September 11, 2015

False Love in a False World

From Crisis:

A society that largely ignores the horrors of the ongoing Planned Parenthood exposé, embraces a new right to same-sex “marriage,” and celebrates a sixty-five year old former male Olympian cum faux female with a “reality” show cannot begin to answer these questions. The campus rape movement, trangenderism, and marriage without meaning are the end game of a sexual devolution begun two generations ago. They are the death rattle of sexuality, not its fulfillment. They are not aberrations of the Sexual Revolution but its natural, nihilistic conclusion. They are final proofs of sex undefined, not redefined. Rather than more sex, the Sexual Revolution has sold us the illusion of sex, substituting the life giving reality for a contradiction that is both sterile and septic. Today, more people than ever think they are having sex where there is no sex at all. A world built on such an illusion cannot define sexual offense when sex itself has no meaning. Rape is the crime of sex forcefully taken. The Sexual Revolution is an act of rape that has taken our sexuality itself.

In this light the cry of campus rape must be considered. Rather than cast ridicule upon campus coeds caught in a current fad, we must see young people seeking love in a barren world. Our disdain will only destroy those whose cries we mistake for a force energized rather than a force spent. It is not water we need to put out a blazing fire but a lifeline to throw to those drowning in a roiling sea of contradictions. Unfortunately, the rope we need suffers the mold and rot of neglect, having been unused for many years.

As the Protestant world disintegrates over a sundered and corrupted sexuality, the Catholic Church alone can restore its meaning. It has the answers. The Catholic Church alone understands the true nexus of sex, love, and men and women made in the image of God. It has the lifeline. But it lies unused. I am a Catholic who does not understand the muted response of the Church I see day to day, in my parish, in my diocese, and in my country. I do not understand the need for an encyclical on a global warming I cannot see while silence meets the catastrophe I do see. I need only look out my door to witness, within the confines of the block I live on, the devastation of sexuality gone awry, with its abortions, divorces, single motherhood, split families, and ever rotating relationships featuring the boyfriend/father of the moment. I imagine that most anybody looking out their door in most any neighborhood, most anywhere in this country, will, if they truly open their eyes, see the same. (Read more.)