Tea at Trianon: The Deathbed Conversion of Oscar Wilde

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

Thursday, December 31, 2015

The Deathbed Conversion of Oscar Wilde

From Church Pop:

Born in Dublin, Ireland in 1854, Wilde was baptized as an infant in an Anglican church. His mother, Jane, however, was drawn to Catholicism and would often visit Mass. When Oscar was a young child, she asked her local priest to instruct her children in the Catholic faith, though it’s unclear if she herself ever joined the Church officially.

Wilde, though he received some Catholic instruction, did not consider himself a Catholic growing up. While at Oxford for university studies, he started to seriously consider becoming Catholic, even becoming a priest. But he also joined the Free Masons around the same time, and commented he “would be awfully sorry to give it up if I secede from the Protestant Heresy.”

In 1877, at the age of 23, he traveled to Rome and had a meeting with Pope Pius IX that left him “speechless,” and he started reading the books of Bl. John Cardinal Newman. He is quoted as having said, the Catholic Church is “for saints and sinners alone – for respectable people, the Anglican Church will do.” In 1878, he befriended a priest and scheduled a date on which he would be received officially into the Church. But his family was against it: his father threatened to cut off his hands if he joined. At the last minute, Wilde decided against joining.

Years later in 1895, after having achieved literary fame, he was accused of sodomy, or of having committed homosexual acts, which was illegal in England at the time. After a lengthy public trial, he was convicted and sentenced to two years of hard labor. (Read more.)