Tea at Trianon: When You Don't Like the Pope

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

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

When You Don't Like the Pope

From The Catholic Thing:

Let me see whether I can clarify something. You don’t have to like a pope. You don’t have to like the way he talks to reporters, the way he addresses people in public, or the kinds of shoes he wears. You don’t even have to like the approach he takes to various topics. But you do have to respect the teaching authority of his office when he exercises that authority officially.

In making this claim, I’m merely echoing Pope Saint John Paul II who in Ad Tuendam Fidem, a document composed with the explicit intention “of protecting the faith (ad tuendam fidem) of the Catholic Church against errors arising from certain members of the Christian faithful,” considered it “absolutely necessary to add to the existing texts of the Code of Canon Law. . .new norms which expressly impose the obligation of upholding truths proposed in a definitive way by the Magisterium of the Church.”

Thus in the Church’s Profession of Faith, one finds this affirmation: “Moreover I adhere with submission of will and intellect to the teachings which either the Roman Pontiff or the College of Bishops enunciate when they exercise their authentic Magisterium, even if they do not intend to proclaim these teachings by a definitive act.” Indeed, according to Lumen Gentium, this religious submission of intellect and will “must be shown in such a way that [the Holy Father’s] supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence, and the judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind and will. . .[which] may be known either from the character of the documents, from his frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or from his manner of speaking.”

A Catholic who is disappointed with the pope is a disappointed Catholic. This is a common enough state of affairs in Church history. But a Catholic who imagines that he or she participates more fully in the charism of magisterial authority granted by the Holy Spirit to the pope than does the pope himself – and who decides that he or she has the authority to set the spiritual standard by which the official teaching of a papacy can be judged (and judged a failure) – is making the mistake Martin Luther made. It is the same mistake many modern liberal theologians make. They have made themselves the authority, the touchstone, the standard; and the pope, whoever he is, should, they insist, bring himself into accord with what they think or be spit out like a piece of rotten fruit. This is the way of folly and division.

(Read more.)