Tea at Trianon: The Conscience of America

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, May 4, 2016

The Conscience of America

From Seton Magazine:

Some have attempted to make this look like a very convoluted case; however, from a legal perspective, the case is actually very simple. As one of the amicus briefs puts it:

“The answer to this question is less complex than it initially appears. The Little Sisters of the Poor have created a health care plan for their employees. It is their creation and their creature. It exists only because they created it. It is a creature of contract, a contract that they authored. It is ultimately their property. The government wants to use it because it finds it administratively convenient to do so. The Little Sisters object to having their property dragooned into these efforts.” (BecketFund.org)
Not only is the legal principle less than complex, so is the ethical principle. Intentional abortion and the use of abortifacients are direct violations of the fifth commandment; therefore, it naturally follows that cooperation with these evils cannot be justified.

Though this ethical stance of the Sisters is often presented as wacko, this is a basic concept—a foundational precept—of morality. With their ethical stance, the Sisters haven’t gone rogue. In fact, the stance of the Little Sisters in this case is supported by the corpus of Catholic moral theology which is essentially two thousand years in the making. (Read more.)