Tea at Trianon: Excommunication According to the Holy Rule of St. Benedict

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

Sunday, November 27, 2016

Excommunication According to the Holy Rule of St. Benedict

From Vulus Christi:

Dante helps us to understand that for Saint Benedict and his monks, community life means salvation. To be separated, even for a time from community life, is strong medicine. In too great a dose it can be deadly. The monk who is cut off, even for a limited time and to a degree, from the life of the community understands that if he persists in his contumacy, or pride, or disobedience, he will find himself frozen in isolation. When a small child is given the punishment of “time out”, it is not long before he begs to be reintegrated into the family circle. To “excommunicate” a child momentarily from the family circle can be salutary; to alienate him for too long from the family circle can harm him irreparably. This is why Saint Benedict would have the measure of excommunication be left to the judgment of the Abbot.

Given post–modern man’s descent into isolation, excommunication may not be a suitable remedy in all cases. The model of our life remains the κοινωνία of the Most Holy Trinity depicted in Roublev’s icon of the Holy Trinity: there we see unity in love expressed in a shared life, in humility, obedience, and mutual reverence. Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est. Where charity and love are, God does there abide. (Read more.)