Tea at Trianon: The Rise of the Catholic Right in France

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, December 4, 2016

The Rise of the Catholic Right in France

From Church Militant:

Fillon is by far the most conservative among the three. He voted against gay marriage when it was initially proposed, has vowed to fight adoption rights for same-sex couples, has voted against IVF babies for single mothers and lesbians, and has fought against radical Islam, supporting a ban on burkinis and speaking out on behalf of persecuted Christians in the Middle East.

A large chunk of Fillon's supporters come from La Manif Pour Tous ("Demonstration for All"), a secular initiative begun in 2013 as a reaction to French legislators' decision to ram through same-sex marriage, contrary to the will of the people. The Manif's purpose is to defend the right of children to both a mother and a father, and its annual rallies are some of the largest pro-family gatherings in Europe, with numbers reaching well over a million (although they are consistently underreported in the secular press). Each year, atheists march alongside Catholics, Protestants and Muslims in protest against what they see as French legislators' destruction of the family.

The wildly popular Manif gave rise to a traditional Catholic political movement, Sens Commun ("Common Sense"), which has backed Fillon from the beginning.

Juppé ran on a more centrist platform, deriding Fillon as too traditionalist and out of touch. "I'm the most open to modernism and I feel closer to the Pope than Sens Commun or La Manif pour tous," Juppé said. (Read more.)