Tea at Trianon: Wanting to Love 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

Sunday, December 11, 2016

Wanting to Love the Pope

This is a good article although overall I think people nowadays are way too obsessed with the Pope. The Pope has no power to change the laws of God regarding basic morality. He is "just" the Pope. Pray for the Holy Father and keep living your life of Christian discipleship.

Furthermore, I am not going to call the Holy Father a heretic and if that makes me a heretic then so be it. I read Amoris Laetitiae; I did not see anything wrong with it, but then I am not in the habit of reading a papal document like a censor librorum. However, if the cardinals ask the Pope for a clarification in a matter of doctrine, then they have a right to do so, although it is for the Pope to answer at his own discretion. But it does not make the Pope a heretic, and it does not make me a heretic for acknowledging Pope Francis as the Vicar of Christ. The heretics are those who deny the authority of a validly and licitly elected Bishop of Rome. From First Things:

Priorities, personnel, and leadership style always change with a new Holy Father. The times also change, and with them pastoral realities and needs. So in many ways, Pope Francis and the issues that engage him are nothing unusual. But some things in the new regime really are new. All previous recent papal transitions—John XXIII to Paul VI; Paul VI to John Paul II; John Paul II to Benedict XVI—were marked by a continuity of experience that Francis does not share. All these earlier men were directly involved in the hopes and struggles of the Second Vatican Council in way Francis was not. For Francis, collegiality is an inherited idea.

While the Church in the global north stalls and declines, the Church in the global south is expanding rapidly. The center of gravity in the Church is shifting accordingly. As a Latin American, Francis has been formed by legitimate urgencies very different from those that prevail in Europe. His actions reflect this. If he seems to dislike the United States (as rumors suggest), his attitude is hardly unwarranted, given hemispheric history. If he also seems to resent the long European intellectual dominance of the Church (as his behavior suggests), it’s not an unreasonable reaction to northern condescension.

But a pope, unfortunately, can’t afford peevishness. Every word and action has weight. Thus, no matter how well-intended, Francis’s very public decision to live in a Vatican hotel rather than the Apostolic Palace is perceived not merely as a statement of humility and simplicity, but also as a rejection—at considerable financial expense—of his predecessors’ manner of life. (Read more.)