Tea at Trianon: Reagan, St. John Paul, and Fatima

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

Friday, May 12, 2017

Reagan, St. John Paul, and Fatima

From Crisis:

It was June 6, 1987. Ronald Reagan was on his way to Rome to meet with Pope John Paul II. Their first meeting at the Vatican had taken place five years earlier, June 7, 1982, whereupon the two men shared their mutual convictions that they believed God had spared their lives from assassination attempts the previous year for a special purpose—to defeat atheistic Soviet communism. For John Paul II, that near-death experience had occurred on May 13, 1981, the Feast Day of Our Lady of Fatima, whose intercession he credited with saving his life.

Now, on June 6, 1987, Ronald Reagan, en route to seeing the Holy Father again, was hearing all about Fatima. He heard it from Frank Shakespeare, his ambassador to the Vatican. That moment most assuredly wasn’t captured by journalists. I learned about it only a few years ago when Shakespeare’s words via cell phone one afternoon compelled me to pull off the highway to start writing notes as quickly as I could muster. As for the 87-year-old former ambassador, he likewise was surprised by the focus of our conversation. He wasn’t accustomed to historians calling him to ask about Ronald Reagan, John Paul II, and Fatima. I figured, however, that Shakespeare, having the distinctly unusual background of having first served as ambassador to Portugal prior to the Vatican, might uniquely be able to answer my unusual questions. He didn’t disappoint. (Read more.)