Tea at Trianon: Not a Neutral Act

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

Thursday, June 29, 2017

Not a Neutral Act

From Catholic Vote:

Some Roman emperors didn’t like Christians. To flush them out, Roman authorities would often force people suspected of being Christian to do a public act that no Christian could in good conscience perform, such as offering incense on the altar of a pagan god or before an image of the emperor himself. Because, in either case, the Christian would be publicly treating that god or emperor as divine (something a Christian – who accepted the One, True God of the Gospel – simply could not do). If they refused to do the act, his or her identity as a Christian would be exposed and the consequences would follow. Often, these consequences were torture and death….

Today, something similar, I suggest, is being tried with the “rainbow flag” of the LGBT movement. Waving the flag, identifying with it, and participating in the public parades staged by gay activists all convey an agreement with an agenda that, at its heart, contradicts and denies, among other things, the teachings of Christ and His Church about the nature and destiny of the human person.

Whether we acknowledge it or not, the rainbow flag is not a neutral flag — it conveys that the flag and the agenda behind it is more important to one than the Christian faith and more important than the teachings of Christ handed down by his apostles, priests, bishops, doctors, martyrs, and popes. Catholics who refuse to wave the rainbow flag, literally or figuratively, especially if they work in industries like entertainment, risk being mocked, passed over, or their having character denigrated. (Read more.)