Tea at Trianon: The Priests of Dachau

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, July 30, 2017

The Priests of Dachau

From The Catholic Herald:

Not to be able to celebrate Mass was a huge deprivation for the imprisoned priests. As one of their number, Fr Bedrich Hoffmann, relates, “What it means for a priest to live without Mass and without Communion can only be understood by another priest.” On admission, they were divested of their cassocks, bibles, missals, holy medals and rosaries, stripped and shaved and given old clothes with a red triangle sewn on them – the sign for “political” detainees.

However, as the result of intense diplomatic pressure from the Vatican, the situation changed at the end of 1940, when a chapel was permitted to be set up in Block 26. The first Mass at Dachau was celebrated on 21 January 1941. The tabernacle had been made secretly in the carpenter’s workshop; the altar and candlesticks had been salvaged from camp materials; and parishioners who had managed to stay in touch with their imprisoned priests, sent vestments, prayer books, Stations of the Cross, holy pictures and two monstrances.

The SS officials who ran the camp naturally placed many restrictions on the liturgical services. Lay prisoners were forbidden to attend – though Communion was secretly distributed to Catholics in other barracks at the risk of severe punishments, and sometimes other prisoners secretly attended Mass or hovered near the chapel window in order hear as much of the liturgy as possible. (Read more.)