Tea at Trianon: Pope St. Pius X on the Indefectibility of the Church

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

Tuesday, January 16, 2018

Pope St. Pius X on the Indefectibility of the Church

From Unveiling the Apocalypse:

The above encyclical of Pope St. Pius X cites an allegory of Pope St. Gregory the Great comparing the Church to the Barque of St. Peter in the midst of a great tempest. This was a deliberate allusion to the accounts of Christ's calming of the storm in the Gospels. Alongside the symbolism of the Battle of Lepanto, this very same theme predominates St. John Bosco's famous prophetic Dream of the Two Pillars. A prophecy which seems to be of especial significance this year, considering the fact that we have a very rare occurrence of a "blue and blood moon" on 31st January this year - which is the feast day of St. John Bosco himself. This is the first occurrence of a "blue and blood moon" in over 150 years, and will also appear during yet another "super-moon" phase (the last of three consecutive such appearances), when the moon is at its closest point to earth.

The last time a "blue and blood moon" lit up the night skies was on 31st March, 1866, while St. John Bosco was still overseeing the construction of the Basilica of Our Lady of Help of Christians in Turin, which wasn't completed until 1868. During its construction, St. John Bosco insisted on incorporating several prophetic elements into the architecture of the Basilica itself, based on the various prophetic dreams and visions he had experienced over the years. The most notable of aspect of these curious additions to the architecture of the Basilica was an allusion to a prophetic date pointing to some time in the 20th century as the moment of another great Marian victory...(Read more.)