Tea at Trianon: Blessed Pius IX and Canonization

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, February 22, 2018

Blessed Pius IX and Canonization

From Aleteia:

Pope Pius IX (1792-1878) died 140 years ago, at the end of the longest pontificate in the history of the Church with the exception of St. Peter: 32 years. (Peter was likely martyred in the year 64 or 67, meaning his pontificate lasted 34 or 37 years. John Paul II, with 26 years on Peter’s Throne, is the third longest-reigning pope.) Reigning at the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, in 1854, and during the rise of devotion to the Sacred Heart, Pius IX, as the 255th pope, was also the last sovereign of the Papal States, which disappeared in 1870 — except for the tiny Vatican State, established in 1929. His pontificate, inaugurated in 1846, was also the occasion of a new missionary impulse, recalled Bishop Liberati: 133 episcopal seats and 50 apostolic vicariates were created as mission territories.

Pius IX also convened the First Vatican Council, which defined papal infallibility. Rather liberal at the beginning of his pontificate, Pius IX is also known for his condemnation of 80 modern errors in the Syllabus, in 1864, which rejects rationalism, socialism, and also the idea that all religions are equal. According to Bishop Liberati, Freemasons opposed his canonization because the pontiff had also condemned the participation of Catholics in Masonic lodges, with the apostolic exhortation Multiplices Inter in 1865. (Read more.)