Tea at Trianon: Cardinal Sarah on the Importance of Silence

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, May 24, 2018

Cardinal Sarah on the Importance of Silence

From ChurchPop:

Cardinal Robert Sarah is amazing person. Born in small village in rural Guinea, he joined a minor seminary as age 12, was ordained at 24, made a bishop at 34, and was finally made a Cardinal in 2010 by Pope Benedict XVI. He currently serves as the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, appointed by Pope Francis to that role in 2014.

About a year ago, he published a book titled The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise. He recently visited The University of St. Michael’s College in Toronto, Canada and gave a talk on the same subject. The University of St. Michael’s College has produced a stunningly beautiful video about his visit, which you can watch below. “Silence is not only not talking. Silence is deeper, because the great noise is inside ourselves,” the Cardinal says in the video. “Even in our churches, there is too much noise. So it’s not a place where we can encounter God, silently.

“Silence makes life more similar to God, because God is silence. He talks in silence. We encounter him in silence. And if you remain with God, you become silent.” He sees a lack of silence as a cause of the decline of religion in the West. “I think why the Western countries today are no longer believers, because they are talking all the time. They know no silence, and their faith is going down. Silence is really the moment where I construct myself as a human being related to God. And without God and without silence, we are lost. […]

“The Western society seems to be lost because when we are cut from God, we are lost. It’s like a tree without roots.” (Read more.)