Tea at Trianon: Honoring Mary in Iraq

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

Monday, May 7, 2018

Honoring Mary in Iraq

From Aleteia:

The meeting was organized by Fr. Roni Momika, who was ordained a priest while living in a refugee camp after fleeing Qaraqosh in 2014. Fr. Momika is the pastor at St. Ephraim church in Qaraqosh, where he runs a women’s support group, which draws nearly 800 women weekly. He explained to CNA that, “This meeting is to empower women.” He added that the goal was to “rebuild women in the spiritual side, in the biblical side and in the psychological side.”

It is a long road to rebuilding the Iraqi infrastructure, much of which was burned beyond repair. One obstacle they face is the sheer magnitude of the destruction, while another is a gross lack of funding. According to Fr. Momika, this lack of funding is of little consequence, since their reconstruction needs to begin with Iraq’s women:

“Everything is difficult here and we want to rebuild the woman before we rebuild the houses,” he said.
“If you rebuild the woman, you can rebuild the children, and when you rebuild the children, you can rebuild the family, and after that we can rebuild the community here in Qaraqosh,”
The three-day assembly featured lectures, videos, Mass, and time for the community to interact. They also commissioned the writing of a new icon of Mary, in which she is depicted wearing the traditional garb of women from Qaraqosh. On the final day of the gathering Youhanna Boutros Moshe, Syriac Catholic Archbishop of Mosul, Kirkuk, and Kurdistan, celebrated mass and led the crowd in a procession to the city’s cathedral. (Read more.)