Tea at Trianon: The Encyclical that Condemned the Sexual Revolution

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

Saturday, July 28, 2018

The Encyclical that Condemned the Sexual Revolution

From TFP:

The context of the encyclical letter was the Sexual Revolution of the mid-sixties. Fashion, literature and the entertainment industry all contributed to an atmosphere where sexual mores were overturned. This was especially seen in Hollywood movies and television shows, the discovery of the contraceptive pill and the advent of the miniskirt.

In May 1968, the outbreak of student riots in most university campuses of the West gave the Sexual Revolution an ideological foundation, unifying and giving meaning to a whole range of disorderly tendencies turned against traditional morals. It was an anarchist ideology mixing Marxism with Freudianism. It denied all order, authority and moral norms. It can best be summarized in the slogan painted on the walls of the University of Paris’ Sorbonne campus: “It is forbidden to forbid.”

At the same time, liberal Catholic circles increasingly called upon the Church to “adapt to the world.” Countless theologians began to contend that the Church should change her perennial morals and forfeit her intransigence in sexual matters by accepting sexual ‘freedom’ and the use of contraceptives.

It was in this climate of contestation that Pope Paul VI, after a seemingly long hesitation, decided to publish his much-awaited encyclical on contraception, Humanae Vitae. To the relief of faithful Catholics and the consternation of liberals, the Pope reaffirmed the Church’s traditional doctrine on the nature of marriage and the sexual act and condemned the use of the pill or any other artificial means of contraception. (Read more.)