Tea at Trianon: Taking Refuge From Church Turmoil

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, December 29, 2018

Taking Refuge From Church Turmoil

From The National Catholic Register:

“‘Lex orandi, lex credenda — the way we worship is the way we believe,’” said Joan Tussing, who converted to the Catholic faith in 1995. “This speaks so clearly about why I prefer and believe in the importance of the traditional Latin Mass.”

Tussing was first exposed to the traditional Mass about eight years ago through a priest in Cleveland, Ohio, who is a family friend. More recently, after doing some reading of Church history as part of her concerns about the synod on the family and the apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, she decided to seek out a traditional Mass at a parish in Florida, where she spends the winter. Tussing said she converted to Catholicism because she was drawn to the truth of the faith and the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and that the Latin Mass better connects and unifies her with the fullness of that truth. Although she does not attend the Latin Mass exclusively, she said when she does, she experiences more fully the embodiment of what Christ instituted at the Last Supper and his offering of himself for the salvation of sins. “It’s not about what we’re doing,” she said. “It’s about what he’s doing for us.” (Read more.)