Tea at Trianon: The Catholic Faith of the Early Church

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, January 7, 2019

The Catholic Faith of the Early Church

From Aleteia:

Some of the inscriptions are more explicit in asking for prayers for the dead. For example,

Ut quisquis de fratribus legerity, roget Deum ut sancto etinnocent spiritu ad Deum suscipiatur.

If any of the brethren reads this, let him ask that this holy and innocent soul may be received by God (Publications of the Catholic Truth Society.) How sure can we be that early Christians really prayed for the dead? Are these short invocations enough? ortunately there is testimony outside of the catacombs that validates their message. One is Tertullian, who lived from around 155 to 240. In On Monogamy, he writes the following in reference to widows:

Indeed, she prays for his soul, and requests refreshment for him meanwhile, and fellowship with him in the first resurrection; and she offers her sacrifice on the anniversaries of his falling asleep. For, unless she does these deeds, she has in the true sense divorced him, so far as in her lies; and indeed the more iniquitously.
Tertullian is not the only early witness to this practice. In the Confessions, St. Augustine also records his mother Monica asking him to pray for her after her death. Read more.)