Tea at Trianon: "Building a Culture"

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

Tuesday, February 26, 2019

"Building a Culture"

Here is a beautiful essay which could apply to all those who are striving to rebuild a Catholic culture in a pagan world. From The Chesterton Academy of Milwaukee:

There’s an old story—many of you have likely heard it before—of a man walking through the countryside of England when he comes across two stone masons constructing a wall. To the first he asks, “What are you doing?” “Laying bricks,” says the mason. He then turns to the second with the same question, “What are you doing?” “Building a cathedral,” the mason replies. The first man had a task. The second had a vision. The first wasn’t wrong, he just didn’t see the whole picture.

Now, when you ask many educators today “What are you doing?” they will likely say something like, “We are teaching students skills to help them succeed in college.” And that is indeed a noble goal. However, if you ask me what we are doing at Chesterton Academy, I say, we are building a culture.

Any culture, to thrive, needs at least three things: a story of our past, a hope for our present, and a sacrifice for our future. First, we need a story of our past, a story about who we are and where we come from. In the world today, many people are story-less; they don’t know where they come from and thus they feel homeless. At Chesterton Academy, we teach young people their story through great books and great ideas. We teach them about virtue and sin and life and death through the wisdom of the past and present. We teach them who they are and where they come from, and we teach them where their true home is – heaven.

Second, every culture needs a hope for the present—not just a hope for the future; not just a “someday things will get better” but a “today is a brighter day.” The Church is in desperate need of hope today, and this hope is in our young people. For too long we have treated young people as if they are the future of the Church, as if one day they will lead. But think of all the blessed who didn’t wait for that one day – St. Therese was 24-years-old, Jose Luis Sanchez was 14, Maria Goretti was 11, Antonetta Meo was 6 – the litany of the young goes on and on. The Church today doesn’t have the luxury, manpower, or means to treat our young people as the future of the Church—that is to say, we need them to be the Church right now. At Chesterton Academy, we call young people to live a life of courage and holiness; we teach them what virtue is and how to live it; we take young people seriously, and they rise to the challenge.

Finally, every culture needs a willingness to sacrifice for a future we may not see with our own eyes; a willingness to die to self so that others may live. As the scriptures remind us, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it will not bear fruit.

It has been said (though perhaps more a rich legend than a hard fact) that when the Romans sacked a city, their soldiers would salt the fields to prohibit the possibility of that city growing crops and rebuilding. It was only after decades of digging and tilling; after thousands of seeds fell to the ground and died; after the sacrifice of generations, that the first sprouts of new life arose, and civilization could be rebuilt.

Many today feel that the soil of our culture has been salted. For generations, it is said, we have forgotten the treasure trove of the past, and thus we have forgotten who we are. For years, it is said, we have treated young people like children rather than calling them to be heroes and saints. And yet, for years now, people have been digging and tilling; for years, people been dying to self and sacrificing to steward our culture and to educate our young people. (Read more.)

Meanwhile, attempts to erase culture are occurring at some Catholic universities. From The New York Post:

Welcome to the new Orwellian world where censorship is free speech and we respect the past by attempting to elide it. Over the past several years, we have seen a rising tide of assaults on statues and other works of art representing our nation’s history by those who are eager to squeeze that complex story into a box defined by the evolving rules of political correctness. This might be called the “monument controversy,” and what happened at Notre Dame is a case in point: a vocal minority, claiming victim status, demands the destruction, removal or concealment of some object of which they disapprove. Usually, the official response is instant capitulation. As the French writer Charles Péguy once observed, “It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been motivated by the fear of not looking sufficiently progressive.” (Read more.)