Tea at Trianon: Fostering a Culture of Life

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

Sunday, February 10, 2019

Fostering a Culture of Life

From The National Review:

Children with Down syndrome are different from other children in significant ways. I don’t know that parenting them is more difficult, but the challenges are different. Pia has had cancer twice, and that means she’s spent almost a full year living in hospitals. Max has a lot of difficult sensory issues. But they’re amazing kids, and they have a lot in common with typical kids — they have the ordinary range of human emotions, the same social desires, the same desire to be loved, to be secure, to learn, to play. And they know every single word of Frozen. They’ll perform the whole movie for you as a duet, any time.

We have learned a lot about weakness and love from them. We’ve learned to accept our own weaknesses. And we’ve learned from them how to ask for help without shame. Most especially, we’ve learned that, as a father, God rejoices when we turn to him in weakness and ask for his help. That’s been a great joy.

It’s also been a great grace to be surrounded by a community, including our own son, who love and accept the kids just as they are — their cousins and the children of our friends know intuitively how to adapt games so our kids can play, and they so often model a very beautiful kind of patience.

Finally, it has been a great joy to work with two different Catholic schools to build inclusive special-education programs. Our kids go to our parish school, they spend the day in the regular classroom, learning the same things as their peers. It takes a lot of work from school and home to make that happen, and we’ve been grateful to have had school communities willing to partner with us. It’s also a costly endeavor –we’re always fundraising for inclusive special education! (Read more.)