Tea at Trianon: The Persecution Trap

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

Thursday, May 2, 2019

The Persecution Trap

From The Catholic Herald:

Christianity is the largest faith in a world of thriving religions. It’s hard sometimes to feel that since the mental picture that grips most Westerners, including many Christians, is one of a dying faith in a disenchanted secular universe in which God is not so much dead as retired on a modest pension. Reality is very different. In 2015 the four largest (conventional) world religions were in descending order Christianity (31.2 per cent of the global population), Islam (24.1 per cent), Hinduism (16 per cent), and Buddhism (7 per cent). If we admit “without religion” as a category, that comes in third today with 16 per cent, a shade ahead of “without religion”.

Looking ahead to population projections for 2060, this picture changes only slightly but significantly. All religions see an increase in the number of their believers. “Without religion” falls behind Hinduism into fourth place – so much for the inevitability of secularisation. And Islam overtakes Christianity as the world’s largest religion. Islam will be ahead only by a nose – both religions hover around 32 per cent in 2060 – but it’s an advantage that will grow in the following years.

The main reasons are innocently demographic: age and fertility. Muslims worldwide are younger than Christians by some six years, and Muslim women have the highest fertility rate among religions. Christians will inevitably fall further behind Muslims in the numbers game for some time to come. That alone need not inspire nervousness. These forecasts are from respectable sources, mainly the Pew Research Centre and the United Nations, but demographic forecasts change over time. Just not quickly.

More worrying than the overall figures is the distribution of Christianity’s decline. Almost all the growth in Christian numbers occurs in sub-Saharan Africa. Asian Christianity does no more than hold its own with other religions. And decline occurs in the traditional heartlands of Christianity, namely Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and the Americas. (Read more.)