Tea at Trianon: The Return of Exorcists

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, June 1, 2019

The Return of Exorcists

From The Catholic Herald:

Modernising theologians who thought that exorcism would disappear forever also believed that the Church no longer needed to oppose the world. In Gaudium et Spes, the Second Vatican Council declared: “Those values which are most highly prized today … insofar as they stem from endowments conferred by God on man … are exceedingly good. Yet they are often wrenched from their rightful function by the taint in man’s heart, and hence stand in need of purification.” Progressives acted as though the Council had simply said: “Those values most highly prized today are exceedingly good.” They dreamed of an open Church that embraced the world.

This required rejecting the apocalyptic view of Pope Leo XIII, which pitted the Devil against the Church in a grand battle. Leo wrote the St Michael Prayer (which has had a recent revival, encouraged by Pope Francis, in response to the abuse crisis). Leo also added an “Exorcism Against Satan and the Apostate Angels” to the Rituale Romanum. This exorcistic formula placed a novel stress on the freedom of the Church. “May you not dare further, most clever serpent, to … persecute the Church of God,” it said. “Accursed dragon and every diabolical legion, we adjure you by the living God … stop harming the Church and casting her freedom into snares.”

For those who sought to reconcile Christianity with liberal society, Leo’s confrontational language seemed altogether out of place. But Leo’s view turned out to be the one more aligned with today’s reality. The Church is at odds with an increasingly pagan culture. It is also wracked by internal divisions, which many Catholics see as the work of the Devil – the divider. The historian Francis Young has observed that there are “just two ingredients essential for a flourishing of exorcism: division within the Church and fear of an external spiritual enemy.” Neither is likely to go away soon. (Read more.)