Tea at Trianon: The Importance of Catholic Community

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, December 21, 2019

The Importance of Catholic Community

In my own experience, something that has destroyed Catholic community is gossip and the shunning that stems from it. And the children suffer the most. From Church Militant:

It is no shocking revelation that people throughout the West (and in some Far Eastern countries like Japan) are demoralized and depressed. There is a (both legal and illegal) drug epidemic in the United States that has killed more people than the Vietnam War. The life expectancy of White Americans is declining for the first time in 100 years. Suicide is increasing at an alarming rate.

There are many causes for these disturbing trends — the first and foremost being the loss of faith in the civilization that was once called Christendom. However, one of the principal causes of this demoralization and decline of the men and women of the West is the disintegration of community life and what could be called the "loss of the Shire."

As Susan Pinker writes in The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier and Happier (this is not an endorsement of her book!), the greatest single determining factor outside of income (and, one might add, a strong faith) in determining a person's happiness is being a member of a strong community.

This community, Pinker further argues, has two layers threaded through it. The first is a close network of those people on whom one can really rely. These are people who will help take care of someone if he or she is sick, or who will loan money to someone if he or she is in a pinch. These people usually include close family members as well as one's dearest friends. (Read more.)