Tea at Trianon: The Assault on Fatherhood

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

Friday, March 6, 2020

The Assault on Fatherhood

From LifeSite:

The mission and focus of my fatherhood is to lead my children to heaven. It is my vocation. It’s of course the same for the holy priest. The dad and priest knows it demands a dying off; a self-amputation of our own will that will fortify our families. When I offer up myself, even to the smallest degree – picking up the broom, washing the dishes, leading the rosary – Christ’s love is put before them, even to the smallest degree.

Perhaps this diminishment of fatherly duty is the greatest reason why our Catholic Church is in travail; it starves for a sacrificial dimension of fatherhood to pour out like a tribute to paternal integrity over its scarred, angry and disillusioned flock. Laity agonizes as it searches out virile witnesses of fatherhood; teachers and authentic doers of sacrifice. The greatest act of love was borne out of sacrifice. It seems to be the only answer to redeem and regain the soul of the Church. (Read more.)