Tea at Trianon: Sinners But Not Hypocrites

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

Monday, October 5, 2020

Sinners But Not Hypocrites

From Fr. Paul Scalia at The Catholic Thing:

The distinction lies in this. The hypocrite has made peace with the division within himself; the sinner fights against it. Now, he might fight poorly and fail more often than not, but he nevertheless keeps pushing against that interior dis-integration. The sinner repents and tries to conform his life to what is true. The hypocrite refuses to repent and instead tries to twist reality to fit his way of living. He has, perhaps without even realizing it, grown comfortable with his interior division.

The difference between the hypocrite and sinner explains why we react so differently to them. We might grow frustrated or angry at a man’s sinfulness, or we might pity him his weakness. But a hypocrite is different. We sense that he suffers a deeper, more fundamental dishonesty. He is dangerous in a way that the sinner is not. While the sinner loses his way occasionally (perhaps often), the hypocrite has lost his compass.

This is the difference between the two sons in our Lord’s parable. (Mt 21:28-32) While both sons do wrong, the first son is capable of repentance and the second is not. The first sins in his defiance; the second has grown comfortable in his duplicity. The first is simply a sinner; the second a hypocrite.

As with many other parables, our Lord directs this one “to the chief priests and elders.” The point is not simply that these men have sinned. Our Lord clearly distinguishes them from sinners, from the tax collectors and prostitutes entering the kingdom of God before them. No, there is a flaw within them deeper than sinfulness, worse than any specific sin. They are men who have grown comfortable with the division within them, who have traded integrity for power. They are, as Jesus declares elsewhere (cf. Mt 24: 13-29), hypocrites.

We have a visceral reaction against hypocrisy precisely because we sense its disintegrating power in the person. The hypocrisy involved in Church scandals angers us more than the actual sins. Likewise, the hypocrisy of our all-too-prominent pro-abortion Catholic politicians is in some ways worse than any particular sin or even a habitual moral failing. They have grown so comfortable with their interior disintegration that they can blithely claim the Catholic mantle and champion the pro-abortion cause. (Read more.)