Tea at Trianon: The Confessional State

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, February 6, 2021

The Confessional State

From Complete Christianity:

I think it’s a shame that the French monarchy fell in such a violent, and blasphemous, revolution. The French republics have never matched the glory of the Catholic Kingdom of France. Had the French monarchy survived the revolution, and remained intact, I think Americans would have greater appreciation for France, and its religious heritage. Today, there are many Catholics in the United States, at last count approximately 70 million, but had France remained Catholic to this day, I believe that number in America would be well over 100 million. Americans, in the 19th and 20th centuries, were deprived of ever seeing, or knowing, our great allies in Catholic France. Instead, after we bought their land here in North America (Louisiana Purchase), we watched France rise and fall under Napoleon, only to pick at itself for a hundred years. Eventually, we bailed France out of two world wars, effectively paying our independence debt back to them. Still, we Americans never saw Catholic France in all her glory. I’ve been told that a younger generation of French patriots are calling for a return of the monarchy. I hope they’re successful. It would be nice for a future generation of Americans to be reminded of the great Catholic kingdom that helped us win independence from the Protestant British Empire.

The Founding Fathers understood the contribution made by Catholic France to the United States of America. In the framing of the Republic, they modeled many of America’s governing principles on the writings of great Catholic thinkers, as pointed out in Timothy Gordon’s bestselling book Catholic Republic. Yes, the Freemasons were present at the founding of the United States, and they were quick to take credit for it, but when you really examine what the Founding Father’s produced in the US Constitution, it was clearly based on Catholic thinking, just re-branded to appear secular and pluralist.

I think that’s where the United States of America went wrong. In attempting to whitewash it’s Catholic underpinnings in government, it created the false illusion that governments don’t need religion. It gave the world the false impression that religion and government can be separated, and that the two can coexist independently of one another. History tells us a different story. While religion and government are not usually the same thing, one will always be subordinate to the other. Either government will be subordinate to religion, or else religion will be subordinate to government. In tyrannical dictatorships, it’s always the latter. Over the last two centuries, since America’s founding, we’ve seen our Republic slowly slip into a situation where religion is subordinate to government. Granted, the First Amendment to the US Constitution has helped slow this process significantly, but ever since the Supreme Court decisions of the 1960s, religion has consistently been on the retreat in American society. (Read more.)