Tea at Trianon: There is No Such Thing as ‘Private’ Catholicism

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

Tuesday, June 29, 2021

There is No Such Thing as ‘Private’ Catholicism

From The New York Post:

When Joe Biden was sworn in as America’s 46th president, he laid his hand on an ancient Douay-Rheims family Bible, a translation made by Catholics in France, where they’d taken refuge from the Reformation across the Channel. In doing so, the new president reminded some 40 million viewers of a truth he may now prefer to forget: namely, that the Catholic Church is inherently political, and faith in her teachings is never a merely private matter.

For decades, American Catholic politicians insisted the opposite was the case. For generations of Democrats, especially, the faith meant dated jokes about stern nuns and sentimentality about Notre Dame football. Catholicism was a cultural institution, quaint but lovable, like a bowling league. The Roman church, in this view, required little of its members, certainly not serious adherence to her moral precepts — about the sanctity of unborn human life, for example.

This was always an untenable position — a fact that became undeniable last week, when a routine meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops made national headlines. Secular and religious media alike reported that American prelates were on the verge of drawing up a document that would formally prevent Biden and other pro-abortion-rights politicians from receiving Holy Communion.

Predictably, the reports occasioned a ponderous open letter from 60 nominally Catholic Democrats objecting to what they described as the “weaponization” of the sacrament by a coterie of sinister right-wing bishops.

The letter did draw attention to an elephant in the room, but that elephant wasn’t the GOP. It was the church’s unchangeable teaching, which demands fidelity without exception from members, regardless of their station in life. (Read more.)