Tea at Trianon: To Save Our Culture

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

Sunday, September 26, 2021

To Save Our Culture

From Crisis:

Excellence is a pathway to God. To imitate excellence is to ascend to the heavens, to climb Mount Sinai as many of the patristic fathers long ago noted. The insistence on excellence is also a hallmark of humanism—not the false humanism of affirmation, but the genuine humanism of molding and reforming to the Divine.

Nowadays we see schools across the country, including Catholic ones, abandoning the insistence on excellence in the name of atoning for supposed inequalities in educational life. The argument, repeated ad nauseum to the point of nauseating putridity, is that excellence is an expression of white supremacy that disenfranchises minorities. The problem, however, of affirming mediocrity (at best) is that we set people up to fail in life. Greatness is a noble virtue to strive for, it is something that will also prepare any student for the realities of life.

Moreover, excellence can—and should—be understood as an expression and manifestation of love. Love, as we know, is to will the good of another. Excellence, and its demand, is a form of willing the good of others. To strive for excellence in education, work, and study is a training in love and how love guides us to the good things in life. The love of excellence in education can lead to the love of the highest excellence of all: God. (Read more.)

From The Western Journal:

Freedom permeates the Old Testament: The Bible begins with the story of Adam and Eve, a story about man’s assertion of his God-given freedom — freedom even to disobey God. The primary story of the Old Testament is the Exodus, a story about God liberating slaves.

For the Founders, the most obvious reason freedom was dependent on faith in God was that only if God is regarded as the source of freedom could men not rightfully take it away. If men are the source of freedom, men can rightfully retract it. This is precisely what is happening today. Freedom is being destroyed primarily by those who scorn the idea that freedom comes from God. (Read more.)