Tea at Trianon: The Managed Decline of the Catholic Church

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, October 19, 2021

The Managed Decline of the Catholic Church

From Eric Sammons at Crisis:

It’s easy to criticize the plan, and it’s easy to lay blame. It’s also tempting to play “What If?” What if the Spirit of Vatican II were a spirit of faithfulness and orthodoxy, rather than a spirit of chaos and destruction? What if bishops and popes had acted quickly and decisively to stop priestly abuse? What if the liturgical reforms that followed Vatican II actually followed Vatican II?

These are all interesting questions, but we live in the here and now. We can’t go back and change the past—millions of Catholics have left the Church, we’ve lost tens of thousands of religious vocations, and the Church’s moral standing in the world is in tatters. Decline is a reality we can’t avoid.

Another temptation is to propose simple solutions to this problem. “Let’s start a new diocese-wide evangelization program!” “We need to return every parish to the traditional Latin Mass!” “Bishops need to stop supporting liberal politicians!” While these ideas might have value, here’s the grim reality: No matter what we do, the Church will continue to decline in the coming years, barring some divine intervention (which we hope and pray for, but cannot presume). (Read more.)

Also from Crisis:

For years now, ordinary Catholics have been barraged with a number of trendy buzzwords and catchy slogans: “A listening Church,” “accompaniment,” “pastoral,” and more. While these words are not necessarily wrong or inappropriate for ecclesial discourse, they often serve as a Trojan horse through which heterodoxy and heteropraxy emerge.

As preparation for the “Synod on Synodality” begins, news regarding the extension of the German Church’s “Synodal Way” into 2023 has ensured that such ordinary Catholics will continue to hear the word “synodality” for the unforeseeable future. In his opening remarks for the synod’s preparatory phase, Pope Francis said, “There is no need to create another church, but to create a different church.” Of course, one wonders where the distinction between the two lies. And furthermore, how can an ordinary, right-believing Catholic survive this era of “synodality”? (Read more.)

From Real Clear Religion:

Continuing his pivot from ancient sources to modern times, Benedict argued that the connection between natural law and justice was well-understood by many Enlightenment thinkers and reflected in documents like the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Produced partly in reaction to the horrors unleashed by National Socialism, this text was composed by individuals ranging from a secular French Jew, René Cassin, to the Lebanese Greek Orthodox diplomat, Charles Malik.

The expression “natural law” appears nowhere in the 1948 Declaration. Some of its articles are more evocative of mid-twentieth-century social democracy than Aquinas. Yet the text’s reference to the “inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family” and its claim that all humans are “born free and equal in dignity and rights” and “endowed with reason and conscience” imitate the language of natural law, albeit one tinged with Enlightenment emphases. The fact, however, that the Declaration was drafted and endorsed by believers and non-believers itself illustrated that some principles are recognizable by all humans as true.

But this confidence in reason’s ability to know truth, Benedict went on, was now in question. The twentieth century’s second half, he said, had witnessed the triumph of “a positivist understanding of nature” throughout the West.

By “positivist,” the pope meant the idea that reason can only know scientific and social facts. Philosophy and religion were subsequently demoted to the sphere of the subjective. The West had consequently cordoned itself off from “the classical sources of knowledge for ethics and law”—and trapped itself in what Benedict called “a concrete bunker with no windows, in which we ourselves provide lighting and atmospheric conditions, being no longer willing to obtain either from God’s wide world.”

How then do we escape this self-imposed prison? “How,” Benedict asked, “do we find our way out into the wide world, into the big picture? How can reason rediscover its true greatness, without being sidetracked into irrationality?” (Read more.)