Tea at Trianon: Pray at a Cemetery this November

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, November 2, 2021

Pray at a Cemetery this November

From CNA:

This year, the Vatican has decided once again to grant a plenary indulgence to Catholics who visit a cemetery to pray for the dead on any day in the month of November. In a typical year, the Church only grants this plenary indulgence for the souls in Purgatory to those who pray in a cemetery on Nov. 1-8, the week of the Solemnity of All Souls’ Day. But last year the Apostolic Penitentiary issued a decree that extended the availability of certain plenary indulgences amid concerns about avoiding large gatherings of people in churches or cemeteries due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Vatican announced on Oct. 28 that this same decree would also apply in November 2021. This includes the particular Nov. 2 plenary indulgence one can receive for one’s own soul by visiting a church or an oratory and reciting an Our Father and the Creed, which can now also be done on any day in November. A plenary indulgence remits all temporal punishment due to sin. It must always be accompanied by a full detachment from sin.
A Catholic who wishes to obtain a plenary indulgence must also fulfill the ordinary conditions of an indulgence, which are sacramental confession, reception of the Eucharist, and prayer for the pope’s intentions. Sacramental confession and reception of the Eucharist can occur up to about 20 days before or after the indulgenced act. With the decree for pandemic conditions, those who cannot leave home, such as the sick and the elderly, can still obtain an indulgence by reciting prayers for the deceased before an image of Jesus or the Virgin Mary. (Read more.)

Why we call God "Our Father." From C.C. Pecknold:

St. Thomas charts a middle path through two great temptations. One he calls “univocal predication” and the other “equivocal predication.” The univocal error is holding that the words we derive from the created order can travel a metaphysical superhighway to hit the target of divine reality perfectly. The opposite error is equivocal predication. Those who hold to the equivocal view of divine names tend to think that none of our words hit the target of divine reality, and so we might as well regard all God’s names as metaphors. It’s easy to see how this ancient error actually lends itself to the problem of Feuerbachian projection. If you believe you cannot really know God through the divine names, then your language for God takes on a different purpose altogether.
St. Thomas’s middle path is through “analogy,” a mirror that reflects both similarity and dissimilarity. As St. Paul teaches, we know God through the mirror of the created world. This presupposes that God is supremely knowable, but because we see through a glass darkly, we must navigate between our likeness and unlikeness to God. Analogical predication requires that we purify our names for God by identifying first what the divine name affirms (via causalitatis) about God as cause from the things made, and then what must be denied (via negativa), since the word is derived from the created order. Finally, we make the “eminential” turn (via eminentiae) in understanding the divine name solely as a divine perfection. The tradition calls this process of purification the triplex via—the threefold way of purifying all our words for God so that they can truly hit the target of the divine reality. Speaking well of God requires that we speak analogically so that we can avoid idolatry: confusing the Creator with creation. (Read more.)