Tea at Trianon: On the Greek Schisms

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, December 11, 2021

On the Greek Schisms

From One Peter Five:

This is one of the things I realized when I converted from Eastern Orthodoxy to Rome: the primacy of Rome is an ecclesiastical reality which binds all Catholics in charity with one another.

One flock. One shepherd.

St. Ignatius of Antioch (d. 108) said that the Roman See is that See which “presides in charity.” This is an ideal to be reached by every bishop of Rome, and many popes as we know have utterly failed in this ideal, causing great scandal and loss of faith for souls. Yet this charity is also a reality which his office manifests. Ultimately as Catholics we are bound to Rome, whether we like it or not. We are forced, as it were, by ecclesial bonds, to keep charity with the Holy See and with one another. “This is the reason why anyone who does not submit to Rome risks his eternal salvation” I wrote in 2019, “rejecting Rome is an objective denial of charity.”

It’s like the members of your family. You can’t choose your family. You are born out of the union which symbolizes charity, and from this is formed a biological bond which can never be broken. (Read more.)