Tea at Trianon: Ecclesiastical Newspeak and the Hatred of Catholic Tradition

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, January 29, 2022

Ecclesiastical Newspeak and the Hatred of Catholic Tradition

From The European Conservative:

The crisis in catechesis, which most practicing Catholics acknowledge (though there is little agreement on the solution), has swollen partly due to the Church’s adoption of a new idiom which fits the purpose of conveying the current widespread official theology—a theology that has certainly departed from the magisterial theology of the Church. Due to the obvious Orwellian character of this new idiom, I call it ecclesiastical newspeak. This newspeak reveals something very troubling. These terms, in their Church usage, mean the opposite of what they purport to mean. It is worth looking at a few examples.

First, ‘accompaniment.’ To accompany someone implies motion, a move from A to B—from one place to the desired location. One accompanies another on a journey. To accompany someone is to go with a person who wants to get somewhere where he is not at present, but requires, or would benefit from, another’s assistance. Accompaniment is, outside ecclesiastical newspeak, not to leave a person where he is. Catholics are told, however, that rather than calling people to life in Christ, and moving with them over that threshold, they should instead “accompany” people, “meet them where they are.” Basically, they must do the opposite of accompany them, namely keep them where they are. What is termed ‘paralysis’ in the vernacular is in ecclesiastical newspeak called ‘accompaniment.’

Another term is ‘New Evangelisation.’ I spent some time trying to pin down the meaning of this term. At first I believed it simply meant the re-evangelisation of once evangelised, now post-Christian, nations. The more I heard the term, however, in diocesan conferences and parish workshops, the more I sought a definition. At such events, inevitably someone would say—and this would always be followed by affirming noises from around the room—“Well, we need to remember that the New Evangelisation is first and foremost about evangelising ourselves.” This claim, or some variant of it, would always sooner or later be said. I realised that, at least in its received and most common usage, ‘New Evangelisation’ means no evangelisation. It means something like slightly better catechesis, perhaps increased ‘lay ministry,’ or in the best case a renewed focus on daily conversion to Christ, but what it does not mean is the proclamation of the Gospel to those to whom it is unknown. (Read more.)