Tea at Trianon: Baptizing the New Mythology: Superhero Evangelization

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

Monday, February 7, 2022

Baptizing the New Mythology: Superhero Evangelization

From Word on Fire:

I attended a small traditionalist Catholic high school that emphasized classical education. My humanities teacher instilled in me an enthusiastic delight in the epics of Greco-Roman literature—the Odyssey, the Aeneid, the Oresteia, and others—as well as a profound respect for the education in virtue these tales could impart. Although the example of the pagan demigods and heroes—not unlike that of comic book superheroes—is often imperfect, they can serve as powerful models of courage, honor, and loyalty. It would be folly to discard such sagas as worthless or obsolete. Christian commentators down the centuries have sought to “baptize” the pagan myths, seeing in them allegories of the Gospel. J.R.R. Tolkien took all that was good and noble in his beloved Norse mythology and transfigured it into his fantasy masterpiece The Lord of the Rings, a novel he described as “fundamentally religious and Catholic.” Tolkien’s close friend C.S. Lewis, a master Christian apologist, believed that mythology offers a powerful means of imparting spiritual and moral truths. These truths can act as signals beckoning us toward the fullness of truth in the Gospel, which Lewis referred to as the one “true myth.” (Read more.)