Tea at Trianon: Recovering the Betrothal Ceremony and the Churching of Women

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

Thursday, March 3, 2022

Recovering the Betrothal Ceremony and the Churching of Women

From Crisis:

Finally, while many betrothals these days end up occurring in Tridentine settings, this is by no means a requirement—there is nothing stopping an exclusively Novus Ordo parish or couple or priest from participating in the betrothal ceremony. Engaged couples should boldly ask for this beautiful, traditional opportunity for grace and witness.

While the Latin-Rite betrothal ceremony has received an uptick of interest recently, the equally ancient and beautiful rite of the Churching of Women is all but extinct. In the Eastern Church, Churching is still quite common, though not universal. The Churching of Women has its roots in the older Jewish practice, but without continuing certain assumptions—such as the idea that the postpartum woman was impure. Christian Churching, East and West, is, rather, an act of blessing and of thanksgiving by the Church for a woman’s safe delivery from the pains and dangers of childbirth. The rite of Baptism does include blessings for the parents, but Churching is focused in a special way upon the ordeal that the mother has just passed through.

It appears that Churching became unpopular only after the dawn of the feminist movement with the myth that the ceremony was all about washing away the “sin” of pregnancy. No doubt this was fueled by poor education on the part of the faithful themselves in places. Long ago, Pope Gregory the Great put this myth to rest in his letter to Augustine of Canterbury, and it is a very dangerous habit to discontinue a practice rather than educate the ignorant. If the Church cancelled everything that might be mistaken for something else, then the Eucharist, the saints, Our Lady, Confession, the pope, and religion itself should be on the chopping block! (Read more.)