Tea at Trianon: The Radical Choice of Full-Time Motherhood

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, May 28, 2022

The Radical Choice of Full-Time Motherhood

Keep in mind that historically women have always worked. Even mothers of small children have been forced to work outside the home. Women throughout the centuries have worked as nannies, servants, agricultural laborers, teachers, artists, store clerks. managers of their husbands' businesses, and as attendants to royalty. However, it has been seen as ideal and a goal of civilization when women could stay home to manage their own households and bring up their own children. Both Scripture and Tradition have spoken of the vital role of mothers in forming souls and the importance of women being able to stay with their children. From Crisis:

An April 26, 2022, article in Crisis asked “Are Women in the Workplace a Good Thing?” Author Jerry D. Salyer points out that feminism is so pervasive that even today’s conservatives consider traditional teaching on male/female roles to be distasteful.

Salyer describes “the extent to which many centuries’ worth of Catholic commentary about sex differences has simply been filtered out as if it were nothing. It is almost as if those responsible for handing down Catholic tradition would just as soon jettison whatever parts of said tradition happen to jar with modern sensibilities.”

It is not surprising, therefore, that many Catholics are unfamiliar with “awkward” Scripture passages such as Ephesians 5:21, “Let women be subject to their husbands, as to the Lord,” or with the “tremendous quantity of Catholic commentary about relations between the sexes.”

Even relatively recent voices like Pope St. John Paul II—an advocate for women if there ever was one—are now considered sexist for declaring that “a workman’s wages should be sufficient to enable him to support himself, his wife and his children.”

The answer to his title question, says Salyer, is not to insist on a rigidly patriarchal society, what he calls a “mirror-image of feminism.” In its own way, this is as strident as the feminism it rejects. He concludes that “what is called for at this moment is not the formulation of a new ideology but simply the jettisoning of an old one.” (Read more.)