Tea at Trianon: A Red Hat

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, June 2, 2022

A Red Hat

From Catholic World Report:

After one of the consistories earlier in Pope Francis’s pontificate, for which I did the radio commentary – maybe in 2016 but more likely the one in June of 2017, as the sun was bright and it was pretty warm outside and I recall the city in bloom (a glorious sight) – I bumped into a monsignor on the way out. He had an office that brought him into pretty close and frequent contact with the comms apparatus. He was in his glad rags.

“What renewal for the Church!” he said to me, a propos of the creation we had just witnessed.

“They’re red hats,” I offered, no biggie. Red hats are what they are. The pope needs to give them out from time to time.

If Pope Francis is rightly praised for his willingness to look to underserved and underrepresented quarters for heads on which to perch red hats – and there is much to be said for it – his unwillingness to foster relationship and community among his choices is problematic, to say the least. Cardinals help the pope govern the universal Church while he lives and reigns, and choose his successor when the See of Rome is vacant.

In order to do that well, they need to know each other. They need to have a feel for each other’s interests – real and perceived – as well as each other’s concerns and priorities. They need to be familiar with each other, personally. Each man needs to have a feel for what makes each other man tic, or at least to be on good working terms with someone who does have such a feel. That sort of working dynamic just doesn’t develop on its own or overnight. Popes frequently call the cardinals to general meetings, which help them to develop a feel for each other. Francis did so at the start of his pontificate, but has not brought the whole College of Cardinals together for such an “extraordinary consistory” since 2015. Francis says he wants to meet with the whole College for two days following the August ordinary consistory, but that on its own will bring him in a day late and a dollar short.

Men who hardly know each other cannot work well together, and Pope Francis has not gone out of his way to give his closest collaborators chances to know each other meaningfully, to understand each other’s personalities, interests, concerns, priorities. Francis’s detractors have accused him of playing politics with his appointments to the College of Cardinals, but every pope does that. Francis’s appointments do frequently strike observers as rather theatrical (though they are political theatre), however, and this time is no exception.

Sunday’s announcement of new red hats sent up cheers from many quarters, as well as groans and shrugs from Rome to the peripheries – geographical and existential – for names on the list and names omitted (some of them rather conspicuously so). (Read more.)