Tea at Trianon: Father Stu (2022)

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

Friday, June 24, 2022

Father Stu (2022)

The real Father Stuart Long and Mark Wahlburg in the title role

I saw the film twice and enjoyed it. The acting is stellar. There is some rough language in the first half of the movie so I would not recommend it to cloistered nuns or super-sensitive persons or anyone under eighteen. From Kate O'Hare:

Baptized and raised Catholic, Wahlberg has had an up-and-down life, from troubles with drugs and the law to rap stardom, modeling, and these days, a very successful career as an actor, producer and businessman. Along the way, he became a father and husband and returned to his Catholic faith. Many elements of Wahlberg’s own life are wrapped up in his latest starring role in Father Stu, hitting theaters on April 13. Wahlberg is also a producer on the film, which has been a passion project. Father Stu is the story of Father Stuart Long, who passed away at the age of 50 in 2014 at the Big Sky Care Center in Helena, Montana, where he grew up, due to complications of inclusion body myositis, a rare autoimmune disease that mimics ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease.

(Click here to read my interviews with a priest who knew Father Stu, and the bishop who ordained him.) (Read more.)

More HERE.