Tea at Trianon: The Promotion of True Religious Unity

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, July 15, 2022

The Promotion of True Religious Unity

From Catholicism:

When nations do not fully enjoy the blessings of peace, and old and new discords break forth into mutiny and conflict, and when indeed it is impossible to settle the numerous controversies that strike at the peace and prosperity of peoples without the harmonious action of those who govern states and rule and promote their interests, it is easy to understand — and all the more so now that all accept the unity of mankind — how it is that, impelled by the desire for universal brotherhood, many should be anxious that the various nations stand ever more closely together.
Some seek to accomplish a thing not unlike this in matters that concern the ordinances of the New Law which Christ brought to us. Convinced that rarely indeed do men lack all sense of religion, they seem to draw from this reason to hope that without great difficulty it may come about that all peoples, no matter how different their religions, will stand fraternally together in the profession of a few doctrines which will serve as a kind of common foundation for the spiritual life.
Therefore, they are accustomed to call congresses, reunions and meetings which are attended by many, and they invite there indiscriminately, to decide the question, infidels of all kinds and Christians alike, and even those who have miserably apostatized from Christ, or who intransigently and tenaciously deny the divinity of His person and mission.
Certainly such movements as these cannot gain the approval of Catholics. They are founded upon the false opinions of those who say that, since all religions equally unfold and signify — though not in the same way — the native, inborn feeling in us all through which we are borne toward God and humbly recognize His rule, therefore, all religions are more or less good and praiseworthy.
The followers of this theory are not only deceived and mistaken, but since they repudiate the true religion by attacking it in its very essence, they move step by step toward naturalism and atheism. Hence it clearly follows that anyone who gives assent to such theories and undertakings utterly abandons divinely revealed religion.
When the question of promoting unity among Christians is under consideration many are easily deceived by the semblance of good. Is it not right, it is said repeatedly, indeed is it not the duty of all who call upon Christ’s name to cease mutual recriminations, and to join together in ties of mutual charity? For who would dare say that he loves Christ when he will not strive to his utmost to attain that which Christ prayed for to His Father when He asked that His disciples might be one? (John 17,21.)
And did not Christ Himself wish His disciples to bear the sign and be distinguished by the characteristic that they love one another: By this shall all men know that you are My disciples, if you have love one for another? (John 13,35.) Would, they add, that all Christians were one, that they might drive out the evil of irreligion which every day spreads more widely and threatens to overturn the Gospel.
These and like arguments are brought forth and amplified by those who call themselves Pan-Christians. No longer are they confined to small and scattered groups, but they grow, so to speak, by whole phalanxes and unite themselves in extensive organizations which, though its members are imbued with different faiths, non-Catholics direct for the most part.
The work itself is promoted with such zeal that it has gained a great variety of followers, and has even ensnared the minds of Catholics with the entrancing hope of attaining a union that would seem to meet the will of Holy Mother Church, to whom nothing is more hallowed than the recall and the return of her wandering children to her bosom. Yet beneath the coaxing words there is concealed an error so great that it would destroy utterly the foundations of the Catholic Faith. (Read more.)