Tea at Trianon: Our Sad Abandonment of the Souls of the Unborn

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, September 1, 2022

Our Sad Abandonment of the Souls of the Unborn

Baptism is the ordinary means of salvation so if anyone is saved without baptism, it is extraordinary. God can save whomever He wills, but we can not be presumptuous and should pray for all the dead. From Crisis:

Assuring someone that “your baby is in Heaven!” is proclaiming as knowledge the unknowable. It seems so pastoral, but does it not scream, “Abortion? No problem!”? Should we not, instead, never cease to pray for the souls of those who have gone before, born or unborn, so as to assist with the grace needed to accept salvation, to escape the lure of the liar, to choose eternal life; to exercise their primary attribute—free will—yet one last time? Is this not the most proper penance of the repentant abortive mother or father? To pray unceasingly for the soul cast aside? To pray for a holy outcome to that soul’s final choice between living in love forever or embracing a spiritual death of eternal fear and loathing?

It will be said that one’s personal judgment comes instantaneously in the moments after death, and if we did not pray then, our opportunity has been lost. However, eternity is outside of time, and as St. Augustine suggested, God may well apply graces across the span of time as He sees fit. No prayer is ever wasted. If you ask for a fish, God will not hand you a snake. “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” (Read more.)