Tea at Trianon: Time and Salvation

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, November 4, 2022

Time and Salvation

From Catholicism:

Eternal salvation is the single most urgent matter facing humanity. Whether or not we live the life of grace here and of beatitude hereafter does objectively matter more than any other concern we face either corporately or individually.

Anyone with a sensus catholicus should know that this is the most important question. Its urgency explains the heroics of the martyrs and the zeal of the great missionaries like Saint Paul, Saint Francis Xavier, and the North American Martyrs. It also explains the dedication of the great religious founders of orders both active and contemplative — for monasticism, too, is a pursuit of God’s glory and man’s salvation.

The dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus is, therefore, a teaching of vital importance — a matter of everlasting life and death. The great heresy of our age, in my opinion, remains indifferentism. Apathy, which is not a heresy per se, is an underlying condition for theological indifferentism. It is also perhaps modern Western man’s most common response to religious questions. It is the atmosphere we breathe.

For all its urgency, the work of salvation is not something to be pursued with that false zeal that we might term “frenzy.” Violent agitation, manic enthusiasm, and delirious excitement are the marks of false religion — and, at times, of a false approach to the true religion. Our God is the God of peace, whose grace works best in us amid serenity and ordered tranquility.

Peace of soul is a necessary condition for the life of virtue.

When, because the order of his loves is well established, the would-be apostle is at peace with God, himself, and his neighbor, his zeal is no less militant for being calm. It is calm because it is confident — not in human means and enterprises, but in God’s goodness and mercy. (Read more.)