Tea at Trianon: A ‘Very Sure and Firm’ Faith

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

Monday, January 16, 2023

A ‘Very Sure and Firm’ Faith

From Life Site:

When I asked Müller about the suffering of Benedict XVI in the Church, he spoke at length about the radical ideologies that have surfaced since the French Revolution, describing them as forms of “gnosticism” and “neo-paganism.”

This is because Benedict, as a young boy in Nazi Germany named Joseph Ratzinger, had to confront a totalitarian, godless ideology that helped shape him as someone absolutely convinced in the salvation of Jesus Christ, “firm in the belief in God” and “very sure and firm in the faith,” as Müller put it.

Regarding Benedict’s “broken heart” over Francis’ undoing of Summorum Pontificum with Traditionis Custodes, Cardinal Müller explained that Summorum Pontificum was rooted in Benedict’s conception of what the Second Vatican Council actually intended with the liturgy.

“This was a very wise decision of Pope Benedict … to distinguish between the ordinary rite in the new form and extraordinary rite,” His Eminence said. “Also by underlining that the [Second] Vatican Council didn’t want to make a rupture in the continuity of the life of the Catholic Church and in the Catholic liturgy.”

Even though Pope Francis has acted “brutally” in suppressing a “legitimate plurality in the liturgical expression,” Cardinal Müller reminded us that the Church has “been in trouble” before and has come out on the other side of it.

“Nobody can say that Cardinal Müller has any doubt about the role of Saint Peter in the Church. I will not say that we have to accept all [of] what happened in the history of the papacy, problematic figures … Jesus is the only teacher in the Church, and the apostles, bishops are only teachers in the name of Jesus,” His Eminence said.

This provided me with a perfect segue into my next question, namely about the Vatican’s laicization of Father Frank Pavone, apparently at the hands of Francis himself. (Read more.)

Kathryn Jean Lopez on Cardinal Pell:

I confess I went to sleep last night hoping it wasn’t true that Cardinal George Pell died. I had hoped we would see another book out of him, among other things. The Australian will always be remembered for being falsely accused and imprisoned, perhaps less known for identifying and implementing economic reforms in the Vatican. I remember him best as an encourager in the Christian life. I last saw him a little over a year ago in New York. He gave a talk at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and implored compassion and courage in living and sharing the Christian faith in the current chaos of our culture:
One might paraphrase my first suggestion by stating that traditional Catholicism, and the Jewish traditions from which it drank, are heading in the right direction. The Catholic story, when centred squarely and courageously on Christ, demonstrates that the message is marketable and improves humanity. The mix works when we work with the Lord.
My second suggestion is that you, my listeners, strive to understand that secular modernity causes multiple forms of suffering that we can often ameliorate when we understand their true origins. We also need to remember that Christ was a healer of the blind, the disabled, the sick and the possessed. We need to bring His healing to others.

Throughout the talk, he quoted from a recent talk from Mary Eberstadt and continued:
Eberstadt is quite explicit that this truth has gone unsaid for too long. Secularism is an inferior culture, small of heart, which defines suffering down, so that victims are not acknowledged as victims but as justified collateral damage. Compare this to the heart of the Lord we see in the Gospels, in his response to the victims of sin and suffering. This is the heart that we must have.
(Read more.)