Tea at Trianon: Catholicism: A Global History from the French Revolution to Pope Francis

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

Tuesday, January 17, 2023

Catholicism: A Global History from the French Revolution to Pope Francis

From Church Times:

John McGreevy is Professor of History at Notre Dame University in the United States. His research embraces Central and Southern America, sub-Saharan Africa, South-East Asia, China, and Japan, as well as other examples from the global South. At the same time, the turmoil of Catholic Europe from the French Revolution onwards is both described and convincingly analysed.
We begin with an eyewitness description of the guillotining of King Louis XVI. McGreevy then illustrates both the openness at the time of many French clergy to democracy and the reaction against it because of the horrors of the Revolution. He charts the story of “Reformed Catholicism” not only in France, but also in Austria-Hungary, Poland, Spain, and Portugal (and in their Empires). This included a cautious espousal of political reform, as well as opposition to papal authoritarianism.
Ultramontanism emerged in reaction, and with it arose a popular piety that emphasised miracles and devotion to the saints, as well as absolute loyalty to the papacy. Napoleon’s conquest of Italy reinforced the Ultramontanes, who insisted on the freedom of the Church from any national control. Ultramontanism also fostered new religious orders with vocations to serve the poor and to evangelise the non-Christian world, besides championing a universal Neo-Thomism.
McGreevy notes the part played by the restored Jesuit order in all this (the subject of an earlier book), though clearly he is not himself an Ultramontane. A significant achievement of Ultramontanism, made possible by developments in transport and communication, was the recognition of a truly universal Church — yet at the cost of Vatican centralisation, not least in the (modern) appointment of bishops. (Read more.)