Tea at Trianon: Pope Benedict’s Passion for Patristics

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, February 14, 2023

Pope Benedict’s Passion for Patristics

From Angelus:

No one in the history of the Church has done more to bring the early Church Fathers to a vast public than Pope Benedict XVI. To do this, he took full advantage of the bully pulpit that is the papacy. In March 2007 — after completing a series of audience talks on the great figures of the New Testament — he launched a new series on the Fathers. He would continue this series, with weekly installments, for more than two years.

In each talk he gave an overview of the life and work of one of the Fathers. Most of the Fathers were in the spotlight just once. Some, however, required longer treatment and occupied the pontiff’s attention for several successive weeks. St. Augustine got five weeks! The content was obviously well prepared, but what delighted the crowds at these Wednesday assemblies was Benedict’s delight in talking about the Fathers. His voice was animated. He sometimes seemed about to rise out of his chair. And he rarely looked down at his prepared text.

In 2008, the Vaticanologist Sandro Magister took the trouble to compare the prepared texts with film of the talks actually delivered by Benedict. He noticed that there were significant differences — not mere discrepancies, but long digressions added spontaneously and delivered with passion. Afterward, the Vatican delayed publication until they could square the text as it had been prepared with the text as it was delivered. The pope’s enthusiasm was visible, and it was infectious. Publishers throughout the world collected his reflections on the Fathers into books. In the United States, these editions came out from both Catholic and Protestant publishers. (Read more.)