Tea at Trianon: Church Teaching on Trial

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

Saturday, April 29, 2023

Church Teaching on Trial

From First Things:

The NAFD takes for granted that there is a tension between being inclusive, welcoming, and hospitable and being faithful to Christ: “Alongside the desire to be a more inclusive and welcoming Church was the need to understand how to be more hospitable, while maintaining and being true to Church teaching.” The just-below-the-surface assumption here is that fidelity to the Church’s teaching needs to be re-imagined and re-worked so that various people will not feel that they are being excluded and rejected. Church teaching is put on trial. Rejection of that teaching is accorded pride of place.

What is going on here? Women who want to receive Holy Orders, people who are unhappy that their immoral sexual acts are categorized as being gravely sinful, divorced people who remarry outside the Church and want to receive Holy Communion—all of them claim that they are being unfairly treated. They claim that Church teaching is hurtful and un-Christian, and they will only feel fully welcomed and affirmed by the Church when their desires and actions are recognized as legitimate, and the Church changes her teaching. The NAFD considers all this to be up for discussion, which means that those pushing for doctrinal change are being treated as prophets needing to be heeded, and not as heretics needing to be rebuked. (Read more.)