Tea at Trianon: Rediscovering the Catholic Intellectual Tradition of the Twentieth Century

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, April 25, 2023

Rediscovering the Catholic Intellectual Tradition of the Twentieth Century

From Catholic World Report:

A few months ago, I had the pleasure of attending a lecture by Robert Royal, founder and president of the Faith & Reason Institute. For the uninitiated, Dr. Royal, in my humble opinion, is one of the most interesting, important, and intelligent Catholic voices in the United States today. For example, almost ten years ago, I read a fantastic article of his in First Things on Albert Camus that inspired me to read several of Camus’s works for the first time. Since then, I’ve been hooked, and have regularly written for his own publication, The Catholic Thing.
Before his lecture, I approached Dr. Royal, and we got to talking about his work, past, present, and future. He told me that his 2015 book A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century—an Ignatius Press work about the Catholic intellectual traditions of the twentieth century—represented some of the best scholarship and writing he would ever do. I was stunned: I had not only not read the book, I had been embarrassingly ignorant about its content and thesis. So I ordered it, read it, and found it to be much as Dr. Royal described it to me.
The book deserves a much wider audience than it elicited when published almost a decade ago, especially because Dr. Royal’s analysis so effectively addresses many of the questions Catholics face in the twentieth-century. This interview aims to help interested readers understand the deep relevancy of a book written by one of the most important Catholic thinkers in America today. (Read more.)