Tea at Trianon: The Miracle of Incorruptibility

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

Wednesday, June 14, 2023

The Miracle of Incorruptibility

From Catholic Exchange:

In 1977, Joan Carroll Cruz wrote a thoroughly researched book on the incorruptible saints called The Incorruptibles. Before this, there had been no thorough treatment of the topic, though some general phenomena were described by Fr. Herbert Thurston in his 1952 book, The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism. There were also many simple references to incorruptibility in the Acta Sanctorum, the official account of the saints published by the Jesuits.
Cruz described her motivations for writing the book — to dispel false impressions and get at the truth of incorruptibility — in its preface:

In a number of European churches there can be found crystal reliquaries that contain reclining statues representing particular Saints, the bones of the Saints being enclosed in their stimulated figures. Because of the techniques employed in reproducing pictures of some of these models, the figures have been frequently mistaken for the actual bodies, producing errors such as that involving St. Francis of Geronimo . . . and creating false rumors, as occurred with regard to St. Frances Cabrini, whose body was never found preserved.

Cruz worked with various shrines that host seemingly incorrupt bodies and found that, in many cases, the remains had been damaged or destroyed by fires, floods, or persecutors of the Church. It also turned out that, in many cases, the relics were not in the shrine, the city, or even the country where they were purported to be. Record keeping was usually subpar, and so inaccuracies about the number and perfection of incorruptibles had seeped into the Catholic consciousness.

This is not to say, however, that the entire concept has been disproved — far from it! Rather, it is a reminder that the Church continues to appeal to the very best science in the claims she makes about miracles, including correcting impressions that had been based on mistaken or out-of-date information. In many cases, Cruz does an excellent job of relating the story of past incorruptible saints that their orders provided to her. There are a number of incorruptible saints whose remains are still available or were so well known over history that there is no doubt of their validity. (Read more.)