Tea at Trianon: A Man’s Job

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

Thursday, October 12, 2023

A Man’s Job

From The Catholic Gentleman:

Cardinal Arinze has called the allowance of girl altar servers to be a “dead end,” it doesn’t go anywhere. I would say, in fact, that it is cruel. It both encourages a girl up steps that eventually she can’t fully ascend, and it discourages boys from serving at the altar because in their youth boys desire to differentiate themselves from the realm of women and children by doing things only men can do.

Of course, there may be reeling at this idea inside of us because we are conditioned to think about things in ideologies instead of realities, but (a) boys at certain ages want to do things that only boys can do, (b) altar serving is inherently related to the priesthood, (c) women can’t be priests, and (d) to mix them all up together is confusing to all involved. It is likely that the more someone denies one of these things (that only men can be priests, for example) the more they deny the need for boy-only altar servers. Those that are formed by a more obvious observation of human nature and the settled theology of the Church, however, know that this is so, and if they do not insist on it are merely waiting for a prudent way to bring the boys back to the altar.

By having just boys at the altar there is the happy side-effect of having more boys there and, therefore, more boys consider the priesthood. A vocation, as Wendell Berry has put it, is more than a job – it’s the work that is set before you that, in some ways, is only for you. You are suited to it and it is suited to you. He was not speaking of the priesthood, but we can, and we can speak of it as the work a man is called to. If he is not brought into that work effectively, he can never develop a sense of whether it is for him, or perhaps the seed is never planted.

There’s no need to go into detail about how having just boys increases the number of boys serving. Just go to any parish that allows only boys and you’ll see this is so. In my tiny parish (where only boys can serve) they regularly turn boys away or assign them to different Masses because the sanctuary – that holiest of workshops – is only so big.

Now that we are seeing more clearly the collapse and failure of innovative Catholicism, it’s time to embrace the wisdom of the Church that knows – uniquely – the ways of man and the ways of God. Some of the “ways” are just for men, and because of that we need to allow a space that is just for boys, and every Catholic Church has that space, that workshop, in the sanctuary. (Read more.)