Tea at Trianon: 14-year-old Nigerian Virgin Martyr

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

Monday, November 20, 2023

14-year-old Nigerian Virgin Martyr

From Aleteia:

To be declared a martyr, someone must either die for the faith directly, or die in defense of a Christian virtue. In the case of Vivian and other “martyrs of purity,” the faith isn’t being attacked directly. These martyrs’ deaths are a reflection of their lives. Living virtuously developed in them the “habit of excellence” that Aristotle described. Though young, they had an abhorrence of sin so deeply developed that when confronted with impurity, even though the sin was not theirs, they fled from it.
The virtue of chastity does not require that a person choose death over rape. The Church does not value virginity over life. If these young women had been unable to get away from the attackers, or if they had submitted in fear for their lives, the sin would have belonged only to the rapist, and would not have touched their own chastity. But neither are they morally required to submit to a rapist.
In the moment of trauma, the martyrs of purity do not have time to philosophize regarding the greater good, of life or chastity. They respond as they can, moved by grace. (Read more.)