Tea at Trianon: Does People Pleasing Lead to Holiness?

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, June 13, 2024

Does People Pleasing Lead to Holiness?

From Catholic Exchange:

Bad habits are ways that we “conform our minds to the age” rather than to the will of God. For various reasons, many of us have developed the bad habit of “people-pleasing.” We set aside our own needs, or sometimes even what is the right thing to do, to make someone else happy or “pleased” with us. This sort of behavior has the immediate reward of being appreciated, accepted, or liked, but the long-term effects are less beneficial.
In this habit of people pleasing, we gradually lose a sense of what makes us happy, and ultimately what are the right and wrong things to do. Our self-worth becomes tied to other people’s responses to what we do, rather than to who we are in God’s eyes. We lose simplicity. We become complicated. We might even become depressed and not know why. A quick, false reading of Christianity could lead a person to believe that putting other’s needs before one’s own is virtue. At times this may be so. But continually putting our own legitimate needs last is not necessarily holiness. It may in fact be people pleasing. Discernment in these situations comes back to purity of intention.
When you are hoping to go see a movie, but your friend calls and needs a ride to the ER, putting that friend’s needs first likely isn’t people-pleasing. But, if you were planning to make a much-needed hour of adoration, and that one needy friend calls to talk about the same problem you’ve already counseled him about time and time again, and yet you choose to listen rather than spend that planned time with the Lord, you might be people-pleasing.(Read more.)