Tea at Trianon: The Beginning of the End of Recreational Catholicism

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, September 23, 2024

The Beginning of the End of Recreational Catholicism

From Crisis:

First, and most importantly, this renaissance is manifesting itself among the faithful—especially the young. They have witnessed Recreational Catholicism and find it like feasting on sawdust. Many of them have awakened and are discovering the riches of the Faith in classic theology and philosophy once thought to be safely buried by elite mandarins of Modernism. They are thrilling to such old authors as Fathers Garrigou-Lagrange and Ambroise Gardeil, Msgr. Ronald Knox and Fr. Gerald Vann, Fathers Basil Maturin and Edward Leen. To say nothing of Lewis, Chesterton, Pieper, Daniel-Rops, Gilson, and Maritain. Add to these Msgr. Robert Benson, Fr. C.C. Martindale, and Hilaire Belloc.
[...]
This high-powered group of young Catholics is impassioned with an electrifying love of the Old Faith, and they are aborning a renaissance before our very eyes. Coming from their numbers are priests. Scores and scores of them. Many are entering the Traditional orders of the Fraternity of St. Peter or Institute of Christ the King. Both seminaries are at their maximum capacity, training young men in the fashion of the seminaries from the Council of Trent to 1965.
Catholics owe it to themselves to visit these impressive battlegrounds of sanctity and learning. Their superiors appreciate that they are sending newly anointed priests as sheep in the midst of wolves. To that end, their training has the feel of Parris Island, with order and discipline sitting upon the crown of their ascetical/theological/philosophical formation like jewels set in a golden diadem. After eight years of this blessed rigor, they are launched, in the words of Henri Daniel-Rops, to bring to the world and the Church “a revolution of the Cross.” (Read more.)