Tea at Trianon: The Nativity: Reason and Reality

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

Friday, December 27, 2024

The Nativity: Reason and Reality

From the late Fr. Schall at Catholic World Report:

The Nativity of the Lord follows the Incarnation of the same Lord. The latter, in its turn, recalls the announcement nine months previously to Mary, if she accepted it, that a Son was to be born of her. She would call Him Emmanuel, “God with us”. And before the Incarnation, we read of prophets and kings who longed for a Savior, who longed to see God, and who expected Him to come to them in some fashion.

In many ways, we do everything possible to celebrate Christmas except to acknowledge why it is worth celebrating. It is almost as if we celebrate Christmas in order to avoid celebrating what it is in the history of the world. Indeed, we insist on celebrating just to be celebrating, an aberration if there ever was one. But in no case will we acknowledge that some event of the past is still present among us and is the foundation of our celebrating. We stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that what happened did happen. We suspect that if were we to do so it would make demands on us that we would not like to follow.

Something odd and curious surrounds this careful and systematic effort to avert our eyes and minds from the central fact of the Nativity. The Nativity is more difficult to explain away than the Incarnation. When a child is born in this world, we cannot deny it is there. We can ask, with the carol, “What Child is this?” It is a question that requires an answer. What is claimed for this Child transcends even the world itself. “In the beginning was the Word”—this was the Word that took flesh and dwelt amongst us, at least for a time. But He was with us long enough for us to be certain that He actually did exist in places in this world: Bethlehem, Nazareth, Galilee, and Jerusalem. (Read more.)