Tea at Trianon: When Catholics are Democrats

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

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

When Catholics are Democrats

Since the Democrat party champions abortion as one of the their major platforms I fail to comprehend how any conscientious Catholic can be one. From Catholic Culture:

My grandmother died yesterday at the age of 96. There is no single person to whom I owe a greater debt for imparting to me my Catholic faith than her. I have explained why in numerous Facebook posts over the years and in a Catholic Herald piece commemorating the centennial of Our Lady of Fatima.

One thing she did not pass on to me (at least not permanently) was her lifelong support for the Democratic Party. My grandparents were the “ancestral white Catholics” mentioned in passing in a recent First Things podcast. Immigrant Catholics in places like Southern New England with a deep historical attachment to the Democratic Party in general and a feudal-like loyalty to the Kennedys in particular.

During the 2020 Democratic convention, when “Scranton Joe” Biden turned on the old working-class Catholic piety, I scoffed. 2020 was a year of Peak Wokeness. Covid lockdowns, George Floyd riots, statues of our founding fathers vandalized, and so forth. Surely “ancestral white Catholics” were wise to the Democrat Party’s false claim to speak for them by now, I thought.

I was wrong. Or, rather, I was early. Biden’s 2020 campaign turned out to be the last gasp of the old ruse. He hadn’t the strength to pull it off again in 2024, before he was yanked from the stage. And there is no longer anyone else left who can do it. With Biden’s exit from public life, an era has finally ended. (Read more.)