Tea at Trianon: “The Two Shall Become One Flesh”

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 3, 2025

“The Two Shall Become One Flesh”

From Elizabeth Stone at Of Home and Motherhood:

In today’s world, the female body is often treated as an object, something we can all judge, a commodity for consumption. But the truth is God designed it for something much different. The woman’s body speaks a language written into creation itself. Its capacity to receive, to nurture, and to bring forth life reveals the character of divine love: creative, generous, and ordered toward communion. To receive life requires openness, not just of the body, but of the heart and the will. And openness always involves risk. It means allowing another to enter the most personal space. It demands trust. This is why, for a woman, sexual intimacy can never be detached from the moral and relational context that gives it meaning. It is not merely an act of pleasure; it is an act of faith, a giving of self that presumes mutual fidelity and care. When that trust is betrayed, through lust, manipulation, or indifference, the damage is vast, because the very design of our bodies show how it was made for covenant, not transaction. The body and soul are left bearing the weight of something sacred that was treated as casual. The tragedy of modern sexual culture is that it demands the fruits of feminine openness, pleasure, beauty, intimacy, without the structure that protects it: covenant, commitment, marriage, and trust.

This is what modern sexual ethics fail to grasp. A culture organized around “consent” assumes that if two people agree, the act is good. But human beings aren’t built for legal minimalism. Sex involves attachment systems, hormonal bonding, moral meaning, and literal God ordained design. Reducing it to permission has stripped it of the structure that made it intelligible. The result is the gray zone now haunting both sexes. Was it wrong? Was it assault? Was it just bad judgment? The categories blur because the moral framework is gone. Consent tells us what’s allowed; covenant told us what’s good. And unfortunately nowadays, they are both speaking very different languages.

When sex belonged to marriage, the questions of trust, stability, and safety were already built into the act. The relationship carried the structure that the body requires. Once sex was detached from covenant, every encounter became a private negotiation. The culture of sex-based consent has been disastrous for both men and women. For women, it’s produced chronic confusion and emotional fragmentation, the body giving itself in contexts it was never meant to. For men, it’s fostered paranoia and moral apathy. A covenantal view of sex — one bound to fidelity and permanence — resolved those contradictions. It gave desire a structure, and intimacy a home. Without that, consent becomes the last word in a language that no longer makes sense. (Read more.)