Tea at Trianon: First Principles of Liturgical Realism

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, January 9, 2026

First Principles of Liturgical Realism

From El Antiguo:

To be re-enchanted would be to throw off this massive ontological pride and embrace the grounds of our being with courage and wisdom; this is not regression but genuine progress. To be “re-enchanted” would mean that we would have to be re-acquainted with the Real, from whom we hide in our plaster boxes and black screens. But the word re-enchantment simply does not convey the severity and fortitude required to become re-acquainted with the Real.
Loving and awe-filled acquaintance with the Real is the purpose of this “movement.” If we are being historically precise, our conviction is really only the reclamation of a robust Christian Realism. But the manner in which we are inheriting the tradition of Christian Realism is new, to a certain extent—at least in its articulation. We are employing Christian Realism to encounter and critique modernity, and to examine our future without dependence on broken philosophical categories. So Christian Realism is an accurate name. However, when the term Christian Realism is employed, some readers will immediately associate this discourse with certain trends in Neo-Scholasticism—essentially Christian glosses on Materialism. This is a major problem; we assert that any articulation of materialism, no matter how “blended” with revelation, is fundamentally incompatible with Christianity. We are not Neo-Scholastics.
Some, too, associate the tradition of Christian Realism with the Neoplatonic tradition, and although we are more sympathetic with the neo-platonists than the materialists, we are cautious of some aspects of Neoplatonic thought, especially from the late, humanist Renaissance—our philosophy is nothing if not theocentric in its approach. Additionally, Neoplatonism has been variously employed in Sophiology and Hermetic circles, and while there is considerable overlap among us with these thinkers, our philosophy remains—and will always remain—utterly Christocentric, pulling from the entire Christian tradition. So, because of the intellectual associations with the term, simply saying “Christian Realism” has become untenable; it is simply too wide of an umbrella, and is used too sloppily. (Read more.)