Tea at Trianon: Talking Nonsense in the Name of God

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

Tuesday, April 14, 2026

Talking Nonsense in the Name of God

Let us remember that the Crusades were initiated by the popes to free the Holy Land from Muslims. Various nations of Islam had committed sacrilege in the Holy Places, raped monks and nuns, destroyed churches or turned them into mosques, while enslaving thousands of Christians. Girls were sold as sex slaves. Boys were often castrated so they could serve as eunuchs in the sultan's palace. This went on for over a thousand years. Various popes called upon Christian warriors to fight the Muslims in order to free the Christians of the Middle East. So while popes encourage peace most have known that sometimes battle is necessary to liberate the persecuted.

Meanwhile, in the present day, so many Catholics do not know the most basic moral teachings about chastity, contraception, abortion, celibacy outside of marriage, and keeping holy the Lord's Day. Not to mention all the theological teachings about the Holy Eucharist and the Blessed Mother. It is the responsibility of the Shepherds to teach them! And where is the outcry from our Shepherds about the Christians being murdered, raped and enslaved around the world, in Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, China, Indonesia, India! What about the blatant and repeated human rights violations in several Muslim countries against their own women? What about the slave trade which flourishes in Africa? What about the human trafficking in the Americas? There are some major moral issues which require the full attention of the Holy Father and the bishops.

From Andrew Klavan at The New Jerusalem:

If the faithful are nothing else, they ought to be clear-eyed and honest about the way things are. Politicians can deal in virtuous-sounding lies, but not priests. A politician can say, “Poverty is the underlying cause of crime,” in order to sell the public on some useless program that will increase his patronage power and line the pockets of his friends. But God-fearing men should see that the logic doesn’t hold. How, for instance, does such an idea explain well-heeled criminals like Jordan Belfort and Bernie Madoff? A Christian should understand that the sinful human heart, with its greed and cruelty, is crime’s real cause. Poverty merely limits the sorts of crimes one can commit. Once you see that, ideas like defund the police and end incarceration reveal themselves to be works of either ignorance or cynicism. Sin is with us until the end of days. So, therefore, are cops and jails.
Likewise war. In a world where men like Hitler and ideas like Islamism can define the ethos of a people, bullets will sometimes have to fly. I say this without jingoism or belligerence. It is a simple fact of life. We can’t love our spouses, play with our children, do our jobs, read books or stroll through parks unless tough guys with weapons guard our borders and our streets, ready to fight when the need arises. Pacifism, if it is not suicidal, is just straight up wicked. It simply shunts the moral responsibility of waging war onto another man’s shoulders.
“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” Jesus said, “and unto God the things that are God’s.” I take this to mean in part that his preachments, if they are to make any sense, cannot be taken as a political program. “Love your enemy,” is not a foreign policy prescription. “Turn the other cheek,” is not a recommended reform of the justice system. These are formative ways of seeing the world and its inevitable troubles as God sees them: as tragedies that spring from the bottomless fountain of our sin. They will continue to exist as long as we are what we are. One hopes that leaders shaped by the Christian ethos will deal with them as justly as possible.
Each person born is going to find himself in that blood-soaked melodrama known as history. He may have the good luck to live in a rich and secure society governed by the rule of law, or he may get the short end of the stick and find himself dumped into the midst of chaos and oppression. Accepting Christ can teach him humility, grant him peace and lead him to salvation. But it can’t shield him from the truth — because it is only by and in and for the Truth that he is saved. (Read more.)