The Real Pride Month

Madame Elisabeth, Dauphin Louis-Charles, Marie-Antoinette, Louis XVI and Madame Royale assisting at Mass at the Tuileries

 From The European Conservative:

Such dislike, though, would be a mistake, because June has a much older and worthier title: the Month of the Sacred Heart. Not well known outside Catholic circles, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is in one sense as old as Christianity, when St. Longinus’ lance pierced it and out flowed blood and water, prefiguring Baptism and the Eucharist. In the Patristic and medieval eras, saints and mystics wrote of it, and of the salvific nature of the wounds and precious blood of Christ. In the latter period, these were ever more bound up with the growth of devotion to the Blessed Sacrament (and miracles arising therefrom) and the stories of the Holy Grail. It was under the banner of the Five Wounds that the Pilgrimage of Grace marched out against Henry VIII in defence of the Old Religion.

Our current version, though, dates back to the 17th century, with the revelations of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. While bound up with making reparation to the Saviour who loves us so much, and suffered death to redeem us, the devotion from the beginning has had a social aspect. One of the requests made to St. Margaret Mary by Jesus was that Louis XIV consecrate his kingdom to the Sacred Heart and place the emblem on his flags and battle colours. This he did not do. But the devotion was taken up by many other royals: Queen Henriette Marie, consort of England’s Charles I; her daughter-in-law, Marie of Modena, James II’s queen; King Augustus I of Poland; King Philip V of Spain; Louis XV’s consort, Queen Marie Leczinska; her father, King Stanislaus of Poland, and her son, the Dauphin Louis; King Augustus III of Poland; Elector Maximilian III of Bavaria; SG Madame Elisabeth of France; her brother, King Louis XVI, who consecrated France privately to the Sacred Heart, and vowed to so publicly if he regained his throne; Maria, Queen of Portugal; King Charles X of France; Henri V, de jure king of France; SG King Francesco II of the Two Sicilies; Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, and his wife Sophie; Bl. Emperor-King Karl of Austria-Hungary, and his wife, SG Zita; King Alfonso XIII of Spain; Albert I, King of the Belgians; Carlist heir Alfonso Carlos I; and a host of others down to the present. 

Such counterrevolutionaries as the Vendeens, the Tiroleans under Andreas Hofer, the Spanish Carlists, and the Mexican Cristeros adopted it as their special badge. Garcia Moreno, president of Ecuador, consecrated his country to the Sacred Heart with its bishops in 1873. Following this, several Latin American countries began performing this national consecration: El Salvador (1874), Venezuela (1900), Colombia (1902), Nicaragua (1920), Costa Rica (1921), Brazil (1922), and Bolivia (1925). In Europe, Ireland’s bishops followed suit in 1873, Spain in 1919, and Poland in 1920. Across Europe and the world, shrines were dedicated in honour of the Sacred Heart—most notably that of Montmartre in Paris. In architecture alone, the Sacred Heart devotion has given the world a priceless treasure to be proud of, to say nothing of the stalwart folk who rallied around the emblem in defence of Christendom’s soul. (Read more.)

 

Once again, we try to make it clear that Marie-Antoinette never made a comment about cake, brioche, etc. And she was not a spendthrift but probably spent less than other queens, and definitely less than all the mistresses. From All That's Interesting:

Some historians have suggested that revolutionaries caught wind of the quote “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” from Rousseau’s writings, then falsely credited it to their despised queen as a form of propaganda. But even this does not hold up to modern scrutiny.

The earliest known source that connected the phrase to Marie Antoinette was the French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr. In an 1843 issue of the journal Les Guêpes, Karr wrote that he found the quote originally in a “book dated 1760,” which he said meant that the rumor about Marie Antoinette must have been false, as she’d have been about five years old at the time the book was published. So, it’s very possible that the French citizens were indeed circulating the propaganda against the queen, though clearly not everyone was buying it.

Why, then, has the misquote carried on for nearly 300 years?

“It did not come to be misattributed to Marie Antoinette during the 18th century, but during the Third French Republic starting in 1870, when a careful program of reconstructing the historical past took place,” Denise Maior-Barron, an adjunct professor at Claremont Graduate University in California, told Live Science.

While the French Revolution of 1789 is considered to be the major revolution in France’s history, it is not the only time the French people rose up against their government.

Towards the end of the 19th century, France saw another major shift in power when members of the Third French Republic dethroned Napoleon III following his failed war against Prussia. Those same republicans then sought to effectively rewrite bits of France’s history to paint key figures in a different light — particularly, the disfavored queen Marie Antoinette.

“The masterminds of the French Revolution destroyed the French monarchy by continually attacking, and eventually destroying, its most important symbols: the king and the queen of France,” Maior-Barron said. “For this reason the ‘Let them eat cake’ type of clichés persist.” (Read more.)

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Tax-Raising Democrats Could Learn a Cautionary Tale from the UK

 From Chronicles:

In a nocturnal video posted to his office’s YouTube channel, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani greeted this year’s April 15 tax day by announcing, “I said I was going to tax the rich. Well, today we’re taxing the rich.” Mamdani, who won the mayoralty by an absolute majority last November, recorded his video on Central Park South, one of the city’s poshest streets, in front of hedge-fund billionaire Ken Griffin’s apartment building as music that sounded vaguely like the soundtrack to HBO’s Succession played in the background. Mamdani chose the location with purpose: Griffin represents, to him, “the richest of the rich,” and therefore a source of revenue to fund his social programs via a “pied-à-terre tax.” The new levy will tax second homes owned in New York by non-residents valued at $5 million or more.

Griffin responded in a CNBC interview, saying he may reconsider a $6 billion construction project that would create an estimated 15,000 permanent jobs in New York and instead focus on future projects in Miami, where he resides. Quoted in the Wall Street Journal describing Mamdani’s video as “creepy and weird,” Griffin added that Mamdani’s singling him out “put me in harm’s way.” President Trump has weighed in, telling radio host Sid Rosenberg that any city’s mayor should “cherish” business leaders and “convince them not to leave” rather than drive them away.

According to the New York Post, Mamdani has reached out to Griffin to ease the tensions but received no response. If Mamdani needs more evidence that he might be in the wrong, however, he should look across the pond to the United Kingdom, whose Labour Party, in office since 2024, has raised taxes and abolished its so-called “non-domicile” (“non-dom”) tax exemption for the non-UK income of foreign nationals who reside in Britain. (Britain, like almost all countries except the United States, does not tax its own citizens’ foreign-earned income).

The results have been a disaster. According to figures cited by the Daily Telegraph, some 10,800 millionaires expatriated from the UK in 2024 alone, an average of one every 45 minutes. More jarring evidence came on May 15, just days after Griffin’s CNBC interview, when the Times of London released its 38^th annual “Rich List,” a compendium of the country’s richest 350 individuals, including UK citizens worldwide and foreign citizens residing in Britain. (Read more.)

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The Ancient Philosophy of Brutality in Euripides’ Cyclops

 From The Collector:

Euripides’ Cyclops is the only satyr play that has survived intact. We do not know anything about the performance history of this play, or why or even when exactly it was written. The plot borrows from well-known versions of Odysseus’ encounter with the cyclops Polyphemus. The plot is simple and brutal, but with comic elements provided by Silenus and the satyrs. The play is perhaps easy to dismiss, but Euripides raises some interesting questions about power and brutality.

The three main characters in the play are Polyphemus, a cyclops; Odysseus, the cunning Homeric hero; and Silenus, the former companion and tutor of Dionysus. There are also a number of satyrs, described as Silenus’ sons, that act as the chorus. Odysseus’ shipwrecked crew is present, but none have speaking roles and were probably not depicted on stage.

Silenus has a few guises in Greek mythology. Sometimes he is depicted as a drunken man and other times as a satyr-like creature. In Euripides’ Cyclops, he is depicted as an old man. In the play, Silenus is toadying, coarse, sly, and greedy. He is there for comic effect, as are his sons, the satyrs. Odysseus is the same character we see in the Odyssey. He uses his cunning to outsmart the cyclops and escape. However, in Euripides’ play, we do not see all of the tricks Odysseus uses in Homer’s story.

Polyphemus is a cyclops. He lives on an island with his cyclops brothers. They are referenced but not seen. Cyclopes are solitary creatures and self-sufficient. Polyphemus lives off the sheep, which he forces the satyrs to look after. They were captured and enslaved after becoming shipwrecked on the island. Polyphemus is brutish but not unintelligent. He believes himself to be superior to the gods by virtue of his brute strength. (Read more.)

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