Tea at Trianon: Forgotten Catholics of the Civil War South

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

Thursday, September 10, 2026

Forgotten Catholics of the Civil War South

From Sensus Fidelium:

Irish immigrants marched in gray uniforms. French Creoles filled the pews of New Orleans. German Catholics worshipped across Texas. Jesuit priests served as chaplains. Religious sisters staffed hospitals. Bishops struggled to shepherd their flocks through one of the darkest periods in American history. Although Catholics remained a minority in most of the South, they were far from insignificant. Their story has too often been overlooked.
One of the best modern studies of Southern Catholic life during the Civil War is historian Gracjan Kraszewski’s Catholic Confederates: Faith and Duty in the Civil War South. Kraszewski argues that many Southern Catholics did not see themselves as outsiders living within the Confederacy. Instead, they identified deeply with their states and communities, viewing their Catholic faith and their Southern loyalties as compatible. He describes this process as the “Confederatization” of Southern Catholics—a perspective that helps explain why Catholic clergy, religious, and laypeople participated so fully in Confederate society. His work challenges the common assumption that the Civil War was solely a Protestant story. (Read more.)