Tea at Trianon: The Sun Also Rises Over the Young Adult Group

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, November 10, 2026

The Sun Also Rises Over the Young Adult Group

The cultural and sexual revolutions have destroyed the old boundaries as well as the old codes of chivalry and etiquette, leaving so many young people rudderless. For centuries the parish church was the center of social integration; it is now another place of social isolation for some young believers. From To the Ends of the Earth:

In this way, Catholic social life risks becoming yet another extension of the broader status economy, subtly reinforcing the very hierarchies it claims to transcend. Cliques form. Certain people become the people you need to know. Certain events become the events you need to attend. Certain friend groups somehow begin functioning like a small country club with a rosary attached. Suddenly, a ministry designed to foster unity and belonging begins, paradoxically, to generate its own factions and divisions.
That is where Hemingway becomes useful. The characters in The Sun Also Rises are constantly together, but togetherness does not necessarily mean communion. They eat together, drink together, travel together, gossip about one another, become jealous of one another, sleep with one another, and repeatedly injure one another. Their social life is incredibly busy. Yet for all their activity, their lives remain marked by a profound emptiness.
Brett is perhaps the clearest example: she is beautiful, magnetic, desired by almost every man around her, and almost incapable of remaining still. There is always another romance, another city, another party, another possibility.
Jake loves her, but because of the wound he suffered in the war, their relationship can never become what either of them wants it to be, so their longing remains unresolved.
That ache sits underneath the entire novel. While our circumstances differ dramatically, the ache of unresolved longing is strikingly familiar. Modern Catholic young adults talk constantly about vocation, dating, marriage, community, intentionality, and discernment. Beneath all that language is often an extraordinarily simple desire: I want to be known. I want friends who actually know me; I want someone to love; I want my life to mean something; I want to know that I am not wasting these years.
There is nothing pathetic about these desires; they are, in fact, profoundly human. Yet when we fail to acknowledge these desires honestly, we begin to perform them instead, enacting a script rather than living a reality. (Read more.)