I've been looking at the latest issue of Mount Carmel: a Review of the Spiritual life, produced by the Discalced Carmelites of the Anglo-Irish Province. The bulk of the issue is devoted to the Carmelite Martyrs of Compiegne, guillotined two hundred and thirty years ago. By pure coincidence I was talking last night to a fellow Secular about the distortions in our perceptions of history. I'm not sure many people know about the bloody persecution of Catholics by fanatical revolutionaries at the period. People know about the guillotine and they find it very distasteful as a means of execution but they think that in the main it was probably killing baddies. As a historian myself I am acutely aware that historians are hampered by personal prejudices and by a tendency to groupthink, particularly when it comes to major events like the Reformation and the English Civil War and the French and Russian Revolutions. Sin affects not just our senses and physical desires, it affects our thinking too.
The magazine comes out four times a year and if you want to know how to take out a subscription you can email me at cpblamires@aol.com
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