Was the French Revolution's primary purpose to destroy the Catholic Church?

[CentralFLJames]

Originally Posted by JimG

And when revolution is led by those with defective ideas, mass murder results.

I am no history scholar but from what I have read on my own, if not for the bloody butchery of the Reign of Terror( la Terreur - 5 Sept.1793 – 27 July 1794) it almost sounds like an unimaginable madcappers comedy and utter macabre lunacy that could be a parody of governments and incompetent revolutionists. The insanity that is reported to have occurred sounds like a bunch of over educated children pompously running around and grabbing anyone that they did not personally like, or anyone who looked "suspicious" or any priest or royalty and just chopped their heads off for entertainment - then turned on themselves when they ran out of victims. These people were wallowing in the gore (16,000 to 40,000 murdered after a mock trial for being counter-revolutionary) and even soaked their clothes in the blood of Louis XVI decapitated head as a badge of honor. It was a hysteric mob and a chance to kill anyone who one did not like or perhaps anyone who one owed debts to.

The Revolutionists wanted a democratic secularized church so badly that they forced clergy and religious to marry and when they balked they chained them together and tossed them into the river to be reformed in a new baptism (drowning them).

The atheists who fomented much of the anti-clericalism were eventually even turned over for execution too as having views that while productive to furthering the revolution were found to be much too structured in own orthodoxy to be so certain that there was no God to blame for the mess - so off with their heads too lol. Mouths were for shouting not to be fed - and the fewer non-productive mouths to feed the better. And Robespierre's insistence on associating Terror with Virtue - OMG it was hell on earth as best I can tell. How fitting that Robespierre was decapitated by his own revolutionary forces who wanted even more radical changes that he wanted to go along with.

It was so insanely mob rule that foreign kings (Prussians) fearful that the old royal order was about to collapse sent in troops to try to establish order before the French Revolution would break out to infect the entire continent to change the entire way of life of Europe. That just fueled more French revolutionary paranoia that the gentry were all in bed with the enemy and increased executions and broadened the uprising.

It's easy to see why the guillotine became such a symbol of the Revolution - decapitate reason from the heart.


What utter macabre madness...

More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution

James

[Kaninchen]

Originally Posted by CentralFLJames

How fitting that Robespierre was decapitated by his own revolutionary forces who wanted even more radical changes that he wanted to go along with.

No he wasn't.

[wcknight]

I thought the French Revolutions was primarily to overthrow the rich aristocracy and monarchy.

The rich and royal bred were living high off the hog while the poor masses were starving. I don't remember the clergy having a whole lot to do with it, unless they were primarily supporting the status quo.

Of course I know very little about it. So take my opinion with a huge grain of salt.

[CentralFLJames]

Originally Posted by Kaninchen

No he wasn't.

OK - It's hard to tell who was on what side and if the "sides" were well defined at all - there was so much intrigue going on.

It was at least interesting to note his incompetence in his unsuccessfully attempt to commit suicide by shooting himself. But the bullet merely shattered his jaw, and Robespierre was guillotined the next day.

So no French revolutionary forces were in on the conspiracy of the Convention on 9 Thermidor (27 July).?

As I said I am no scholar of this history but it sure looks to me like his own people wanted more fun and less restraint.

James

[CentralFLJames]

Originally Posted by wcknight

I thought the French Revolutions was primarily to overthrow the rich aristocracy and monarchy.

The rich and royal bred were living high off the hog while the poor masses were starving. I don't remember the clergy having a whole lot to do with it, unless they were primarily supporting the status quo.

Of course I know very little about it. So take my opinion with a huge grain of salt.

Sadly, most Americans idea of the French Revolution is from the the Broadway historical fiction Les Misérables (Les Mis) and are clueless that it was about the Paris Uprising of 1832 and not the French Revolution.

James

[Kaninchen]

Originally Posted by CentralFLJames

OK - It's hard to tell who was on what side and if the "sides" were well defined at all - there was so much intrigue going on.

It was at least interesting to note his incompetence in his unsuccessfully attempt to commit suicide by shooting himself. But the bullet merely shattered his jaw, and Robespierre was guillotined the next day.

So no French revolutionary forces were in on the conspiracy of the Convention on 9 Thermidor (27 July).?

As I said I am no scholar of this history but it sure looks to me like his own people wanted more fun and less restraint.

James

It rather depends on what you mean by 'revolutionary forces' - there were 'left' revolutionaries, there were 'right' revolutionaries etc. The fall of Robespierre didn't end the Revolution, it ended a stage of the Revolution.

[distracted]

Originally Posted by CentralFLJames

I

It's easy to see why the guillotine became such a symbol of the Revolution - decapitate reason from the heart.


What utter macabre madness...

More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution

James

thanks for the info... I think...

and i have thoguht for a long time that, as you say:

"the insanity that is reported to have occurred sounds like a bunch of over educated children pompously running around and grabbing anyone that they did not personally like, or anyone who looked "suspicious" or any priest or royalty and just chopped their heads off for entertainment - then turned on themselves when they ran out of victims.

I thought i had heard it all but...

These people were wallowing in the gore (16,000 to 40,000 murdered after a mock trial for being counter-revolutionary) and even soaked their clothes in the blood of Louis XVI decapitated head as a badge of honor

i was right... people just got possessed...

I've heard of things going on in exorcisms that look like child's play in comparison....

[distracted]

Originally Posted by wcknight

I thought the French Revolutions was primarily to overthrow the rich aristocracy and monarchy.

The rich and royal bred were living high off the hog while the poor masses were starving. I don't remember the clergy having a whole lot to do with it, unless they were primarily supporting the status quo.

Of course I know very little about it. So take my opinion with a huge grain of salt.

well, i didn't know anything either until i read some book... can't recall which one..

seems the educational sys in this country (USA ) wants to keep students ignorant...

well, no surprise since Masons are trying to educate our children... No, not trying... succeeding...

[JimG]

It was a tragedy that incompetent kings who ignored the people for whom they were personally responsible by reason of their office, were followed by revolutionaries who were even more incompetent, and more murderous, than the kings.

The 'enlightenment' completed the process of putting to the guillotine the entire corpus of western civilization, the accumulated wisom of centuries, chopping off its head in spite, in order to get a fresh start, free of the 'superstition' of religion and the tyranny of kings.

But not all kings are tyrants; and not all religion is superstition. I shouldn't say that the deconstruction of western civilization was completed, for that has continued to the present day.

We can't complacently contemplate our superiority; the present age supports its own barbarisms.

[distracted]

Originally Posted by JimG

It was a tragedy that incompetent kings who ignored the people for whom they were personally responsible by reason of their office, were followed by revolutionaries who were even more incompetent, and more murderous, than the kings.

The 'enlightenment' completed the process of putting to the guillotine the entire corpus of western civilization, the accumulated wisom of centuries, chopping off its head in spite, in order to get a fresh start, free of the 'superstition' of religion and the tyranny of kings.

But not all kings are tyrants; and not all religion is superstition. I shouldn't say that the deconstruction of western civilization was completed, for that has continued to the present day.

We can't complacently contemplate our superiority; the present age supports its own barbarisms.

now we are chopping off the heads of the unborn..

Why is it that in every age... we humans seem to have to have some scapegoat... someone to murder?

and yet before the so-called Reformation... when the Church was, well, the only one.. there didn't seem to be so much wanton blood-shed... (middle ages...) Yes there were wars... but there have always been wars..

Martin Luther unleashed the devil on the world.. The Church was just starting to spread... and he ruined things...

[Kaninchen]

Originally Posted by JimG

The 'enlightenment' completed the process of putting to the guillotine the entire corpus of western civilization, the accumulated wisom of centuries, chopping off its head in spite, in order to get a fresh start, free of the 'superstition' of religion and the tyranny of kings.

The 'Enlightenment' did have its good points - rather difficult to see how the new 'Industrial Age' and the great emancipation of populations in Europe would have happened without that kind of intellectual impetus.

One might also ask questions about 'What Western Civilization'? Never mind the new industrial and old peasant classes, in what sense were Junkers, Boyars and the petty Aristocracy of France, 'civilized'? How far was Western Civilization more than a relatively small number of rich men, sitting in their studies, writing books for other rich men, sitting in their studies, to read?

The Enlightenment may have opened the door to all sorts of destructive forces but the pre-Enlightenment world had brought wonders like the Thirty Years' War which was, proportionately, as devastating as anything that followed.

[Axion]

As far as the French Revolution was concerned:

• It started, with the poor of Paris having had enough of hunger and poverty. There was idealism in the first revolutionary assembly and many priests took part.
• Then however, the anti-Christians gained control. Anti-Christians form a large part of the Left, and always try to subvert any revolution or popular movement into an anti-Church one. This has happened across the world. Many people blame freemason influence.
• To gain money, church property was seized, then there was an attack on all the Church, priests had to foreswear the Pope or face death, monasteries were closed, followed by most Churches. Thousands of priests were exiled or killed.
• Having abandoned Christianity, the French, like the later Stalin and Mao, began to massacre opponents, including priests.
• In the Vendee region Catholics resisted the closure of Churches. They were defeated, and this led to the massacre of up to 150,000 Catholics. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_the_Vend%C3%A9e

[Gottle of Geer]

Originally Posted by distracted

i don't know how to do a poll... (maybe you can tell me how?) but i am wondering how many people here think that the primary goal of the French Revolution was to destroy the Church..

I think it was..

## That might have been no bad idea. The Church was seriously secularised. Granted, it was not all bad - but an awful lot of it was. Doesn't a rotten & toxic Church deserve to be swept away ?

If the French Church had had characters like the Wesleys & their contemporaries in England & Wales, maybe it would not have had to pay the price it did; but it had no Wesleys, no reformers of its spirit, no deep foundation in Christ; just wealth and position and prestige & tradition & law on its side; Protestantism was not even legal until 1787

Source of info: Henri Daniel-Rops (1901-65); "The Church in the Eighteenth Century". He was a Catholic, but he was also honest; not one of these people who present the Church as endlessly perfect & always blameless. In Europe, the facts are too well known for that sort of deceitful nonsense not to be exposed; which is just as well. If the Church is so perfect, that makes what happens to it incomprehensible. US Catholics have a far shorter record of evil-doing than the Churches in Europe - they have no way of appreciating just how decrepit & worldly the Churches have at times been. A Church with no Middle Ages is ill-equipped to understand that rot in the French Church had been there for centuries. It needed a shock it wouldn't forget - & the Revolution gave it one.

[KyivAndrew]

Originally Posted by Gottle of Geer

rot in the French Church had been there for centuries. It needed a shock it wouldn't forget - & the Revolution gave it one.

I disagree. The Church was already making concessions in 1790; the French revolutionary extremists did not have to end a part of the Revolution with the guillotine. I may misunderstand you but are you arguing that the Jacobin terror was justified? Do you go further down and approve of Napoleon Bonaparte and his drive to bring in the reign of the Revolution's ideals at the ends of bayonets through Europe resulting in the deaths of over half-a-million of his own French soldiers. Not even the Church could kill off half-a-million at that time.

If the Revolution is instructive of anything it is that the Church, in drawing to near to Caesar, may suffer the same fate as an unpopular or incompetent Caesar if it is not careful. There is no doubt that among the French cardinals, some had become corrupted and many aristocratic families, the Talleyrands and others, always tried to monopolize the hierarchy, but my reading, limited as it is, leads me to believe that French parish priests, the real workhorses of the Catholic Church, were overwhelmingly guided by concern for their parishioners, their health, their well-being, the Sacraments, and that most French villages and towns appreciated this greatly. (A recent statistic I came across showed that only 5% of French parish priests could be considered delinquent..not bad...I think it's from Michael Burleigh's study).

I am no expert and am more than willing to acknowledge error since I am not a historical expert by any means on the French Revolution but I think you are using a stereotypical secularized account of good vs. bad in the French Revolution. And no matter what you may think about our education across the pond, believe me: in most public schools throughout North America young children are taught exactly as you have argued. Church corrupt, rotting...revolutionaries good. Most history teachers in our high schools recite this by rote.

God Bless Gottle!

[JimG]

Originally Posted by KyivAndrew

And no matter what you may think about our education across the pond, believe me: in most public schools throughout North America young children are taught exactly as you have argued. Church corrupt, rotting...revolutionaries good. Most history teachers in our high schools recite this by rote.

I am shocked, shocked! that our public school teachers have turned into secular propagandists against the Church! Must be one of those Enlightenment things.