The New Liturgical Movement reports (with lovely photos and video), as does Andrew Cusack, that the Roman Catholic Church has opened the cause for beatification of Empress Zita (1892-1989), wife of Emperor Karl of Austria-Hungary (1887-1922) who was himself beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2004. Naturally I am in favor of such a process, but I am also anxious that appreciation of the Habsburgs not be confined to the past. Austrian, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, Slovene, and Croatian Catholics should be praying and working not only for her beatification but for the demise of the illegitimate republics that have dared in their arrogance to claim to replace one of history's greatest dynasties, and the restoration of her son Otto to the thrones of his ancestors! Yes, by all means honor Empress Zita, but not as the "last" Empress; the tragedy of 1918 must never be accepted as permanent, as the efforts of organizations such as the Black-Yellow Alliance and the Czech Crown remind us, no matter how formidable the odds.
Here is a beautiful video of Karl and Zita's wedding in 1911.
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This gives me much joy. I do agree with you, however, that this should not be entirely rooted in the past; the late Emperor and Empress' family lives on, and there is no reason why, with hard work and prayer, they may not be restored. Europe needs its royals greatly in this age.
Also, it's nice to see that on NLM, there are *no* comments hostile to royalty! It's an American site, and I expected the same level of hostility as on places like WDTPRS and InsideCatholic.
I remember the hostile reactions to John Zmirak's "Praying with the Kaisers" on InsideCatholic. Did you have any other specific examples in mind? I certainly know what you're talking about in general though. :(
That was the biggest one I can remember, but there's be occasions where even mentioning monarchy in the comments gets a bunch of people responding with the usual attacks that no Catholic should ever make, especially the "I ain't bowing to no one but Jesus" crap. Similar on Fr. Z's.
I also remember similar hostility whenever there are posts defending the Confederacy, where the detractors shout racism. Nothing quite compared to Zmirak's article; it's just that American Catholics are mostly such closed-minded Americanists that buy into all of the "conservative" propaganda about the past of this nation.
There was one place I debated recently (can't remember where) about the concept of state religion, where someone basically said that he was a marine sniper, and that if America ever started turning into a nation with a state religion, he'd start killing priests... and there were people defending him!
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