New Chesterton fan needs feedback

The incomparable Nancy Brown has a message up on the ACS blog that she received from a gentleman who is an extremely recent convert to our beloved Gilbert, and who would like some input on his first analysis of his ideas. Check it out here, if you please, and encourage a fellow who deserves it.

New from Amazon.......

If you need to read this,

Then read this:

Collected works in Large Print.

Ox Blog

A new blog dedicated to The Dumb Ox, who kinda qualifies as a GKC friend, though there's obviously the problem of about 750 years between them.

Addendum: Alright, alright: Go here.

On the trolley again

Now happily ensconced in London once again, I can get back to the furious content-production for which I'm famous. Not immediately, of course, for there is much I must do before I can get back into the groove properly, but a recent development is very promising indeed as far as this blog is concerned.

Some readers may remember my attempts to hornswoggle the government into giving me money to research Gilbert in some regard over the course of my MA year, and they, duly impressed with my application, thought it worth supporting. I had regretted that any actual study of our great man would be unlikely, as the fellow best-suited to supervising a year-long research project on the subject is on sabattical this year, but as I would certainly give them good value for their money whatever project I turned my hand to, my conscience was more or less clear.

So it was with surprise and delight that I discovered that one of the senior professors in our department, with whom I have always been on excellent terms, has some small affection for GKC and had been nursing a growing interest in the man's works. A few meetings and exchanged e-mails later and I'm happy to report that I will be able to fulfill my earlier hopes, though not in precisely the way I had imagined. Rather than looking at Chesterton as a subtle precursor to various popular and modern literary approaches (chiefly post-colonialism and cultural studies; it's a long story), I will instead be looking at him in the context of the anti-modernist movement which seemed to have its last and greatest gasp around his time. Sidelights on Whitman and Eliot will also be inevitable, for the thing is primarily concerned with his poetry, but I'm alright with that.

It seems likely, then, that I'll have plenty to post about in the coming months.

A BEAUTEOUS EVENING

In Kyro’s post on Mother Theresa I was reminded of a William Wordsworth poem that I will share with you. It is the last few lines that remind me of the Dark Night of the Soul. And Mother Theresa was both calm and free.

IT IS A BEAUTEOUS EVENING, CALM AND FREE

IT is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet as a Nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity;
The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea:
Listen! the mighty Being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder--everlastingly.
Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here,
If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,
Thy nature is not therefore less divine:
Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year;
And worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine,
God being with thee when we know it not.

Friday thoughts..........

Mother Theresa, oh my gosh, was human!!

For those of you who dont follow news, some of Mother Theresa's diaries and letters are being published which reveal she lived most of her life in a Dark Night of the Soul. This was reported years ago in First Things, but only hit the mainstream press now. I hope this is grasped as a teaching moment to get across some of the very unique teachings of authentic Catholic spirituality.....Holiness is not a "buzz", fanaticism is not a virtue, steadfast fidelity through thick and thin (Way of the Cross, perhaps?) is.

Senator Craig
Um, wow. Lets reason through this. Either he is guilty or it is a misunderstanding. If this was a misunderstanding I would picture the accused behaving in a totally different manner. Innocent people accused of something like this should be vocal, angry, and beligerent in protest.

Other option, he is guilty, in which case this man's devience is so deep and his compulsions so strong that he would try something like this in a public place. And, by the way, he is a senator.

Finally, a Clerihew

President Amadinejad
Rants for global Jihad
His name is difficult, I get it wrong.
Cant we call him, "President Tom?"

Have a great weekend.

Clerihew - Michael Vick

Michael Vick
is sick.
Like many of his passes, his notions of sport
fall short.

So she hesitated.

today in BBC news:

In 1937 Marie Slocombe was working as a summer relief secretary at the BBC.

One of her tasks was to sort out - and dispose of - a pile of dusty broadcast discs. She noticed that among them were recordings of GB Shaw, HG Wells, Winston Churchill, Herbert Asquith and GK Chesterton. So she hesitated.

In that moment was the humble beginning of what became one of the most important collections of recordings in the world - the BBC Sound Archive.

If Clerihew I Must

They should be a bit funnier, but this is all I have right now:

Some call Sauron
A moral moron,
Hiding in Barad-Dur,
Living off hatred and fear.

The beautiful Arwen,
Was Aragorn's cousin?
Yes, first cousins I fear,
But removed by many-a-year.

New Chesterton Blogger

This new blog has one post, but has quoted GKC twice already. He also mentions my other blog, the ACS blog, and Dawn Eden. I figured he deserves a little support.

Ive got the Clerihew Bug

Benedict Sixteen
Comes off as mean
Causes widespread panic
That the Pope, my gosh, is Catholic

Another clerihew

I don't think Ayn Rand
should be banned.
I just think we should label her works:
"The ideal gifts for selfish jerks."

Thoughts for the Weekend

Clerihew

Vladimir Putin
Exercises to be slim
His muscles are sore
Needs a nice cold war

Thoughts....

Enough time has gone by that the hippie relativist generation is now "old fashioned". The Sixties are almost fifty years old, why cant they be archaic. Its amazing how fixed in time the "progressives" really are. There were deep societal problems that these people helped solve, I will grant them that, but listening to the rhetoric they seem blind to the actual progress made in race relations, police professionalism, and corporate responsibility. One of the things Im grateful to Chesterton for is the ability to see the eternal now, how our modern problems--take environmentalism and Islamic terror--are best thought out, defined, and approached through the time honored method of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Augustine, Scotus, and the others. Great thinking done by great thinkers is not bound by time or subject.

A Political Clerihew

Al Gore
came across as a bore.
That and the sighs are among the reasons why
he lost to a light-weight but "regular" guy.

T-SHIRT SALE

Yes, that’s right!

You can be the first kid on your block to own the new House of Gilbert T-shirt.

This burnt orange 100% cotton T (cotton is a common sense material after all) is emblazoned with the House of Gilbert Aesthetics Department on the front (in navy and white) and on the back is GKC’s quote, “Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.”

Now you would expect to pay hundreds of dollars for this rare quality item in stores but here at the Chesterton and Friends blog we (that is I am) are offering this ‘Yes, I know who Chesterton is’ T-Shirt for the rock bottom price of only $17.50 and that includes shipping!

There is a limited supply so act NOW! This shirt comes in a one size fits most XL.

Now if you want to buy a dozen or more for your local Chesterton Society or next pub crawl you can receive a discount and get them in the size God built you.

Send check or money order to:
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pobox 336
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Include your name and shipping address. Let us know if you want info on buying this shirt in quantity or info on our other Catholic T- shirts.

Order today – Because you don’t want to be caught drinking your next ale without a shirt on. Do you?

Smoking and Writing

Some friends are mentioned in an article by A.N. Wilson (biographer of Belloc and Lewis):

What do the following have in common: Oscar Wilde, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, T S Eliot, W B Yeats, Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Evelyn Waugh, Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis?

The answer is, of course, that if they were to come back to life in Gordon Brown's Britain and wanted to go out to their club, or a restaurant or café, they would not be allowed to indulge in a habit which sustained them during the most creative phases of their lives.

The moment they popped their favoured cigar, cigarette or pipe between their lips and lit up, they would have been fined on the spot.

continue reading at the Telegraph...

If you don't want to read the whole thing, here is another mention of smoking friends later in the article:

Sitting with my drink in such now-empty bars, my mind has turned to the great smokers of the past - to C S Lewis, who smoked 60 cigarettes a day between pipes with his friends Charles Williams (cigarette smoker) and Tolkien (pipe-smoker); to Thomas Carlyle, whose wife made him smoke in the kitchen of their house in Cheyne Row, but who is unimaginable without tobacco, to Robert Browning, who quickly adapted to the new cigarette craze, to the great John Cowper Powys, who continued to smoke cigarettes, and to produce fascinating novels, into his nineties.

The Rambler

In April of 1934, Chesterton agreed to supply an Introduction to Hesketh Pearson's biography of Sydney Smith. Chesterton, however, submitted an essay on Smith that mentioned neither Pearson nor Pearson's book. When Pearson protested, Chesterton sheepishly admitted that he had become so enthralled with Sydney Smith that he became "rather like a chairman who gave a lecture but forgot to introduce the guest speaker." Chesterton quickly corrected the defect, and the biography was published that January. [Ian Hunter, Nothing To Repent, London: Hamilton, 1987]

Jane Austen

"Jane Austen was born before those bonds which (we are told) protected women from the truth were burst by the Brontes or elaborately untied by George Eliot... Jane Austen may have been protected from truth: but it was precious little of truth that was protected from her." - Chesterton

My daughters are fans of Jane Austen (I am not – a weakness, some would say). And now there is the movie Becoming Jane – a fictionalized account about Austen’s early romance. (Think Shakespeare in Love.)

One daughter has seen the movie and enjoyed it. It prompted her to pick up Emma again.

I naturally wondered if Chesterton had much to say about Austen.

I went on line and found a few quotes.

''Jane Austen may have been protected from truth: but it was precious little of truth that was protected from her.''

Then I found this article.

G.K. Chesterton and the orthodox romance of Pride and Prejudice
Renascence, Spring 1997 by Marian E. Crowe.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3777/is_199704/ai_n8782918

Food for thought.

Chesterton at CE

I had occasion to quote the big man in my most-recent article at Catholic Exchange, along with a couple of his "friends."

In his 2004 book Hip: The History, John Leland writes, "The squarest of American institutions, from gardening manuals to Army recruitment ads, now market themselves in two strengths: hip and hipper."

What does America's hip culture do? It buys and goes into debt. The United States is "awash in debt," to quote Merrill Lynch chief North American economist Dave Rosenberg. Consumer credit and mortgage debt are both a higher percentage of disposable income now than they've ever been before.

Hip and debt have risen together because the marketplace feeds off that central element of hip: concern for nothing but immediate satisfaction. In Leland's words, hip "is well suited to the values of the market, which has always had a place for wild yea-saying."

But the marketplace doesn't emphasize another aspect of hip; namely, that of Matthew 5:3: "Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." It's an important element in the hip formula. Hip originated among poor blacks who didn't have much wealth or prospects to distract them. It was a central element of the Beatnik phenomenon: "Better to live simply, be poor and have the time to wander," is how Pulitzer Prize poet Gary Snyder explained the Beats.

Heresies, G.K. Chesterton observed, aren't errors. They're simply exaggerations of one truth to the detriment or suppression of other truths.

Hip's emphasis on Now is good. Perhaps the Now's highest praise came from C.S. Lewis, who wrote, "The Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience which [God] has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them."

The free market's ability to meet our needs and wants is also good. Market prices provide information that, properly sifted and responded to, allow buyers and sellers to conduct their affairs in the most advantageous manner. Since every person acts for a good (to move from a less satisfactory state to a more satisfactory one, said the commonsensical Thomas Aquinas), the market's ability to meet our needs is a great good.

The article first appeared in Catholic Men's Quarterly. If you haven't checked out CMQ, give it a look.

A GCK KINDA GUY

The last day of my summer Humanities class is movie fun night. Film is last section of the course and we have already spent many days talking about, seeing, and analyzing the “great movies”. So it is time to see a fun movie one that we can just enjoy, and one that has no test after it is done. Ah but I’m not going to let them off that easy. The film has to do with that arts, be well made, hold a few laughs and, oh yea, be in color. This past class I choose Billy Elliot because it meets all the afore mentioned criteria and Billy’s description of what it feels like to dance is right on the money. I wanted the class to hear that.

Since this would be about the 5th time I’ve seen that movie I began to focus on other elements of the film. In particular Billy’s dad (brilliantly played by Gary Lewis). As I watched that character I could not help but to think that this is the man in the pub, the working class guy GKC talks about in What’s Wrong With The World. The film shows the mental struggles, the mistakes, the sacrifices and the pride of fatherhood. It shows a domestic kingdom in all its confused glory. And that it is through sacrifice that the love comes through and binds the family together.

When Billy wants to be a ballet dancer his dad is, to say the least, aghast, “No son of mine is going to be a poof ballet dancer!” He eventually sees his son’s talent and love for dance and does what he can to support him. Some critics have called this change of character “unrealistic” these are obviously critics that are childless. I have seen big burly men hold a great distain for women’s sports that is until their daughters start to play then they are the biggest boosters for title 9 programs you have ever seen.

I recommend this movie to you on many levels but mostly to see a great portrait of fatherhood with all its warts.

The movie does contain rough language and the “F” word so it carries an R rating.

USCCB review/rating here.

A hot night

"At any innocent tea-table we may easily hear a man say, "Life is not worth living." We regard it as we regard the statement that it is a fine day; nobody thinks that it can possibly have any serious effect on the man or on the world. And yet if that utterance were really believed, the world would stand on its head. Murderers would be given medals for saving men from life; firemen would be denounced for keeping men from death; poisons would be used as medicines; doctors would be called in when people were well; the Royal Humane Society would be rooted out like a horde of assassins. – Chesterton, Heretics

I had an encounter with firemen last night, but it had nothing to do with death.

Unless you count “of embarrassment.”

The encounter began with a daughter coming downstairs announcing that when she turned on the overhead light in her room there was a flicker, some smoke, and a smell.

Wife went into panic mode demanding we call the fire department and evacuate the house.

I said let me check first.

I went up. The light was fine. There was no smoke, though there was a smell.

Wife kept yelling that we should leave.

I said just let me check.

I turned off the light, unscrewed the light cover, and saw nothing amiss.

I felt the ceiling next to the light. It was warm – the light had just been on after all.

Wife’s panic crossed over to hysterics.

I said let me check above the room in the attic, so I went to the garage to get a ladder (the attic crawl space has no stairs). I noticed the back door was opened.

I suggested that everyone look for the indoor cat who had obviously gotten out and was probably confronting the feral tom cat that had been stalking around the neighborhood.

The daughter whose room was the focus of our adventure - and who had left the back door open in the first place - spotted our cat. She went to pick him up, and he turned on her, scratching her arm. He does that. I have the scars to prove it.

He’s my wife’s cat.

I got the ladder and went up into the crawl space as the wife evacuated the house and yelled at me repeatedly to get out.

I checked above the light. Nothing.

By this point the firemen had arrived. She had called them.

Three fully clad firefighters came up to the bedroom, including the fire chief I have sometimes interviewed.

He looked around at the mess in daughter’s room, then at the light.

He nodded. The kind of bulb was one of those new fangled fluorescent ones – about 4 years old.

He said those kinds of bulbs get old and sometimes do that after a couple of years.

He sniffed the bulb. Yep, that was the smell.

Still, the three firefighters – in full gear in the sweltering heat – did a scan with a heat detecting device in the ceiling, and up in the attic.

Nothing.

He suggested we get a new bulb. He also said we might get an electrician to check the line just to make sure, but that he saw nothing amiss.

Wife was still babbling on, retelling the story for the third or fourth time.

He tried to reassure her that she had done the right thing, even though he could see nothing wrong.

For the rest of the night she kept making comments about how he said she did the right thing. And stubborn pig-headedness.

Daughter kept complaining about the scratches.

I kept quiet.

I was thinking about tonight. I’m scheduled to attend a fire department meeting.

The fire chief will be there.

Catholic Economics

New book about economics that is sympathetic to distributism. Excerpt from review:

Médaille ultimately demonstrates that some form of distributism (remember Chesterton and Belloc?) is essential for the proper operation of free enterprise in such a way that it actually expands prosperity, rather than progressively constricting it to a smaller and smaller group. In fact, he argues persuasively that an initial widespread distribution of ownership is necessary for capitalism to work at all. He adduces a long history and clear economic analysis to prove that the pursuit of equity in economic affairs leads directly to economic equilibrium, which is critical for human flourishing, and so should be a preeminent goal for any culture.

Holy Chesterton, Batman!

Sean P. Dailey has started a blog. The Blue Boar. It started August 3rd. If it's like most blogs, it'll have a shelf life of three months (that's a (near) fact, incidentally, not a sarcastic aside). But if we all regularly stop over and tell Sean that J.K. Rowling is a druid and that Tolkien catered to the homosexual lobby, I'm sure we'll keep him fired up for years.

Weekender

Greetings All,

It seems that if I post with brevity, I am far more likely to post here frequently.

One thing Ive been tumbling around in my head lately related to GKC is an admiration for his balance. Chesterton's distributist writing, Im thinking Utopia of Usurers and similar titles, are full of Jeremiah like fire and brimstone. You can feel the hot angry breath and flushed cheeks at times coming through. If Chesterton had stayed at this level he would be no different than the Al Gores and other pseudoprophets and politicizers of our day. Chesterton's mind, heart, and faith were large enough that he could rant against injustice to the poor while still shedding a tear for Baroque beauty, sharing a friendship with Shaw, and a beer with Belloc. Balance sounds so zen, but Chesterton shows us a fine example of good Christian magnanimity.

The Detective

I was at the library the other day. Our library has a good selection of videos and DVDs.

I don't remember why, but I just decided to search to see if any of our local libraries had any movies or television shows featuring Chesterton or Chesterton stories.

I discovered my library had The Detective. The British title for the film was Father Brown.

What a find. Alec Guinness as Father Brown. Peter Finch as Flambeau.

Well written, well acted.

I wonder what other Chesterton film treasures are out there.

The summer slow-down

I think we're all in a bit of a rut at the moment. I don't know what it's like for our readers, but the heat hit 35 degrees celsius here today and it's looking to endure in like manner for the near future. It was all I could do just to get home from work.

September will bring greater attentiveness, but for now we'll just have to slog along as best we can.

Nelson's Friends

(In deference to Lee Strong’s piece “Gratitude” it was good that he reminded us of the joy of singular graces. It also inspired me to finish this story.)

When the wind rushes head long into the trees Nelson Doolittle stretches his ears, closes his eyes, and watches his mind scramble a frenetic dance in an effort to put a handle on this newly created sound.

It is the sound of the ocean 100 giant steps behind Aunt Rose’s summer cottage.
“Mother may I?”
“Yes, you may.”

It is a sound that when he hears it, from indoors, makes him peek out the window expecting to see rain landing on the sidewalk. It is a sound that always surprises him. It is a sound he grew up with, always familiar but always different, so that whenever he hears it he always has to look around to reaffirm its source. This sound is not of the present but one that always sings of past experiences. It is the sound dinosaurs made on their way to extinction.

Even the birds stop their musings when the wind and leaves raise their voices as one. In the soft breeze it is the sound of satin petty coats worn by little girls walking the isle to First Communion. In a sudden gust it is the sound of the veil of the temple being torn in two. It is the echo of a soul decrying, "Certainly this man was innocent."

On hot summer days it is the sound of a thousand wood sprites laughing as if they finally got the joke. In the fall it is the sound his grandmother made busily preparing Thanksgiving dinner. It is a sound that always makes Nelson smile.

It is a sound that never sits still long enough to truly capture or firmly attach a label to, like the love he harbors for his children.

Whenever his wife talks about cutting down the two big maples in the back yard he always changes the subject, or speaks of the benefits of shade on the utility bills, he never just tells her no.

He would like to tell her the real reason, that the trees sing to him, that they carry him up into their arms and tell him stories. If he did that, Nelson knew, she would look up at him through lowered eyebrows and say, “You’re full of crap,” and the trees would be gone.

What would Chesterton Think?

It has come out into public knowledge that some astronauts have violated the 12 hour "bottle to throttle" rule to the point of sobering up in space. Im sure there have been many bar jokes involved about the metabolism of alcohol in zero gravity.

At one level, the system is broken because no matter what the rule might be space launches are such high profile events that scrubbing a mission over alcohol consumption would be a PR nightmare. Also, this is high level science and engineering, and one would seemingly want to be at 100% in order to perform at top level.

On the other hand, there is a point where a little bit of bravado is a useful thing. Using the idea of "high level science and engineering" again, one needs to keep the mindset of not being intimidated of the craft and the situation. Ive been handed a drink on my way to board a C130 to a warzone, and I understand both the tradition and the practical element.

I dont know the full set of facts, NASA obviously is running a troubled ship after the last astronaut debacle, but Im not so quick to be scandalized by this as some others. Im quite curious how Chesterton would have viewed all of this......."Why is this gentleman going exploring, when he so obviously already found what he was looking for?" Perhaps?

Have a great weekend.

Gratitude

Brave New Family contains an early Chesterton short story, "Homesick at Home" (It's also contained in the collected works).

A man travels around the world to get back home, searching for what he already had.

The story reminded me of an assignment a spiritual advisor gave me.

I tend to be a cynical, sarcastic sort, prone to wallowing in the shadows too much.

So my assignment was to write down at least three things I was grateful for each day. They didn't have to be profound things, just things that brought me a sudden flash of joy.

It hasn't been easy!

Here's a few:

riding my bike

rabbits along the bike trail

dad moving to a rehab unit

a teaching contract for next year

riding the New York-Vermont ferry

White Face Mountain through the mist

a baby at Mass

a man complimenting some things I wrote

fireworks over Mirror Lake

a bat circling me

Gilbert magazine arriving with one of my clerihews in it

gold finches at the bird feeder

rereading To Kill a Mockingbird

birds building a nest outside my father's hospital room

Maybe I don't need to go searching for a "White Farmhouse by the river" after all.

“I cannot believe that the Human Reason will permanently lose its power. Now the Faith is based upon Reason, and everywhere outside the Faith the decline of Reason is apparent.

But if I be asked what sign we may look for to show that the advance of the Faith is at hand, I would answer by a word the modern world has forgotten: Persecution. When that shall once more be at work it will be morning.”

From SURVIVALS AND NEW ARRIVALS by Hilaire Belloc

Nice review here
Read on line here

Still alive

I spent the weekend (and early Monday) in London (Ontario, not the real one) finding an apartment for the coming school year, and as such was not in any real position to blog about anything, much less Chesterton. The rest of Monday was spent in traffic, as the highways were all choked with imbeciles and construction. What should have been a three hour trip ballooned into about seven.

Anyway, I'll be more constant once school starts again and I'm actually on the computer with some regularity. As it is, most of my time is spent reading, writing, watching films, working, etc. I haven't even been reading any Chesterton lately, though not because I don't want to; I've just run out of books of his to read, and don't want to buy any more until after I've gotten my tuition and texts and whatnot sorted out. For the moment I've had to content myself with Flaubert's Salammbo, Lucy Beckett's excellent In the Light of Christ, and the final installment of the Harry Potter saga, about which much could be said.

But not right now, and certainly not without extensive spoilers. I'm tired, and getting more so.

Street Fight Part 4

This Goya painting is titled “Dual with clubs”. It was one of his Black Paintings, a product of his dark period after the Napoleonic Wars and the turmoil of the Spanish government. “He had an acute awareness of the panic, terror, fear, and hysteria that was running rampant through Spain at the time”. Some think these paintings show that his spiritual battle ended in the belief that some men are so far into the lie that they can not be brought back to the truth, thus Goya developed an embittered attitude towards humanity. This painting is of two men determined to beat each other to death and it is so senseless because as they swing away they are both knee deep and sinking in quick sand. They could save each other but no, in this battle both will die and nothing will remain. They are mean and stupid it is not their meanness that makes them dangerous but their stupidity. Goya feared stupidity especially armed stupidity. There is nothing you can do about it and you can not appeal to it.

This belief, that some cannot be saved, is an easy one to fall into but it was not the case with Goya. Goya was painting warning signs. This one is saying that above all that this belief, that some cannot be saved, is not a truth. What is the truth is that you or I, in some instances, can not bring them to the Light. Only the Holy Spirit can do that. Some times He uses us to help and sometimes that job goes to another. It is when we cannot do it that brings us to despair but that is only wounded ego. And sometimes people just refuse to go no matter what we do, as told in C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce.

Goya’s warning signs were painted direct to the walls of his house where he was reminded every day of what he was up against. They are loud statements about what’s wrong with the world. But unlike what the historians tell us of his later days these painting are proof that he was not in complete despair. An artist in complete despair and hopelessness does not work – to do art or any great creative act one must have hope. He fought the world with the only weapon he had – pigment.

If this belief, that some cannot be brought back to the Light, were true we would not now know of such people like St. Augustine, St. Francis or C.S. Lewis and Chesterton for that matter.

Chesterton used words to do this battle. I am sure that after reading H. G. Wells’ Outline of History, Gilbert could have easily said, “This is what the world has come to and there is nothing I can do about it”. Instead he gave us Everlasting Man. This along with What’s Wrong with World he created two huge warning signs telling us that the ‘bridge is out up ahead – turn back now’.

Both Goya and Chesterton did not pick up clubs and bludgeon the enemies of truth, Goya’s paintings were never meant to leave his house they were for him and his friends and Chesterton’s writings were never an attack as much as they were a powerful flashing light house in the fog so that we may not crash onto the rocks. He gave us the truth in an uncompromising manner or as they say over at Catholicity “get the facts decide for your self”. Chesterton also debated the “dark side”.
The one thing that marked the Chesterton/Shaw debates - they were civil. Civility is now considered a weakness not a virtue.

I mention all this because Tammy wants to escalate our newspaper fight to one of dual with clubs. She wants to convince me that there are circumstances where abortion is hokay and I should leave her alone about my stance that, no there are not. She made an excellent attempt to goad me into a personal meeting. She used the playground technique of ‘You are hiding behind your keyboard so meet me behind the gym after school or I’ll tell everyone you are a coward’. After several very uncivil types of emails form her, I at first said yes then I realized I left the playground a longtime ago and her opinion of me matters not. I also remembered what my Dad once told me, “Never go out of your way to be with angry people.” I then declined the meeting.

I felt bad about that because maybe I was chosen to be the one to bring her to the truth and in fact I was a coward. But after reading her latest Op-Ed piece I knew I was not the man for the job. She is in too deep and I do not have enough rope to throw her. She has written several times that Israel has no right to exist and in her inverted reality that in fact Israel is the aggressor not the victim in the mid-east conflicts. Now in her latest piece she wants us to believe that the attacks on 9/11 were a CIA plot, possibly in conjunction with Israel, to convince us to go to war with the enemies of Israel and that radical Islam is not the real problem.

She begins her piece recounting the 1999 movie “… The Matrix is based on the premise that everyday life is a dream and that the real world – one where comatose humans serve as energy sources for alien robots – is a closely guarded secret. Keanu Reeves’s character discovered the truth and was offered a choice: take a pill and forget everything or see “just how far the rabbit hole goes.” This week I am offering readers a similar choice: skip over today’s column or venture with me down that rabbit hole.”
(OK never mind that they were not alien robots but a machine of human design. Or as GKC said, “We will soon become slaves to our own inventions.”)

This is the pill of reality she wishes to give us:
She recounts a 45 year old declassified document call Operation Northwoods which states in part how the CIA could launch terrorist type attacks on the US and blame the Cubans thus giving us a cause to go to war with them. She twists and turns from there to involve both the CIA and the Israeli government in the 9/11 attacks, proof being that between 8/26 and 9/11 some Israeli citizens “sold short” 38 stocks, some of which were airline stocks. There is the profit motive. Also that there is evidence that Israel is spying on the US. She thinks that The Israeli government knew that the 9/11 attcks were going to happen but did not tell us. Maybe they did but no one listened, like no one listened to our own FBI on the likelihood of such an attack.

Now Tammy may not know or ignores a couple of facts: First, that there are people in the U.S. government whose 9-5 job is to come up with scenarios that involve how to start a war, how to fight a war and how to win a war. There are no rules in this office and every idea is permissible, these “plans” are then forwarded to higher-ups. Second is that the US government did not implement Operation Northwoods.

Many paragraphs on current conspiracy stuff follows then she ends with:

“Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu characterized the 9/11 attacks as “very good”. Moments later he added, “well, it’s not good, but it will generate immediate sympathy.”
Sympathy and justification for unprecedented U.S. aggression against countries that don’t recognize Israel.
So when another “Fort Dix Six” are nabbed for an alleged terror plot, or the next time a “pro-Western” official is assassinated in Lebanon, a church is bombed in Gaza or Iraq, or a shoe bomber” is arrested on an airplane remember the deception of our own government and whose interests it serves to keep fomenting the bogus “War on Terror”. Ask yourselves if radical Islam is the real enemy.”

I’m sure she will soon have proof that the shooters on the grassy knoll were Israeli operatives.

Tammy believes I am out to discredit her but with more Op-Ed pieces like her recent one I don’t have to – she is doing a fine job of it all by herself.

Sick dad

My dad is back in the hospital, and has taken a turn for the worse. Not life threatening yet, but serious. We just learned now he will need surgery - which in his condition (75, with blood sugar, partial paralysis due to a stroke) is risky.

I've been spending time with him and I've been so distracted I just realized I forgot to do my Thursday entry.

I will make up for it when the dust settles.

Weekend Thoughts

Greetings Everyone,

I just got my new issue of Catholic Men's Quarterly in the mail this week. I have to say that Im very impressed with the improved layout and design quality. The stuff they actually wrote about was terrific as well.

I like CMQ's focus on masculine spirituality, and particularly their features of Saints from military or missionary backgrounds. This quarter they did an excellent feature set during the Viking Age.

This is quickly becoming one of my favorite time periods, and I think Chesterton spent some mental energy there as well. Ballad of the White Horse has become one of the books that I am constantly re-reading. This area fascinates me in many ways. The Crusades/Inquisitions/Gallileos and all of the other things which complicate later periods were yet to happen. What we have at this time is no bureaucracy, no true nations, no real civilizations, just the stark heroism and holiness of true Saints whose lot in life was even worse than St. Paul - he at least got to preach in Athens and Rome, among civilized people. I really feel lacking that I dont know more about St. Patrick, St. Brendan, St. Adalbert(?) St. Bede and the others of this time. The names seem antique to us, and this is unfortunate.

The History Channel recently had a feature on Alfred the Great, and I think they did as good a job as they are capable when dealing with a Christian figure. I dont know if Chesterton ever made a direct connection between our (his) times and the era where paganism and Christianity vied against each other as active forces, but I think Somebody said Something about a "New Evangelization" which hits the mark.

New Gilbert is Here

It's the summer movie edition, one of my favorites every year. Art Livingston (also one of my favorites) offers up two reviews, including one of Bogart in which he claims that In a Lonely Place is Bogey's best. I'd like to write more, but I'm a bit under the gun in other areas of my life right now. Hopefully, some more tomorrow.

Old Thunder

John of the Combox notes that we (almost) missed today's anniversary: The 54th anniversary of the passing of Hilaire Belloc. It hadn't crossed my mind. My great shame. I'll have to hoist an extra one tonight.

Wikipedia, incidentally, has a good entry for Belloc.

Weekend Thoughts

Only one comment on this item: I cannot believe the media fuss over the Pope standing up for Catholic teaching. I hope the people wasting the ink and paper over this are just going through the motions. I really do not get what is so shocking over this.

To keep on the catholic theme.....The universality of Chesterton never ceases to amaze me. If people were handed some of the Pope's writings without a byline, and actually read them I think that there would be a positive reaction to the depth of thought, wonderful use of language, and sincere compassion for the human condition. Nobody is going to read the Pope, even incognito. This is what we get from Chesterton. He restates the old truths in such a way that we do not realize that we are reading The Baltimore Catechism in veiled form. The deep universal truths of Chesterton appeal across the board to folks at totally different ends of the spectrum. He is quoted by Tai Chi hippies, Catholic homeschoolers, mystery fiction fans, peace activists, saber rattlers, Anglophiles, and even once in a while by academics. In the years Ive been following Chesterton this appeal across "party lines" never ceases to amaze me.

Pope Benedict, Chesterton, and the Church

I took exception to something in my local newspaper.

The paper has a series of blogs, some written by citizens (such as one that I do for them), some by staff members.

This appeared in the “Editorial Blog” written by one of the newspaper’s editors.

The pope pontificates

Any other Catholics out there a mite perturbed at the way Pope Benedict is going at ecumenical relations? First he makes a point of endorsing the Latin mass, within which are prayers that offend Jews. And this week he says that non-Catholic Christian churches are defective. He says he's not undermining Vatican II. But that is very much the impact of these public statements. Repudiating Vatican II is an impossibility for this pope or any. But the pope can find ways to dismantle at what he and others feel was the door leading to the very fractured Catholic Church of today.

I responded in two posts:

He's simply restating what has always been the official teaching for those who cared to read it rather than relying on what they hear and "popular" (mis)interpretations.
…

From the Documents of Vatican II - "This is the sole Church of Christ ...."

"... in this one and only Church of God from its very beginnings there arose certain rifts, which the Apostle strongly censures as damnable. But in subsequent centureis much more serious dissension appeared and large communities became separated from full communion with the Catholic Church ..."

There are more instances in the Documents of Vatican II, and in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

In this case, then, he is simply stating what Vatican II said, not undermining it.

Endorsing the Latin Mass? The Latin Mass has been said in Rochester for years - with official approval - at St. Stanislaus Church, so it has already been endorsed by Bishop Clark according to the rules promulgated by Pope John Paul II. All Pope Benedict did was loosen those rules to make it easier to say it. So there might be wider use of that Mass. But he did not repudiate the Novus Ordo (post-Vatican II Mass), and that will continue as the main (and most likely only) Mass in most places.

One of the things that drew me to Chesterton was the story of his conversion – which I encountered years ago during a time when I had questions about the faith (I resolved them).

Part of what stuck me was his certainty that the Catholic Church was THE Church.

As he noted in The Catholic Church and Conversion, “And it is simply a historical fact that the Roman Church is the Church and is not a sect. Nor is there anything narrow or unreasonable in saying that the Church is the Church.”

Chesterton in the Desert

From The Life and Legacy of Russell Kirk by George H. Nash:

Kirk's drifting ended abruptly in August 1942 when he was drafted into the Army. For nearly four years he lived in the desolate wastes of Utah (and, later, at a camp in Florida) as a sergeant in the Chemical Warfare Service. In one respect, Kirk's wartime experience proved to be invaluable: As a clerk with largely routine duties, he found a large amount of time to read. And read he did—Albert Jay Nock's Memoirs, Chesterton's Orthodoxy, Irving Babbitt's Democracy and Leadership, the political thought of Walter Bagehot, and countless classics of English and ancient literature.

hat tip to Denny

--

The Book Den has a nice post about the meeting of GKC and Max Beerbohm. Excerpt:

One of the most delightful and inviting notes I've ever read was one I came across while perusing the G.K. Chesterton folders in the British Museum a couple of years ago. The note was in a beautifully flourished handwriting on indiscriminate sides of a card. It was directed to Chesterton from the irrepressible drama critic, radio broadcaster, artist, sometimes author, and forever bon vivant, Max Beerbohm. The date was May 4, 1902.

(Note: For whatever reason, I couldn't get Blogger to accept a title for this post.)

Words mostly fail me

Note: The possibility exists that the article here discussed is some sort of excessively-veiled satire. If so, this post is irrelevant and is evidence of my humorless inability to construe things properly.

==

Normally when an article proposing some new approach to the ethics of sexuality comes along, particularly in the New York Times, there are certain standard tropes that are employed, and certain standard reactions to those tropes that can be effectively and rightfully produced to counter them.

Every once in a while, an article comes along that makes this difficult. More rare still is an article so insulting as to make charity itself seem difficult.

This is not one of those articles. This is transcendant.

What does one say to this? On a bare technical level it's fairly poorly-written, repeating itself frequently and to little effect. But what it proposes confounds rather than enrages, at least at first (the rage sets in afterwards, and does not let up).

The article in question, by one Steven E. Landsburg (author of The Armchair Economist and not Freakonomics, as was previously and incorrectly reported), is an excerpt from a new book of his which appears to be dedicated to solving the world's problems by approaching them as an economist would. It's hard to get closer to "treating human beings as numbers" than this, clearly, but he presses on regardless. I mentioned at the top of this post that there's a possibility all of this could be satire. A comment left in the reader reviews of the book in question has similar concerns:

"At first these crazy suggestions were amusing, but as they kept coming, I wondered: Is he serious or just screwing around? The crazy unsupported ideas made me skeptical of the ones he seems to be trying to defend more seriously, because it seems he's more interested in shocking people than in reach seriously supportable truths. "

Dr. Landsburg's record indicates that he really does believe in his idiosyncratic economic approach as being one of real transformative and analytic power, anyway, so I'll take the article at its word for the time being.

The general jist of the piece is that the best way to combat the spread of sexually transmitted disease, AIDS included, is to encourage promiscuity among sexual conservatives. It is concluded that this makes it less likely that any given sex-having person will unluckily find himself coupled with someone spreading diseases (because sexual conservatives, being cautious by nature, don't tend to have 'em). Further to this, it is cheerfully proposed, such disease as is passed on - AIDS included, once again - has an increased likelihood of winding up in one of the sexual conservatives here discussed, who, being sexually conservative, will simply curl up and die rather than promiscuously passing it on to other people. Hurray!

All of this is supported with the most exquisite logic, of course, factored into which is the proposition that sex is enjoyable. That is, the author is using the release of endorphins and mere personal delight as logically-vital premises to a conclusion that would (and is apparently intended to) sicken and kill people who would otherwise be both harmless and unharmed.

But that's alright. Sexual conservatives - with particular emphasis on those who are completely chaste - are compared to "polluting factory owners" who only care about themselves. Sexual conservatives, the article suggests, should stop being so greedy and selfish and start having sex with people in hopes of contracting a fatal disease that might otherwise have infected someone likely to pass it on. The author's respect for the virtue of self-sacrifice would appear to be unimpeachable. Indeed, the author candidly admits that what's good for the group is often not ideal for a given individual.

He admits this, as I said, while implying that people should be ready to simply die for sex rather than give up the pleasure such dangerous behavior scandalously provides.

How do we get sexual conservatives to come out of their shells, though? Disdaining to consider the issues of just why a person would be sexually conservative in the first place, the author concludes that free or heavily-subsidized condoms are the answer, as though the extravagant price (?) of the things is what's keeping us from leaping into the fleshpots. The author gravely admits of this difficulty, instead proposing some program whereby positive rewards rather than discounts are applied to condom use. Other ideas in the fields of "combatting their shyness" and "providing them with partners" are bandied about. The article ends shortly thereafter.

The argument outlined in this article is both monstrous and inhuman, not least because it does not actually treat its eventual victims (for such they are) as human beings (for such they are), but rather as elements in a sort of equation, the goal of which is not to stop the AIDS epidemic (the author finds the idea impractical, it seems), but rather to maximize everyone's pleasure in the face of consequently inevitable doom. Such nihilistic barbarity refutes itself when considered candidly.

Above I described this article as a rarity, but I see now that the term might be paradoxical in this case. This piece manages to be wholly unique in infamy while simultaneously being perfectly emblematic of the spiralling, noisy collapse of an entire world.

Summer Catch up

I apologize for my lack of appearance here. Last few months have been chaotic professionally and family wise, but it looks like things are under control now.

I have 2 thoughts to share that seem to have come up alot lately.

Conscience: Probably getting back in the news because of the politicians saying they vote their conscience. This term is used so much without any regard to its definition. The formation of true conscience is the art of a lifetime. Conscience is not "how I feel" about something being right or wrong. For heaven's sake, cheat on your spouse 4 times and the 5th wont bother your "pseudo-conscience". Kill 6 people and the 7th wont bother you much either. We now live in an age where any question of fact or definition can be answered in less than a second, except for the meaning of the term in question.


Juvenile Philosophy: My daughter, age 3, loves rats. She was wondering how rats pray. She attempted, "Jesus love rat-god, amen rat angels." Her brother, age 6, said, "No, no. This is how rats pray, 'squeak squeak; squeak-squeak, squeak.'" Folks that is Plato(with some Gnosticism) and Aristotle in a nutshell.

Have a great weekend.

I've been on vacation and on the road this week, so I didn't get around to my writing my usual Thursday post. Mea culpa.

Security

On Independence Day Thomas Brewton mentioned our friend Belloc. The article was picked up by many independent web news sites including The Post Chronicle:

Security, however, amounts to selling one's soul to the Devil for materialistic gain.

Hilaire Belloc described it in his 1912 book, The Servile State. He noted that, while the just-beginning socialist state in Great Britain was doing nice things for workers, it was at the price of their liberty to decide whether to work, when to work, or where to work. Recipients of unemployment benefits, for example, had to report to employment offices and take whatever jobs were offered to them, or face punishment.

Socialism is a form of slavery, or more accurately, a sort of neo-feudalism in which the individual has no rights independent of the figurative “piece of ground” to which the political state has assigned him.

--

The old Anglo-American quarrel...

JULY 4th, INDEPENDENCE DAY

The old Anglo-American quarrel was much more fundamentally friendly than most Anglo-American alliances. Each nation understood the other enough to quarrel. In our time, neither nation understands itself even enough to quarrel.

G.K. Chesterton's Introduction to American Notes

Dixie GKC

A blogger asks, "Was young GKC a Confederate sympathizer?"

I'm reasonably certain that the young GKC and the older GKC were both sympathizers, but I invite comments on the matter.

Undelivered(?) mail

Here's something of a rare gem for you. It's a trifle long, but it's certainly worth the time.

As we all know, Albino Luciani (Pope John Paul I) died very soon after his election to the throne of St. Peter; so soon, in fact, that he was unable to produce any documents as pope, magisterial or otherwise. His election was one of the swiftest in history, however, and his smiling face was a welcome one to the people of a weary world. There was something passionate and real about him that delighted even as it intrigued, and it is a great loss to us indeed that he was taken so soon.

What, then, survives him besides his memory? Various lesser-known works are available, but the most famous of them all is a series of letters that were never answered. This may sound bizarre, and on the surface the description is accurate. Still more bizarre, even, given that the reason for this lack of reciprocity was because the addressees were all either long-dead or figments of fiction.

Illustrissimi, first published in 1976, is a collection of letters written by Luciani to famous historical figures and characters from art and literature. The value of such an exercise is enormous, both as a delightful hobby and as a way to collect one's thoughts. Samuel Johnson famously (or so I would have it) described the merits of writing as a way to "enable the mind to detect its own sophisms;" writing to someone, even someone who can not answer, as such, enables such detection and more.

The volume is a thick one, and it must be read in full to properly appreciate its merits. There are dozens of letters to be examined and considered, addressed to figures as diverse as Mark Twain and Pinochio; Empress Maria-Theresa of Austria and St. Therese of Lisieux; Aldus Manutius and the members of the Pickwick Club; St. Luke the Evangelist and Jesus Christ.

There is also - which concerns us the most - a letter to one Gilbert K. Chesterton, written in 1971. That letter follows in full.

==

Dear Chesterton,

On Italian television, these past months, we have seen Father Brown, that unpredictable priest-detective, a typical creation of yours. Too bad Professor Lucifer and the monk Michael did not also appear. I would have been happy to see them, as you described them in The Ball and the Cross, traveling in an "airship," seated side by side, Lent next to Carnival.

When the ship is over St. Paul's Cathedral in London, the professor hurls blasphemy at the Cross. And the monk says: "I once knew a man like you, Lucifer.... This man also took the view that the symbol of Christianity was a symbol of savagery and all unreason. His history is rather amusing. It is also a perfect allegory of what happenes to rationalists like yourself. He said, as you say, that it was an arbitrary and fantastic shape, that it was a monstrosity, loved because it was paradoxical. The he began to grow fiercer and more eccentric; he would batter the crosses by the roadside.... Finally in a height of frenzy he climbed the steeple of the Parish Church and tore down the cross, waving it in the air, and uttering wild soliloquies up there under the stars. Then one still summer evening as he was wending his way homewards, along a lane, the devil of his madness came upon him with a violence and transfiguration which changes the world. He was standing, smoking, for a moment, in front of an interminable line of palings, when his eyes were opened. Not a light shifted, not a leaf stirred, but he saw as if by a sudden change in the eyesight that this paling was an army of innumerable crosses linked together over hill and dale. And he whirled up his heavy stick and went at it as if at an army. Mile after mile along his homeward path he broke it down and tore it up. For he hated the cross and every paling is a wall of crosses. When he returned to his house he was a literal madman.... He broke his furniture because it was made of crosses. He burnt his house because it was made of crosses. He was found in the river."

Lucifer was looking at him with a bitten lip.

"Is that story really true?" he asked.

"Oh, no," said Michael, airily. "It is a parable. It is a parable of you and all rationalists. You begin by breaking up the Cross; but you end by breaking up the habitable world...."

The monk's conclusion, which is also your own, Dear Chesterton, is correct. If you take away God, what remains, what does mankind become? In what sort of world are we reduced to living?

But it is the world of progress, I hear some say, the world of well-being!

Yes, but this vaunted progress is not everything that was hoped: it also brings with it missles, bacteriological and atomic weapons, the current process of polution: things which - if provision is not made in time - threaten to bring catastrophe on the whole human race.

In other words, progress with human beings who love one another, considering themselves brothers, children of a single God the Father, can be something magnificent. Progress with human beings who do not recognize God as a universal father becomes a constant danger. Without a parallel moral process, interior and personal, that progress develops, in fact, the most savage dregs of mankind, making the human being a machine possessed by machines, a number manipulating numbers, "a raving barbarian," Papini would have said, "who instead of a club can wield the immense forces of nature and of mechanics to satisfy his predatory, destructive, orgiastic instincts."

I know: many people think the opposite of you and of me. They think that religion is a consolatory dream: it is supposed to have been invented by the oppressed, imagining a non-existent world where they later will recover what is stolen from them today by their oppressors; it is supposed to have been organized, entirely for their own advantage, by those oppressors, to keep the oppressed still under their heel, and to lull in them that instinct of class which, without religion, would impel them to struggle.

It is useless to point out that it was precisely the Christian religion that fostered the wakening of the proletarian consciousness, exalting the poor, announcing future justice.

Yes, they answer, Christianity awakens the consciousness of the poor, but then it paralyzes it, preaching patience and replacing the class struggle with faith in God and gradual reformation of society!

Many think also that God and religion, directing hopes and efforts toward a future, distant paradise, alienate man, prevent him from fighting for a more immediate paradise, to be achieved here on earth.

It is useless to point out to them that, according to the recent Council, a Christian, precisely because he is a Christian, must feel more committed than ever to fostering progress, which is for the good of all, and to supporting social advancement, which is meant for everyone. The fact remains, they say, that you think of progress for a transitory world, while waiting for a definitive paradise, which will not come. We want paradise here, as the end of all our struggles. We already glimpse its rise, while your God, by the theologians of secularization, is called "dead." We agree with Heine, who wrote: "Do you hear the bell? On your knees! They are carrying the last sacraments to God, who is dying!"

My dear Chesterton, you and I do indeed fall on our knees, but before a God who is more alive than ever. He alone, in fact, can give a satisfying answer to these three problems, which are the most important for everyone: Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going?

As for the paradise to be enjoyed on earth, and only on earth, and in a near future, as conclusion of the famous "struggles," I would like people to listen to someone much more gifted than I and - without denying your merits - also than you: Dostoevsky.

You remember Dostoevsky's Ivan Karamazov. He is an atheist, although a friend of the devil. Well, he protests, with all his atheist's vehemence, against a paradise achieved through the efforts, the toil, the sufferings, the torment of countless generations. Our posterity happy thanks to the unhappiness of their forebears! These forebears who "struggle" without receiving their share of joy, often without even the solace of glimpsing the Paradise emerging from the Inferno they are going through! Endless multitudes of the maimed, the sacrificed, who are merely the humus that serves t omake the future trees of life grow! Impossible! Ivan says, it would be a pitiless and monstrous injustice.

And he is right.

The sense of justice that is in every man, of whatever faith, demands that the good done, the evil suffered, be rewarded, that the hunger for life innate in all be satisfied. Where and how, if not in another life? And from whom if not from God? And from what God, if not from the of whom Francis de Sales wrote: "Do not fear God in the least, for He does not want to do you harm; but love Him greatly, because He wants to do you great good"?

The one that many are fighting is not the true God, but the false idea of God that they have formed: a God who protects the rich, who only asks and demands, who is envious of our progress in well-being, who constantly observes our sins from above to enjoy the pleasure of punishing them!

My dear Chesterton, you know as well as I, God is not like that, but is at once good and just; father also to prodigal sons; not wanting us poor and wretched, but great, free, creators of our own destiny. Our God is so far from being man's rival that He wanted man as a friend, calling him to share in His own divine nature and in His own eternal happiness. And it is not true that he makes excessive demands of us; on the contrary, He is satisfied with little, because He knows very well that we do not have much.

Dear Chesterton, I am convinced, as you are: this God will become more and more known and loved, by everyone, including those who reject Him today, not because they are wicked (they may be better than either of us), but because they look at Him from a mistaken point of view! Do they continue not to believe in Him? Then He answers: I believe in you!

==

Interesting stuff. This brings the number of popes who have openly engaged Chesterton in some way to four (Pius XI, Pius XII, John Paul I, Benedict XVI), so far as I know; if you can think of any other instances, we would very much like to hear them.

Upon This Coward

from Chesterton Day by Day

JUNE 29th, ST. PETER'S DAY

WHEN Christ at a symbolic moment was establishing His great society, He chose for its corner-stone neither the brilliant Paul nor the mystic John, but a shuffler, a snob, a coward -- in a word, a man. And upon this rock He has built His Church, and the gates of Hell have not prevailed against it. All the empires and the kingdoms have failed because of this inherent and continual weakness, that they were founded by strong men and upon strong men. But this one thing -- the historic Christian Church -- was founded upon a weak man, and for that reason it is indestructible. For no chain is stronger than its weakest link.

G.K. Chesterton in Heretics

--

Award'd

Special bulletin:

Dawn Eden was apparently given the American Chesterton Society's prestigious "Outline of Sanity" award shortly after her address at the recent conference. Boo to all the reporters who failed to mention this fact in their accounts, but cheers indeed for Dawn.

Happy anniversary to the Chesterblogg

Today is the wedding anniversary of G. K. and Frances (June 28, 1901).

For their silver anniversary in 1926 he wrote:

Epithalamium Argentum

I need not say I love you yet
You know how doth my heart oppress
The intolerable tenderness
That broke my body when we met.
I need not say I love you yet.

But let me say I fear you yet
You the long years not vulgarise,
You open your immortal eyes
And we for the first time have met.
Cover your eyes; I fear you yet.

Ann Coulter clerihew

Ann Coulter,
sensibility jolter,
will continue to say what she wants to say
as long as we pay

A fragment

The following was written by Gilbert some time between 1902 and 1906. It's short but sweet.

The furious Frenchman comes with his clarions and his drums,
His tactics of Sadowa and his maxims of Jean-Paul,
He is bursting on our flanks, grasp your pikes and close your ranks,
For Belloc never comes but to conquer or to fall.

Just a little someting to bide the time.

Conference Round-Up

For the sake of all those who could not be there in person (like me, I regret to say; next year, by God!), here is a broad selection of reports from those lucky enough to attend 2007's ChesterCon.

• The American Chesterton Society's blog has a number of reports from the conference floor, courtesy of both Nancy Brown and Dr. Thursday. 1, 2, 3, 4.
• The Unknown Poet at Waiting for Godot to Leave has three meaty posts about the experience, making me salivate with envy. 1, 2, 3.
• Joe Grabowski, a seminarian with a good sense of narrative, has another three solid entries about the weekend. 1, 2, 3.
• Denny at The Book Den has a series of in-depth looks at some of the lectures that were given as well as the general ambience of the thing. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
• Todd Mitchell at With Tears Oppressed offers a somewhat abstract but wholly enjoyable post about time spent at the conference. 1.
• And of course, the incomparable Dawn Eden speaks about her speaking about her book about chastity at the conference (fisk that one for grammar, Mr. Dailey!). 1.

That should keep you busy for a while, at least. Sounds like a grand old time, and I look forward to attending the conference next year, possibly even on the school's dime and in an official capacity if I can convince them it's worthwhile. We'll see.

Street Fight Part 2

Here is an update on my fight with a local op-ed writer. It has been long. It has not been pretty. I know when two people fight no one wins. Of course this is not about me or her winning. From my point of view it is about trying to turn this ginormous runaway culture of death train back on the right track.

In her second-to-last article she said I had obscenely misrepresented her position on abortion. Allowing that I could have done that my follow up letter said that if indeed she was against abortion under any circumstances I would apologize in every media outlet I have access to. She began her last article talking about a bumper sticker she saw, “We Vote Pro-Life”. She says, “There is a lot to be read into that statement. I assume it meant the occupants apply the standard litmus test of a candidate’s stance on abortion to determine worthiness of a vote. Kind of ironic when you consider most elected officials opposing abortion still uphold what is transpiring in the slaughterhouse formally known as Iraq and continue to refuse medical benefits to our nation’s children.” This sets abortion at best third on her list maybe fourth because she also strongly believes that the Palestinians are correct in trying to get rid of Israel. Then she said something promising “For the record, I made my opposition to abortion perfectly clear.” This she did not do but maybe she thought she had so I held out hope that I was wrong. Then she follows that statement with, “While I’m in favor of birth control, including “morning after” emergency contraception.”
After that statement my heart sank. Then she says, “However, rather than imposing an all-out ban on abortion so the erstwhile “pro-lifers” can go buy stock in coat hangers, I suggested attacking the causes for why women seek abortions.” This is the new twist on the personally opposed but… rhetoric. It is like she is saying that we stop working on a cancer cure until we get everyone to stop smoking. No, when one has a cancer you first cut it out then apply treatment to stop the growth then and only then do you confront life style. She believes women seek abortions (70% she tells us) is for financial reasons. Poverty is now a crime punishable by death. Margaret Sanger would be proud. She then goes on in the article in favor of discarding left over embryos from in-vitro fertilization to be used in embryonic stem cell research.

My latest letter to the editor follows:

Since my last letter to the editor I have longed to make a public apology for misrepresenting Tammy O’s view on abortion. This began because she came out against partial birth abortion but said any other type was OK. Now she is saying that she opposes surgical abortion but favors chemical abortion which she calls “emergency contraception” aka the "morning after" pill. This pill was supposed to be "different" from Mifepristone (RU-486), which induces a miscarriage at any time after conception. The company that produces the chemical agent delivered through this pill, Women's Capital Corp. (WCC) claimed that their "Plan B" pill used "progestin", a hormone used in contraceptive pills, to interfere with ovulation or prevent fertilization. However, the weight of medical evidence clearly disputed the claim. This chemical mix is an abortifacient, in that it makes the implantation of human life in the womb impossible. In effect, the "Plan B" Pill is no different than abortion-inducing medications like RU-486 used to cause medical abortions, it evicts human life.

“It is not as if any of these attempts to distinguish between chemicals which allegedly prevent fertilization and those that actually kill the child does not really matter in this barbarism disguised as science. A chemical weapon is a chemical weapon. This new "pill" essentially denies nascent human life any room at the Inn, the first home of his or her mothers' womb. This "Plan B" chemical weapon thus renders that human life homeless, interrupting "Plan A", which is life and safety that is supposed to take place in the warmth and nurturing environment of the womb.”

Then she supports selective abortion (what other kind is there?) inherent with America’s unregulated in-vitro fertilization industry. With embryonic stem cell research (ESR) you believe the ends justify the means in that many should die so one can live. Not one clinical test using ESR has been successful yet stem cells from adults and umbilical cords have worked. So why are you continuing to pursue a scientific dead end? (Pun intended). But the issue is no longer about science; it’s about when life begins and when life ends and who gets to decide.

Tammy, I have not been as kind as I should have but you still favor death, so it is with a heavy heart that I see your views on the genocide of children have not changed and I can not apologize for my earlier statements only for my sarcasm.

FYI: my bumper sticker says, ‘Adoption – the loving choice’.

Your friend,
Alan B. Capasso, MI

An Easy Essay

People credit Dorothy Day
with starting
the Catholic Worker movement.
Dorothy Day credits Peter Maurin
with the ideas behind
the Catholic Worker movement.
Peter Maurin credits
many Catholic thinkers
for the ideas he had.
In his Easy Essays
Maurin names many of those thinkers.

G. K Chesterton
shows up in the Easy Essays.
Maurin likes to quote
Chesterton’s idea that
“The Christian ideal
has not been tried
hnd found wanting.
It has been found difficult
hnd left untried.”

Maurin cites that quote
several times.

Chesterton shows up again
In an essay called
“Industrialism.”

“R. H Tawney said
that Englishmen wear blinkers.
Because they wear blinkers
the Englishmen
lack vision.
Because they lack vision
the Englishmen
are very strong
for supervision.
And supervision
Is not a substitute
for vision.
A few Englishman
got rid of their blinkers.
Among the Englishmen
Who got rid of their blinkers
one can name:
William Cobbett,
John Ruskin,
William Morris,
Arthur Penty,
Hilaire Belloc,
G. K. Chesterton
Eric Gill ….”

It's easy to see
Peter Maurin
had the right idea.

Conference CDs

CDs of the American Chesterton Society conference talks are now available at www.chesterton.org/cds_online.htm

"If for some inexcusable reason you did not attend this year's Conference here's a chance to hear what you missed."

Order them now if you want to have them before the summer is over: "Please allow eight weeks for delivery." I hear patience is a virtue.

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UPDATE: Eight weeks was a large safety net, I suppose, for I happily received them in a little over one week. I ordered on June 21, and they arrived to my mailbox on June 30. The recording quality is superb. Thanks to the Dailey family at the St John Fisher Forum for producing these.

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Devoted to a Drivelling Dissipation

Today's quote from Chesterton Day by Day is another bit on the comradeship of men (see my previous post "Man Night"):

JUNE 20th

THERE are two very curious things which the critic of life may observe. The first is the fact that there is one real difference between men and women: that women prefer to talk in two's, while men prefer to talk in three's. The second is that when you find (as you often do) three young cads and idiots going about together and getting drunk together every day, you generally find that one of the three cads and idiots is (for some extraordinary reason) not a cad and not an idiot. In those small groups devoted to a drivelling dissipation there is almost always one man who seems to have condescended to his company: one man who, while he can talk a foul triviality with his fellows, can also talk politics with a Socialist, or philosophy with a Catholic.

G.K. Chesterton in Tremendous Trifles

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Sleuth Show

The big guy will be making appearance in Chicago: At the Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore. Gilbert Magazine's Art Livingston will play GKC.

Our next Meeting of Minds (XIV) is scheduled for Friday & Saturday October 26 & 27 at 8:PM. Our guests will provide the audience with an animated, witty, enlightended & informative conversation. The guests are G. K. Chesterton, George Bernard Shaw, Bram Stoker, Ellen Terry, & Oscar Wilde. Admission will be $10/person payable with reservation with a 30 person limit.{We had 32 people for both performances last year}.

Considerations of a Ceremony

As I mentioned all too briefly last week - and apparently with poor grammar - last Monday saw me graduate from the University of Western Ontario with an Honours BA in English. Hooray!

There were several Chestertonian elements to the thing that struck me at the time, though they were more bittersweet than reassuring. Primarily, that is, they were elements that suggested much that was possible, but nothing much that was ever really realized.

Many of you will no doubt have experienced (endured, for all I know) similar ceremonies, so all of this may come as no surprise. Knowing as I do my school's tendency towards the boring and the cheap, however, I must count myself almost (almost) delighted by the proceedings, which were somewhat different than I thought they would be.

That we - that is, my extensive class and myself - should mill about in a gym offsite while the exasperated organizers attempted to herd us into some semblance of alphabetical order was about what I expected, at the outset. Our robes generally fit well, though they were all rented, and there was something in that crowd of black-clad geeks that seemed to suggest something faintly hermetic and arcane, though it was often spoiled by the high-pitched tittering of happy women and the brawny halloos of young men catching sight of one another. UWO, you see, is no wizards' school. Above that sea of black bobbed the heads of those I had known and loved so well, and I was somewhat surprised to see that almost nobody was wearing the mortarboard to which they were entitled. I say "almost" because, perhaps characteristically, the field of bare heads was interrupted by a single black square, worn at a jaunty angle by my friend of many years, which did not surprise me in the least. He alone really looked the part as he glided around serenely, hands alternating between a steady clasp behind the back and gently making points in the air as he spoke.

Once the proper lines had more or less coalesced, the organizers - who I can only assume in retrospect were the professors emeriti, for such was what their eventual placement on stage suggested - began to don their own robes for the occasion, and this marked a moment of real pleasure for me, though one largely of amusement for the others, who are moderns and heathens and have no sense of space. The robes and caps worn by the organizers appear to have been designed to their own specifications, or at least with some greater thought in mind than "make it loose and dark." Theirs were rather colourful, in fact, and their caps were extravagant and luxurious, with all sorts of fringes and tassles and so forth in evidence. I was reminded of the garden party that concludes The Man Who Was Thursday, though I regret to say that my ignorance of the individual professors' specific reputations or professional capacities prevented me from making the sort of connections that were so obvious on that other occasion, or in the dazzling uniforms of the reconsistuted boroughs in The Napoleon of Notting Hill.

Thereafter we all moved out, keeping careful tabs on who was where in line so that we would not eventually get up on stage at the wrong time. Many schools are small, but UWO is not; there were hundreds of us to get through, and this was the first of two ceremonies to be held that day during a week that would see two every day. Anyway, this snaking black line obstructed traffic and caused all sorts of confusion as it made its way into the auditorium proper, where we were greeted with the traditional processional music (though not, if memory serves, the traditional processional music by Elgar). We found our seats and awaited the entrance of the rest of the professors emeriti, who were to a man and woman clad in robes so bright and curious as to put ours to shame. Old-guard Canadian journalist Rod McQueen was on hand to receive an honorary degree, and he too was dressed in a highly distinctive outfit, wrought in yellow, purple and dark violet bordering on blue (if I did not misapprehend this latter colour in the dim light).

The procession of the colourful processors was attended by a number of things that seemed again to be out of place in a school so frequently and obsessively (and needlessly) mundane; first among them were the banners. A number of these were arrayed on the stage behind the professors emeriti, but several were carried in as well in a manner reminiscent of the great battle eagle of imperial Rome, or the cross of Peter the Hermit. There was little beautiful about them, though, I'm afraid. They were done in the strange modern style that seems actually to disdain skill and quality, and were by measures childish or incomprehensible. We may at least say of them charitably that their depictions approached their intended subjects, and may even have looked at them very hard and with genuine admiration before deciding to do their own thing.

Next came the Mace, which was both as plain and as portentous as the name suggests. It was an enormous silver mace, brought forward with all due reverence, and presented in a way that suggested it was being brandished in the abstract, though both the threat and the promise of the thing were dulled wholly by the fact that few present had ever heard of the school's mace or had any idea what it was for apart from the wholesome and unacademic pursuit of breaking heads. Our schools will break idols, barriers and spirits with gleeful abandon, but anything beyond that smacks too much of objective truth.

Thereafter things progressed efficiently. One person in a hundred (charitably) leapt to his feet when the opening notes of "God Save the Queen" were played, with the rest following them upwards in baffled alarm. This sorry production was followed by the colonial anthem (that is, "O Canada"), and then a return to our sitting position. The girl beside me: "What was that song we stood up for first?" Someone in the row behind: "Why did they play 'My Country 'Tis of Thee'?"

This was followed by a number of warm, sincere, and inexorably platitudinous speeches, including that of Mr. (now Dr.) McQueen. Then the PhD students got their hoods, and received their applause. Then the MA students. Then us. All present were counselled to hold their applause until the end of each section, or we'd be there all day, but this edict was not able to prevent sporadic cheers when people of note to our tribe took the stage. I was gratified to receive some myself, but maintained my grim resolve, for this was a solemn occasion. Following the example of those who had passed before me, I knelt before the subchancellor tasked with hooding me to receive my degree. He uttered the sacred words (a secret; I will not divulge them) inititating me into the mysteries of the baccalaureate - which name sounds far more ominous and lusty than what it actually describes, regretably - and the deed was done. I walked off the stage in my stately way, pausing briefly for poorly-lit photographs before descending the steps.

That's the substance of the thing. There were elements of it, as I suggested, that approached the sort of mystic reality that one would hope to find in a ceremony of this sort, but on the whole it seemed to my monstrous soul to be a sumptuous veneer on nothing very much. It fostered in me feelings much like those that must have swum about so furiously in the hearts of The Great Reformers of centuries past as they smashed statues, shredded paintings and burned chapels to the ground; tearing the useless vanity from the essential core of the thing. I was frustrated as they were, yes, but looking around at the plainly delighted faces of my colleagues, I discovered that I was wrong, too, as they were.

Getting a BA is not the same as a coronation, or a wedding, or an excommunication, though for some I'm told it feels like all three and more; but this is no reason to insist that the experience should be drab, utilitarian or unmemorable. If we can cheer the new prince with the flash of purple and a peal of brass, we can do the same for a new (if minor) lord in the court of the academy.

But enough of all this. Next week we'll return to simpler stuff, but for now I'm talking about this. It helps take the sting off of my non-presence at Chestercon, which wrapped up yesterday, no doubt to great acclaim and gentle regret. Around the same time they would have been finishing it all off, I myself finally finished Chesterton's The Flying Inn, a novel that is remarkably straightforward but for a few incidents that are never explained and a conclusion that baffles utterly. I'll have more to say about the book eventually, but for now I'm going to bed.

A Report from ChesterCon

Not here, but over at The Unknown Poet's blog.

It sounds hot there again this year. I hope the first-timers found the fans kept hidden in the basement last night.

Let's all turn off our A/C in an act of solidarity. Heh.

--

Chesterton citing

A while back I mentioned that I’ve been working my way through My Life with the Saints by Father James Martin.

Father Martin does not list Chesterton among his “holy people,” but he does cite GKC

In his appreciation of St. Francis, he mentions that he’s read a number of biographies, including “G. K. Chesterton’s affectionate one.”

Chesterton’s biography of St. Francis was actually one of the books that got me reading Chesterton in the first place, so I was disappointed Father Martin did not say more about it.

He made up for that in is discussion of St. Thomas Aquinas and Chesterton.

“In his touching biography, Saint Thomas Aquinas, the English writer G. K. Chesterton compares Thomas and another beloved saint, Francis of Assisi. Were we to see the two of them coming over the hill in their friars’ habits, the contrast between them would seem almost comic. (But what a wonderful conversation they would surely have!) Francis, writes Chesterton, was a 'lean and lively little man; thin as a thread and vibrant as a bowstring; and in his motions like an arrow from a bow.' Thomas, on the other hand, he describes as a 'huge, heavy bull of a man, fat and slow and quiet; very mild and magnanimous but not very sociable; shy, even apart from the humility of loneliness.'”

He later cites Chesterton’s “delightful phrase, 'occasionally wrote a hymn like a man taking a holiday'” in reference to St. Thomas’ songs we still sing.

Fr. Martin said he came to like Aquinas the person, not the philosopher, “Specifically, it was the person I met in G. K Chesterton’s Saint Thomas Aquinas whom I found so compelling and attractive. The immensely learned man given to deep humility. The theologian whose lifelong study of God drew him ever closer to God. The famously busy scholar who was not too busy to write a poem or a hymn. The active person whose life was rooted in prayer.”

Finally, in his last section “For Further Reading,” he recommends Chesterton’s biography as “a fine introduction to the life of the Angelic Doctor.”

I haven’t read Chesterton's Aquinas in a while. Maybe that should be one of the books I add to my “To Read” pile for the summer.

But first, I have to finish Father Martin’s book - it’s due back at the library!