(Blessed) Fulton Sheen and Chesterton

 

Archbishop Fulton Sheen has been in the news lately. The Vatican has announced he will be beatified September 24 in St. Louis. 

"Blessed" Sheen was a fan of Chesterton, and the two even met.

I was reminded of something Dale Ahlquist wrote a couple of years ago:

In addition to being a radio and television personality, Sheen was a popular author. He wrote over 30 books that were bestsellers. But his first book is less well-known. It was his doctoral thesis. He had the bright idea that it would be more attractive to a publisher if it had an introduction by a famous writer. Like G.K. Chesterton. Sheen recalled the encounter:

My first meeting was when I asked him to write the preface to my book God and Intelligence. Chesterton said, “I know nothing about Philosophy.” I retorted that he had written an excellent philosophy himself entitled Orthodoxy. Scratching his bushy head, he said, “I will write it! We both belong to the great mystical corporation called the Catholic Church in which we stand responsible for one another’s opinions. You know what I must believe, and I know what you must believe.”

The last meeting was in 1936, when Monsignor Sheen traveled from Catholic University to Beaconsfield, England, to attend Chesterton’s funeral.

One day a woman called me up because she wanted to tell me about the time she met Bishop Sheen. She had been a librarian at a university and Sheen was visiting. He was at the height of his popularity. He was being escorted through the library by university officials and one of them introduced her to the bishop by saying that she had read all of Sheen’s books. The bishop smiled and asked her: “But who’s your favorite author?”

She didn’t hesitate: “G.K. Chesterton.”

Sheen smiled even bigger. “Mine, too!”

Sheen said that the writer who influenced him the most was G.K. Chesterton. It is obvious to anyone who reads Sheen. In fact, many of those great Sheen lines are actually lines from GKC, such as: “We don’t need a Church that moves with the world, we need a Church that moves the world.”

But talk about moving with the world … 

Maybe someday we will be able to celebrate Blessed Gilbert Chesterton too!  

Not Merely Islam: C.S. Lewis Assesses the Religion of Mohammed

Hmm. On light of the current conflict ... 

Not Merely Islam: C.S. Lewis Assesses the Religion of Mohammed

Getting Dramatic

 

At the beginning of each year I set reading goals. Among the goals for this year is to read a couple of plays. 

Being in the mood for some theatrical works, I stopped by the library and picked up a couple of plays I'd wanted to read because of their reputations as "plays one should read".

The first play was The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. I had just read his The Picture of Dorian Gray, so it was a natural choice.

The play was light, amusing, and witty. I enjoyed it in part because I dd not have high expectations of it being something profound.

Then I read Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill. I knew it would be a much more serious play. Indeed, it was. I found it dark and sad. 

After finishing it I thought I needed something a bit lighter and brighter.

Chesterton.

I dug out my copy of Volume XI of the Collected Works, the volume that contains Chesterton's plays and writings about George Bernard Shaw.

I had already read Magic, The Judgement of Dr. Johnson, and The Surprise. I looked at the other play titles, and one jumped out: The Turkey and the Turk. It drew my attention in part because of the current war with Iraq.

I quickly discovered it was a short play, and his version of a mummer's play. Being a professional Santa, I found the inclusion of Father Christmas as a character appealing.

Okay, it's not a "serious" work - certainly not in the sense of O'Neill's drama. But he does deal with some more serious issues. Yes, there is the conflict between Christians, represented by St George and Father Christmas, and militant Muslims, represented by the Turk. But there seemed to be some mutual respect between these antagonists. The Germanic Doctor with his penchant for replacing body parts with mechanical devices seems to be the real point of mockery and satire. Hey, maybe he's the "turkey".

I found the Doctor a prophetic character: I see the same impulse active today as science and the culture seek to replace the real and the natural with the artificial and mechanical. IVF, pills to enhance male "performance" in older men. AI. and more. 

Ah, Chesterton the prophet!

One Nuke To Rule Them?

 

Many reviews said that the Ring in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings was suggested by the atom bomb. What could be more plausible? Here is a book published when everyone was preoccupied by that sinister invention; here in the centre of the book is a weapon which it seems madness to throw away yet fatal to use. Yet in fact, the chronology of the book’s composition makes the theory impossible.

C.S. Lewis (‘Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism’)