Blessed Fulton Sheen and Chesterton

"The greatest influence in writing was G. K. Chesterton who never used a useless word, who saw the value of a paradox, and avoided what was trite." - Fulton J. Sheen

Today, Blessed Fulton J. Sheen was officially beatified. 

I wrote something earlier this year about Blessed Sheen and Chesterton, a writer whom Sheen admired. The two even met, Chesterton wrote a preface to one of Sheen's books, and Sheen attended Chesterton's funeral in 1936.

Here's part of what I wrote earlier - 

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!

Humour

“Humor can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle.” - G. K. Chesterton

There is so much darkness in our world these days that it would be easy to despair. But there is also so much good. We have a choice on which to focus.

Chesterton clearly opted for the good in his time. One manifestation of it is his good humor.

"The comedy of man survives the tragedy of man." - G. K. Chesterton

Laughter helps us to deal with the darkness. It gives us hope and turns us out from ourselves. It helps us to focus on what is true and beautiful and good.

“Laughter has something in it common with the ancient words of faith and inspiration; it unfreezes pride and unwinds secrecy; it makes people forget themselves in the presence of something greater than themselves.” - G. K. Chesterton

It would be possible to go on quoting him again and again. But her also wrote an essay in 1928 about "humour" - and that seems appropriate to post here.


Humour, in the modern use of the term, signifies a perception of the comic or incongruous of a special sort; generally distinguished from Wit, as being on the one side more subtle, or on the other side more vague. It is thus a term which not only refuses to be defined, but in a sense boasts of being indefinable; and it would commonly be regarded as a deficiency in humour to search for a definition of humour. The modern use of the term, however, is by no means the primary or necessary use of it; and it is one of the cases, rarer than is commonly supposed, in which derivation offers at least an approach to definition. Everybody knows that `Humor’, in the Latin sense of `moisture’ was applied here as part of the old physiological theory, by which the characters of men varied according to the proportions of certain different secretions in the human body; as, for instance, that the predominance of phlegm produced the phlegmatic humour. By the time of the full consolidation of the English language, it had thus become possible for Ben Jonson and others to use the word `humour’ rather in the sense of `the ruling passion’. With this there necessarily went an idea of exaggeration; and by the end of the process the character of a humorist was more or less identical with what we should call an eccentric. The next stages of the development, which are rather slow and subtle correspond to the various degrees in which the eccentric has become conscious of his eccentricity. England has always been especially rich in these eccentrics; and in England, where everything was less logical and more casual than in other countries, the eccentric long remained, as we should say, half unconsciously and half consciously humorous. The blend, and the beginnings of the modern meaning, may perhaps be dated at about the time of Walter Scott’s Waverley Novels; when Guy Mannering complains of Councillor Pleydell as `a crack-brained humorist’. For Pleydell is indeed laughed at for his little vanities or whims; but he himself joins in the laugh and sees the humour of his humour. Since then the word has come to be used more and more exclusively of conscious humour; and generally of a rather deep and delicate appreciation of the absurdities of others.

Nevertheless there clings to the word Humour, especially when balanced against the word Wit, a sort of tradition or atmosphere that belongs to the old eccentrics whose eccentricity was always wilful and not infrequently blind. The distinction is a fine one; but one of the elements remaining in this blend is a certain sense of being laughed at, as well as of laughing. It involves some confession of human weakness; whereas wit is rather the human intellect exerting its full strength, though perhaps upon a small point. Wit is reason on its judgment seat; and though the offenders may be touched lightly, the point is that the judge is not touched at all. But humour always has in it some idea of the humorist himself being at a disadvantage and caught in the entanglements and contradictions of human life. It is a grave error to underrate Wit as something trivial; for certain purposes of satire it can truly be the sword of the spirit, and the satirist bears not the sword in vain. But it is essential to wit that he should bear the sword with ease; that for the wit the weapon should be light if the blow be heavy; that there should be no question of his being encumbered with his instrument or laying open his guard. But humour can be of the finest and yet lay open the guard or confess its inconsistency. When Voltaire said, commenting on the judicial murder of Byng, “In England they kill one Admiral to encourage the others,” it would immediately be recognized as humour. But we rightly class Voltaire as a wit, because he represents the consistent human reason detesting an inconsistency. We shall be very wrong if we despise him as a wit, for that French clearness has depths of irony; there is, for instance, more than is seen at a glance in the very word `encourage’. But it is true that the wit is here a judge independent of the judges, unaffected by the King or the Admiral or the English Courtmartial or the mob. He is abstract justice recording a contradiction. But when Falstaff (a model of the humorist become or becoming conscious) cries out in desperate bravado, “They hate us youth,” the incongruity between the speech and the corpulent old humbug of a speaker is present to his own mind, as well as to ours. He also discovers a contradiction, but it is in himself; for Falstaff really did bemuse himself with youthful companionship which he knew to be like a drug or a dream; and indeed Shakespeare himself, in one at least of the Sonnets, becomes bitterly conscious of the same illusion. There is therefore in humour, or at least in the origins of humour, something of this idea of the eccentric caught in the act of eccentricity and brazening it out; something of one surprised in disarray and become conscious of the chaos within. Wit corresponds to the divine virtue of justice, in so far as so dangerous a virtue can belong to man. Humour corresponds to the human virtue of humility and is only more divine because it has, for the moment, more sense of the mysteries.

If there be so much of enlightenment to be gathered from the history of the word, there is very little to be gathered from any of the attempts at a scientific history of the thing. The speculations on the nature of any reaction to the risible belong to the larger and more elementary subject of Laughter and are for the department of psychology; according to some, almost for that of physiology. Whatever be their value touching the primitive function of laughter, they throw very little light on the highly civilized product of humour. It may well be questioned whether some of the explanations are not too crude even for the crudest origins; that they hardly apply even to the savage and certainly do not apply to the child. It has been suggested, for example, that all laughter had its origin in a sort of cruelty, in an exultation over the pain or ignominy of an enemy; but it is very hard even for the most imaginative psychologist to believe that, when a baby bursts out laughing at the image of the cow jumping over the moon, he is really finding pleasure in the probability of the cow breaking her leg when she comes down again. The truth is that all these primitive and prehistoric origins are largely unknown and possibly unknowable; and like all the unknown and unknowable are a field for furious wars of religion. Such primary human causes will always be interpreted differently according to different philosophies of human life. Another philosophy would say, for instance, that laughter is due not to an animal cruelty but to a purely human realization of the contrast between man’s spiritual immensity within and his littleness and restriction without, for it is itself a joke that a house should be larger inside than out. According to such a view, the very incompatability between the sense of human dignity and the perpetual possibility of incidental indignities, produces the primary or archetypal joke of the old gentleman sitting down suddenly on the ice. We do not laugh thus when a tree or a rock tumbles down; because we do not know the sense of self-esteem or serious importance within. But such speculations in psychology, especially in primitive psychology, have very little to do with the actual history of comedy as an artistic creation.

There is no doubt that comedy existed as an artistic creation many thousands of years ago, in the case of peoples whose life and letters we can sufficiently understand to appreciate the fine shades of meaning; especially, of course, in the case of the Greeks. It is difficult for us to say how far it existed in civilizations more remote of which the records are for us more stiff and symbolic; but the very limitation of symbolism which makes it hard for us to prove its existence should warn us against assuming without evidence that it did not exist. We know more about Greek humour than about Hittite humour, at least partly for the simple reason that we know Greek better than we know any sort of colloquial Hittite; and while what applies to Hittite applies too in a less degree to Hebrew, a case like that of early Hebrew presents something of the same problem of limitation. But without any attempts to settle such problems of scholarship, it is hard to believe that the highest sense of human satire was not present in the words of Job. “Truly you are wise and wisdom will die with you”; or that no perception of a poetic contrast was felt by so great a poet when he said of Behemoth, commonly identified with the hippopotamus; “Canst thou play with him as with a bird?” It is probable that the Chinese civilization, in which the quality of the quaint and the fantastic has flowered with a beautiful luxuriance for many centuries, could also quote fairly early examples of the same order of fancy.

In any case, humour is in the very foundations of our European literature, which alone is quite sufficiently a part of ourselves for the full appreciation of so subtle and sometimes sub-conscious a quality. Even a schoolboy can see it in such scenes of Aristophanes as that in which the dead man sits up in indignation at having to pay the toll of the Styx, and says he would rather come to life again; or when Dionysus asks to see the wicked in hell and is answered by a gesture pointing at the audience. Before the period of intellectual controversies in Athens, indeed, we generally find in Greek poetry, as in the greater part of all human folk lore, that the joke is a practical joke. To a robust taste, however, it is none the less of a joke for that. For the joke of Odysseus calling himself Noman is not, as some suppose, a sort of trivial pun or verbalism; the joke is in the gigantic image of the raging Cyclops, roaring as if to rend the mountains, after being defeated by something so simple and so small. And this example is worth noting; as representing what is really the fun of all the fairy-tales; the notion of something apparently omnipotent made impotent by some tiny trick. This fairy-tale idea is undoubtedly one of the primitive fountains from which flows the long winding stream of historic humour. When Puss in Boots persuades the boastful magician to turn into a mouse and be eaten, it almost deserves to be called wit.

After these two early expressions, the practical joke of the folk-tale and the more philosophic fun of the Old Comedy, the history of humour is simply the history of literature. It is especially the history of European literature; for this sane sense of the incongruous is one of the highest qualities balancing the European spirit. It would be easy to go through the rich records of every nation and note this element in almost every novel or play, and in not a few poems or philosophical works. There is naturally no space for such a survey; but three great names, one English, one French and a third Spanish, may be mentioned for their historical quality; since they opened new epochs and even their few superiors were still their followers. The first of these determining names is that of Chaucer, whose urbanity has done something to conceal his real originality. Medieval civilization had a very powerful sense of the grotesque, as is apparent in its sculpture alone; but it was in a sense a fighting sentiment; it dealt with dragons and devils; it was alive, but it was very decidedly kicking. Chaucer brought into this atmosphere a cool air of true comedy; a sort of incongruity most incongruous in that world. In his personal sketches we have a new and very English element, of at once laughing at people and liking them. The whole of humorous fiction, if not the whole of fiction, dates from the Prologue of the Canterbury Tales. Rather later, Rabelais opened a new chapter by showing that intellectual things could be treated with the energy of high spirits and a sort of pressure of physical exuberance, which was itself humorous in its very human abandon. He will always be the inspiration of a certain sort of genial impatience; and the moments when the great human mind boils over like a pot. The Renaissance itself was, of course, such a boiling, but the elements were some of them more poisonous; though a word should be said for the tonics of that time, the humour of Erasmus and of More. Thirdly, there appeared with the great Cervantes an element new in its explicit expression; that grand and very Christian quality of the man who laughs at himself. Cervantes was himself more chivalrous than most men when he began to mock at chivalry. Since his time, humour in this purely humorous sense, the confession of complexity and weakness already remarked upon, has been a sort of secret of the high culture of the West. The influence of Cervantes and Rabelais, and the rest runs through all modern letters, especially our own; taking on a shrewd and acid tang in Swift, a more delicate and perhaps more dubious taste in Sterne, passing on through every sort of experiment of essay or comedy, pausing upon the pastoral gaiety of Goldsmith or going on finally to bring forth, like a great birth of giants, the walking caricatures of Dickens. Nor is it altogether a national accident that the tradition has here been followed in our own nation. For it is true that humour, in the special and even limited sense here given to it, humour as distinct from wit, from satire, from irony or from many things that may legitimately produce amusement, has been a thing strongly and specially present in English life and letters. That we may not in turn depreciate the wit and logic of the rest of the world, it will be well to remember that humour does originate in the half-conscious eccentric, that it is in part a confession of inconsistency, but, when all is said, it has added a new beauty to human life. It may even be noted that there has appeared especially in England a new variety of humour, more properly to be called Nonsense. Nonsense may be described as humour which has for the moment renounced all connection with wit. It is humour that abandons all attempt at intellectual justification; and does not merely jest at the incongruity of some accident or practical joke, as a by-product of real life, but extracts and enjoys it for its own sake. Jabberwocky is not a parody on anything; the Jumblies are not a satire on anybody; they are folly for folly’s sake on the same lines as art for art’s sake, or more properly beauty for beauty’s sake; and they do not serve any social purpose except perhaps the purpose of a holiday. Here again it will be well to remember that even the work of humour should not consist entirely of holidays. But this art of nonsense is a valuable contribution to culture; and it is very largely, or almost entirely, an English contribution. So cultivated and competent a foreign observer as M. Emile Cammaerts has remarked that it is so native as to be at first quite unmeaning to foreigners. This is perhaps the latest phase in the history of humour; but it will be well even in this case to preserve what is so essential a virtue of humour; the virtue of proportion. Humour, like wit, is related however indirectly, to truth and the eternal virtues; as it is the greatest incongruity of all to be serious about humour, so it is the worst sort of pomposity to be monotonously proud of humour; for it is itself the chief antidote to pride; and has been, ever since the time of the Book of Proverbs, the hammer of fools.

Latest Clerihew Submissions

I submitted the following Clerihews to Gilbert. They are on top of a batch I sent in June. Will any of them make it to print? I don't know. The next issue will feature clerihews from the Chesterton Conference, so maybe in the issue after that I might see one of them published.

Calixto Garcia
was writing a love note to a pretty senorita
when Andrew Rowan burst into his life
with a message Garcia feared might be from his jealous wife.

Erasmus
rode into London on a double-decker bus.
He was looking for a novelty store
to buy a foolish gift for Thomas More.

Giacomo Puccini
was enjoying some fettuccini.
But he stopped mid-bite when a Japanese butterfly
caught his eye.

Heroic Colonel Patrick O'Rorke
and his wife had dreams about a visit from the stork.
Alas, at Gettysburg he was undone,
and his widow later became a nun.

Brigadier General Strong Vincent
tended to stand out whatever he did and wherever he went.
At Gettysburg he bid the world goodbye
when he stood out on a boulder and got shot in the thigh.

This last one is an old one, but since he's been in the news lately, I included it. If nothing else, it might give the Minnesota folks at Gilbert a chuckle.

Governor Tim Walz
was enjoying some spaghetti and meatballs,
but then got a sick feeling in his belly
when an ad for tampons came on the telly.

Localism is Environmental

 "The only words that ever satisfied me as describing nature are the terms used in fairy books, charm, spell, enchantment; they express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery." - G. K. Chesterton

The Season of Creation began September 1 and will run through October 4, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, the Patron Saint of Ecology. 

A local parish celebrated the new Mass for Creation on September 1. The priest preached a homily about environmental concerns, and in the process made some comments that immediately made me think of Chesterton and localism.

Father decried large corporations, saying that they were concerned with profits, not with the effects their uni-crop/cash crop policies harm the environment. As part of that policy, they dose the land with chemical fertilizers that produce large crops in the short term but that damage the soil in the long run. He also said what is better is small, locally owned farms and business, as they encourage awareness of what is happening and care for the land, for the environment, and for their neighbors.

Very Chestertonian. 

As Chesterton emphasized, small, local ownership, and concern for what is near and local is the way to go. We become more aware of what lies around us. As he noted, "One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak."

And, of course, Chesterton had respect for the natural world, seeing it as a source of wonder, and as a manifestation of the spiritual.

“Nature is not natural. Nature is supernatural.”

I went up to the priest after Mass and asked if he was familiar with Chesterton and distributism/localism. He knew who Chesterton was, but did not seem to know a great deal about him. And it was clear he did not know anything about Chesterton's promotion of distributism.

Ah well, he at least he was thinking like Chesterton.

Overlooked Dystopian Novels

I recently saw a list of best dystopian novels, with dystopian fiction defined as "a genre that explores imagined societies where life is deeply flawed, oppressive, or dehumanizing, often as a critique of current social, political, or technological trends."

The list included many familiar titles, such as 1984 by George Orwell, Brave New World by Aldous 

Huxley, and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. There are also some more contemporary titles such as The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I searched a few other lists and found such works as The Giver by Lois Lowry, The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey, and Divergent by Veronica Roth mentioned. There were other lists that cited some novels I'd heard of, but with which I was not familiar.

I noted some works that I would include on my list of favorite dystopian novels tended to be left off most of the "best" lists.

That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis was mentioned on only one list. Ditto for A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller. Lord of the World by Father Robert Hugh Benson was left off the lists. And my favorite novel by Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, was left off as well. If I was compiling a list, I'd even include some of the novels of Michael D. O'Brien, such as Eclipse of the Sun and Plague Journal. 

I wonder if these works get overlooked because therer are Christian elements in them?

I've read many dystopian books, but certainly not all. So, my list of 10 favorites (not necessarily "the best"), in no particular order, is subject to change:

That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller

Lord of the World by Father Robert Hugh Benson

The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G. K. Chesterton

Eclipse of the Sun by Michael D. O'Brien

1984 by George Orwell

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

The Time Machine by H. G. Wells

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

C. S. Lewis and "The Everlasting Man"

"As for books, the very best popular defense of the full Christian position I know is G.K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man." - C. S. Lewis

Last night my wife and I watched Shadowlands - the excellent Anthony Hopkins/Debra Winger version. The movie depicts the relationship of C.S. Lewis and Joy Davidman (taking some theatrical liberties) from their meeting to just after her death. Winger was nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal. 

In the movie, Lewis notes that they had both been atheists, but had found faith. In Lewis' case, Chesterton played a role. It was reading The Everlasting Man that helped him discover Christianity - along with his friendship with J. R. Tolkien. 

In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, Lewis talked about reading Chesterton.

"I had never heard of him and had no idea of what he stood for; nor can I quite understand why he made such an immediate conquest of me. It might have been expected that my pessimism, my atheism, and my hatred of sentiment would have made him to me the least congenial of all authors. It would almost seem that Providence, or some 'second cause' of a very obscure kind, quite overrules our previous tastes when it decides to bring to minds together. Liking an author may be as involuntary and improbable as falling in love."

That first encounter was with The Everlasting Man in 1925 while still an atheist.

“Then I read Chesterton’s Everlasting Man and for the first time saw the whole Christian outline of history set out in a form that seemed to me to make sense . . . I already thought Chesterton the most sensible man alive; apart from his Christianity; Now, I veritably believe, I thought that Christianity itself was very sensible; apart from its Christianity.” 

He recommended the book to others, as he did in the quote at the top of this entry. In 1963, six months before he died, he observed in God in the Dock, “The contemporary book that has helped me the most is Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man.” 

Chesterton and Dostoyevsky

 “The one thing this Russian loves is Liberty. The one place where he finds it is in … no, not Christianity… Christ. Compared with that, he cares nothing for anything.” - G. K. Chesterton

I recently finished reading Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Possessed (also called The Devils). It was one of my reading goals for this year. It also means I have now read all of Dostoyevsky's four great novels, the other three being The Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot, and Crime and Punishment. (I've also read Notes from the Underground.)

As I read it, I couldn't help thinking about the current socialist upsurge in the Democratic Party in the United States. His satire of the radicals/socialists in Russia could easily be applied to our progressives today.

I knew that Chesterton, like me, appreciated Dostoyevsky. He once wrote that Dostoyevsky "was one of the two or three greatest novelists of the nineteenth century. And he cared for nothing but Christ who had made him free. It is worth thinking about.”

I found a lecture that even dealt with Chesterton and Dostoyevsky. 

https://youtu.be/2v2pEyoU8ps?si=pUfomTC4KZ4ymR0Y

Nobel Committee Considered Tolkien Unworthy

 

In 1961, the Nobel Prize committee rejected J. R. R. Tolkien for the Literature Prize, deeming his work as unworthy.

The prize jury said his works had "not in any way measured up to storytelling of the highest quality".

Tolkien had been nominated for the prize by C. S. Lewis. The nomination had come after The Lord of the Rings trilogy had been published - The Return of the King, the last volume, came out in 1955. The committee said LOTR was “not comparable to works of the highest literary quality.”

He was nominated again in 1967 and 1969 after LOTR had developed a wider following - but he was rejected again.

Apparently, they did not like fantasy.

Ironically, by the end of the 20th Century and early in the 21st Century The Lord of the Rings topped many polls as the most significant or greatest book of the 20th Century.

 

Six Catholic Authors

 

Some friends made the list!

6 great Christian authors (and how to start reading them) - Catholic Courier

Fauci Clerihew

 

In light of this "testimony" before Congress, and his later swearing at reporters, I scribbled:

Dr. Anthony Fauci
is feeling a little grouchy.
He heeded what his lawyers said,
now his reputation and credibility are basically dead

Not great, lacks whimsy, but oh well... 

Death Is Part of the Adventure

“The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.”

I went to a funeral today. The mother of one of the members of my Secular Franciscan Fraternity passed away at 92. I was there to support him; I did not know her. But some of the comments by her family made it clear she was a good soul and much loved.

As I sat there, I thought about the fact that Chesterton died when he was just 62. He did not make it to the Biblical prediction about longevity: "Seventy is the sum of our years, or eighty, if we are strong."

But given his weight, his diet, his drinking, his smoking, not surprising that he died relatively young.

By the way, the longevity of some of the "Friends":

Hilaire Belloc - 82

J. R. R. Tolkien - 81 

C. S. Lewis - 64 

Chesterton was a happy soul, not obsessed with death and what lies beyond. He did comment on it, though.

In the quotation at the beginning of this post, he does talk about how awareness of death can affect our view of what we have. Life is transient, death is inevitable, appreciate what we have and the people in our lives. Think of all the times when someone passes we regret not spending more time with them or realize what they meant to us and others.

Another quotation expressing a similar thought is: 

"It is this passionate sense of the value of things: of the richness of the cosmic treasure: the world where every star is a diamond, every leaf an emerald, every drop of blood a ruby, it is this sense of preciousness that is really awakened by the death of His saints”

One comment he made about the afterlife deals with the place we don't want to go.

“Hell is God’s great compliment to the reality of human freedom and the dignity of human choice”

Yes, we do have free will, and we can choose Hell; God does not send us there. The fact that it exists is indeed a compliment. 

There are other quotations related to death and eternity, but here's one about living that struck me. 

“Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.”

It takes courage to act and to fully live - but in acting and living we face the possibility of failure or death. If we fear failure and death too much, we can become paralyzed and not do what needs to be done or to live up to our potential.

One final quotation, one that is often cited.

“A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”

Death is passive; truly living involves struggling and facing the challenges of living.

Living is an adventure, and death is just part of it.

A Message to Garcia

For several years I taught at a private Christian school. The school was run by a branch of the Plymouth Brethren that separated themselves as much as possible from the world, hence they created their own school to avoid their children being tainted by worldly education.

There are many tales I could tell about teaching there, but I'll stick to one that involves my sarcastic sense of humor and my big mouth.

The board overseeing the school consisted largely of businessmen. For a teacher conference one year they gave all the teachers in advance copies of A Message to Garcia by Elbert Hubbard. The book consisted of an 1899 essay that promoted initiative and conscientiousness in work. The essay is about the mission of Lieutenant Andrew Rowan to General Calixto Garcia in Cuba just before the Spanish-American War broke out.

Rowan was supposed just to make contact with Garcia and to serve as an observer, and there was actually no letter or message. Hubbard took extensive liberties with the actual story, using it as a means to show determination on the part of Rowan. He supposedly single-mindedly pursued his mission, overcoming obstacles, and never complaining. The essay became a best seller much loved by businessmen like those running our school.

On the day of the teacher conference the head of the board asked what we thought the message of the book was. Being a sarcastic sort, I replied, "Shut up and do your job."

They were not amused. Indeed, the principal chewed me out during a break.

After that incident, I did create one of my slugku (a humorous series of haiku that all begin with the line " a slug among weeds") about Hubbard's version of the story, and even added it to a picture of Rowan and Garcia.



I recently did a little more reading about the event, and about General Garcia. One thing I discovered was he was married, but had a series of mistresses and illegitimate children. I got inspired and wrote a clerihew.

Calixto Garcia
was writing a love note to a pretty senorita
when Andrew Rowan burst into his life
with a message Garcia feared might be from his jealous wife.

Sometimes imagination is more amusing than just the facts. Hubbard certainly seemed to think that!

Two Gettysburg Clerihews - With Connections

 

Last week was the 166th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. 

Okay, an oddly numbered anniversary, but my wife and I had once visited the site of the battle and have fond memories of that trip, and every year we rewatch the movie Gettysburg,

I have two other connections to Gettysburg, including a family one.

We live in Rochester, New York, and one of the heroes of the battle was from Rochester, Colonel Patrick O'Rorke. 

An Irish immigrant, O'Rorke grew up in Rochester, where he encountered anti-Irish prejudice. He went to West Point, and after the Civil War saw action in multiple engagements. He rose through the ranks and by 1863 was the Colonel in command of the 140th New York Infantry Regiment, which consisted largely of Rochester-area volunteers and was mainly Irish.

When the Confederates were attacking Little Round Top on July 2, and after the heroics of Joshua Chamberlain's 20th Maine on the Union left flank, O'Rorke was ordered to take his regiment to the top of the hill to stop the continued the Rebel advance. He did so, and succeeded in repulsing them, but got shot and killed while urging his troop on. Although Chamberlain was later lauded as a hero of that phase of the three-day battle, historians view O'Rorke's actions as just as heroic and important.

Here in Rochester we have a bridge named after O Rorke.

His widow, Clara Bishop O'Rorke, later became a religious sister, a member of the Society of the Sacred Heart.

About him I wrote:

Heroic Colonel Patrick O'Rorke
and his wife had dreams about a visit from the stork.
Alas, at Gettysburg he was undone,
and his widow later became a nun.

My family connection to the battle is through Brigadier General Strong Vincent. His mother was Sarah Ann (Strong) Vincent, a granddaughter of Timothy Strong, who is my fourth-great-grandfather.

Strong Vincent was born in Waterford Pennsylvania. He had just begun a law practice when the Civil War began. He enlisted with the Pennsylvania Militia. He saw action in various battles and rose through the ranks, becoming by the time of the Battle of Gettysburg the Colonel commanding the 3rd Brigade - Chamberlain's 20th Maine was one of his regiments.

At the top of the hill, Vincent climbed on a boulder to urge his men on and was shot in the thigh. He died of his wound five days later, but in the interim in recognition of his heroism was promoted to Brigadier General.

Like O'Rorke, he left a young widow, Elizabeth Carter Vincent, though, in her case, she was pregnant. A daughter, Blanche, was born two months after the battle, but died before reaching the age of one. Elizabeth never married again.

In the movie, Gettysburg, Strong Vincent is portrayed by Maxwell Caulfield.

About Strong Vincent I wrote:

Brigadier General Strong Vincent
tended to stand out whatever he did and wherever he went.
At Gettysburg he bid the world goodbye
when he stood out on a boulder and got shot in the thigh

On the Library New Books Shelf

 

I stopped by our local library and, as I always do, I checked the New Books shelves. The name G. K. Chesterton jumped out at me.

A new book about Chesterton?!

G. K. Chesterton on Life by Kevin Belmonte is new in that it was published in 2026. But it's old in the sense that it is basically a large collection of quotations from Chesterton.

Indeed, Belmonte had somewhat mined the same field with two previous works featuring quotations from Chesterton, The Quotable Chesterton, and Chesterton's Tavern. He also wrote a biography of Chesterton, Defiant Joy: The Remarkable Life & Impact of G. K. Chesterton. 

As for this collection, a blub on the back describes it as "a perfect gift for any occasion." It has that feel of a gift book. It's nicely laid out, with some page decorations at the start of each chapter. But that is not a criticism of it; it is a book that might introduce people who don't know him to Chesterton.

The book includes some quotations from others about Chesterton, some pictures of Chesterton from various sources, ads and news reports, and other images from the time Chesterton's time, and, of course, page after page of excerpts and quotations from Chesterton's works. Those quotations are organized under such chapters as "Things of Faith," "Nature, and the World Around Us," "Dash and Wit," and "Trappings of Modernity." 

There is also one chapter - "G.K.C. and the Eve of Orthodoxy" - dedicated to excerpts from an article about Chesterton written by George Holbrook Jackson in 1908, " I was not familiar with the article, and found the excerpts interesting. 

I had previously encountered a number of the quotations and excerpts, but I discovered many others new to me. 

I was amused to read one account of Chesterton meeting with Theodore Roosevelt, with Roosevelt observing, "What a supreme genius Chesterton is! I never met a man who could talk so brilliantly and interestingly."

This book can serve as an introduction to Chesterton, and indeed might make "a perfect gift" for those not too familiar with him.  

At the very least, it's great to see Chesterton's name featured on a library bookshelf where it might help to draw attention to him.

Another Reading Goal Met

 

I begin every year by setting reading goals. Those goals include the total number of works read, the total number of pages, and specific book/genre/author goals. This year, one of those goals was to read a book about G. K. Chesterton. I met that goal last Sunday by finishing The Gift of Wonder: The Many Sides of G. K. Chesterton edited (of course) by Dale Ahlquist. 

The book is a collection of papers presented at the June 2000 Chesterton Conference.

There are a number of delightful papers in the collection. As a Secular Franciscan, one that stood out for me was Frances Farrell's "Chesterton's St. Francis of Assisi." I also really enjoyed Aidan Mackey's "Chesterton and the Moral Imagination" and Ekaterina Volokhonskaia's "A Russian Perspective of G. K. Chesteron." And though I'm not a fan of Belloc (Heresy!), I also found James Reidy's "The Four Bellocs" interesting. (Yes, they snuck in a paper about Belloc in a book about Chesterton!)

Though I singled out a few of the papers, I enjoyed them all. Which is a nice way to meet one of my reading goals.

I had several other goals related to this blog. 

I earlier in the year met one of them, reading The Adventures of Tom Bombadil by J. R. R. Tolkien.

I have two other blog-related goals to meet yet: A book by Chesterton, and a book by C. S. Lewis. 

Chesterton and Fantasy/Science Fiction

 

Every Thursday at dinner time - except with it is preempted - we watch Chesterton Station on EWTN. The premise of the show is that Chesterton (wonderfully played by John Walker), after his death, is at a railway station where he meets up with others on their way to their eternal destinations. Robert Louis Stevenson, H. G. Wells, Georger Bernard Shaw, Charles Dickens, Dorothy Sayers, and George McDonald are among the travelers with whom he meets. They talk, act out scenes, interact with characters from their works, and enjoy some beverages. It's an amusing show, well worth watching.

Last night's episode featured Father Robert Hugh Benson, a convert who, in addition to being a priest, wrote works of fantasy and science fiction, the most famous of them being the dystopian novel Lord of the World. 

Confession: I was in a play version of one of his novels, Come Rack! Come Rope!, about the persecution of Catholics in England under Queen Elizabeth. 

In the episode, Father Benson is being harassed by forces of the "Lord of the World" - prompting Chesterton to fire off his pistol in their direction.

The episode got me to wondering what would have happened had Chesterton turned more of his energies to speculative fiction. He certainly wrote some fantastic tales, and two of his novels, The Man Who Was Thursday, and The Napoleon of Notting Hill, certainly seem to straddle the realms of fantasy and science fiction. And there are fantasy elements in the collection The Coloured Lands.  

He might have produced more of such works, but I suspect his conversion changed his focus. He continued to write mysteries and essays - to help pay the bills - but seemed to focus more and more on religious writings. 

I have not read all of his short fiction - yet - so perhaps there are some fantasy/science fiction gems among them. Perhaps some folks who have read him more widely have already looked into this. 

St. Clare Clerihew

St. Clare

was shorn of her hair.
Her symbolic rejection of worldly vanities
inspired some of her father's choicest profanities.

Pope Leo Knows ...

 

In his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV, in talking about artificial intelligence and technology, cited J. R. R. Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings: 

213. The twentieth-century Catholic author J.R.R. Tolkien, in the words of a protagonist in one of his novels, described our responsibility in this way: “It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.”  The civilization of love will not arise from a single or spectacular gesture, but from the sum total of small and steadfast acts of fidelity that serve as a bulwark against dehumanization. For this reason, it is worthwhile pausing to reflect on some aspects of how we, each in our own way, can cooperate in building the civilization of love. Without presuming to exhaust this theme, I would like to propose five paths toward daily and public responsibility: the need to disarm words, building peace through justice, adopting the perspective of victims, cultivating a healthy realism and reviving dialogue and multilateralism.

The quotation is from The Return of the King. 

I've seen some comments that he supposedly also cites Chesterton, but in a quick scan of the encyclical I could not find any direct quotations from Gilbert. Perhaps the Holy Father used some of his Chesterton's ideas but internalized them and put it in his own words. I have to read the whole document to be sure.

So we'll stick with a quotation from Chesterton in one of the Pope's addresses.

In a February 28, 2026 address to four Spanish seminaries he said: 

There is a quote from the author Chesterton that can serve as a key to understanding everything I would like to share with you: “Take away the supernatural, and what remains is the unnatural” (cf. Heretics, VI). Man is not made to live closed in on himself, but in a living relationship with God. When that relationship is obscured or weakened, life begins to fall into disorder from within. The unnatural is not only the scandalous; it is enough to live without God in daily life, leaving him out of the criteria and decisions with which we face existence.

The Pope apparently know two of our favorites. Good sign!  
.

People and Laws

 “We do not need to get good laws to restrain bad people. We need to get good people to restrain us from bad laws." - G. K. Chesterton

One of the latest social outrages is the upsurge in "teen takeovers" in cities across the country. The out-of-control teens harass, commit vandalism, fight, assault bystanders and police, shoot people, and more. 

Pundits and lawmakers are decrying the takeovers, and some are calling for new laws to help charge the teens, and even to charge their parents.

Laws to restrain.

Meanwhile, back in 2022, the State of New York, concerned about the environment, mandated that school districts replace their diesel school busses with "zero emission - i.e. electric - ones. The original mandate declared that after 2027 districts would no longer be able to buy diesel busses, and that by 2035 their bus fleets be entirely electric. 

Some districts tried to comply. They quickly discovered that the electric busses were many times more expensive than diesel ones. That would inflate their budgets and would mean raising taxes. Meanwhile, rural districts discovered that the busses would not be able to cover all the long routes with a single charge, and that this got even worse in the cold winters which drained the batteries even more quickly to heat the busses. And as opponents of the plan in the first place had pointed out, New York's electric infrastructure is woefully inadequate to handle the new demand. The state is now trying to find new sources of electricity - including covering acres of fertile farmland with solar panels, hurting the state's agricultural industry. 

Some communities have begun to rebel, voting down the purchase of the electric busses. The state's politicians, fearing voter backlash, have kicked the can down the road, moving the 2027 purchasing deadline to 2032, and the complete switchover from 2035 to 2040. Instead of revoking a bad law, they have simply delayed implementing it.

There are many other examples that illustrate Chesterton's observation, but these two will do.

With the teens, we are trying to restrain "bad people" with laws and more laws rather than addressing the underlying social issues that lead teens to act in these violent ways. We can ask "Where are the parents?", but they have abrogated or even are completely oblivious to their responsibilities, and, in many cases, are afflicted with the same social disorders and ignorance as their progeny. What we need are for parents and role models to be good people to provide proper examples and guidance.

As for the bus mandate, while dealing with a somewhat real concern - though one that seems to be blindly exaggerated (think of all the environmental "prophets" who predicted that the ice caps would all melt and parts of our coastal cities would now be under water) - they passed a law without thinking through its implications or even realistic chances of being implemented.

The lawmakers who shoved this mandate through did not heed the warnings of those good people with common sense who tried to restrain them.

Once again, Chesterton proves prophetic.

 

Lepanto

'Don John of Austria 

is gone by Alcalar.'

"That is from Lepanto, and it is a trumpet call! But indeed the whole of that poem Lepanto is not only the summit of Chesterton's achievement in verse but the summit of high rhetorical verse in all our generation. I have said this so often that I am almost tired of saying it again, but I must continue to say it. People who cannot see the value of Lepanto are half dead. Let them so remain."

~Hilaire Belloc: On the Place of Gilbert Chesterton in English Letters.

Tonight at our meeting of the Rochester Chesterton Society, we will be reading and discussing Lepanto.  I have read the poem before, but it will be a pleasure to read it talk about it with fellow Chesterton fans. I have the Ignatius Press edition edited by Dale Alhlquist. As Dale notes in this introduction, "Lepanto is not only one of G. K. Chesgerton's finest poems; it is one of the finest poems in the English langue." 

Okay, one would expect both Belloc and Ahlquist to praise something by Chesterton. A commentary more telling is mentioned in Joseph Pearce's biography of Chester, Wisdom and Innocence. 

"Amid all the praise of his literary peers perhaps the tribute that pleased Chesterton more that any other was a short note from John Buchan, dated 21nJune 1915: 'The other day in the trenches we shouted your Lepanto.'" 

Here is the poem.

Lepanto
By G. K. Chesterton

White founts falling in the courts of the sun,

And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;

There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,

It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard,

It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips,

For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.

They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,

They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,

And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,

And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross,

The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;

The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;

From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,

And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,

Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,

Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,

The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,

The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,

That once went singing southward when all the world was young,

In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,

Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.

Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,

Don John of Austria is going to the war,

Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold

In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,

Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,

Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.

Don John laughing in the brave beard curled,

Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world,

Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.

Love-light of Spain—hurrah!

Death-light of Africa!

Don John of Austria

Is riding to the sea.

Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star,

(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)

He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri’s knees,

His turban that is woven of the sunset and the seas.

He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,

And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees,

And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring

Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.

Giants and the Genii,

Multiple of wing and eye,

Whose strong obedience broke the sky

When Solomon was king.

They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn,

From temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;

They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea

Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be;

On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,

Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl;

They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,—

They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.

And he saith, “Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide,

And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,

And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest,

For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.

We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,

Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done,

But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know

The voice that shook our palaces—four hundred years ago:

It is he that saith not ‘Kismet’; it is he that knows not Fate ;

It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey in the gate!

It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,

Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth.”

For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar,

(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)

Sudden and still—hurrah!

Bolt from Iberia!

Don John of Austria

Is gone by Alcalar.

St. Michael’s on his mountain in the sea-roads of the north

(Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.)

Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift

And the sea folk labour and the red sails lift.

He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone;

The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone;

The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes

And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,

And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room,

And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom,

And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,

But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea.

Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse

Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips,

Trumpet that sayeth ha!

      Domino gloria! 

Don John of Austria

Is shouting to the ships.

King Philip’s in his closet with the Fleece about his neck

(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)

The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin,

And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.

He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon,

He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon,

And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey

Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day,

And death is in the phial, and the end of noble work,

But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk.

Don John’s hunting, and his hounds have bayed—

Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid

Gun upon gun, ha! ha!

Gun upon gun, hurrah!

Don John of Austria

Has loosed the cannonade.

The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke,

(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)

The hidden room in man’s house where God sits all the year,

The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.

He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea

The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;

They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,

They veil the plumèd lions on the galleys of St. Mark;

And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,

And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,

Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines

Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.

They are lost like slaves that swat, and in the skies of morning hung

The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.

They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on

Before the high Kings’ horses in the granite of Babylon.

And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell

Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell,

And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign—

(But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!)

Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,

Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate’s sloop,

Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,

Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,

Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea

White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.

Vivat Hispania!

Domino Gloria! 

Don John of Austria

Has set his people free!

Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath

(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)

And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,

Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain,

And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade....

(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)