My Lenten Thursday Nights

Every Thursday evening during Lent, I plan to attend the 5:30 p.m. Mass in the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church and then go study Dante's Divine Comedy at the Spiritual Life Center (SLC). The series, An Introduction to the Divine Comedy, begins on February 27, the Thursday after Ash Wednesday (next Thursday):

Join us as we travel with Dante on this Lenten journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven as we seek to gain spiritual insights from the sinners and saints encountered along the way.

Written in the fourteenth century by Italian poet and philosopher Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy is arguably the greatest epic poem of all time—presenting Dante’s brilliant vision of the three realms of Christian afterlife: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise.

We will be using Professor Anthony Esolen’s translation of the Comedy, and will have copies available for sale.

I'll take my copies Dorothy L. Sayers' translation and see how it goes. 

After a break for Holy Week, Easter and its Octave, I'll be back--Lord willing--at the SLC to attend the Catholic Culture Conference, with another program on Dante:

The Catholic Culture Conference is an opportunity for faithful Christians to come together for formation and fellowship. The program intends to promote Catholic values in personal and family life, as well as in society at large. 
 
The theme for the 2020 Catholic Culture Conference is “Dante and the End of Men”. The title plays off the title of a 2010 article which appeared in The Atlantic magazine. In her article “The End of Men” author Hanna Rosin tells the story of a culture which once gave respect, and even deference, to the role of men. According to Rosin, though, times have changed, and modern culture no longer needs men. Women can now do everything that men used to do, which makes them “equal” to men in most every way, and even preferential to men in most things.

One reason for this shift has been a denigration of all things authentically masculine, and a lowering of expectations for men. A culture which fosters true masculinity will hold men accountable for their behavior, look to them for leadership in faith and morals, and be able to count on them as trustworthy providers and protectors.

Dr. Jason Baxter of Wyoming Catholic College will give three talks on the theme of “Dante and the End of Men”; one focusing on men in each of the three stages of Dante’s pilgrimage: Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. For additional insights on Catholic masculinity, Bo Bonner of Mercy College will present talks on St. Joseph.

The Culture Conference is open to all. Join us for a weekend of study, discussion, and culture-building.

Professor Baxter was here in December of 2017 and made a presentation at Eighth Day Books before his book was published.

A Report on the Sunday Sessions of the Catholic Culture Conference

The Adult Education program of the Spiritual Life Center here in Wichita, Kansas recently presented the Fourth Annual Catholic Culture Conference. Joseph Pearce and Dale Ahlquist made presentations on Friday and Saturday and Brad (Bradley) Birzer from Hillsdale College spoke on Sunday. He was born and raised in Kansas and had attended a family wedding in Kansas City on Saturday before driving to Wichita on Sunday. He was born in Great Bend and grew up in Hutchinson--his mother and other family members met him during his presentations so there was a family reunion going on too.

He was a great presenter; his enthusiasm and knowledge of his subject was so evident. I enjoyed his talk on Russell Kirk because I had not read much about him. Here's a Catholic World Report introduction to Kirk that Professor Birzer wrote:

By almost any 21st-century American or western standard, Russell Amos Augustine Kirk (1918-1994) possessed a quirky, eccentric, and original personality. He was—to put it as simply as possible—genius. Descriptors like charitable, tolerant, loyal, intense, playful, mischievous, creative, imaginative, shy, romantic, brilliant, humble, eccentric, traditional, and innovative flow from the lips and pens of most of those who knew him personally. As with every person, of course, Kirk expressed an immense variety of emotions and thoughts during his life. No man or woman can be summed up in a sentence, let alone in a book or even in a series of books. Almost certainly, the person himself fails to apprehend all of his majesty and his failings. Of all appreciations of and attacks on Kirk, Dartmouth professor of English literature Jeffrey Hart says it best. “Russell Kirk was a fantastic individualist—in his own way, of course.”

Yet, of all major converts to Roman Catholicism in the 20th century, Kirk remains one of the least known. There were so many notable converts, as biographers such as Joseph Pearce have explored, that one middle-aged American’s conversion has understandably been overlooked. After all, Kirk is remembered mostly for his 1953 magnum opus, The Conservative Mind, and as the founder of intellectual and cultural conservatism. On the surface, Roman Catholicism is not inherently conservative, at least politically, and most Catholics would probably be more comfortable reading a Flannery O’Connor short story than a speech Kirk ghostwrote for Senator Barry Goldwater.

Still, it is unfortunate that Catholics have not paid more attention to Kirk’s story. His conversion to the Church not only provided a major asset to the faith but also reveals much about the nature of tradition, the continuity of the pagan and the Catholic, the fragility of civilization, and the sanctity of charity.

I bought Birzer's biography of Russell Kirk--and he bought a copy of my book. Very kind of him: we autographed each other's books.

He also spoke on J.R.R. Tolkien, emphasizing how much World War I influenced the creation of Tolkien's Catholic mythology of Middle Earth. This essay, from the Imaginative Conservative (which Birzer co-founded) gives you an inkling of what Birzer discussed:

One finds the most moving prose of The Lord of the Rings, somewhat surprisingly, in chapter two of Book Four (that is, the second chapter dealing with Frodo and Sam in The Two Towers), “The Passage of the Marshes.” In it, Tolkien offers a vast and broad claustrophobic landscape across which Frodo, Sam, and Gollum must travel.

As is typical with Tolkien, he allowed his experiences to influence and inform his writing, but he refused to let them dominate it. In a 1960 letter, he admitted that the approach came from his reading of William Morris as well as his own experiences in World War I.
"The Lord of the Rings was actually begun, as a separate thing, about 1937, and had reached the inn at Bree, before the shadow of the second war. Personally, I do not think that either war (and of course not the atomic bomb) had any influence upon either the plot or the manner of its unfolding. Perhaps in landscape. The Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme. They owe more to William Morris and his Huns and Romans, as in The House of the Wolfings or The Roots of the Mountains." [Letter 226 in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien].

That Tolkien mentions his experience in World War I at all is startling, as he rarely did this, and certainly not until the end of his life. In an interview eight years later, Tolkien confirmed the influence of his experience in the trenches on his writing. “I remember miles and miles of seething, tortured earth, perhaps best described in the chapters about the approaches to Mordor. It was a searing experience.” [Interview by Keith Brace, “In the Footsteps of Hobbits,” Birmingham Post (March 25, 1968)]

In almost every way, Tolkien’s “The Passage of the Marshes” presents a deeply frightening and suffocating experience for the reader, as the three figures—the two Hobbits and the decrepit Gollum, once a Hobbit himself—move across a landscape that has become, and continues to become through the chapter, devoid of grace. Unlike the area of the Old Forest (in The Fellowship of the Ring) that had once been the sight of a terrific battle in the North, the Dead Marshes, and the No-man’s land, just to the northwest of Mordor, has no guardian spirit or caretaker such as a Goldberry or Tom Bombadil. In the Old Forest, the evil of the angry trees and undead wights cannot prevail against the natural goodness of Tom and Goldberry, masters of the land. No such masters ever took hold of the Dead Marshes. Instead, there still lingers the rotting souls of elves, orcs, and men, all the remains of the Last Alliance against Sauron, a pyrrhic victory won more than 3,000 years earlier.

Birzer concludes:

If there is a passage in all of English literature that better describes the horrors of the twentieth-century—its world wars, its gulags, its holocaust camps—I have yet to encounter it.

In a genius moment of anti-Romantic Romanticism, “The Passage of the Marshes” echoes the structure of a medieval church—from the “lights” of the purgatorial recesses to the buttresses of the decayed walls to the obscene graveyard. This is a church unprotected, unguarded, unclean. As Frodo and Sam journey through it, even memory itself is elusive and unattainable.

As ghosts, Frodo and Sam continue through this nightmare realm, itself devoid of grace, armed only with the Elvish lembas, what would be translated into English as “the bread of life.”

If there is a story in the English language that better grasps the meaning of life and perseverance in this world of sorrows, I have yet to encounter it.

I hope that Professor Birzer returns to Wichita soon to talk Christopher Dawson or Charles Carroll of Carrollton, about whom he has also written.

Corpus Christi Thursday and Sunday

I have already celebrated the Solemnity of Corpus Christi: our Latin Mass (Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite) community and Blessed Sacrament Parish collaborated on a Thursday night Mass with a Eucharistic Procession and Benediction. The choir of Blessed Sacrament sang the Sine Nomine Mass of Palestrina--and will again this morning at the 11:00 Mass today--and we chanted St. Thomas Aquinas' great sequence for the feast during Mass and the Pange Lingua during the procession, concluding with Tantum Ergo back at the Altar. Father Thomas Hoisington offered Mass beautifully and offered a great homily on the Paschal Mystery: the Passion and the Mass.

Pope St. John Paul II expressed the Church's doctrine of and his own love for the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ in his 2013 encyclical letter ECCLESIA DE EUCHARISTIA:

3. The Church was born of the paschal mystery. For this very reason the Eucharist, which is in an outstanding way the sacrament of the paschal mystery, stands at the centre of the Church's life. This is already clear from the earliest images of the Church found in the Acts of the Apostles: “They devoted themselves to the Apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (2:42). The “breaking of the bread” refers to the Eucharist. Two thousand years later, we continue to relive that primordial image of the Church. At every celebration of the Eucharist, we are spiritually brought back to the paschal Triduum: to the events of the evening of Holy Thursday, to the Last Supper and to what followed it. The institution of the Eucharist sacramentally anticipated the events which were about to take place, beginning with the agony in Gethsemane. Once again we see Jesus as he leaves the Upper Room, descends with his disciples to the Kidron valley and goes to the Garden of Olives. Even today that Garden shelters some very ancient olive trees. Perhaps they witnessed what happened beneath their shade that evening, when Christ in prayer was filled with anguish “and his sweat became like drops of blood falling down upon the ground” (cf. Lk 22:44). The blood which shortly before he had given to the Church as the drink of salvation in the sacrament of the Eucharist, began to be shed; its outpouring would then be completed on Golgotha to become the means of our redemption: “Christ... as high priest of the good things to come..., entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption” (Heb 9:11- 12).

4. The hour of our redemption. Although deeply troubled, Jesus does not flee before his “hour”. “And what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour?' No, for this purpose I have come to this hour” (Jn 12:27). He wanted his disciples to keep him company, yet he had to experience loneliness and abandonment: “So, could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation” (Mt 26:40- 41). Only John would remain at the foot of the Cross, at the side of Mary and the faithful women. The agony in Gethsemane was the introduction to the agony of the Cross on Good Friday. The holy hour, the hour of the redemption of the world. Whenever the Eucharist is celebrated at the tomb of Jesus in Jerusalem, there is an almost tangible return to his “hour”, the hour of his Cross and glorification. Every priest who celebrates Holy Mass, together with the Christian community which takes part in it, is led back in spirit to that place and that hour.

“He was crucified, he suffered death and was buried; he descended to the dead; on the third day he rose again”. The words of the profession of faith are echoed by the words of contemplation and proclamation: “This is the wood of the Cross, on which hung the Saviour of the world. Come, let us worship”. This is the invitation which the Church extends to all in the afternoon hours of Good Friday. She then takes up her song during the Easter season in order to proclaim: “The Lord is risen from the tomb; for our sake he hung on the Cross, Alleluia”.

5. “Mysterium fidei! - The Mystery of Faith!”. When the priest recites or chants these words, all present acclaim: “We announce your death, O Lord, and we proclaim your resurrection, until you come in glory”.

In these or similar words the Church, while pointing to Christ in the mystery of his passion,also reveals her own mystery: Ecclesia de Eucharistia. By the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost the Church was born and set out upon the pathways of the world, yet a decisive moment in her taking shape was certainly the institution of the Eucharist in the Upper Room. Her foundation and wellspring is the whole Triduum paschale, but this is as it were gathered up, foreshadowed and “concentrated' for ever in the gift of the Eucharist. In this gift Jesus Christ entrusted to his Church the perennial making present of the paschal mystery. With it he brought about a mysterious “oneness in time” between that Triduum and the passage of the centuries.

The thought of this leads us to profound amazement and gratitude. In the paschal event and the Eucharist which makes it present throughout the centuries, there is a truly enormous “capacity” which embraces all of history as the recipient of the grace of the redemption. This amazement should always fill the Church assembled for the celebration of the Eucharist. But in a special way it should fill the minister of the Eucharist. For it is he who, by the authority given him in the sacrament of priestly ordination, effects the consecration. It is he who says with the power coming to him from Christ in the Upper Room: “This is my body which will be given up for you This is the cup of my blood, poured out for you...”. The priest says these words, or rather he puts his voice at the disposal of the One who spoke these words in the Upper Room and who desires that they should be repeated in every generation by all those who in the Church ministerially share in his priesthood.

This morning, I'll attend Mass of the External Celebration of the Solemnity of Corpus Christi at the Spiritual Life Center. Professor Bradley Birzer, author of Sanctifying the World: The Augustinian Life and Mind of Christopher Dawson and other works will speak on Russell Kirk and J.R.R. Tolkien on the last day of the Fourth Annual Catholic Culture Conference:

1:30 p.m. Bradley Birzer, presenting “The Christian Humanism of Russell Kirk—one of Catholicism’s greatest (but largely forgotten) 20th century figures”

A convert, Kirk went from spiritualism to Stoic Paganism to Catholicism in the first 45 years of his life. From 1964 to his death in 1994, he served the Church faithfully, in word, if not always in deed. He was, however, one of the single most charitable men of his age.

2:30 p.m. Break, and book signing/continued conversation with Dr. Birzer

3:00 p.m. Bradley Birzer, presenting “The Inklings and J.R.R. Tolkien’s mythology”

Most of you know something about J.R.R. Tolkien and his monumental work, The Lord of the Rings, and the literary impact of his friendship with C.S. Lewis and the rest of the “Inklings”. Below the surface, however, there is much in Tolkien’s work that lies hidden to the casual reader. In this lecture, Dr. Birzer will explore Tolkien’s mythology as a Catholic answer to the terrorist ideologies of the previous century.

Report on the Second Annual Catholic Culture Conference

Last year I wrote: "The Catholic Culture Conference was a great success in my view, with excellent presenters, a great venue, and wonderful fellowship during the lunch and breaks. Our local chapter of the American Chesterton Society made some good contacts and we hope to gain new members and/or guests at our monthly meetings." I can repeat those comments this year too, after the second annual Catholic Culture Conference, with the addition that I am happy with how my presentation was received Saturday afternoon. Dusty Gates announced that there will be a third annual Catholic Culture Conference next year (that's 2017!--2020 is in sight!) on April 28 and 29, with Monsignor Stuart Sweatland, the President of Donnelly College in Kansas City, Kansas as the keynote speaker--with the specific topic to be announced.

Professor Anthony Esolen gave three talks: one Friday night and two Saturday morning and then headed back to Providence, RI after lunch. Poetry was one of his themes, and he cited a poem of G.K. Chesterton's Friday night, "The Holy of Holies":

‘ELDER father, though thine eyes
Shine with hoary mysteries,
Canst thou tell what in the heart
Of a cowslip blossom lies?

‘Smaller than all lives that be,
Secret as the deepest sea,
Stands a little house of seeds,
Like an elfin’s granary.

‘Speller of the stones and weeds,
Skilled in Nature’s crafts and creeds,
Tell me what is in the heart
Of the smallest of the seeds.’

‘God Almighty, and with Him
Cherubim and Seraphim,
Filling all eternity—
Adonai Elohim.’

In his second lecture, he emphasized the fact that in Dante's Divine Comedy, poetry is not mentioned in the Inferno, and is replaced by prayer and song in the Paradiso, but is included in the Purgatorio. He highlighted these aspects (from the foreword of another translation) of Dante's journey through Purgatory and toward Heaven:

Of the three sections of the poem, only Purgatory happens on the earth, as our lives do, with our feet on the ground, crossing a beach, climbing a mountain. All three parts of the poem are images of our lives, of our life, but there is an intimacy peculiar to the Purgatorio. Here the times of day recur with all the sensations and associations that the hours bring with them, the hours of the world we are living in as we read the poem. Tenderness, affection, poignancy, the enchantment of music, the feeling of the evanescence of the moment in a context beyond time, occur in the Purgatorio as they do in few other places in the poem. And hope, as it is experienced nowhere else in the poem, for there is none in Hell, and Paradise is fulfilment itself. Hope is central to the Purgatorio and is there from the moment we stand on the shore at the foot of the mountain, before the stars fade. To the very top of the mountain hope is mixed with pain, which brings it still closer to the living present. . . .

The Purgatorio is the section of the poem in which poets, poetry, and music recur with fond vividness and intimacy. The meetings between poets — Virgil's with his fellow Mantuan Sordello, over twelve hundred years after Virgil's own life on earth; his meeting with the Roman poet Statius; Dante's with Guido Guinizzelli and with Arnaut Daniel and the singer Casella — are cherished and moving moments. It is worth noting something about the current of poetic tradition that Dante had come to in his youth.

And in his third lecture, Esolen described the three dementias of our current day: fatal errors in category, premise, and logic.

The Spiritual Life Center will probably post video or audio recordings of these presentations. 

I also attended Dusty Gates' presentation on St. George, in which he explored some themes from the Inklings and G.K. Chesterton on true myths, traditions, and fairyland. Matthew Umbarger of Newman University described how rabbis read scripture and interpreted it with a great deal of imagination and creativity to delve deeper into its mysteries--midrash. He gave us an example of Christian midrash, the Gospel of Nicodemus, which depicts the Harrowing of Hell, when Jesus freed the dead from Sheol:

1 And as Satan the prince, and Hell, spoke this together, suddenly there came a voice as of thunder and a spiritual cry: Remove, O princes, your gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in. When Hell heard that he said unto Satan the prince: Depart from me and go out of mine abode: if thou be a mighty man of war, fight thou against the King of glory. But what hast thou to do with him? And Hell cast Satan forth out of his dwelling. Then said Hell unto his wicked ministers: Shut ye the hard gates of brass and put on them the bars of iron and withstand stoutly, lest we that hold captivity be taken captive.

2 But when all the multitude of the saints heard it, they spake with a voice of rebuking unto Hell: Open thy gates, that the King of glory may come in. And David cried out, saying: Did I not when I was alive upon earth, foretell unto you: Let them give thanks unto the Lord, even his mercies and his wonders unto the children of men; who hath broken the gates of brass and smitten the bars of iron in sunder? he hath taken them out of the way of their iniquity. And thereafter in like manner Esaias said: Did not I when I was alive upon earth foretell unto you: The dead shall arise, and they that are in the tombs shall rise again, and they that are in the earth shall rejoice, for the dew which cometh of the Lord is their healing? And again I said: O death, where is thy sting? O Hell, where is thy victory?

3 When they heard that of Esaias, all the saints said unto Hell: Open thy gates: now shalt thou be overcome and weak and without strength. And there came a great voice as of thunder, saying: Remove, O princes, your gates, and be ye lift up ye doors of hell, and the King of glory shall come in. And when Hell saw that they so cried out twice, he said, as if he knew it not: Who is the King of glory? And David answered Hell and said: The words of this cry do I know, for by his spirit I prophesied the same; and now I say unto thee that which I said before: The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle, he is the King of glory. And: The Lord looked down from heaven that he might hear the groanings of them that are in fetters and deliver the children of them that have been slain. And now, O thou most foul and stinking Hell, open thy gates, that the King of glory may come in. And as David spake thus unto Hell, the Lord of majesty appeared in the form of a man and lightened the eternal darkness and brake the bonds that could not be loosed: and the succour of his everlasting might visited us that sat in the deep darkness of our transgressions and in the shadow of death of our sins.

It's apocryphal, of course, but it's the background of  one of the York Mystery Plays and the great reading in the Office for Holy Saturday!

Another Catholic Literary Convert

Coincidentally, I had just read George Mackay Brown's name in Father John Vidmar's The Catholic Church Through the Ages (second edition); then I see that Joseph Pearce has written an article in The Catholic Herald about George Mackay Brown, who

was raised in a lukewarm Presbyterian family, where “all the words that clustered about [Catholicism] – rosary, pope, confession, relics, purgatory, monks, penance – had the same sinister connotations”. Yet Brown, a great and underrated Scottish poet who died 20 years ago on April 13, 1996, would be received into the Catholic Church in 1961, shortly before his 40th birthday.

The process by which he overcame these inherited prejudices is recounted in his semi-autobiographical story The Tarn and the Rosary (1974), especially in the letter that Colm Sinclair, a character in the story, sends home to explain to his parents why he took the unthinkable step of becoming a Catholic: “What saves us is ceremony … Ceremony makes everything bearable and beautiful for us. Transfigured by ceremony, the truths we could not otherwise endure come to us … It is this saving ceremony that you call ‘idolatry’ and ‘mumbo-jumbo’.”

This salvific “ceremony” was of course the Mass. Completing the letter, Colm walks to a nearby church to experience the beauty of the liturgy: “The celebrant entered … Once again, for the thousandth time, Colm watched the ancient endless beautiful ceremony, the exchange of gifts between earth and heaven, dust and spirit, man and God. The transfigured Bread shone momentarily in the saffron fingers of the celebrant.”

Having been transformed and transfigured by the sheer beauty of the Mass, it might be said that Brown’s conversion was essentially aesthetic. And yet, as is illustrated in his multifarious works – verse, short stories, novels and essays – he was acutely aware that beauty points towards the good and the true, forming a transcendental trinity which reflects the Trinity itself.

In contrast to the beauty of the Mass, the Reformation casts a gloom-laden shadow over Brown’s poems and stories. In “Master Halcrow, Priest”, one of the stories in A Calendar of Love (1967), religious images are callously and iconoclastically destroyed; and in his play, A Spell for Green Corn (1970), the Reformation is held responsible for the destruction of the old faith of the island folk and its replacement with a barren and lifeless puritanism: “The Word was imprisoned between black boards, and chained and padlocked, in the pulpit of the kirk.”

Read the rest there. More about Brown here at the Scottish Poetry Library.

I'll be at the Catholic Culture Conference all day today at the Spiritual Life Center, trying to decide which sessions to attend when I have a choice and making my own presentation:

Saturday, April 23, 2016

7:30am Holy Mass- Chapel of Mary the First Disciple

8:15am Breakfast and book sales

9am Opening prayer in Main Assembly Room

Plenary Lecture by Anthony Esolen- “Dante and the Glorious Liberty of the Children of God”

10am Break

10:15am Pillar Lecture by Anthony Esolen- “Assaults on Spiritual Liberty”

11am Break

11:15am Breakout Sessions

Bo Bonner- “Purifying the Passions through Wonder: Why Children should read Homer & Virgil” - Marian Room

Dusty Gates- “Imagination and Heroism: The Mystery of St. George the Dragonslayer” St. Joseph Room

Fr. Ken Van Haverbeke- “Touched by the Divine through our Imagination” Main Assembly Room.

12:00pm Lunch (Dining Room)

1:00pm Pillar Lecture by Stephanie Mann “Chesterton, Cobbett, and Merry Old England”

2:00pm Break

2:15pm Breakout Sessions

Matthew Umbarger- "Reading the Bible with an Overactive Imagination: Midrash as a Tonic for Fundamentalism"- Main Assembly Room

Jackie Arnold- “Inspiring a Catholic Imagination in Children”- Marian Room

Bo Bonner- “Chewing on God: Scripture, Prayer, and Lectio Divina”- St. Joseph Room

3:00pm Break

3:15pm Panel Conversation: Questions, Answers, and Comments

4:00pm Closing Prayer and Dismissal

Our Greater Wichita American Chesterton Society local group will have a table with information about our meetings and Chesterton and Eighth Day Books will also be there with tables and tables of books!

With Chesterton on the Middle Ages

Preparing for my presentation for the Catholic Culture Conference this weekend at the Spiritual Life Center ("Cobbett and Chesterton on Merry Old England"), I've been reading books and essays by Chesterton. Registration closes today at noon, so you'd better call in now!

Throughout his Short History of England, his study of Chaucer, and many essays in which he mentions the Middle Ages, Chesterton notes that the twentieth century Englishman (or woman) knows nothing about the Middle Ages except what prejudices he or she has received about the darkness and obscurity of that Catholic era. As an example, The American Chesterton Society posts this essay from the Illustrated London News, November 15, 1913, "Getting to Know the Middle Ages":

It is quite natural that the prosperous people in our time should know no history. If they did know it, they would know the highly unedifying history of how they became prosperous. It is quite natural, I say, that they should not know history: but why do they think they do? Here is a sentence taken at random from a book written by one of the most cultivated of our younger critics, very well written and most reliable on its own subject, which is a modern one. The writer says: “There was little social or political advance in the Middle Ages” until the Reformation and the Renaissance. Now I might just as well say that there was little advance in science and invention in the nineteenth century until the coming of William Morris: and then excuse myself by saying that I am not personally interested in spinning-jennies and jelly-fish – which is indeed the case. For that is all that the writer really means: he means he is not personally interested in heralds or mitred abbots. That is all right; but why, when writing about something that did not exist in the Middle Ages, should he dogmatise about a story that he has evidently never heard? Yet it might be made a very interesting story.

A little while before the Norman Conquest, countries such as our own were a dust of yet feeble feudalism, continually scattered in eddies by barbarians, barbarians who had never ridden a horse. There was hardly a brick or stone house in England. There were scarcely any roads except beaten paths: there was practically no law except local customs. Those were the Dark Ages out of which the Middle Ages came. Take the Middle Ages two hundred years after the Norman Conquest and nearly as long before the beginnings of the Reformation. The great cities have arisen; the burghers are privileged and important; Labour has been organised into free and responsible Trade Unions; the Parliaments are powerful and disputing with the princes; slavery has almost disappeared; the great Universities are open and teaching with the scheme of education that Huxley so much admired; Republics as proud and civic as the Republics of the pagans stand like marble statues along the Mediterranean; and all over the North men have built such churches as men may never build again. And this, the essential part of which was done in one century rather than two, is what the critic calls “little social or political advance.” There is scarcely an important modern institution under which he lives, from the college that trained him to the Parliament that rules him, that did not make its main advance in that time.

Read the rest there.

Also from The American Chesterton Society, Dale Ahlquist writes about Chesterton on Chaucer:

Chesterton has often been dismissed for blindly idealizing the Middle Ages, but the real problem is quite the opposite. The modern world automatically attacks the Middle Ages as something backwards, dark, and superstitious, the enemy of reason and liberty. Chesterton merely defended the truth that reason and liberty enjoyed a high point in medieval times that the world has not really seen since. He acknowledged that there were still problems in those times, and there are certainly many things that we can rightfully regard as improvements. But history is not a story of progress. Our fortunes move both backward and forward. While technology provides a kind of liberty, it also provides a kind of slavery. While the experts are useful as servants, they are unbearable as masters.

In the Middle Ages the peasant class, according to Chesterton, was still successfully fighting off the rise of the Aristocratic state. He refers to a famous peasant uprising where they “killed the lawyers; a comprehensible and (relatively) even commendable course; though they also showed some disposition to hang anybody who could read or write; which is perhaps carrying the distrust of professionalism too far.”

The most difficult thing for us to understand about that culture is that it was purely Catholic, there were no Reformers or Rebels to contend with. The theology was solid and widespread. The criticisms of the Church came in the form of making fun of stuffy Roman officialism, or, in the case of Geoffrey Chaucer, making fun of friars.

As I recall, though dimmed by years, when I studied The Canterbury Tales in college, it was as if the Reformation had already happened in Chaucer's time: the Church was corrupt; Indulgences were for sale; we were as anti-clerical as Lollards or Voltaire; Martin Luther came far too late to the ball! After this project, I think I need to read Chesterton on Chaucer and then re-read The Canterbury Tales without jaundice. After all, April is not over yet!

Whan that Aprille, with hise shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
So priketh hem Nature in hir corages-
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunturbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for the seke
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.

First Printed Notice: The Annual Catholic Culture Conference

We are just two months away from the annual Catholic Culture Conference at the Spiritual Life Center. From the Wichita diocesan newspaper, The Catholic Advance:

. . . A Catholic culture is an environment which fosters our authentic development in mind, body, and spirit. John Senior described this culture as “the natural environment of truth, assisted by art, ordered intrinsically, that is, from within – to the praise, reverence, and service of God our Lord. To restore it, we must learn its language.”

This is the motivation, and hope, for the 2nd Annual Catholic Culture Conference April 22-23 at the Spiritual Life Center. The theme of this year’s conference is “Reviving the Catholic Imagination.”

Our keynote speaker is Dr. Anthony Esolen. Professor Esolen currently serves as professor of English at Providence College, and is perhaps best known for his widely acclaimed translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. He has also authored several original works, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization and the satirically titled Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child. He regularly writes for publications including The Catholic Thing and Crisis Magazine.

Dr. Esolen will give three presentations at the conference. A keynote presentation entitled “The Smallest of the Seeds: The Union of All Things in Christ” on Friday, April 22, followed “Dante and the Glorious Liberty of the Children of God” and “Assaults on Spiritual Liberty” on Saturday, April 23. The conference will also feature other presentations by regional and local speakers including Bo Bonner, Stephanie Mann, Jackie Arnold, Matthew Umbarger, and Fr. Ken Van Haverbeke.
Gates is assistant program director at the center.

Want to hear Esolen?

Space is limited to the first 150 registrants. Sign up early by calling the Spiritual Life Center at (316) 744-0167 or online at SLCWichita.org. Registration includes a wine and appetizer social Friday evening, and breakfast and lunch on Saturday. Early bird rates, by April 11, are commuter $55, single occupancy $85, double occupancy $75.

I'm preparing my presentation now: "Cobbett, Chesterton, and Merry Old England."

My 2016 Events and Speaking Calendar

Fortunately for me, I have a secretary, well, desk, because my calendar is filling up this year with events and speaking engagements.

This coming Friday and Saturday: I am attending the 2016 Eighth Day Institute Symposium. As this article in The Wichita Eagle described this year's topic and speakers:

The ecumenical Eighth Day Institute that seeks to renew culture through faith and learning is using the Paris Climate Conference and Pope Francis’ recent encyclical on the environment as a backdrop to its 2016 symposium, “Soil and Sacrament: The World as Gift.”

Mike Aquilina, Hans Boersma, Rod Dreher and Vigen Guorian will be among the speakers at the symposium from Jan. 14 to 16 at St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral.

The symposium will explore the notion of creation as a gift from God and humanity’s role as grateful stewards of the gift.

Guorian, who is an author, gardener and professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia, will give two keynotes: one, a view from the garden called “Soil & Sacrament: Earth Meditations,” and the other a view from the classroom: “World as Gift: The Earth Poetry of Wendell Berry.” The event also includes a banquet with reflections by the speakers and live music.

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/living/religion/article51315235.html#storylink=cpy

On Thursday, February 4, I am scheduled to present at the Church of the Resurrection for a book reading group. The book they are reading: Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation! I'll follow up with a presentation in April to conclude their series.

On Saturday, February 13, I am scheduled to present at an all-day Chesterton Conference hosted by the Four States G.K. Chesterton Society at the St. Pius X Newman Center, Pittsburg State University, Pittsburg, Kansas. More information to come! (I'll be talking to one of the organizers today.)

The Eighth Day Institute is hosting an important meeting about the situation of Christians in the Middle East and what we can do to help them in February. More info here.

In April, I'll be one of the presenters at the second annual Catholic Culture Conference at the Spiritual Life Center in Wichita, Kansas, which will be headlined by Professor Anthony Esolen, with the topic "Reviving the Catholic Imagination." (My presentation will be on Chesterton, Cobbett, and Merry Old England.)

The Catholic Culture Conference is an opportunity for faithful Christians to come together for formation and fellowship. The program intends to promote Catholic values in personal and family life, as well as in society at large.

The Conference will consist of multiple sessions, each geared towards some particular component of Catholic life in our modern age. A combination of large group lectures and smaller breakout sessions will give each participant the opportunity to learn more about how Catholicism relates to–and is intended to positively change-our culture.

Our Catholic Faith is not just a notional idea. It is a concrete reality with the power to open the hearts and minds of all peoples. It can make the societies in which we live flourish in the way God intended. This Conference will give participants knowledge and inspiration to go about doing just that.

Our Keynote speaker is teaches Renaissance English Literature and the Development of Western Civilization at Providence College. He is a senior editor for Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity, and a regular contributor to Crisis Magazine.

On June 21, I'll be speaking on an English heroine, Margaret More Roper, at the Sisters of Sophia meeting of the Eighth Day Institute. (Ladies only).

Finally--so far--I'll go back to the Spiritual Life Center to present in the Docentium dinner/speech series on Blessed John Henry Newman: Faith, Family and Friends (August).

Every month the Wichita Area Chesterton Society meets on the third Friday at Eighth Day Books to discuss Chesterton's works. Once we finish The Wells and the Shallows, I think we are going to read the biography of Chesterton's wife Frances: The Woman Who was Chesterton by Nancy Carpenter Brown. I also look forward to the monthly meetings of the Sisters of Sophia at the Ladder.

If you want me to speak at an event or meeting, please contact me and we can work something out. Part of our negotiations must include effective promotion of the event, an opportunity (if my talk is related to the English Reformation) to sell and sign copies of my book, and travel expenses if outside Wichita. For Catholic churches in the Wichita diocese, please contact the Speakers Bureau to start the process of scheduling an event.

Thank you very much and Happy New Year!

Report on the Catholic Culture Conference

The Catholic Culture Conference was a great success in my view, with excellent presenters, a great venue, and wonderful fellowship during the lunch and breaks. Our local chapter of the American Chesterton Society made some good contacts and we hope to gain new members and/or guests at our monthly meetings.

Dale Ahlquist is a remarkably approachable key note speaker--highly recommended. He mingled with the attendees immediately when we started gathering Friday night. His presentations were filled with Chestertonian wisdom and winsomeness. All the local speakers--I could not bilocate today so only saw four of the six--acquitted themselves well (I can never bilocate of course).

Next year's event is already scheduled and Anthony Esolen will be the keynote speaker. My husband and I took these pictures today:

Also, I feel rather hopeful about attendance at the St. Thomas More presentation I'm making on Saturday, May 2nd, as several attending spoke to me about it and Dusty highlighted it during one of his announcements. One friend is going to drive from Frontenac, Kansas--and then we are going to go to lunch!

As ever with such events, the camaraderie and connections are as wonderful as the learning experience. Not even the fact that the power steering belt on our truck broke on the way home could mar the day!

Walk-Ins Welcome at the Catholic Culture Conference

We enjoyed Dale Ahlquist's first presentation last night--he commented that he looks forward to the day when the Spiritual Life Center unveils the portrait of St. Gilbert K. Chesterton among the Doctors of the Church in the main conference room.

The program begins this morning with Holy Mass at 7:30 a.m. and breakfast before Dale Ahlquist's next talk at 9:00 a.m.: “The Trouble with Catholic Social Teaching”. Then the local speakers take the stage and after lunch and more local speakers, there's a panel discussion.

My husband took this picture of Mr. Ahlquist: he threatened us a few times with a two or three hour lecture, but his hour long talk about G.K. Chesterton, the Dark Ages, King Arthur, and today just flew by. More info here. Eighth Day Books has a table; Dale Ahlquist has a table, and our local American Chesterton Society has a table (there are lots of books available for purchase!).

Beware the Ides of April: Taxes and the Catholic Culture Conference

Midnight tonight is the deadline for your taxes to be postmarked. Registration for the Catholic Culture Conference at the Spiritual Life Center here in Wichita has the same deadline: midnight tonight:

Join Dale Ahlquist and many Diocesan speakers for this great conference about being Catholic in the world.

The Catholic Culture Conference is an opportunity for faithful Christians to come together for formation and fellowship. The program intends to promote Catholic values in personal and family life, as well as in society at large.

The Conference will consist of multiple sessions, each geared towards some particular component of Catholic life in our modern age. A combination of large group lectures and smaller breakout sessions will give each participant the opportunity to learn more about how Catholicism relates to–and is intended to positively change-our culture.

Our Catholic Faith is not just a notional idea. It is a concrete reality with the power to open the hearts and minds of all peoples. It can make the societies in which we live flourish in the way God intended. This Conference will give participants knowledge and inspiration to go about doing just that.

Our Keynote speaker is one of the most respected G.K. Chesterton scholars in the world, Mr. Dale Ahlquist. He will give a keynote lecture entitled "The Glorious Side of Social Decline" and a second lecture on "The Trouble with Catholic Social Teaching."

The Conference will also feature the following Diocesan speakers: Jackie Arnold, Bo Bonner, Dusty Gates, James Lewis III and Laurie Robinson.

And while you're hobnobbing with other cultured Catholics, you could find out more about my St. Thomas More presentation on Saturday, May 2. Also, our local chapter of the American Chesterton Society will have a table with info about our group and what we've read so far.

Wichita Area Chesterton Group Reading "The Well and the Shallows"

We held our second meeting of 2015 at Eighth Day Books last Friday and continued our reading of G.K. Chesterton's The Well and the Shallows. The American Chesterton Society publishes this description of this collection of essays and articles:

A few years after his conversion, G.K. Chesterton began contributing articles to Catholic magazines on both sides of the Atlantic. The bulk of these of essays were reprinted in The Thing: Why I am a Catholic (1929) and this book, The Well and the Shallows (1935), which could almost be called The Thing: Part II or, as he suggests, Why I Would Have Become a Catholic if I Had Not Already Done So.

As always, he takes on all subjects, writing about anything and everything, but not only are these essays more specifically Catholic than his other works, there is clearly a sense of foreboding. He warns in the introduction that there are not as many jokes as his readers are used to. There is an urgent and somber sense that there are very dark and desperate days ahead, and that among other dangerous developments, the worst war that the world has ever seen is just over the horizon. He saw before anyone else that something terrible was about to happen to the Jews, and he proclaimed that he would die defending the last Jew in Europe. In spite of that, there are still fools who accuse him of hating the Jews.

Chesterton’s prophecies are chilling. But what is perhaps more shocking than his prophecies falling on deaf ears at the time, is that everything he said is still true – and still ignored. We have forgotten completely how bad the world got and how it got that way. Chesterton lays it all out in this book. What do these trends have in common: Birth control, State-enforced education, scientific officialism, academic deconstruction, and Anti-Catholicism? They are standard elements of the culture in present day America. But they were also the exact same trends seen in the rise of Nazi Germany.

The essay concludes with some comments about suffering and self-denial! Perfect for Lent:

There are two particular groups who find this book especially challenging to their ideas: Protestants and Catholics.

Protestantism is a large category and the only common factor it has is anti-Catholicism. Chesterton sympathizes with new religious movements. He knows that these people are seeking God. He remembers Christ’s dictum that he who seeks finds. But he also notes that most Protestants movements have lost their original reasons for existing. They simply take on some new form of anti-Catholicism to justify their position of remaining outside of the Church. Ultimately, Chesterton argues, the Catholic Church is right and everything thing else is wrong, or perhaps more accurately, the Church is complete and everything else is incomplete. The Church defends not only the eternal truths but the all the good things that are under attack in the modern world: the family, the poor, self-government, self-control. Protestants who at first feel that their toes are getting stepped on soon realize that Chesterton’s complete view of things has their own best interests in mind. The Church is the Well. It is deep and truth is at the bottom of it. Everything else is the Shallows.

It is when Chesterton starts talking about Catholic social teaching that many Catholics start suddenly going deaf or looking for something else to read. Chesterton appeals to the Church’s long history of serving the poor and bringing about social justice. He believes that Church teachings would be best fulfilled in the implementation of widespread property ownership, self-sufficiency, and family-centered trades. For those who continue to be puzzled by Distributism, perhaps the best one-chapter explanation of it anywhere can be found in the essay entitled: “Reflections on a Rotten Apple.”

There are people who enjoy Chesterton’s abstract thinking, but get prickly when he goes concrete. It is fine to argue that the Catholic Church is right, and modernism is wrong, but it gets downright uncomfortable when Chesterton starts talking about some of the real practical effects of being Catholic. It may mean making some sacrifices. Giving something up. Suffering, even. But we forget how deep is the well. Not only do we draw truth from it, we also draw strength and refreshment and eternal satisfaction.

Dale Ahlquist, President of the American Chesterton Society, will talk about Distributism and Catholic teaching about social justice at the Catholic Culture Conference scheduled at the Spiritual Life Center here in Wichita on April 17 and 18. More info here.

We are reading The Well and the Shallows in the the Collected Works edition from Ignatius Press, but Eighth Day Books also has the separate volume, pictured above, available.

Kansas Has Three Local American Chesterton Societies!

While attending the Eighth Day Institute Symposium I was very happy to see Father Robert McElwee and his wife Ginger. Father McElwee is a retired Catholic priest of the Diocese of Wichita--he had been an Episcopalian minister but as a convert to Catholicism was able to become a (married) priest under Pope St. John Paul II's Pastoral Provision. The Pastoral Provision was kind of an antecedent to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI's Anglican Ordinariate.

I gave Father McElwee a review copy of my book--he later told me that he would read it during Lent (my husband said that's a perfect penance; I love my husband, but . ..). We hope to collaborate some time in the near future when Father can broadcast some "local" programming (right now he's just carrying EWTN's schedule).

Father McElwee has started a Catholic radio station in Southeast Kansas, KOOJ, which stands for Kause of Our Joy, and he and his wife host the local American Chesterton Society group in their home, according to this article:

For the past year and a half, Fr. McElwee, retired priest, and his wife, Ginger, have hosted a Chesterton discussion group on the second Sunday of the month in the living room at their home, 4084 Mt. Carmel Road, Frontenac.

“I’ll do a traditional Latin Mass at 4 p.m. for those who wish to attend it, then around 5 p.m. we have our Chesterton discussion group with food and some adult beverages,” Fr. McElwee said.

“We do designate a book, a chapter of a book, a poem or essay for discussion,” added Michael Ehling, an avid member of the group who assists the priest with it.

They are going to read The Flying Inn at their February and March meetings. Our Greater Wichita group is reading The Well and the Shallows, as I've mentioned--but I'm not sure what the Northeast Kansas group is reading (they meet in Eudora, Kansas). Perhaps we'll all meet up together at the Catholic Culture Conference in Wichita this April, at which Dale Ahlquist will speak!