Chesterton and Christmas at Eighth Day Books

As George Marlin wrote at The Catholic Thing on December 29, 2009: " . . .Chesterton’s publisher at Sheed and Ward (and later his biographer), Maisie Ward, described his essays as going “to the heart of his thought. Some men, it may be, are best moved to reform by hate, but Chesterton was best moved by love and nowhere does that love shine more clearly than in all he wrote about Christmas.”

The Greater Wichita local society of the American Chesterton Society will gather tonight to celebration this Chestertonian Spirit of Christmas, sharing poems, essays, insights, and refreshments. We'll gather on the second floor of Eighth Day Books at 6:30 p.m.

In January, we'll continue our discussion of Lepanto, reading two essays by Chesterton: "The True Romance" and "If Don John of Austria Had Married Mary Queen of Scots". The title of the second essay is very enticing! What do you think would have happened if the victor of Lepanto had married the Queen of Scotland?

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."

Chesterton, Duffy, Dawson, and Lewis: 50 Best Books of the 20th Century

Intercollegiate Review re-published their list of "The Fifty Best Books of the 20th Century" on their blog and I'm glad to see that several of my favorites made the list:

The turn of the century is a time to take stock of the path we have followed, the better to discern where we ought to be going. Historical discernment requires coming to judgment about what has been noble, good, and beneficial in our time, but also about what has been base, bad, and harmful. In the life of the mind, what has our century produced that deserves admiration? What has it produced that deserves only contempt?

Earlier this year, the Modern Library published a list styled The Hundred Best Nonfiction Books of the Twentieth Century. A list of significant books can make a compelling statement about how we are to understand an age. In judging the quality of a book, one necessarily judges the perception and the profundity which the book displays, as well as the character of the book’s influence.

Yet many were dissatisfied with the several “Best” lists published in the past year, finding them biased, too contemporary, or simply careless. So the Intercollegiate Review (IR) set out to assemble its own critically serious roster of the Best—and the Worst—Books of the Century. To assist us in this task, we relied on the advice of a group of exceptional academics from a variety of disciplines.

To make the task more manageable, our lists include only nonfiction books originally published in English, and so certain giants of the century such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn will not be found here, on two counts. We left the definition of “Best” up to our consultants, but we defined “Worst” for them as books which were widely celebrated in their day but which upon reflection can be seen as foolish, wrong-headed, or even pernicious.

There was broad agreement about a majority of titles, but there were also fierce disagreements. Several titles appeared on both “Best” and “Worst” lists. We have tried to be faithful to the contributions of our consultants, but the responsibility for final composition of the list lay with the editors of the IR.

Among their choices:

C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1947)--Number 2 on their top five list!
Preferable to Lewis’s other remarkable books simply because of the title, which reveals the true intent of liberalism.

G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908)
The master of paradox demonstrates that nothing is more “original” and “new” than Christian tradition.

Christopher Dawson, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture (1950)
An essential work of European history that shows how the rise of Christianity altered civilization in the West. Credits the Roman Catholic Church with keeping civilization alive after the fall of Rome and during the barbarian invasions.

Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (1992)
Revisionist history as it was meant to be written: as a correction to centuries of Whig historiography. Demonstrates that the brute force of the state can destroy even the most beloved institutions. What do you know . . . Belloc was right.

and a book I have not read, but certainly should:

Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (1931)
Every day, in every way, things are getting better and better? No, and Butterfield provides the intellectually mature antidote to that premise of liberal historiography.

Check out the rest of the list here. How many have you read? Do you think they chose the right books?

William Cobbett, RIP and his book on the English Reformation

William Cobbett died on June 18, 1835. He was an English pamphleteer and supporter of Emancipation for Catholics, writing a history of the Protestant reformation in England. He very much believed that Henry VIII's takeover of the Church in England was a matter of political power and disastrous for England economically and socially.

Cobbett took controversial stands on the need for reforms in England, especially of Parliament and the military. He also wrote against the French Revolution, democracy in America, the Industrial Revolution, and Malthus' theories of population.

G.K. Chesterton published a biography of Cobbett in 1925, in which he wrote:

It is the paradox of his life that he loved the past, and he alone lived in the future. . . . he seemed like a survival and a relic of times gone by. And he alone was in living touch with the times that were to come.

Chesterton also compares Cobbett and Lingard, noting that Father Lingard and Cobbett made the same case about the English Reformation, but that Lingard was careful about being impartial while Cobbett "flung away all such airs of impartiality to prove how completely he had been convinced" that the common view of the English Reformation was wrong.

I am reading Cobbett's History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland had find it just as Chesterton described. Sometimes Cobbett has to restrain himself and sometimes he just can't! He stops one time to comment that if he keeps writing such exclamatory sentences, he will never make progress in telling the story! He rakes Hume over the coals for special pleading and manipulation or interpretation of facts so that Catholics always sound bad. Cobbett consistently argues that the poor were hurt by the actions of the English "reformers"--destroying sources of charity in dissolving the monasteries, wrecking sights of beauty in remodeling the churches, etc. Cardinal Gasquet provided footnotes, including some corrections in the edition I have from St. Benedict's/TAN.

Newman's Idea of a University

In April, Father Ian Ker delivered a lecture at the Catholic University of America explaining Newman's great work on University education:

Rev. Ian Ker described Cardinal John Henry Newman’s book The Idea of a University as “the one classic on university education” in an April 27 lecture titled “Newman’s Idea of a University — Some Misunderstandings.”

However, Father Ker — one of the world’s leading experts on Newman and a senior research fellow in theology at Oxford University — noted that Newman’s work has been misinterpreted in some ways.

Newman, who was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI on Sept. 19, 2010, was the rector at the Catholic University of Ireland from 1854 to 1858. The book, which was published in 1873, was written in two parts at different times: one on university teaching (1852) and one on university subjects (1858).

In his book, Newman wrote that liberal education was the principal goal of a university. Newman’s definition of a liberal education, Father Ker noted, is not a liberal arts education as it is understood today, but “a real cultivation of the mind.”

“The heart of his philosophy of education was to use one’s mind, to think,” said Father Ker.

He concluded his lecture with a reminder of the continuing relevance of Newman's vision of university:

In the end, Father Ker noted that all universities have changed since Newman’s time but that does not mean that his ideas are irrelevant today.

“The fundamental principles of Newman are still of value,” he said. “If you stray too far from them, you can’t be a university.”

While preparing for his new role as president of CUA, Garvey read The Idea of a University. The book inspired Garvey in his selection of the inaugural year theme “Intellect and Virtue: The Idea of a Catholic University.” This lecture was part of a series of events related to that theme.

Father Ker is generally recognized as the leading authority on the life and thought of Newman. He has written and edited more than 20 books about Newman, including the Oxford critical edition of The Idea of a University and John Henry Newman: A Biography. He is also the author of The Catholic Revival in English Literature 1845-1961 and Mere Catholicism.

In introducing Father Ker, Monsignor Kevin Irwin, dean of the School of Theology and Religious Studies, described the scholar as “breaking news” in the United Kingdom as his new book, G. K. Chesterton: A Biography, was just published there last week.

More on Fr. Ian Ker at CUA here. More on the Chesterton biography here.

Almanac for May 29

Technically, but perhaps not elegantly, speaking, lots of things happened on May 29:

--G.K. Chesterton was born in 1874!

--Charles II was born in 1630

--Charles II was restored to the thrones of England and Scotland (HAPPY BIRTHDAY!) in 1660

--John Penry, a Welsh Puritan minister and the Martin Marprelate author was executed during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, with her Archbishop of Canterbury, Richard Whitgift, signing the death warrant. He was drawn and hung, but not quartered. There is a strange conspiracy theory about his connections to Christopher Marlowe.

Another event was the murder in 1546 of Cardinal Archbishop of St. Andrews, David Beaton, the last Catholic Cardinal named before the Scottish Reformation erupted. He was utterly opposed to the marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots to Henry VIII's heir Edward, and steadfastly in favor of the "Auld Alliance" between Scotland and France. Beaton served King James V of Scotland as ambassador and attempted to serve the infant Queen as regent. Many at Court blamed him for James V's refusal to meet with Henry VIII--Henry was urging James to follow his lead: take over the Church in Scotland, suppress the monasteries and take their wealth as his own, and break away from the Catholic Church and the Pope's authority. After the Scots were defeated at the battle of Solway Moss, James V died. Beaton regained power in 1543 and cancelled the marriage agreement between Mary and Edward--and of course that led to the "Rough Wooing", English incursions into Scotland.

Beaton had a role in the burning of George Wishart, a Protestant, as a heretic on March 1, 1546 and that led to his murder by Norman Leslie, master of Rothes, and William Kirkcaldy of Grange in the castle of St. Andrews, his home. John Hamilton, who succeeded him as Archbishop, was executed on April 6, 1571, found guilty of conspiracy in the death of Lord Darnley and James Stewart, the Earl of Moray.