GKC Summer Reading Plans

Our Greater Wichita Chesterton reading group will wrap up its discussion of the three final essays in The Well and the Shallows tonight: "An Explanation", "Why Protestants Prohibit", and "Where is the Paradox?" The first two essays are responses to reactions to a BBC broadcast Chesterton made offering the Catholic view of Freedom. I wish we could readily find out what Chesterton said about the Catholic view of Freedom, but since I'm leading the discussion tonight I may pose that as our first question: "What, based on what we've read so far of Chesterton, would have he have said about the Catholic view of freedom?". The final essay is also reactionary, as Chesterton comments on an article in a High Church newspaper in which he was called a "prolix Papist professor of paradox". I'm sure Chesterton appreciated the alliteration.

Eighth Day Books is also holding its annual spring sale this weekend just before the beginning of summer. And it is getting warm early in June (my husband and I prefer cooler weather). Nevertheless, the GKC group will have refreshments, EDB will have refreshments, and books and about Chesterton--and all the other authors from Abelard to Zwingli--are on sale: 20% off new books and 35% off used books.

For our July 8 meeting, we will read The Flying Inn for discussion. We will have to have some rum and cheddar cheese!

As Dale Ahlquist introduces the novel:

Besides Heretics and Orthodoxy, Chesterton said that the book he most enjoyed writing was The Flying Inn. He apparently enjoyed creating the comical scenes as much as the polemical ones, the drinking songs as much as the bitter satire and the hard-edged debate. As the hero of the novel says (in describing something else), “It’s as innocent as Heaven and as hot as hell.” And one critic called it a novel of “great anger and high mirth.” It is also possible that writing this book provided an outlet of tension for Chesterton, as he started it after the trial of his brother, Cecil, who had been sued for libel in connection with the Marconi Scandal. The novel is a vehicle for Chesterton to tee off against corrupt and ineffectual politicians who had not merely lost touch with common citizens but were actively taking away their basic rights and freedoms. Besides politicians, he also makes room on his skewer for journalists, textual critics, health gurus, idiot socialists and capitalist toadies.

The plots of Chesterton’s novels are always difficult to explain (which is why none have been made into movies, as studio executives only understand descriptions the length of an advertisement). In The Flying Inn, Prohibition has come to England in a roundabout way. Public houses have not been abolished, only the signs that hang in front of them. However, pubs cannot serve wine and spirits unless they have a sign. Got it? So a couple of rebels start roaming around England with an inn sign, setting up temporary public houses in unexpected places. The two adventurers are Patrick Dalroy, an Irish soldier, and Humphrey Pump, a former inn-keeper. Along with the inn sign, they carry with them a barrel of rum and a wheel of cheddar cheese, and are accompanied by a dog and a donkey. Their nemesis is Lord Ivywood, the cold and calculating leader of Parliament, who has engineered the oppressive law. Ivywood rabidly pursues the good villains until he is confronted by a small crowd and comes face-to-face with the utter unpopularity of his laws. He is asked, “Do you think you made the world, that you should make it over again so easily?”

Rather than being suitably chastised and repentant, he answers: “The world was made badly, and I will make it over again.”

Lord Ivywood is one of Chesterton’s best bad guys. He represents everything that is wrong with the world. He is not only the personification of Big Government and Big Business, he is the loss of Western religion, the unreflective acceptance of Eastern religion in the wake of that loss, and he is the mood of modernism in art, philosophy, and love: “I see the breaking of barriers,” he says. “Beyond that I see nothing.”

Then in August, we'll start on Chesterton's two great studies of medieval saints: St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Francis of Assisi. More info on that soon.

Chesterton's Sanctity in THE ATLANTIC

James Parker writes about "Saint" Gilbert:

If the Catholic Church makes G. K. Chesterton a saint—as an influential group of Catholics is proposing it should—the story of his enormous coffin may become rather significant. Symbolic, even parabolic. Chesterton’s coffin was too huge, you see, to be carried down the stairs of his house in Beaconsfield, its occupant being legendarily overweight at the time of his death, in 1936. So it went out a second-floor window. Very Chestertonian: gravity, meet levity. Hagiographers might pursue the biblical resonance here, citing the Gospel passages in which a paralyzed man, unable to penetrate the crowds surrounding the house in Capernaum where Jesus was staying, is lowered in through a hole in the roof. Or they might simply declare that Gilbert Keith Chesterton’s was a spirit too large to go out through the conventional narrow door of death—that it had to be received, as it were, directly into the sky.

In his vastness and mobility, Chesterton continues to elude definition: He was a Catholic convert and an oracular man of letters, a pneumatic cultural presence, an aphorist with the production rate of a pulp novelist. Poetry, criticism, fiction, biography, columns, public debate—the phenomenon known to early-20th-century newspaper readers as “GKC” was half cornucopia, half content mill. If you’ve got a couple of days, read his impish, ageless, inside-out terrorist thrillerThe Man Who Was Thursday. If you’ve got an afternoon, read his masterpiece of Christian apologetics Orthodoxy: ontological basics retailed with a blissful, zooming frivolity, Thomas Aquinas meets Eddie Van Halen. If you’ve got half an hour, read “The Blue Cross,” the first and most glitteringly perfect of his stories featuring the crime-busting village priest Father Brown. If you’ve got only 10 minutes, read his essay “A Much Repeated Repetition.” (“Of a mechanical thing we have a full knowledge. Of a living thing we have a divine ignorance.”)

Read the rest here.

Our G.K. Chesterton reading group meets tomorrow night at Eighth Day Books (on the second floor at the table among books about Church history, the Bible, and education) at 6:30 p.m. We are reading The Well and the Shallows.

Gracewing publishes the book pictured above: The Holiness of G. K. Chesterton, with contributions by Sheridan Gilley, Ian Ker, Nicholas Madden OCD, Aidan Nichols OP, John Saward and Bob Wild and an introduction by editor William Oddie:

G. K. Chesterton was one of the most provocative and well-loved English writers of the 20th century. Renowned for his journalism and as an essayist, he was the author of around eighty books, some two hundred short stories, four thousand essays and several plays. His writing ranged from fiction and poetry, to history, philosophy, political, social and literary criticism, theology and Catholic apologetics. His works reflect a life that was filled with wonder and joy, a constancy in fighting for the Christian faith in a world losing belief, a lifelong devotion to the Blessed Virgin and his love for all men, especially the poor. But are these grounds for his canonisation? The late Cardinal Emmett Carter described G. K. Chesterton, on the 50th anniversary of his death as one of the “holy lay persons” who have exercised a truly prophetic role within the Church and the world.

G.K. Chesterton's "The Thing: Why I Am a Catholic"

Our Wichita chapter of the American Chesterton Society is reading The Thing: Why I am a Catholic from Volume III of the Ignatius Press editions of G.K. Chesterton's Collected Works. As the publisher describes the volume, it is:

 

A collection of five powerful essays by Chesterton in defense of Catholicism and the Catholic Church. Unique because most of his writings do not deal specifically with religion or the Catholic Church. However, here he directly addresses the teachings of the Church and objections to them. It also includes his inspiring and moving commentary on the Stations of the Cross, along with the drawings of the stations he used for his meditations. Another essay explains why he converted to Catholicism.

 

As with all of his writings, these are just as germane today as they were in his time. Today's reader can revel in the same delight GKC's contemporaries felt, for he always presented the Church's best face to an antagonistic and indifferent world. The introduction and footnotes are written by another convert and author, James J. Thompson, Jr.

 

Last night we discussed chapters 20, 21, and 22--and in August we look forward to discussing chapters 23, 24, and 25--meeting on Friday, August 22 at Eighth Day Books, since August 15 is the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady. As Dale Ahlquist describes the collection of essays in The Thing, Chesterton is writing to a Catholic audience:

 

The essays in this collection were originally written for Catholic publications and are somewhat different from his other journalism because here Chesterton is writing for a specifically Catholic audience. And yet his vigorous defense of the Catholic faith seems to invite all comers. But as for addressing Catholics, there is one passage that is strikingly relevant to modern Catholics who seem intent on “reforming” things in the Church, whether it be the liturgy, the moral teachings, or the fundamental doctrines of the faith: “In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them,” says Chesterton, there are two kinds of reformers. “Let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, ‘I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.’ To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: ‘If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.’”

The modern reformer is especially guilty of trying to do away with things he does not understand rather than trying to understand them. Reformers throughout history have done away with elements of the Catholic Church only to find that they soon need to replace them. But the replacement is always an inferior version, as psychotherapy, for instance, has proved to be a disastrous replacement for the Confessional. And so Chesterton defends the Catholic things that both Catholics and non-Catholics may not understand. They may be simple things, but as Chesterton says, “The mind must be enlarged to see the simple things — or even to see the self-evident things.” One of Chesterton’s greatest gifts is to explain to us what we already know but have never been able to explain.

Chesterton says that all the revolts against the Church, from even before the Reformation until now, tell the same strange story. Every great heretic has always exhibited three remarkable characteristics in combination. First, he picks out some mystical idea from the Church’s balance of mystical ideas. Second, he uses that one mystical idea against all the other mystical ideas. Third, he seems generally to have no notion that his own favorite mystical idea is a mystical idea, as mysterious or dubious or dogmatic as any of the Church’s other mystical ideas that he rejects. Thus Calvinists are obsessed only with the Sovereignty of God, Lutherans with the Grace of God, Methodists with the sin of man, Baptists with the Bible, Quakers with simplicity. The list goes on, it even includes religious and political movements outside of Christianity. Muslims are obsessed with the Oneness of God, Communists with the equality of men, Feminists with the equality of men and women, Materialists with creation apart from the Creator, Spiritualists with the rejection of materialism, and so on. In every case, these sects have taken one of the Church’s mystical ideas and exalted it above the rest, even against the rest. They have lost all the moderating and balancing measures of the Thing, the Catholic Faith.

The chapters we discussed last night included a comparison between Bunyan's allegory in Pilgrim's Progress and Dante's in The Divine Comedy; the Protestant superstition of Anti-Catholicism, and the common but mistaken notion that Catholics have no intellectual freedom in the Church: "On Two Allegories", "The Protestant Superstition", and "On Courage and Independence", respectively. If you are in Wichita, come next month to our discussion of "The Nordic Hindoo", "A Spiritualist Looks Back" and "The Roots of Sanity". Refreshments are served!

The Everlasting Man and an Odious Assignment

Our Wichita, Kansas chapter of the American Chesterton Society meets tonight at Eighth Day Books at 6:30. If you are in Wichita, like Chesterton, bookstores, and refreshments, it's the place to be tonight. Except for the assignment we've been given. It's an odious assignment--it's an impossible assignment--it's an incredible assignment: Pick ONE of my favorite passages from The Everlasting Man!

Quoting Chesterton is like quoting Blessed John Henry Newman: you may find the pithy statement you want to cite, but you have to surround it by all the context before and after. In their different ways, Chesterton and Newman advance their arguments so precisely (if not always concisely) that the entire context is essential. That's why people can get in trouble when they cherry pick statements from Newman. Some have used his statement about change to justify change he never intended ("In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.")--as though he advocated change for change sake. Primarily, they ignore the sentence that precedes it:

But whatever be the risk of corruption from intercourse with the world around, such a risk must be encountered; if a great idea is duly to be understood, and much more if it is to be fully exhibited. It is elicited and expanded by trial, and battles into perfection and supremacy. Nor does it escape the collision of opinion even in its earlier years, nor does it remain truer to itself, and with a better claim to be considered one and the same, though externally protected from vicissitude and change. It is indeed sometimes said that the stream is clearest near the spring. Whatever use may fairly be made of this image, it does not apply to the history of a philosophy or belief, which on the contrary is more equable, and purer, and stronger, when its bed has become deep, and broad, and full. It necessarily rises out of an existing state of things, and for a time savours of the soil. Its vital element needs disengaging from what is foreign and temporary, and is employed in efforts after freedom which become wore vigorous and hopeful as its years increase. Its beginnings are no measure of its capabilities, nor of its scope. At first no one knows what it is, or what it is worth. It remains perhaps for a time quiescent; it tries, as it were, its limbs, and proves the ground under it, and feels its way. From time to time it makes essays which fail, and are in consequence abandoned. It seems in suspense which way to go; it wavers, and at length strikes out in one definite direction. In time it enters upon strange territory; points of controversy alter their bearing; parties rise and around it; dangers and hopes appear in new relations; and old principles reappear under new forms. It changes with them in order to remain the same.  (From The Development of Doctrine, chapter 1, section 1)

But if I must choose one of my favorite passages from The Everlasting Man, I suppose it could be this from Part 2, Chapter 3: The Strangest Story in the World:

Every attempt to amplify that story has diminished it. The task has been attempted by many men of real genius and eloquence as well as by only too many vulgar sentimentalists and self-conscious rhetoricians. The tale has been retold with patronizing pathos by elegant skeptics and with fluent enthusiasm by boisterous best-sellers. It will not be retold here. The grinding power of the plain words of the Gospel story is like the power of millstones; and those who can read them simply enough will feel as if rocks had been rolled upon them. Criticism is only words about words; and of what use are words about such words as these? What is the use of wordpainting about the dark garden filled suddenly with torchlight and furious faces? 'Are you come out with swords and staves as against a robber? All day I sat in your temple teaching, and you took me not.' Can anything be added to the massive and gathered restraint of that irony; like a great wave lifted to the sky and refusing to fall? 'Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me but weep for yourselves and for your children!

As the High Priest asked what further need he had of witnesses, we might well ask what further need we have of words. Peter in a panic repudiated him: 'and immediately the cock crew; and Jesus looked upon Peter, and Peter went out and wept bitterly.' Has anyone any further remarks to offer? Just before the murder he prayed for all the murderous race of men saying 'They know not what they do'; is there anything to say to that, except that we know as little what we say? Is there any need to repeat and spin out the story of how the tragedy trailed up the Via Dolorosa and how they threw him in haphazard with two thieves in one of the ordinary batches of execution; and how in all that horror and howling wilderness of desertion one voice spoke in homage, a startling voice from the very last place where it was looked for, the gibbet of the criminal; and he said to that nameless ruffian, 'This night shalt thou be with me in Paradise'? Is there anything to put after that but a full-stop? Or is anyone prepared to answer adequately that farewell gesture to all flesh which created for his Mother a new Son?

But I would want to go on with the next brilliance of Chesterton:

It is more within my powers, and here more immediately to my purpose, to point out that in that scene were symbolically gathered all the human forces that have been vaguely sketched in this story. As kings and philosophers and the popular element had been symbolically present at his birth, so they were more practically concerned in his death; and with that we come face to face with the essential fact to be realized. All the great groups that stood about the Cross represent in one way or another the great historical truth of the time; that the world could not save itself. Man could do no more. Rome and Jerusalem and Athens and everything else were going down like a sea turned into a slow cataract. Externally indeed the ancient world was still at its strongest, it is always at that moment that the inmost weakness begins. But in order to understand that weakness we must repeat what has been said more than once; that it was not the weakness of a thing originally weak. It was emphatically the strength of the world that was turned to weakness and the wisdom of the world that was turned to folly.

In this story of Good Friday it is the best things in the world that are at their worst. That is what really shows us the world at its worst. It was, for instance, the priests of a true monotheism and the soldiers of an international civilization. Rome, the legend, founded upon fallen Troy and triumphant over fallen Carthage, had stood for a heroism which was the nearest that any pagan ever came to chivalry. Rome had defended the household gods and the human decencies against the ogres of Africa and the hermaphrodite monstrosities of Greece. But in the lightning flash of this incident, we see great Rome, the imperial republic, going downward under her Lucretian doom. Scepticism has eaten away even the confident sanity of the conquerors of the world. He who is enthroned to say what is justice can only ask, 'What is truth?' So in that drama which decided the whole fate of antiquity, one of the central figures is fixed in what seems the reverse of his true role. Rome was almost another name for responsibility . Yet he stands forever as a sort of rocking statue of the irresponsible. Man could do no more. Even the practical bad become the impracticable. Standing between the pillars of his own judgment-seat, a Roman had washed his hands of the world. There too were the priests of that pure and original truth that was behind all the mythologies like the sky behind the clouds. It was the most important truth in the world; and even that could not save the world. Perhaps there is something overpowering in pure personal theism; like seeing the sun and moon and sky come together to form one staring face. Perhaps the truth is too tremendous when not broken by some intermediaries divine or human; perhaps it is merely too pure and far away.

See what I mean? Do you have a favorite passage from The Everlasting Man--or would you end up quoting most of any chapter like me?

Since that day it has never been quite enough to say that God is in his heaven and all is right with the world; since the rumor that God had left his heavens to set it right.