GKC: the Pumpkin and the Resurrection

Well, I think it is time for all us Christian Chestertonians to adopt a new and most Chestertonian symbol for Easter: the pumpkin. No, not necessarily carved - though perhaps it might be fittingly emptied and illuminated...

No I have not gone loony. It's all here for you to read and consider. Get out your pumpkins, then, and sing Alleluia!
--Dr. Thursday

Mr. Blatchford has summed up all that is important in his whole position in three sentences. They are perfectly honest and clear. Nor are they any the less honest and clear because the first two of them are falsehoods and the third is a fallacy. He says "The Christian denies the miracles of the Mahommedan. The Mahommedan denies the miracles of the Christian. The Rationalist denies all miracles alike."

The historical error in the first two remarks I will deal with shortly. I confine myself for the moment to the courageous admission of Mr. Blatchford that the Rationalist denies all miracles alike. He does not question them. He does not pretend to be agnostic about them. He does not suspend his judgment until they shall be proved. He denies them.

Faced with this astounding dogma I asked Mr. Blatchford why he thought miracles would not occur. He replied that the Universe was governed by laws. Obviously this answer is of no use whatever. For we cannot call a thing impossible because the world is governed by laws, unless we know what laws. Does Mr. Blatchford know all about all the laws in the Universe? And if he does not know about the laws how can he possibly know anything about the exceptions?

For, obviously, the mere fact that a thing happens seldom, under odd circumstances and with no explanation within our knowledge, is no proof that it is against natural law. That would apply to the Siamese twins, or to a new comet, or to radium three years ago.

The philosophical case against miracles is somewhat easily dealt with. There is no philosophical case against miracles. There are such things as the laws of Nature rationally speaking. What everybody knows is this only. That there is repetition in nature. [See postscript below. Dr. T] What everybody knows is that pumpkins produce pumpkins. What nobody knows is why they should not produce elephants and giraffes.

There is one philosophical question about miracles and only one. Many able modern Rationalists cannot apparently even get it into their heads. The poorest lad at Oxford in the Middle Ages would have understood it. (Note. As the last sentence will seem strange in our "enlightened" age I may explain that under "the cruel reign of mediaeval superstition," poor lads were educated at Oxford to a most reckless extent. Thank God, we live in better days.)

The question of miracles is merely this. Do you know why a pumpkin goes on being a pumpkin? If you do not, you cannot possibly tell whether a pumpkin could turn into a coach or couldn't. That is all.

All the other scientific expressions you are in the habit of using at breakfast are words and winds. You say "It is a law of nature that pumpkins should remain pumpkins." That only means that pumpkins generally do remain pumpkins, which is obvious; it does not say why. You say "Experience is against it." That only means, "I have known many pumpkins intimately and none of them turned into coaches."

There was a great Irish Rationalist of this school (possibly related to Mr. Lecky), who when he was told that a witness had seen him commit murder said that he could bring a hundred witnesses who had not seen him commit it.

You say "The modern world is against it." That means that a mob of men in London and Birmingham, and Chicago, in a thoroughly pumpkiny state of mind, cannot work miracles by faith.

You say "Science is against it." That means that so long as pumpkins are pumpkins their conduct is pumpkiny, and bears no resemblance to the conduct of a coach. That is fairly obvious.

What Christianity says is merely this. That this repetition in Nature has its origin not in a thing resembling a law but a thing resembling a will. Of course its phase of a Heavenly Father is drawn from an earthly father. Quite equally Mr. Blatchford's phase of a universal law is a metaphor from an Act of Parliament. But Christianity holds that the world and its repetition came by will or Love as children are begotten by a father, and therefore that other and different things might come by it. Briefly, it believes that a God who could do anything so extraordinary as making pumpkins go on being pumpkins, is like the prophet, Habbakuk, Capable de tout. If you do not think it extraordinary that a pumpkin is always a pumpkin, think again. You have not yet even begun philosophy. You have not even seen a pumpkin.

The historic case against miracles is also rather simple. It consists of calling miracles impossible, then saying that no one but a fool believes impossibilities: then declaring that there is no wise evidence on behalf of the miraculous. The whole trick is done by means of leaning alternately on the philosophical and historical objection. If we say miracles are theoretically possible, they say, "Yes, but there is no evidence for them." When we take all the records of the human race and say, "Here is your evidence," they say, "But these people were superstitious, they believed in impossible things."

The real question is whether our little Oxford Street civilisation is certain to be right and the rest of the world certain to be wrong. Mr. Blatchford thinks that the materialism of nineteenth century Westerns is one of their noble discoveries. I think it is as dull as their coats, as dirty as their streets, as ugly as their trousers, and as stupid as their industrial system.

Mr. Blatchford himself, however, has summed up perfectly his pathetic faith in modern civilisation. He has written a very amusing description of how difficult it would be to persuade an English judge in a modern law court of the truth of the Resurrection. Of course he is quite right; it would be impossible. But it does not seem to occur to him that we Christians may not have such an extravagant reverence for English judges as is felt by Mr. Blatchford himself.

The experiences of the Founder of Christianity have perhaps left us in a vague doubt of the infallibility of courts of law. I know quite well that nothing would induce a British judge to believe that a man had risen from the dead. But then I know quite as well that a very little while ago nothing would have induced a British judge to believe that a Socialist could be a good man. A judge would refuse to believe in new spiritual wonders. But this would not be because he was a judge, but because he was, besides being a judge, an English gentleman, a modern Rationalist, and something of an old fool.

And Mr. Blatchford is quite wrong in supposing that the Christian and the Moslem deny each other's miracles. No religion that thinks itself true bothers about the miracles of another religion. It denies the doctrines of the religion; it denies its morals; but it never thinks it worth while to deny its signs and wonders.

And why not? Because these things some men have always thought possible. Because any wandering gipsy may have Psychical powers. Because the general existence of a world of spirits and of strange mental powers is a part of the common sense of all mankind. The Pharisees did not dispute the miracles of Christ; they said they were worked by devilry. The Christians did not dispute the miracles of Mahomed. They said they were worked by devilry. The Roman world did not deny the possibility that Christ was a God. It was far too enlightened for that.

In so far as the Church did (chiefly during the corrupt and sceptical eighteenth century) urge miracles as a reason for belief, her fault is evident: but it is not what Mr. Blatchford supposes. It is not that she asked men to believe anything so incredible; it is that she asked men to be converted by anything so commonplace.

What matters about a religion is not whether it can work marvels like any ragged Indian conjurer, but whether it has a true philosophy of the Universe. The Romans were quite willing to admit that Christ was a God. What they denied was the He was the God - the highest truth of the cosmos. And this is the only point worth discussing about Christianity.
[GKC "The Blatchford Controversies" CW1:386-389]

Or, just to vary the source of our thought, you should recall those four powerful words - verbal fireworks from ancient Egypt, and a most fitting story for the present season:

"His God IS God."

(Said of Moses by the Pharaoh in C. B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments".)

A Postscript:

The bit about laws and miracles needs some further comments which, if I had the time, would easily fill a book or two. But I don't have time today or even next week, so I will just give you two links for your own examination, and perhaps I will someday get to write some more about it. The point I wish to indicate arises from Father Jaki's book Brain Mind and Computers in which he mentioned the great Charles Babbage, the first Computer Scientist, and his 1837 book called The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise: A Fragment. Babbage actually uses his own mechanical computer as an analogy to help explain the idea GKC is speaking about! Simply, God is a Master Programmer, and can set His machinery to perform anything at all... it is a bit too much to summarise quickly. You can obtain the Jaki book from Real View Books, and I have recently found that Babbage's book is available here.

Happy Easter!

I hope you had a nice Easter.

Here is some news from Milwaukee:

Please plan to attend the next meeting of the Milwaukee Chesterton Society. The April meeting will be held at the Elm Grove Village building, Wednesday, April 7th, from 7 p.m. - 9 p.m.

We plan to continue our discussion of GK's classic What's Wrong with the World? - Part 2, chapters 1 through 4, Imperialism, or the Mistake About Man.

Speaking of which, the G. K. Chesterton Institute is hosting a conference on June 11-12 celebrating the 100th anniversary of the publication of What's Wrong with the World? See the attached press release and flyer.

Also, there is an article of interest in the February issue of Homiletic and Pastoral Review titled "St. Thomas and Chesterton on Law, Human and Divine" by Thomas Storck.

GKC: Preferring Death to the Denial of the Truth of the Resurrection

Alleluia! He is risen!

In keeping with the liturgical delights of the Octave, I shall continue to Divine Mercy (Low or Quasimodo) Sunday with our meditative posts - in particular since GKC speaks with great wisdom about the Resurrection - this most awesome and exciting Surprise...

Remember, as Mr. Dickens has indicated, we must believe that Jesus is DEAD - or no good can come of the rest of the Story - and there is more to come. More of the Story, that is.

Incidentally, I ought to tell you that I just learned that the centurion at Calvary was technically called the exactor mortis as it was his responsibility to ascertain that the capital sentences were carried out. See Ricciotti's The Life of Christ for details.

--Dr. Thursday

Some time ago, when a stir was made by a rather striking book called Who Moved the Stone? which might almost be described, with all reverence, as a divine detective story and almost a theological thriller, a pugnacious little paper in Fleet Street made a remark which has always hovered in my memory as more mysterious than any mystery story in the world. The writer said that any man who believes in the Resurrection is bound to believe also in the story of Aladdin in the "Arabian Nights." I have no idea what he meant. Nor, I imagine, had he. But this curious conjunction of ideas recurs to my mind in connection with a rather interesting suggestion recently made by Mr. Christopher Dawson about what we may call the History of Science. On the face of it, the remark I have quoted from the pugnacious paper seems to have no quality whatever except pugnacity. There is no sort of logical connection between believing in one marvellous event and believing in another, even if they were exactly alike and not utterly different. If I believe that Captain Peary reached the North Pole, I am not therefore bound to believe that Dr. Cook also reached the North Pole, even if they both arrive with sledges and dogs out of the same snows. It is a fallacy, therefore, even where the two things are close enough to be compared. But the comparison between the Gospel miracle and the Arabian fairy-tale is about the most unfortunate comparison in the world. For in the one case there is a plain and particular reason for thinking the thing true, or at least meant to be true. And in the other case there is a plain and particular reason for realizing that the tale is not only untrue, but is not even meant to be
true.

The historical case for the Resurrection is that everybody else, except the Apostles, had every possible motive to declare what they had done with the body, if anything had been done with it. The Apostles might have hidden it in order to announce a sham miracle, but it is very difficult to imagine men being tortured and killed for the truth of a miracle which they knew to be a sham. In the case of the Apostles' testimony, the general circumstances suggest that it is true. In the case of the Arabian tale, the general circumstances avow and proclaim that it is false. For we are told in the book itself that all the stories were told by a woman merely to amuse the king, and distract his attention from the idea of cutting off her head. A romancer in this personal situation is not very likely to confine herself strictly to humdrum accuracy, and it would be impossible more plainly to warn the reader that all the tales are taradiddles. In the one case, then, we have witnesses who not only think the thing true, but do veritably think it is as true as death, or truer than death. They therefore prefer death to the denial of its truth. In the other case we have a story-teller who, in trying to avoid death, has every motive to tell lies. If St. John the Baptist had wished to avoid being beheaded, and had saved his life by inventing a long string of Messianic or Early Christian legends on the spur of the moment, in order to hold the attention of King Herod, I should not regard any "resurrection myth" he might tell as a strong historical argument for the Resurrection. But, as the Apostles were killed as St. John was killed, I think their evidence cannot be identified by sound scholarship as a portion of the Arabian Nights.
[GKC ILN Sept 28 1934; thanks to Frank Petta and my mother. This essay also appears in As I Was Saying.]

GKC: the First Day of a New Creation

The members of some Eastern sect or secret society or other seemed to have made a scene somewhere; nobody could imagine why. One incident occurred once or twice again and began to arouse irritation out of proportion to its insignificance. It was not exactly what these provincials said; though of course it sounded queer enough. They seemed to be saying that God was dead and that they themselves had seen him die. This might be one of the many manias produced by the despair of the age; only they did not seem particularly despairing. They seemed quite unnaturally joyful about it, and gave the reason that the death of God had allowed them to eat him and drink his blood. According to other accounts God was not exactly dead after all; there trailed through the bewildered imagination some sort of fantastic procession of the funeral of God, at which the sun turned black, but which ended with the dead omnipotence breaking out of the tomb and rising again like the sun.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:295-6]

Christus heri et hodie
Principium et Finis
Alpha et Omega
Ipsius sunt tempora et saecula
Ipsi gloria et imperium per universa aeternitatis saecula.
Amen.

Christ yesterday and today,
The Beginning and the End,
The Alpha and the Omega,
His are the times and the ages,
To Him be glory and dominion through the universe of unending ages.
Amen.

-- from the ritual for the Vigil of Easter


Sing now, ye people of the Tower of Anor,
for the Realm of Sauron is ended for ever,
and the Dark Tower is thrown down.

Sing and rejoice, ye people of the Tower of Guard,
for your watch hath not been in vain,
and the Black gate is broken,
and your King hath passed through,
and he is victorious.

Sing and be glad, all ye children of the West,
for your King shall come again,
and he shall dwell among you all the days of your life.

And the Tree that was withered shall be renewed,
and he shall plant it in the high places,
and the City shall be blessed.

Sing all ye people!

-- J. R. R. Tolkien: The Return of the King


On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realised the new wonder; but even they hardly realised that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:345]

GKC: Holy Saturday

They took the body down from the cross and one of the few rich men among the first Christians obtained permission to bury it in a rock tomb in his garden; the Romans setting a military guard lest there should be some riot and attempt to recover the body. There was once more a natural symbolism in these natural proceedings; it was well that the tomb should be sealed with all the secrecy of ancient eastern sepulture and guarded by the authority of the Caesars. For in that second cavern the whole of that great and glorious humanity which we call antiquity was gathered up and covered over; and in that place it was buried. It was the end of a very great thing called human history; the history that was merely human. The mythologies and the philosophies were buried there, the gods and the heroes and the sages. In the great Roman phrase, they had lived. But as they could only live, so they could only die; and they were dead.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:344-5]

You may be wondering why "second" cavern? The first was the cave of Bethlehem, and hence the first chapter of Part II of TEM is called "The God in the Cave" - but there is also a strong echo of the primary (primeval?) theme of the first chapter of part I, which of course is called "the Man in the Cave". (You mean you haven't read it yet? What on earth are you waiting for - an engraved invitation? GO READ IT. And if you read it before, go read it again. It's good any time of day or year, and quite nourishing too.

Also, I find that I must - simply MUST - quote another English writer today - one whose name is often associated with GKC, and indeed whose popularity has been claimed to date from GKC's book about him. [I will give the ref if anyone desires, but not today.] It is from a book you may already be familiar with, but not one which is often linked to the very special events of this sacred and silent time. But, since we are detectives in the very best sense of the term [more on that soon], it is very good that we hear these words, which might come from any grand mystery story - and in fact are echos of the Greatest of All Mystery Stories, the real one we are presently commemorating! But let us proceed.
--Dr. T.

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon `Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to.

Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

...

The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.

[C. Dickens, A Christmas Carol opening lines of Stave One, emphasis added]

Please, please, please, my dear reader. Please read those bold-face lines again and think about them very carefully - until tomorrow.
--Dr. T.

GKC: Good Friday

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 hap-hazard 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?

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 realised. 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 civilisation. 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?" [Jn 18:38] 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 had become the impracticable. Standing between the pillars of his own judgment-seat, a Roman had washed his hands of the world. [Mt 27:24]

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. Anyhow it could not save the world; it could not even convert the world. There were philosophers who held it in its highest and noblest form; but they not only could not convert the world, but they never tried. You could no more fight the jungle of popular mythology with a private opinion than you could clear away a forest with a pocket-knife. The Jewish priests had guarded it jealously in the good and the bad sense. They had kept it as a gigantic secret. As savage heroes might have kept the sun in a box, they kept the Ever. lasting in the tabernacle. They were proud that they alone could look upon the blinding sun of a single deity; and they did not know that they had themselves gone blind. Since that day their representatives have been like blind men in broad daylight, striking to right and left with their staffs, and [#b215] cursing the darkness. But there has been that in their monumental monotheism that it has at least remained like a monument, the last thing of its kind, and in a sense motionless in the more restless world which it cannot satisfy. For it is certain that for some reason it cannot satisfy. 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 rumour that God had left his heavens to set it right.

And as it was with these powers that were good, or at least had once been good, so it was with the element which was perhaps the best, or which Christ himself seems certainly to have felt as the best. The poor to whom he preached the good news, the common people who heard him gladly, the populace that had made so many popular heroes and demigods in the old pagan world showed also the weaknesses that were dissolving the world. They suffered the evils often seen in the mob of the city, and especially the mob of the capital, during the decline of a society. The same thing that makes the rural population live on tradition makes the urban population live on rumour. just as its myths at the best had been irrational, so its likes and dislikes are easily changed by baseless assertion that is arbitrary without being authoritative. Some brigand or other was artificially turned into a picturesque and popular figure and run as a kind of candidate against Christ. [Jn 18:39-40] In all this we recognise the urban population that we know, with its newspaper scares and scoops. But there was present in this ancient population an evil more peculiar to the ancient world. We have noted it already as the neglect of the individual, even of the individual voting the condemnation and still more of the individual condemned. It was the soul of the hive; a heathen thing. The cry of this spirit also was heard in that hour, "It is well that one man die for the people." [Jn 11:50-51] Yet this spirit in antiquity of devotion to the city and to the state had also been in itself and in its time a noble spirit. It had its poets and its martyrs; men still to be honoured forever. It was failing through its weakness in not seeing the separate soul of a man, the shrine of all mysticism; but it was only failing as everything else was failing. The mob went along with the Sadducces and the Pharisees, the philosophers and the moralists. It went along with the imperial magistrates and the sacred priests, the scribes and the soldiers, that the one universal human spirit might suffer a universal condemnation; that there might be one deep, unanimous chorus of approval and harmony when Man was rejected of men.

There were solitudes beyond where none shall follow. There were secrets in the inmost and invisible part of that drama that have no symbol in speech; or in any severance of a man from men. Nor is it easy for any words less stark and single-minded than those of the naked narrative even to hint at the horror of exaltation that lifted itself above the hill. Endless expositions have not come to the end of it, or even to the beginning. And if there be any sound that can produce a silence, we may surely be silent about the end and the extremity; when a cry was driven out of that darkness in words dreadfully distinct and dreadfully unintelligible, which man shall never understand in all the eternity they have purchased for him; and for one annihilating instant an abyss that is not for our thoughts had opened even in the unity of the absolute; and God had been forsaken of God. [Mt 27:46]

[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:341-4]

GKC: the Feast of Love

As it is Holy Thursday, I forgo my usual lengthy posting and give you for your meditation a most curious passage from GKC. I struggled somewhat with a selection, for today (rather than March 2) is the true "Feastday of Subsidiarity" - it is not possible to hear the description of the Washing of the Feet of the Apostles without leaping to a deeper understanding of the reality of this technical and practical and useful design method... I have told you before GKC's famous epigram, "henceforth the highest thing can only work from below" [TEM CW2:313] but such is the mystical truth of the Plan of the Master Designer that even this ties in and links, forward and backward, to the Eucharist and to the Priesthood...
In GKC's The Man Who Was Thursday there is a chapter called "The Feast of Fear". Today's chapter ought to be called "The Feast of Love" - the intricate and splendid structure of which perhaps someday I may write more at length. But for the present, please read this excerpt from the famous CW14 of GKC's little-known and previously uncollected fiction, and ponder it. Should you have difficulty understanding, please find a cookbook and sit and read it for an hour or two, and perhaps you will find illumination.

--Dr. Thursday.

Gabriel Hope's voice came sudden and jarring, "What do you say to the third verse of the eleventh chapter of the gospel according to St. Luke? [That is, "Give us this day our daily bread."]

So sharply did the voice vibrate that Mrs Mandelhorne looked quite nervous for a moment and not at all as if she said anything to that authority.

"No," said Hope with a kind of bitterness, "we don't say anything to it, we cultured dogs. But it is there to be spoken to. The offices are open from everlasting to everlasting A.M."

Mrs. Mandelhorne glanced at the speaker, Janet at the ball-handle, and Mark at the poker, but Madge still sat, with her prominent chin on her hand, with an inexplicable spark under her eyelids.

"For my part," went on Hope, quietly, almost modestly, and evidently supposing everyone attentive, "I think it is a side of religion very much neglected. If anything is religious, food is religious."

Mark began to examine his bread and butter with some interest, but seemed to fail to find any visible traces of the morning service.

"Surely, a loaf of bread is the centre of the parable of life: it contains all parables, the sower, the seed, the blade, the ear, the harvest, the sweat of toil, the joy of hospitality, the joy of giving, the joy of receiving, the assimilation, the building-up, the invisible essence of life and limb. A crust of bread broken by the horny hands of fishermen was the last parable he spoke, was it not? We have flattened it into a wafer: and we deliver it by white-robed pontiffs with all the sacramental mystery of the worship of Isis. It is the Holy Eucharist, I know. Is it the Last Supper?"

"Don't know," observed Mark, cheerfully, and added a traditional supplement in an undertone which theoretically involves the utmost penalty of the law.

"I think not," said Hope, turning on him with an earnestness which greatly disconcerted him. "I think that they have wrung out of it exactly the point they should have left in: the humility, equality, and division of bread: all that is so admirably suggested by the act of sitting round a table. On that last night, in that dark garret, knowing the the gibbet hung above him, he gave those he loved a last symbol and memory: what did it mean? Surely it meant the central miracle of man, the miracle compared with which stopping the sun and moon is a conjuring trick, and cursing the fig-tree a scientific experiment, the profound revolutionary and dazzling miracle that a two-legged animal thrown free and hungry on the earth, should break a crust of which he might eat all and give half to his brother."
[GKC "Wine of Cana" CW14:559-561]

I almost forgot that I had been retaining another short line for today. It is not, properly speaking, GKC's own words, but he recorded them, and perhaps it required the heart and brain of a Chesterton to grasp them and their richness. They, too, are a strange and mysterious echo of Subsidiarity. Tonight, after the altars are stripped, and you think of Jesus in the Garden, you ought to recall them.
--Dr. T.

There are three examples of Western work on the great eastern slope of the Mount of Olives; and they form a sort of triangle illustrating the truth about the different influences of the West on the East. At the foot of the hill is the garden kept by the Franciscans on the alleged site of Gethsemane, and containing the hoary olive that is supposed to be the terrible tree of the agony of Christ. Given the great age and slow growth of the olives, the tradition is not so unreasonable as some may suppose. But whether or not it is historically right, it is not artistically wrong. The instinct, if it was only an instinct, that made men fix upon this strange growth of grey and twisted wood, was a true imaginative instinct. One of the strange qualities of this strange Southern tree is its almost startling hardness; accidentally to strike the branch of an olive is like striking rock. With its stony surface, stunted stature, and strange holes and hollows, it is often more like a grotto than a tree. Hence it does not seem so unnatural that it should be treated as a holy grotto; or that this strange vegetation should claim to stand for ever like a sculptured monument. Even the shimmering or shivering silver foliage of the living olive might well have a legend like that of the aspen; as if it had grown grey with fear from the apocalyptic paradox of a divine vision of death. A child from one of the villages said to me, in broken English, that it was the place where God said his prayers. I for one could not ask for a finer or more defiant statement of all that separates the Christian from the Moslem or the Jew; credo quia impossibile.
[GKC The New Jerusalem CW20:353; emphasis added. The Latin means "I believe because it is impossible" (Tertullian)]

Sorry for this post-postscript, but I think you will find it worthwhile. In The Life of Christ by the wonderful Father Ricciotti, priest and archeologist, you can find out more about Gethsemane. Yes, it really means "olive-press", but the detail you must hear is this. When the Romans besieged Jerusalem about 70 A.D. they cut down every tree for miles around, as was their practice in such maneuvers. However, it seems that the roots of olive trees are notorious for maintaining their life, and it is possible that some of the present-day trees are sprung from ancient roots. Of course that may just be a parabolic way (y=x²) of speaking of the mystery. But I thought you ought to know. (If you wish, I'll get the reference for you another time.)
--Dr. T.

GKC: God is censored (but not Judas or Satan)

Sooner or later in every story (except for some very curious ones like GKC's Manalive or "The Surprise") we encounter the Villain: the Bad Guy: the Wicked Witch of the West; Simon Legree; Sauron; Voldemort; Professor Moriarty; Arnold Zeck; the Demons of the Mountains of Ignorance... Some (who have not read very much) seem to think the presence of this character is essential for the hero to be authentic - indeed (they would insist) for any story to BE a Story-writ-large. Well, of course that is silly, and goes to show how little technology these liter'y folks know (or how little ontology, if you prefer) but it is unfortunately a common view, and a wrong view. But as interesting as it may be, we have no time to study the theory of Story - or of villains - today.

After all: sooner or later we must remember we live in the real world (no matter what John Mayer sings about it, hee hee). And in the real world we need things like the police - since there really are criminals, and firefighters - since there really are fires. We need EMTs and physicians - since there really are illnesses. We need automotive mechanics - since there really are flat tires and worse. Yes, we need the real world heroes in all their many forms, just as we need all the many forms of cells within our bodies. St. Paul's writing on this (1 Cor 12) reveals him to be the First Mystical Histologist... But again we have no time to study such things today.

Rather, let us consider the greatest villains of history, as this morning's Gospel considers him - and hear GKC give a few comments about Judas - and about Satan.

--Dr. Thursday.

PS: I wanted to quote something from The Poet and the Lunatics but the weave is too tight to excerpt nicely, so I suggest you read (or re-read) it carefully with attention to its relevance to this holy time.

There is a sort of phrase or joke about such "whitewashing" of the villains of history; but, to be quite just, there ought to be some phrase such as "blackwashing" also. For the truth is that such rehabilitations are of two very different kinds. One is a mere anarchist itch to upset a traditional and universal verdict. The other is a reasonable petition to appeal against a very hasty and sectarian verdict. In other words, we may appeal for whitewashing if we can prove that there has been blackwashing. Excusing Judas Iscariot is a literary amusement. By all human tradition he is the same, whatever we think of the story in which he figures. He is the same whether he was a legend or a living traitor. He is the same whether he is a liar or a lie. The story is a plain story. The apologia is a fancy.
[GKC ILN May 10 1913 CW29:490]

...the rules of the Censorship encourage anarchy, and that the worst sort of anarchy, which is anarchy in the mind. There is an obvious example, which I mentioned long ago, when this debate was more topical. By the old rule of Censorship, we must not put Jesus on the stage. It would be much easier to put Judas on the stage. It would be perfectly easy to justify Judas on the stage. There is now no form of blasphemy or bad morals that anybody is really forbidden to justify on the stage. A modern drama may be one wild dance of all the devils and all the swine. It may contain anything or anybody, except anybody who can cast out devils or destroy swine. Generally speaking, in the whole spirit of the thing, the one thing that the Censor can really cut out is God. He has no particular reason to cut out Satan; and no reason at all to cut out Satanism. No doubt the actual wielders of such powers try to soften their insane regulations by behaving as sanely as they can. But I am not talking about the Censor, but about the rules of the Censorship. And though they are by this time an old example, they are still perhaps the most distinct and disputable example of a certain moral muddle into which this country has managed to stumble during the last half-century.
[GKC "About the Censor" in As I Was Saying, emphasis added]


The journalists (that pious and prayerful class of men) seem very much annoyed with Mr. Shaw for being flippant about the Early Christians. I think it is precisely when he is flippant that he is right; I might almost say he is never right unless he is flippant. The jesting of the Christians about the lion's dinner is as true as death and the details of history. Such jests are recorded of innumerable martyrs in all ages. They begin with the somewhat broad and farcical jest of one Early Christian martyr who spat suddenly in the magistrate's face. They range on to the more delicate jest of the great Renaissance martyr, Sir Thomas More, when he carefully removed his beard from the swing of the axe; because a beard cannot be a traitor.

No; it is not the irreverence of the unbeliever that we cannot tolerate. The thing we cannot tolerate is his reverence. When he comes into the temple he has an irritating habit of always bowing at the wrong moment to the wrong thing. Thus Mr. Shaw seems to think that an Early Christian would have felt a profound horror about drawing a sword and hitting a man. I doubt it; now I come to think of it, I deny it. St. Peter certainly did draw a sword in the Garden of Gethsemane, and was rebuked for it. [Jn 18:10-11] But I seriously think it was because that august irony would not weaken with a hopeless scuffle the greatest scene in the whole history of man. But there was another apostle present, who achieved his ends in the most peaceful and humane manner; by a kiss and not a scar. If the spirit of early Christianity had really been what Mr. Shaw suggests, Judas and not Peter would have been the rock on which religion was built. It is only in these serious passages that I ever think Mr. Shaw is fallacious. In the farcical passages, I really think he is infallible.
[GKC ILN Sept 27 1913 CW29:561]

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 patronising pathos by elegant sceptics 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 mill-stones; 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 word painting 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?
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:340-1]

GKC: Christ's Supreme Miracle and Shaw's Complaint About It!

It is not what you expect... but please read this first excerpt and consider it. Then proceed to the next somewhat longer excerpt which (you will be surprised to learn) touches on all the usual modern media whine against Christ - and answers it as only a genius like GKC can: by going deeper into the mystery, the mystery which we shall peer into in these next few days.

--Dr. Thursday.

...all these incidents have in them a character of mounting crisis. In other words, these incidents are not incidental. When Apollonius the ideal philosopher is brought before the judgment-seat of Domitian and vanishes by magic, the miracle is entirely incidental. It might have occurred at any time in the wandering life of the Tyanean; indeed, I believe it is doubtful in date as well as in substance. The ideal philosopher merely vanished, and resumed his ideal existence somewhere else for an indefinite period. It is characteristic of the contrast perhaps that Apollonius was supposed to have lived to an almost miraculous old age. Jesus of Nazareth was less prudent in his miracles. When Jesus was brought before the judgment-seat of Pontius Pilate, he did not vanish. [Jn 18:33-19:16] It was the crisis and the goal; it was the hour and the power of darkness. [Lk 22:53] It was the supremely supernatural act of all his miraculous life, that he did not vanish.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:340]


Some little time ago Mr. Bernard Shaw, faced with the frightful difficulty of explaining how a man of his intelligence could be anything else nowadays but an orthodox Christian, invented (as is his wont) a really new argument, good or bad. The old-fashioned blasphemers (who are the most lovable of men) had always denounced Bible stories as silly stories; they were too clumsy and faulty to be believed. But Mr. Shaw said of the central Bible story, not that it was too faulty to be believed, but that it was too faultless to be believed. He rejected it not because it was imperfect, but because it was perfect. He declared that the story of Calvary was to be discredited precisely because it was sublime, because it was pointed and poetic. Things so artistic as that (he said in effect) do not happen.

I am not concerned here to offer any of the many minor criticisms which might be made upon this view. I might remark for the hundredth time upon the hundredth example of the fact that the enemy of Christianity is always eating his own words and deserting his own standard; that the attack on that faith can only be kept up even for three generations by each one of its accusers repudiating the last accusation, by every son of scepticism disowning his own father. I might even suggest that if the Superman ever came on earth Mr. Shaw would not complain if he talked naturally in poetry - if he asked for the mustard in an impromptu sonnet. If it be imaginable that the Superman on earth might speak poetry, it is surely not unlikely that God on earth might act poetry. But I am not entangled in any of these considerations. It is only one much more innocent aspect of Mr. Shaw's theory that I propose to attack.

He said that a certain tale is probably unhistorical because it is dignified and dramatic, a thing with an artistic climax. I am concerned to point out that Mr. Shaw said this because he had not really read or understood human history; because he has allowed his great genius and sympathy to be suffocated with the materialism of a mean modern environment. The truth is that the things which astonish us in the tremendous tale of the Passion are things which not only would happen at a divine crisis, but which have happened at every genuine human crisis. It is only in epochs of exhaustion and mere pottering about with problems that they do not occur. Mr. Shaw, when he suggested that the Passion was too artistic to happen, really meant that it was too artistic to happen in the Fabian Society or in the London School of Economics. But in history it did happen. It happened again and again.

We talk of art as something artificial in comparison with life. But I sometimes fancy that the very highest art is more real than life itself. At least this is true: that in proportion as passions become real they become poetical; the lover is always trying to be the poet. All real energy is an attempt at harmony and a high swing of rhythm; and if we were only real enough we should all talk in rhyme. However this may be, it is unquestionable in the case of great public affairs. Whenever you have real practical politics you have poetical politics. Whenever men have succeeded in wars they have sung war songs; whenever you have the useful triumph you have also the useless trophy.

But the thing is more strongly apparent exactly where the great Fabian falls foul of it, in the open scenes of history and the actual operation of events. The things that actually did happen all over the world are precisely the things which he thinks could not have happened in Galilee; the artistic isolation, the dreadful dialogues in which each speaker was dramatic, the prophecies flung down like gauntlets, the high invocations of history, the marching and mounting excitement of the story, the pulverising and appropriate repartees. These things do happen; they have happened; they are attested, in all the cases where the soul of man bad become poetic in its very peril. At every one of its important moments the most certain and solid history reads like a historical novel.

[GKC "The Heroic That Happened" in Lunacy and Letters]

GKC: the Journey of Holy Week

...the story of Christ is the story of a journey, almost in the manner of a military march; certainly in the manner of the quest of a hero moving to his achievement or his doom. It is a story that begins in the paradise of Galilee, a pastoral and peaceful land having really some hint of Eden, and gradually climbs the rising country into the mountains that are nearer to the storm-clouds and the stars, as to a Mountain of Purgatory. He may be met as if straying in strange places, or stopped on the way for discussion or dispute; but his face is set towards the mountain city. [Lk 9:51: "He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem."] That is the meaning of that great culmination when he crested the ridge and stood at the turning of the road and suddenly cried aloud, lamenting over Jerusalem. [Lk 19:41, Lk 13:34] Some light touch of that lament is in every patriotic poem; or if it is absent, the patriotism stinks with vulgarity. That is the meaning of the stirring and startling incident at the gates of the Temple, [Jn 2:14-17, Mt 21:12-13] when the tables were hurled like lumber down the steps, and the rich merchants driven forth with bodily blows; the incident that must be at least as much of a puzzle to the pacifists as any paradox about non-resistance can be to any of the militarists. I have compared the quest to the journey of Jason, but we must never forget that in a deeper sense it is rather to be compared to the journey of Ulysses. It was not only a romance of travel but a romance of return; and of the end of a usurpation. No healthy boy reading the story regards the rout of the Ithacan suitors as anything but a happy ending. But there are doubtless some who regard the rout of the Jewish merchants and money-changers with that refined repugnance which never fails to move them in the presence of violence, and especially of violence against the well-to-do. The point here, however, is that all these incidents have in them a character of mounting crisis. In other words, these incidents are not incidental.

[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:339-340]

GKC: Palm Sunday and Christian Art

But it is true that there is something in it [Christian Art] that breaks the outline of perfect and conventional beauty, something that dots with anger the blind eyes of the Apollo and lashes to a cavalry charge the horses of the Elgin Marbles. Christianity is savage, in the sense that it is primeval; there is in it a touch of the Negro hymn. I remember a debate in which I had praised militant music in ritual, and some one asked me if I could imagine Christ walking down the street before a brass band. I said I could imagine it with the greatest ease; for Christ definitely approved a natural noisiness at a great moment. When the street children shouted too loud, certain priggish disciples did begin to rebuke them in the name of good taste. He said: "If these were silent the very stones would cry out." [Luke 19:40] With these words He called up all the wealth of artistic creation that has been founded on this creed. With those words He founded Gothic architecture. For in a town like this, [GKC is in Bruges, Belgium opposite the Belfry Tower] which seems to have grown Gothic as a wood grows leaves, anywhere and anyhow, any odd brick or moulding may be carved off into a shouting face. The front of vast buildings is thronged with open mouths, angels praising God, or devils defying Him. Rock itself is racked and twisted, until it seems to scream. The miracle is accomplished; the very stones cry out.
[GKC "The Tower" in Tremendous Trifles]

An Announcement from Florida

From Su:

I wanted to give you the info for the launch of the North Pinellas Chesterton Society. Feel free to broadcast the info.

The North Pinellas Chesterton Society

3rd Thursday of each month at 7:00 p.m.
Inaugural Meeting: Thursday 15, April 2010
Panera
The Bluffs
2928 West Bay Drive
Largo, FL 33770

For more information please contact:
Su Morton

Congratulations, North Pinellas!

GKC on the Incarnation

Today is the great celebration of the turning point of history. We call it the Annunciation, but it is really the feast of the Incarnation, the day when God the Son took on human nature when Mary said those most wonderful words: "Be it done unto me according to thy word".

Oh, for a mole of terabytes, to attempt to begin to write of this great mystery we celebrate! If only I could give you a glimpse of the light which pours forth today from the conjoined disciplines of computing and biology, glittering in those wonderful ancient words about Abraham and Moses and Isaias - indeed, and Virgil too. [See e.g. GKC's The Everlasting Man] It is the Conception of the Pontifex, the Bridge-builder, Who unites our fallen humanity to our Creator, but also restores the disparate branches of the Kingdom of Wisdom [see Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth] - the Conception of Him "in Whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge!" [See Col 2:3] And how the solidity of the dogma of the Monogenes, the Unigenitus (the Only-Begotten) which we affirm each Sunday in the Nicean Creed - the solidity upon which all Science and Engineering is founded. [See e.g. Jaki's The Savior of Science] Ah, there is so much, and perhaps some day I may be permitted to write on it - but not here, and not now. Rather I will give you a choice selection from Uncle Gilbert, as we begin the Master Novena of Months, and count down as the Romans did to the feast of Christmas,the birthday of Jesus, true God and true Man.

--Dr. Thursday

We talk of the Faith turning the world upside down. There is a deep and rather indescribable sense, in which it turns the world inside out. Among the wild abstractions of mathematics there is an idea which cannot present itself to the imagination in any image, however monstrous; which is a purely logical necessity. It is a process by which the sphere is turned inside out, the centre becoming the circumference and the circumference the centre. Something like that is among the paradoxes of Christianity, which are so puzzling to those True Christians who can only understand the platitudes of Christianity. Christianity was like that impossible mathematical figure. Christianity was a whirlwind which was the inversion of a whirlpool. There was in the heart of it some mysterious centrifugal force by which the heart passed outwards to the extreme limit of the limbs. It was not always safe to look for the centre in the centre; certainly not to look for the life in the root. This paradox is suggested in many dark sayings in the New Testament; about the lightning shining from the east unto the west, or the children of the kingdom being cast out. They seem to suggest a remote ring of light running like a halo round the horizon; even in the day when all is darkest at the centre; and the Abomination of Desolation is sitting in the Holy of Holies.

This mystery is a fact even of history and geography. In any case, it is plain that even the home of Christ was only the place where He was homeless. It is also true in a more strange fashion of the whole secular history and destiny of that devoted place. The scene of the Incarnation seems to have become almost sealed and consecrated to the denial of the Incarnation. Before the coming of Christ, it was ruled by those Jews whose high monotheism eventually hardened and narrowed into a violent refusal of the Incarnation. After the coming of Christ it was ruled by those Moslems, who also interpreted monotheism mainly as the denial of the Incarnation; even after the Incarnation. But even between the Mosaic and Moslem systems, which emphasized a disembodied divinity before and after Christ, there was a multitude of mystical developments, tending in the same direction and thriving especially in the same neighbourhood. We too often forget that the Monophysite who came before the Moslem had fundamentally much the same mood as the Moslem. Heresies thronged through all the cities of the Near East, through all the roads trodden by the Apostles, all loudly denying the doctrine of the double nature of Christ; which was the essential paradox of the Incarnation.

Most people know that the Monophysites were the very opposite of the Modernists. Whereas the most recent heretics are humanitarians, and would simplify the God-man by saying He was only Man, the most ancient heretics simplified Him by saying He was only God. But these mystics had in their hearts the same horror as the Moslems: the horror of God abasing Himself by becoming human. They were, so to speak, the anti-humanitarians. They were willing to believe that a god had somehow shown himself to the world like a ghost; but not that he had been made out of the mere mud of the world like a man. And the odd thing is that these cries of horror, at the very possibility of such a blasphemy happening, were most wild and shrill round the very place where it had happened.

It would be inhuman not to pity the poor Modernist or Humanitarian or Higher Critic, who set out so confidently to find the real origins of Christianity in the original country of Christ. He naturally felt that the nearer he came to the stones of Jerusalem or the grass of Galilee, the more simple the story would appear; that in the place where Jesus had lived a human life, He would admittedly appear most human; that among the actual natural surroundings would be found the most natural explanation. If the critic had been approaching any of the common kings or heroes of history, it probably would have been true; that to find them in their homes would be to find them when they had laid aside the crown and sword, and the terrible postures of history. As the critic was approaching the perplexing Carpenter of Nazareth, it was not in the least true. There was no purely human tradition of any purely human Jesus. In so far as there was any tradition at all, lingering in the fights and factions of Greek and Judaic religion, it was the tradition of a purely divine Jesus. It was a tradition furiously upheld by all those traditionalists who wished to represent Him as wholly and solely divine. Only the orthodoxy of the Catholic and Apostolic Church declared that He was in the least human. And above all, for this is the point of the paradox, the Catholic Church proclaimed that original humanity more and more loudly, as it passed away from its original human habitation. As the Church marched westward she bore with her, with ever-increasing exultation and certitude, the human corporeal thing that had been made flesh in Bethlehem; and left behind a ghost for the Gnostics and a god like a gilded idol for the Greek heretics, and for the Moslems only the fading shadow of a prophet.

It may be repeated that the emphasis on this truth, if not the truth itself, actually grew stronger as the Church marched westward, from Antioch to Rome and from Rome to the ends of the earth. And there is really a certain confirmation of this view; in the fact that the mere expression of the truth, apart from the truth itself, gathered new forms of power and beauty, as its long travels took it not only far from Jerusalem, but even far from Rome. The ends of the earth shall praise Him; and some of them had powers and methods of praise that were not known even to the more civilized centre. It is true that this was only a matter of clothing the Incarnation in garments; as the Incarnation was itself a matter of clothing the incredible in flesh. But it is interesting to note that the original human nature, which the Modernists seek in its Oriental birthplace, and the Monophysites most indignantly denied in the neighbourhood of that birthplace, unfolds itself in physical imagery most fully in the extreme occidental outposts that recognize the leadership of Rome. The Higher Critics took a frigid pleasure in referring to their human Christ only as Jesus of Nazareth; but they could not find Him in Nazareth. They could find little or nothing in Nazareth or twenty other holy places of the East, but the flattened faces of the Greek icons or the faceless ornament of the Moslem script. In so far as He was remembered, or at least in so far as He was imagined, as a human personality and a Man moving among men, He was seen moving as in a hundred pictures, under Italian skies or against Flemish landscapes, a new Incarnation in colour and clay and pigments; which did not take place till He reached the coloured regions of the sunset. This contrast is true, to some extent, even where the Eastern tradition is orthodox and not merely 'Orthodox.' The tendency was always to make the image a sort of diagram of divinity; even when it was not the dark inhuman diagram of the Monophysites and the Manichees. Even the true theologians were theologians; they defended rather than described the Humanity. Western Christendom, the new empire made entirely by Rome, discovered this Humanistic development. It made the first portraits, if not the first pictures of Christ.
[GKC Christendom in Dublin 84-91]

"The Next Great Heresy" quote

People have been hunting for a certain quote recently, and I thought perhaps it would be useful to give it with some of its context.
--Dr. Thursday

The next great heresy is going to be simply an attack on morality; and especially on sexual morality. And it is coming, not from a few Socialists surviving from the Fabian Society, but from the living exultant energy of the rich resolved to enjoy themselves at last, with neither Popery nor Puritanism nor Socialism to hold them back... The roots of the new heresy, God knows, are as deep as nature itself, whose flower is the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye and the pride of life. I say that the man who cannot see this cannot see the signs of the times; cannot see even the skysigns in the street that are the new sort of signs in heaven. The madness of tomorrow is not in Moscow but much more in Manhattan - but most of what was in Broadway is already in Piccadilly.
[GKC, G. K.’s Weekly, June 19, 1926; quoted in Maycock, The Man Who Was Orthodox, 123]

For the Feast of Great Saint Joseph

GKC does not mention St. Joseph very often, but I think this one little piece can stand on its own:

"A Christmas Song For Three Guilds"

To Be Sung A Long Time Ago - Or Hence

The Carpenters.

St. Joseph to the Carpenters said on a Christmas Day:
"The master shall have patience and the 'Prentice shall obey;
And your word unto your women shall be nowise hard or wild:
For the sake of me, your master, who have worshipped Wife and Child.
But softly you shall frame the fence, and softly carve the door,
And softly plane the table - as to spread it for the poor,
And all your thoughts be soft and white as the wood of the white tree.
But if they tear the Charter, let the toscin speak for me!
Let the wooden sign above your shop be prouder to be scarred
Than the lion-shield of Lancelot that hung at Joyous Garde."

[GKC Collected Poems 137-8]

Therefore, let us always honour St. Joseph, in particular in his title of "Terror of Demons", and let use recall the great guidance given to us by Father Jaki:

Let us therefore exclaim: "Holy Mary, Saint Joseph, pray for us, and do so together!" No combined voice can be stronger than the united voice of those two. The two are so united that whenever we invoke Joseph, Mary also hears our voice, and so does the Child of theirs, who as the Savior of the world is the greatest treasure which a marital union could conceivably guard.
[SLJ The Litany of St. Joseph]

Doc's Errant Saga... and the Moon?

Some of you are wondering what "Quayment" is, and what that has to do with Chesterton.

Quayment is not from Chesterton's writing, but from the Saga of a far lesser writer. Quayment is simply the name of my fictional town by the bay, somewhere on the Atlantic Ocean. It is the great American book town, vaguely deriving from the real-world book town called Stillwater, Minnesota. In Quayment you will find the famous "Weaver's Books" housed in the former "Psephic Church of God" high up on the north hill, not far from the huge Catholic church of St. Ambrose. Over on the south side you will find another dozen bookstores, including such famous names as "Bastian's" (run by Bastian Bux, and formerly known as "Coriander's"), "Leary's", (formerly in Philadelphia) and "the Haunted Bookshop", owned by Roger and Helen Mifflin (formerly in Brooklyn). Quayment is not the only town in my Saga - there are others, such as "North Belloc", the twin-city to "Harley" which are a two hour drive north from Quayment, and "Stirling" another two hours further in the mineral-rich hills of northeastern Pennsylvania.

Why do I bother telling you all this chatter, which may strike you rather like knowing the location of Hobbiton relative to Minas Tirith? Because I was reading my Latin dictionary the other day and learned a new word, which seemed to fit in so well with my work - and with our current discussion - that I had to tell you at least a little more about my Saga.

But first, a word from our Uncle Gilbert - an aphoristic phrase which (like so many others) I have previously overlooked:

...morality is the most dark and daring of conspiracies...
[GKC "A Defence of Detective Stories" in The Defendant]

I found this because I was curious about the context of the very next line, the concluding line from that essay, but I will give you the entire concluding paragraph for you to ponder:

There is, however, another good work that is done by detective stories. While it is the constant tendency of the Old Adam to rebel against so universal and automatic a thing as civilization, to preach departure and rebellion, the romance of police activity keeps in some sense before the mind the fact that civilization itself is the most sensational of departures and the most romantic of rebellions. By dealing with the unsleeping sentinels who guard the outposts of society, it tends to remind us that we live in an armed camp, making war with a chaotic world, and that the criminals, the children of chaos, are nothing but the traitors within our gates. When the detective in a police romance stands alone, and somewhat fatuously fearless amid the knives and fists of a thieves' kitchen, it does certainly serve to make us remember that it is the agent of social justice who is the original and poetic figure; while the burglars and footpads are merely placid old cosmic conservatives, happy in the immemorial respectability of apes and wolves. The romance of the police force is thus the whole romance of man. It is based on the fact that morality is the most dark and daring of conspiracies. It reminds us that the whole noiseless and unnoticeable police management by which we are ruled and protected is only a successful knight-errantry.
[ibid]

Now, the fun of the matter is the word I was hunting was "errant". I was curious to see if GKC always used it in the context "knight-errant" (or its variants), and for the most part it seems that he indeed used it that way. I happened to look up "errant" in the dictionary, and found it comes from the Latin verb errare, to wander, stray, rove. (Hence it is a Greco-Latin pun to say the planets are errors, hee hee.) But the knights were not "in error" - the Laws of Chivalry always put obedience to the Church first. No, the knights were simply wandering, and wandering in search of adventure. This was not a vain way of life in the days of chivalry, as if a knight was a bored suburbanite out for a night on the town. It was more like the famous image of the modern miniature knight called the Boy Scout: always patrolling and alert, on the watch for an opportunity to do a good deed.

Now, of course those of you who recognized my imaginary town of North Belloc as the location for my stories about "Joe the Control Room Guy" who works the night shift at a certain little cable TV company, watching the WATCHERs (ah, now you begin to see? Yes, I am a Juvenal Delinquent!) and ready to respond to problems as they arise - well, you may begin to see some link to GKC's "unsleeping sentinels" - or, if you like, to the five wise virgins [Mt 25:1-13] and to our Lord's warning to "watch and pray" [Mt 26:41]... but all this is just part of the hint. You see, the word I wanted to hunt for wasn't "errant" but "saga" - as in story. I expected "saga" to link to "sage" (as in "wise", not as in the herb), but found that "saga" is from a Norse root for an epic narrative, whereas "sage" is from the Latin sagax, meaning "having keen senses" and hence "acute, clever".

Now for the excitement. Just a little further down the page [See P.S. at end for a comment about this] I found the word sagum of the second declension... which means its plural must be saga!

Indeed. But what does sagum (plural saga) mean?

Ah. According to Cassell's it means a mantle of coarse wool worn by slaves, also the plaid of the Celts; But especially of soldiers, a military cloak. Hence symbolical of war, as the toga was symbolic of peace. saga sumere or ad saga ire - literally "to put on sagums" or "to go to the sagums" were idiomatic for "to take up arms, prepare for war".

And there you have it, my dear readers. I was not wrong to call my story a Saga, for it is about war. For it keeps the Church central, as it was put central by God the Engineer and Story-Teller:

while it [the Church] is local enough for poetry and larger than any other philosophy, it is also a challenge and a fight. While it is deliberately broadened to embrace every aspect of truth, it is still stiffly embattled against every mode of error. It gets every kind of man to fight for it, it gets every kind of weapon to fight with, it widens its knowledge of the things that are fought for and against with every art of curiosity or sympathy; but it never forgets that it is fighting. It proclaims peace on earth and never forgets why there was war in heaven.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:315]

It is the mystical union of the technical - or perhaps I ought to say the scientific - with the artistic. It's a little town where young men grow up to do heroic deeds - it is Nazareth or Roma or Hobbiton - or even Quayment, USA - but it is still about war. "Think ye, that I am come to give peace on earth?" [Luke 12:51] Therefore, let us arm ourselves, and not with peacock feathers, the plumes of hell's proud victory [see "The Red Town" in Alarms and Discursions or "The House of the Peacock" in The Poet and the Lunatics] - but let us take a hint from their thousand eyes: let us be watchful and pray.

For behold - if you go out around sunset tonight and look west, you shall see the crescent Paschal moon, already waxing towards its plenitude, which shall come after the Vernal Equinox, the first full moon of Spring. A Saga of the Moon may seem like sheer lunacy - but it is not lunacy, not at all. The sign is given. Let us prepare!


P.S. Regarding the link from sagax to sagum: this delightful serendipitous encounter of words (and hence ideas) by mere physical proximity is one reason why I like books so much. Another is that I can throw them across the room when I disagree. Or, as the poet writes about our Mr. Ahlquist:

"Dale says it's tactile books that most prefer."

Also, I should say that I did have more to tell you about "error" and "errant" - but the poetic links here were too delightful. We'll get to it eventually, please God.

MicroNations

From Ellen:I found this via the What's Wrong with the World? blog.  Someone who started their own country! How positively Chestertonian!

Mentions the book: Micronations: the Lonely Planet guide to Self-Proclaimed Nations.  Has anyone read this? 

Dale/Chesterton/Worchester

You are warmly invited to come to a free evening conference celebrating the 80th anniversary of the great Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton’s visit to America and the College of the Holy Cross.
When: Thursday, 25 March 2010
What time: 7:30 pm
Where: Rehm Library, Carol and Park B. Smith Hall, Holy Cross
The great English writer, author of over 100 books and the world’s most famous convert at that time, visited the College (and was made an ‘Honorary Crusader’) in December of 1930.  He planted a tree at the College and recited Joyce Kilmer’s celebrated poem, ‘Trees,’ when doing so.

The program, ‘Chesterton in America,’ will be a delightfully warm presentation and ‘conversation’ on Chesterton’s celebrated visit to the United States, captured eloquently in his book, ‘What I Saw in America.’ This event is being co-sponsored by the G.K. Chesterton Society of Worcester and the Holy Cross Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture.
The presentation will be offered by two wonderful speakers: Father Ian Boyd, C.S.B.,  editor of The Chesterton Review, and Professor Dermot Quinn. Both scholars teach at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey, and are associated with the G.K. Chesterton Institute for Faith and Culture.
The program will begin with Professor Dermot Quinn making the point that it was during Chesterton’s second visit to America (and especially during his visit to the College of the Holy Cross) that he really experienced the richness of American Catholicism. He had to come to America to see how Catholic the Catholic Church in America, in her myriad ethnicities, really was, and paradoxically, how European. Professor Quinn will incorporate remarks about Paul Claudel’s introduction of Chesterton at Holy Cross and how those remarks captured the essence of both men.
Fr. Boyd will then present an abbreviated paper on Chesterton’s insights on America.
The remarks of these two scholars will lead into a dialogue between Boyd and Quinn on the following: the difference between Chesterton’s first and second American visits; G.K.’s famous remark about America being “a nation with the soul of a Church;” how G.K. delighted in the exuberance of America, yet worried about its “false materialism;” how G.K. was concerned about America’s “standardization by a low standard;” G.K.’s concern about the real threat “not coming from Moscow but Manhattan;” and how Chesterton’s America has changed and how it has stayed the same.

GKC and Some "Hard To Get At" Elements

With all my recent postings about Subsidiarity, I wondered if anyone would ask a certain question: Did GKC ever talk about Subsidiarity?

The answer is not directly, though one of his most powerful sentences is a thumbnail sketch of the idea:

That is the paradox of the whole position; that henceforth the highest thing can only work from below.
[GKC, The Everlasting Man CW2:313. Also cf. Jn 13:2-15]

And, for completeness, here is the correlate in his fiction:

...you remember that he [Peter] was crucified upside down. I've often fancied his humility was rewarded by seeing in death the beautiful vision of his boyhood. He also saw the landscape as it really is: with the stars like flowers, and the clouds like hills, and all men hanging on the mercy of God.
[GKC The Poet and the Lunatics 21-22]

But of course Chesterton never used the term "Subsidiarity", since it only entered the vocabulary of Catholic Social Teaching in the early 1960s in John XXIII's Mater et Magistra and Pacem in Terris, but as you ought to expect, GKC has various hints and comments which grow out of his consideration of Rerum Novarum (1891), which perhaps someday some scholar will investigate.

But when I looked into this matter, I found (as usual) a very funny little bit which I think you will enjoy:

[Regarding the manner of M. Anatole France in dealing with Joan of Arc:] Because her miracle is incredible to his somewhat old-fashioned materialism, he does not therefore dismiss it and her to fairyland with Jack and the Beanstalk. He tries to invent a real story, for which he can find no real evidence. He produces a scientific explanation which is quite destitute of any scientific proof. It is as if I (being entirely ignorant of botany and chemistry) said that the beanstalk grew to the sky because nitrogen and argon got into the subsidiary ducts of the corolla.
[GKC ILN Mar 28 1908 CW28:72]

Now, GKC was trying to be funny - and he was. You may not know what argon is - it's an inert gas. Or what a corolla is - that's the term for the petals of a flower. But you've surely heard the word "subsidiary" recently - or at least something very close to it.

Now, when I first glanced at that lovely little jargon, I had to laugh. There's so much like that these days - people trotting out science words without any real awareness of their meaning. Sometimes it's very funny. For example, I recently heard a term "unobtainium" and laughed, since there really is an element called "dysprosium" which means almost the same thing in Greek! Actually the Greek root means "hard to get at", since it is one of the rare earths and was particularly hard to get at. And of course the inert gases like argon are also hard to get at - there's a great story about the discovery of argon but I probably ought not go into that sort of topic here - or at least not today. [Welll... if you want to find out, see Jaki's The Relevance of Physics 255. The discussion actually ties into the larger one we've been having about "error" since it reveals some deeper truths about the nature of such things as "error" and "precision", to say nothing of more human issues like honesty. Fascinating - maybe next week!]

But this idea of elements which are hard to get at, coupled with that botany word "corolla" - which I first read as "corona" - well, that made me think of that very strange element called "coronium".... No it's not on the Periodic Table. It was found in the corona of the sun, but of course it was eventually found on earth wearing a disguise.

There's another hard-to-find element called "nebulium" - it gives a strange lurid kind of green to certain odd things far out in space. But like "coronium", it was eventually found to be something found here on earth, but in a kind of disguise.

Now, the funny thing about all this is that the "coronium" and "nebulium" are the ones which are wearing disguises, or (to be quite accurate) have had their earthly clothes partially removed - and so they reveal themselves in a very unusual light.

Wow...

Alas, I am not expressing myself well today - I am quite busy just now, and perhaps leaving out what I should include, and including what I should leave out. Perhaps I should just leave you with this somewhat longer fragment of our Uncle Gilbert, which perhaps will unite my thoughts for me, as he so often does:

...there is something mysterious and perhaps more than mortal about the power and call of imagination. I do not think this early experience has been quite rightly understood, even by those modern writers who have written the most charming and fanciful studies of childhood; and I am not so presumptuous as to think that I can scientifically succeed where I think they have somehow vaguely failed. But I have often fancied that it might be worth while to set down a few notes or queries about this difficult and distant impression. For one thing, the ordinary phrases used about childish fancies often strike me as missing the mark, and being in some subtle way, quite misleading. For instance, there is the very popular phrase, "Make-believe." This seems to imply that the mind makes itself believe something; or else that it first makes something and then forces itself to believe in it, or to believe something about it. I do not think there is even this slight crack of falsity in the crystal clearness and directness of the child's vision of a fairy-palace - or a fairy-policeman. In one sense the child believes much less, and in another much more than that. I do not think the child is deceived; or that he attempts for a moment to deceive himself. I think he instantly asserts his direct and divine right to enjoy beauty; that he steps straight into his own lawful kingdom of imagination, without any quibbles or questions such as arise afterwards out of false moralities and philosophies, touching the nature of falsehood and truth. In other words, I believe that the child has inside his head a pretty correct and complete definition of the whole nature and function of art; with the one addition that he is quite incapable of saying, even to himself, a single word on the subject. Would that many other professors of aesthetics were under a similar limitation. Anyhow, he does not say to himself, "This is a real street, in which mother could go shopping." He does not say to himself, "This is an exact realistic copy of a real street, to be admired for its technical correctness." Neither does he say, "This is an unreal street, and I am drugging and deceiving my powerful mind with something that is a mere illusion." Neither does he say, "This is only a story, and nurse says it is very naughty to tell stories." If he says anything, he only says what was said by those men who saw the white blaze of the Transfiguration, "It is well for us to be here."
[GKC The Common Man 56-7 quoting Mt 17:4]

Yes, that's the word I left out, the hidden theme of those hard-to-get-at elements which revealed their unearthly reality by a new light - "Transfiguration".

P.S. I had forgotten this particular, very Tolkien-esque, bit about Story - it is utterly splendid. Now,perhaps, you will understand a little about why I like to write about Quayment...

STaR Chesterton Issue

Dear Fellow Chestertonian,

The March/April issue of the Saint Austin Review is hot off the press. It's another exciting, power-punching issue, filled to the brim with great articles. The theme of the next issue is "G. K. Chesterton: Fidei Defensor" and we've assembled a veritable cornucopia of Chestertonian delights for the delectation of our readers. Please see www.staustinreview.com <http://mail2.avemaria.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.staustinreview.com>  for a cover image, a sample article and the table of contents.

Amongst the highlights of the next issue:

Dale Ahlquist, President of the American Chesterton Society and host of the long running EWTN series, "The Apostle of Common Sense", asks the beguiling question: "What if Chesterton Had Gone Bad?”

Louis Markos surveys "The Journey Back Home: How G. K. Chesterton 'Discovered' Orthodoxy".

Jennifer Overkamp examines Chesterton "the Fairy Tale Philosopher"

Matthew P. Akers defends Pump Street, in Chesterton's Napoleon of Notting Hill, "and all things medieval".

Geir Hasnes defends Chesterton "from those who damn with faint praise".

John M. Dejak, headmaster of Chesterton Academy, champions "Chesterton: The Just Warrior".

Kevin O'Brien, host of the EWTN series, "Theater of the Word", praises "The Drama of Chesterton" as "A Story of Life and Death and Life Again".

The irrepressible and indefatigable Jesuit, James V. Schall, visits "Towns and Places" with Hilaire Belloc.

The equally irrepressible Father Dwight Longenecker looks at "Chesterton and the Morality of Movieland".

My fellow countryman in exile, Father Benedict Kiely, a native of England now serving his parish in Vermont, discusses Hilaire Belloc and Heroism.

My fellow faculty member at Ave Maria University, Susan Treacy, discusses the connection beetween poetry and music in the verse of Siegfried Sassoon.

Film Critic, James Bemis, presents the first of a new series examining the films on the Vatican list of great movies, commencing with The Flowers of Saint Francis.

Patrick G. D. Riley casts his experienced eye over the American political scene from an unremittingly pro-life perspective in his regular column, Riley's America.

Book reviews in this issue include:

Thomas Howard on Peter Kreeft's and Father Tacelli's Handbook of Catholic Apologetics; Matthew Kenefick on Charles E. Rice's What Happened at Notre Dame; Michael M. Jordan on Lee Oser's The Return of Christian Humanism: Chesterton, Eliot, Tolkien and the Romance of History; Lorraine V. Murray on Father Benedict Groeschel's Tears of God: Persevering in the Face of Great Sorrow and Catastrophe.

The issue is illustrated, as befits an issue published in Lent, by all fourteen of David Myers' superb depictions of the Stations of the Cross, as well as featuring two lenten poems by Father Dwight Longenecker and Pavel Chichikov.

Last but hopefully not least is my own editorial which compares G. K. Chesterton as a Defender of the Faith to King Henry VIII and Prince Charles.

Why would anyone in their right mind want to miss out on such a treasure trove of Chestertonian wit, wisdom and rambunctiousness? Well, what are you waiting for? Go to the section of the website that allows you to subscribe on-line! Become a Wise Man - Follow the StAR!

Sincerely,

Joseph Pearce

Subsidiarity - A View From the Real World

Yes, my friends, it was ten years ago today - a third of a billion seconds ago - that Subsidiarity stopped being an abstraction: something only written about, or argued about, or doubted, or debated, or derided, or praised. For on March 2, 2000, it entered the Real World, and so this day shall ever be kept as the Feast Day of Subsidiarity. (Note for liturgists: the Proper for the day has not been selected yet. If you wish to commemorate the day, you might consider either the Wedding at Cana - "do whatever He tells you" or the Washing of the Feet at the Last Supper - "I have come not to be served, but to serve".) And just as I began my posting about fiction with a picture of reality, I begin this posting about reality with an illustration from fiction:


That's "Joe the Control Room Guy", a fictional character who WATCHES Subsidiarity in action, standing in front of the big dish by which it occurred.

But today let us hear a little about the reality from which that story sprouted, even if it reads more like fiction. After all, "we have made fiction to suit ourselves". [GKC Heretics CW1:67] But the big dish was not fiction, nor was the machinery associated with it, nor the workers who made it happen.

Very early in the morning of Thursday March 2, 2000, one of the Field Techs at a certain cable television company had driven to a headend (the local distribution site for the viewing public) in central Pennsylvania.

There he installed six inserters. These are large black boxes, each weighing about 80 pounds. They contain a computer, two huge hard drives (huge for 2000, that is) and eight MPEG playback cards. These six computers were linked with each other into what we call the "subtree" - an ethernet network, much like what everyone calls "the INTERNET" except there was neither e-mail nor web pages there. Here's what one with four inserters (a portal and three leaves) looks like:



But on that Thursday, there were five leaves connected with the portal. A portal contained two satellite communications cards, which were linked to a four-foot-wide satellite dish, enabling it to communicate with our headquarters, back in the suburbs of a certain city in southeastern Pennsylvania. (Bear in mind that the leaves cound not communicate directly with headquarters - that's where the interesting part begins.)

The Field Tech then set the satellite dish in precise alignment to a satellite, moving in geosynchronous orbit somewhere over the midwest. He broke into the headend connections in the video and audio lines for 48 different cable networks, linking each of them into the corresponding playback cards within those inserters. By now it was sometime in the late morning. He started all the computers working, he checked that the satellite connection had been made, and then called in to our headquarters.

Here's our headquarters, showing the flow of spots from customers through various departments and machinery, outwards towards the Field (the headends scattered across the mid-Atlantic region):



Then, at headquarters, the lunatic software developer who had written some 50,000 lines of code in the past year, connected to the distant headend by telephone, checked everything, cleared the various conveyor belts, and put the various wheels into motion - the Engine which received the cuetones that trigger the playback of spots, and the Ferry which handled transport of files among the computers of the subtree; on the portal it handled tranport over the satellite to our headquarters. The work of the system began that day: in the Field, the inserters at the headends played spots according to their instructions, requesting them when necessary; at headquarters, the PUMP program sent out spots when requested by the portals in the Field, and informed the Operators of needed spots - and all the many other activities which went on, far too many and too complex to note here.

This work continued for the next 2000 days, that is about five and a half years. Around another 100 headends received their inserters. Every day about 200 schedules were sent out, which caused some 1200 requests for spots to be sent - an average of 120 spots were delivered. Every day over 100,000 spots were played. All these processes were made visible in the Control Room by a program called WATCHER - in particular the needed spots and the spots being transported. That activity of spot transport became known to the Control Room Operators and to workers in Traffic and Field Services as "Subsidiarity" - the software which had been written according to papal encyclicals which proposed an orderly method for handling complex activities - like spot transport.

No longer was Subsidiarity an abstraction. No longer was it just a theory, no longer was it just an idea, or just a suggestion of how things might be done.

Subsidiarity was real. It was visible - you could watch it happen. It worked, and it worked well. It was relied upon by a multi-billion-dollar business, one of the largest media companies in the world.

Do not feel any qualms about whether machinery can perform something so radically human. This system was "doing" Subsidiarity in the exact way that the followers of Jesus are "salt" or "seeds" or "wise or foolish virgins carrying oil lamps" - that is, by analogy. But as in those cases, the analogy was instructive - indeed, highly illuminating.

In ten years, the electromagnetic beams of those spot requests and spot transports have extended past Sirius... Subsidiarity has been proclaimed to our Galaxy.

I told you a week or two ago I had found a remarkable Chesterton quote which bears upon this matter - it voiced something I had not been able to express. It was really astounding, and I think you will also find it so. Here it is:

It has been the boast of religion that all religious acts are irrevocable; the rite of baptism, the vow of celibacy, the vow of marriage. But, indeed, all acts are irrevocable; hence all acts are in their nature more religious than words. Many truths follow from this; one truth that follows is that the only actual, rugged, realistic, robust, and practical religion is the thing called Ritualism. But one other thing that follows is this, that an overt and defiant act is always the best way of arousing controversy. Argument never really begins until someone has gone beyond argument. We can all reason about actions, but it bores even a rationalist perpetually to reason about reasonings. The discussion gets too far away from life if there is not some solid palpable proceeding within approximate reach to be discussed. As the not unknown writer of the Vixere fortes knew very well, heroes depend a good deal upon poets, but poets depend upon heroes also. One does not like to think of what a miserable condition poets would be in if they had nothing but poets to write about. Therefore, I look with pleasure upon any positive action done anywhere in a good cause. It ought to raise the question better than questions raise it. The best way to raise a question in the modern world is not even to ask the question yourself. The best way is to answer the question yourself. Then you may have some faint and far-off hope that other people may begin to ask it.
[GKC ILN Dec 15 1906 CW27:347-8, bold added.]

Yes. There you have it. This event of ten years ago was an overt and defiant act. It went beyond argument. It was the all but incredible yet highly fruitful result of letting a Chestertonian computer scientist "revert to the doctrinal methods of the thirteenth century" since he was "inspired by the general hope of getting something done." [GKC Heretics CW1:46] Like St. Paul he appealed to Roma [Acts 25:11] - and Roma answered. [See Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno but especially Centesimus Annus.]

You may say this is all a matter of argument - all a matter of words, of analogies, of an odd verbal parallel. But 200,000 TV commercials, which played over 230 million times, which were requested by the Field by means of some 2 million PSRs and which were delivered by multicast via satellite to an average of 6.5 portals each time - well, that goes quite a bit beyond argument. You might as well discard the "Good Samaritan" parable because it doesn't actually define what a neighbor is! [We recently considered Fr. Ricciotti's comments on that parable and its application to our topic.]

Here's the real picture of the big dish by which everything happened:



I would like to write more, but I can't do it now. Rather, I already have: there are two books, one fiction, one non-fiction, waiting for you to read them - they tell everything you might wish to know. (Except how to write the software, but that's the boring part anyway.) There's even a poem, if you prefer that form.



People are still asking "What is Subsidiarity" as if it has to do with economics or government, as if it were something abstract and most likely a useless academic speculation appearing in just another journal article. That possibility, that view has been closed permanently. For not only from design but from careful observation of this real world system over 2000 days, I have proposed this answer: "Subsidiarity is like unto a cable TV spot distribution system for local ad insertion, made of leaves and portals and HOME and the Control Room, of FERRY and PUMP and WATCHER... Now go and do likewise."

--Dr. Thursday.

PS. My thanks to my friends, the co-workers who helped make it happen. It really is an everlasting adventure.