The Suprise

We watched The Surprise again as a family yesterday and really enjoyed it. As Dale explains at the start, it was slated to be revised, but that never happened. It does end rather abruptly, but Dale comes back in for a nice fireside chat about the meaning of it all.

Looking for a great gift for a graduate, confirmandi, or just something to watch together as a family? The Surprise fits the bill.

Alive and Young: Chesterton Thing 2

Creative Paul Cat made this very cool sphere of Gilberts.

ChesterTeens Create New Chestertonian Easter Egg

Creativity abounds.

Easter: Dr. Thursday

Authority: Riddles and Puns, Burglars and Police

Alleluia!!!

Ah - the Octave of Easter! It's a week of eight Sundays. (No this is NOT an allusion to The Man Who Was Thursday.) The Canadian rock group "Rush" has a song called "Time Stand Still" - but here we have just a hint of that mystic eternity as the Church suspends all other feasts for these eight days! (the Annunciation, which falls during this week in 2008, yet cannot be suppressed, shall be celebrated next Monday.) Yes, despite some curious and confused looks from the less attentive in the congregation, the careful and reverent priest will chant sed in hac potissimum die or "...on THIS EASTER DAY" in the Preface of each Holy Mass during this week.

Yes, indeed, O ye rockers! Time DOES stand still. How? Click here to find out.Truly we HAVE to celebrate during this week of Sundays, because this Son was dead and has come to life again - this Brother of ours was lost - and now He is found!!! [cf. Lk 15:24]

"Early in the morning of the first day of the week, when the Son had risen..." [cf. Mark 16:2]

Puns - did you say puns? Yes, of course - there are lots of puns to handle - one of the funniest is this thing about RISING - which occurs during the feast of Azymes, the ancient Pasch, the Time of the Unleavened - where we are the New Leaven. [1Cor 5:6-8] Leavening, for those of you who don't bake, is any agent added to dough to make it rise - to make it get lighter than it is... (And we hear our big-billed toucan friend murmur, "Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly." CW1:325) Typical leavening agents are lard or butter, baking powder, baking soda and some acid, and so on, but most of all, yeast, which is zumh = "zyme" (long E) in Greek.

An aside: if you're wondering why "zyme" sounds familiar, it's in the word "enzyme" (something found IN YEAST)... But we're not going to talk biology today, as exciting as it might be, and even though this feast is about the resurrection of the BODY...

No: instead, we'll take just a tiny glance at one paragraph from Orthodoxy, then we can resume our festival.

Here it is:

The sages, it is often said, can see no answer to the riddle of religion. But the trouble with our sages is not that they cannot see the answer; it is that they cannot even see the riddle. They are like children so stupid as to notice nothing paradoxical in the playful assertion that a door is not a door. The modern latitudinarians speak, for instance, about authority in religion not only as if there were no reason in it, but as if there had never been any reason for it. Apart from seeing its philosophical basis, they cannot even see its historical cause. Religious authority has often, doubtless, been oppressive or unreasonable; just as every legal system (and especially our present one) has been callous and full of a cruel apathy. It is rational to attack the police; nay, it is glorious. But the modern critics of religious authority are like men who should attack the police without ever having heard of burglars. For there is a great and possible peril to the human mind: a peril as practical as burglary. Against it religious authority was reared, rightly or wrongly, as a barrier. And against it something certainly must be reared as a barrier, if our race is to avoid ruin.
[CW1:235-6]

We've had a pun or two already, and will probably have more. So... perhaps you are wondering, does GKC actually advise us to do physical harm to the officers of the law? Of course not. Perhaps you'd prefer to think of posting negative comments in a policeman's blogg, or writing editorials against the idea of Law Enforcement.... Well, again, it's not quite that either.

Let me try something. Anyone who has read many of the best "Boy's Books" - like, let's say, The Mad Scientists' Club or even The Phantom Tollbooth, or to vary the genre, the Sir Henry Merrivale mysteries by John Dickson Carr - if you HAVE read such things, you know that boys of all ages especially like to do daring tricks, and play hilarious pranks. Not real crimes of course, but pranks... Wrong, perhaps, but NOT (emphatically NOT) evil...

Such is the kind of "attack" GKC is suggesting. Pranks, I say, not crimes, things no "mature adult" would do, more out of embarrassment than out of "respect" for the Law, at the border where there's still some light to the humour even though some shadows are looming....

There is a certain rebel in so many of us, which gives rise to practical jokes, to boldness - but this is not a "Boy's Book". We are NOT talking about playing tricks in the town square! No, as usual, GKC is desperately trying to construct a metaphor about a exceedingly complex idea, and one which will bring out far more argument and debate than any merely civil power, police force, bad cops, or corrupt city governments have EVER had.

Let's just say, for discussion, that GKC really meant to "attack the police" - let us take this in its extreme sense to mean "to abolish the police utterly"... to destroy Authority.

BUT!!!!

GKC tells us how stupid it would be to reject the idea of police as if we had never heard of burglars...

There IS something real that threatens us, something dangerous in this life, something we need protection from...

GKC is about to reveal that the authority "in religion", just as the authority "in the police" or "in the Law", exists for a very good reason, and was placed there as a protection against a Very Real Threat.

And that threat is NOT what you might otherwise have guessed. But for the answer you will have to come back next week.

For now: back to the feast! It's still Easter Sunday for another three days...

--Dr. Thursday

The Cassette's Sing Chesterton

From Stephen, either the leader of the band, or just a band member:

I play in a secular band called the Cassettes from the Washington, DC area. If you watch the video for the song "Rogue Gnome" to the end, you'll hear a rather familiar paraphrasing of a quote from one of our favorite authors [Chesterton].
Made up of myself, a Catholic, a Muslim, a lapsed-Romanian Orthodox/Non-denom Protestant, and a "secular" Jew, The Cassettes don't have any particular religious stance, but I should say that we are fighting, in our small way, towards what I would suggest is something close to Distributist ideals. We try to work and play with local and small-minded (in the Schumacher sense) folks as much as possible, including playing on street corners for passers-by when the mood strikes us.

Check here for more of The Cassette's music videos.

Alive and Young: Chesterton Thing

Alive and Young's Paul Cat has been learning some graphic design, calling attention to himself on airplanes, and playing with GKC's image. Check it out here: Alive and Young: Chesterton Thing
I think it's amazing the creativity inspired by Chesterton. Tomorrow I'm going to tell you about this band that plays Chesterton. And then there's this Chesterton Easter Egg...and did I tell you about the Chesterton cornflake that got $1300 on eBay?

Happy Easter!

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.
--G. K. Chesterton The Everlasting Man CW2:345

Good Friday/Holy Saturday Chesterton The Everlasting Man

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.
--G. K. Chesterton The Everlasting Man CW2:344-5

Thanks to Dr. T.

George MacDonald: Mary Magdalene

A beautiful poem for today.

Good Friday Thoughts from Chesterton's Orthodoxy

God the rebel, God with his back to the wall, God for atheists

That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already; but that God could have his back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents for ever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete.

Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point - and does not break.

In this indeed I approach a matter more dark and awful than it is easy to discuss; and I apologise in advance if any of my phrases fall wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which the greatest saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach. But in that terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt.

It is written, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." [Mt 4:7 quoting Dt. 6:16] No; but the Lord thy God may tempt Himself; and it seems as if this was what happened in Gethsemane. In a garden Satan tempted man: and in a garden God tempted God. He passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror of pessimism.

When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. [Mt 27:46 quoting Ps 22:1] And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt.

Nay (the matter grows too difficult for human speech), but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist. [cf The Everlasting Man CW2:344]

--G. K. Chesterton Orthodoxy CW1:343
Thank you, Dr. T.

Holy Thursday

This is Holy Thursday, and just as the Church shifts the calendar of fixed dates to accommodate the variable, we also shall shift our focus. The wonder is that we shall nevertheless consider the very next bit of Orthodoxy, since it plays a role in today's considerations.

As those who attend the evening Mass today shall see, although this Mass is the Mass of Masses - the anniversary, as it were, of the first Mass - the gospel reading for today is not about the Eucharist. It's about Subsidiarity. Yes. Did Dr. Thursday just say subsidiarity? Why? Click here.It's where Jesus washes the feet of the Apostles [John 13] Here we see the truth set forth in very clear, though quite horrifying detail. Horrifying, that is, to the ancient Aristotelian view of society with its slaves serving at the bottom and its "best" people ruling (Greek "aristocracy"= rule by the best) at the top. Horrifying, too, to the modern corporate mind which sees their megastructures built from the top down, paying the do-nothing executives VAST amounts and the least minimum possible to the underlings who actually do the work. (What? Not much different in 2300 years?)

But from Subsidiarity, we learn that the higher orders exist to serve the lower - which Jesus demonstrated by washing the Apostles' feet. Ever think about that? Those were bare, or at best sandal-clad feet, that had recently stomped through dust and mud and trash and ... ah... other things one might find on the horse and donkey and camel-travelled roads of that time.

Hey! That's slave work - being done by the Master? Yes: "He took the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men..." [Phil 2:7]

Why do I use this word "horrifying"? What does that have to do with Orthodoxy, or with the current moment in the liturgical cycle?

Well, when one is about to die, one has to try to deal with the most important matters in one's life. As we know from St. Paul, and from the three Synoptic evangelists, the Eucharist was established amid the Passover rituals, as the new and everlasting passover-covenant. St. John reports how Jesus repeated this dogma six times, [see John 6] utterly scandalizing many who heard it, so much that they went away. We also know, from St. John, the lengthy prayer-instruction which Jesus gave just after the evening meal [John 14-16] - within which are more clues to this mystery.

But as I said, echoing St. John (13:1), Jesus knew he was about to die. This is the single most talked-about death, the single most dramatic death, the single most important death to occur in history, or even in fiction. This death is, as I have harped on previously, an important thing to remember. Dickens told us how important it was that we know, at the outset of the "Christmas Carol":

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. ...
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"]

Likewise, we have to enter into this matter of Christ's death - and be fully convinced of it, in order to proceed into these next days.

But "Horrifying"? Why? Because of the death? Because of the manner of death?

No. Because it was so unreasonable, so inappropriate.

Peter, always the spokesman for the others, certainly thought so: "Lord, far be it from You [to die]..." (Mt. 16:22) And also, St. Paul called the crucifixion (1 Cor 1:23) a "stumbling block" to some - apparently the Greek word is "scandal" - that is, "the distressing effect on others of unseemly or unrighteous conduct". He also called it "foolishness" to others. That is, something quite irrational- the Greek word apparently is "moron".

Now, if you take just a few minutes from your day and read the next two or three paragraphs from Orthodoxy CW1:235-6. But don't worry if you cannot, we shall talk some more about them in the future. What does GKC tell us there? The critical line is in that first short paragraph, near the bottom of 235:

...what peril of morbidity there is for man comes rather from his reason than his imagination.

Well! Chesterton, if we are reading him right, seems to be hinting that the problem we men face comes from expecting REASONABLE things - presumably in places where things are just not going to be reasonable.

Or - maybe - just maybe - he's giving some kind of strange paraphrase ... ah ... of St. Paul.

Did I just write that?

Yes, I did. Just last week I was considering something, and I have begun to note some interesting alignments - maybe we might say that GKC is a disciple of St. Paul. I am not arguing this in any strict sense; nothing more, perhaps than a "slovenly poetry", without rhyme or even rhythm. Unreasonable, perhaps, but imaginative.

But there was one thing, NOT from Orthodoxy which hit me, as I thought of the events we recall this week, and considered my writing on our present book... this idea of a journey. And I recalled this, which I warn you may seem very blunt, and perhaps horrifying:

...the life of Jesus went as swift and straight as a thunderbolt. It was above all things dramatic; it did above all things consist in doing something that had to be done. It emphatically would not have been done, if Jesus had walked about the world forever doing nothing except tell the truth. And even the external movement of it must not be described as a wandering in the sense of forgetting that it was a journey. This is where it was a fulfilment of the myths rather than of the philosophies; it is a journey with a goal and an object, like Jason going to find the Golden Fleece, or Hercules the golden apples of the Hesperides. The gold that he was seeking was death. The primary thing that he was going to do was to die. [see Mt 16:21, Lk 12:49-50] He was going to do other things equally definite and objective; we might almost say equally external and material. But from first to last the most definite fact is that he is going to die.
[GKC, The Everlasting Man CW2:339, emphasis added]

OK, now compare that with this:

For I judged not myself to know anything among you, but Jesus Christ: and him crucified.
[St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 2:2)]

I know; the words are not even close. I said I was NOT making that kind of argument! But the thought is the same. It's what I said before; it's the Dickens opening. It's most unreasonable, it's putting the End - (isn't death an End?) at the very beginning. It's upside down. Of course it is! He told us so himself, feeding, as it were, GKC with whole rafts of paradoxes. "I have come to serve, not to be served, and to give his life..." [Mt 20:28, emphasis added; this verse is the very kernel and object of Subsidiarity!] Mary, his mother, carrying Jesus within her as an embryo of just a few cells, stated this of God: "He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble." [Luke 1:52] And Jesus repeated that this inversion shall occur [Lk 13:20] and, as we heard, demonstrated it by washing those dirty feet.

((An aside: Don't let anyone ever tell you Chesterton is the Master of Paradox. Really, that's just another title of our Lord. Just check out the gospels, and you'll see it's true.))

You look a bit concerned: Is that all? I'm still confused. Isn't there any more?

Sure there's more. There's a lot more - to Dickens, to St. Paul, to GKC - and to our remembrance of these next days. There will be, in a future chapter, very powerful and bitter - and shocking - comments about this death, and we shall see a courageous God, a God with his back to the wall, a God who was a rebel, a God who seemed to be atheistic (See CW1:343) But for today that is all you ought to consider.

May God give you the grace "to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified".... "to begin with. Or nothing wonderful can come of the story" you are about to hear. [1Cor2:2, cf. Dickens' "Christmas Carol"]

--Dr. Thursday

Catholic Blog Awards

Congratulations American Chesterton Society Blog!

We won!

Well, we came in Eleventh Place (with 20 votes) in the "Best Group Blog" category. Yeah, us!

We also came in 93rd (with one vote) in the "Most Informative and Insightful" blog.

Thanks to everyone who voted.

Unexpected Chesterton talk coming up in Chicago Area

Event Calendar

4/9/2008
"G.K. Chesterton's Discovery of Metaphysical Realism"
Details:
“G.K. Chesterton’s Discovery of Metaphysical Realism” is the topic of a lecture that will be presented by Fr. Aidan Nichols, O.P., a renowned theologian, author and John Paul II Memorial Visiting Lecturer at the University of Oxford, at 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, April 9 in the Krasa Center Presentation Room. The lecture is the first in a series at Benedictine titled “Theology in Life” which focuses on theology for lay people and how they can relate that theology to their lives in the workplace, civil society, political society and family. The lecture is sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies and St. Procopius Abbey. It is free and open to the public.

Contact Information
Christine Fletcher

GKCleveland's First Meeting

As reported in the March issue of Gilbert, there is a new Chesterton society in Cleveland, (see pg. 15) who is lucky enough to have a G.K. Chesterton room where they can meet and stare at Chesterton's large portrait on the wall while talking about him.

The most interesting item, to me, buried in the second last paragraph of that article, was the report of a small hand-drawn booklet, made for Sheila Matier of California (age 9) containing the original poem "The Three Conquistadors".

This poem was mentioned in Maisie Ward's biography of Chesterton, and part of the poem was reprinted, but not the entire thing. People have been searching for this poem for a long time. Including me.

At one point in my duties as a Chestertonian, I was put to the task of trying to find this person and possibly this manuscript. I went down a bunch of dead ends for a year or more. And now, I have come to discover that according to Dale Ahlquist, President of the American Chesterton Society, that TWO such manuscripts have been located!

The first is, as Gilbert recorded, in the collection of Chestertoniana at the Special Collections of the John Carroll University just outside Cleveland. The membership at the first GKCleveland got to see this manuscript with their own eyes (and possibly in their own hands) during that first meeting. (I wonder, did it smell like cigar smoke?!)

According to Dale, there is a second, possibly identical manuscript in the Huntington Library in Los Angeles!

I would be very curious to know how two such items came into existence. Does anyone know any more about this?

The Best and Funniest Article in the Latest Gilbert

Over the past two days, I've savored every moment I spent reading this month's Gilbert. Sometimes I skip around, but there were so many interesting things to read, this time I just did the front-to-back book style reading of it. And boy was I pleasantly surprised when I reached the last page, the last word, a new essay of Gilbert's from the Daily News, March 14, 1908.

This column, titled "A Case of Comrades" shows Gilbert's tremendous ability to *show* the reader what he means. It illustrates his artistic nature and that he is a visual writer.

As I pictured this group of men, debating over whether the train had a central passageway or a left-sided passageway (and having seen enough old movies to visualize both myself), and imagining the way Chesterton drops one conversation on the left and another on the right to engage in this debate, using the sugar cubes, the knives and forks, and the tables for visual aids, well, by the end of that article, I was laughing so hard, I had tears.

Chesterton makes out that men's conversations are rather foolish (although they take them quite seriously) and the debate might not be over a serious subject, but still, I can't help but wish I'd been just somewhere in the room so I could have had a good laugh over it all, don't you?

Gilbert: Feminism

I finally got my March issue of Gilbert magazine, hopefully you've had time to read yours. There were some great articles in there, some good news, writing of Gilbert's that are new and fun to read, announcement of the conference speakers, and more.

I had a moment of sadness, when I read Frank's joke in the letters, knowing he sent that in before he died. I'll miss those jokes in the letters in the months ahead. Frank was a good soul.

I'll be discussing this issue more, but for right now, there is science, math and some Easter dresses that are a pretty high priority. ;-)

Dr. Thursday's Post

The Defender of Truth, the Patron of Humility

The vast quantity of GKC's writing - over 45 megabytes of text, as AMBER counts such things - means that we might claim him under a variety of titles - which, as usual, is a trademark of All Christian Things.

You may have heard it said that there are 1000 names of God (or various other numbers). There are 33 famous titles of Jesus appearing in the Litany of the Sacred Heart, many of which are drawn from Sacred Scripture. There are whole Towers of titles for Mary; there are a number for St. Joseph; there even are various nicknames and honorifics for at least the big-name saints. Peter, who really is Simon-Bar-Jonah, is called the Rock (Cephas in Aramaic, Petrus in Greek/Latin, and so on) - you know the list. Sometimes these are not so much titles but names-given-in-place-of-function, like "Keeper of the Keys" for Peter. The hidden Latin pun calls him "Janitor of Heaven" as if we'd expect to see him with a mop or dustpan and brush, a cigar butt hanging from his mouth! But the ancient Janitor is a "doorkeeper" - from janua, the Latin word for "outer door" or "gate".

GKC, though not yet formally canonised, might have a variety of titles as well. Our esteemed president, Dale Ahlquist, calls him "the Apostle of Common Sense" - which conveniently happens to have the same initials as the American Chesterton Society. But Fr. Jaki, one of the great students of Chesterton on Science, calls him such dignified titles as "Interpreter of Science", "Antagonist of Scientism", "Critic of Evolutionism", and my favourite, "Champion of the Universe". Those of us who read GKC's mysteries might call him "First President of the Detection Club" - which he was. But if we consider his philosophical teachings - in the overall, comprehensive, catholic method he followed, we should have to focus on certain aspects: his novel sense of vision, his exaltation of gratitude - or his stern defence of humility, which could also be phrased as his utter antipathy to pride.

If there is one essay of GKC's you really OUGHT to read during Lent - and indeed at least once a year - it is his "If I Only Had One Sermon to Preach" which can be found in his The Common Man. I do not have a date for that particular essay (though it is clearly after 1922) and that book dates from after his death (its essays were collected by his secretary, Dorothy Collins); however, his thought on this matter can be found in many places. For example, here is something he wrote in 1905:

Humility is so practical a virtue that men think it must be a vice. Humility is so successful that it is mistaken for pride. ... Now, one of these very practical and working mysteries in the Christian tradition, and one which the Roman Catholic Church, as I say, has done her best work in singling out, is the conception of the sinfulness of pride. Pride is a weakness in the character; it dries up laughter, it dries up wonder, it dries up chivalry and energy. The Christian tradition understands this... the truth is much stranger even than it appears in the formal doctrine of the sin of pride. It is not only true that humility is a much wiser and more vigorous thing than pride. It is also true that vanity is a much wiser and more vigorous thing than pride. Vanity is social - it is almost a kind of comradeship; pride is solitary and uncivilized. Vanity is active; it desires the applause of infinite multitudes; pride is passive, desiring only the applause of one person, which it already has. Vanity is humorous, and can enjoy the joke even of itself; pride is dull, and cannot even smile.
[GKC Heretics, CW1:72, 107]

Or, from the essay you really must read, written after his conversion in 1922:

Pride is a poison so very poisonous that it not only poisons the virtues; it even poisons the other vices. ... Pride consists in a man making his personality the only test, instead of making the truth the test. It is not pride to wish to do well, or even to look well, according to a real test. It is pride to think that a thing looks ill, because it does not look like something characteristic of oneself.
[GKC The Common Man 248,254 (emphasis added)]

Read that excerpt again; it will serve you well. Lest I give you the impression that GKC has only given the warning, and said nothing of the remedy, behold, from a different essay in the same book:

Laughter has something in it in common with the ancient winds of faith and inspiration; it unfreezes pride and unwinds secrecy; it makes men forget themselves in the presence of something greater than themselves; something (as the common phrase goes about a joke) that they cannot resist.
[GKC, The Common Man 158]

Hm: "Laughter unfreezes pride, unwinds secrecy." We shall see more of that particular remedy when we near the completion of our journey. The password for that moment shall be "toucan"; if I forget, please remind me.

Oy. Have I thoroughly lost it? Why am I quoting large chunks of other books? Aren't we talking about Orthodoxy any more?

Why, yes, we are. You have already advanced into the next chapter of our journey.
Click here to go further.
This leg of our journey, the chapter we have just entered, is called "The Suicide of Thought". If you are reading along, please consider just the first five paragraphs - all the further we shall travel today.

GKC begins with some verbal fireworks, examining the phrase "having one's heart in the right place" - and its negation. Again, he is aiming to introduce us to a complex matter by presenting us with a well-known matter, and drawing analogies to it. You may, of course, think of the dear once-wicked Grinch, who heard a song one Christmas morning, inspiring his heart to grow three sizes - and so was able to pull a Scrooge - a veritable "Damascus Moment" - and come sit down at the feast. [Cf. Rev 19:9] The hearts of Scrooge and of the Grinch were clearly in the right place.

GKC talks about the vices running rampant. We all know that in our time - it may be funny to think of such words coming from 100 years ago. But immediately he adds that the virtues are also rampant - and cause far more damage. Look at these next words - you may feel a chill from his precognition of our modern world:

Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.
[CW1:233]

There is a famous quote I read in a book by Fr. Jaki, I cannot quite recall who said it, or the context, about how the work on the atom bomb was "technically sweet". There are other charming little phrases, quite current in this day-and-age, about cloning, embryo-experiments, harvesting organs from living people, which sound much more like things right out of ancient Carthage...

Oh - pardon. You are bothered by this, are you not?

Again - and I have told you previously - do not lose sight of the point GKC is getting at. He is NOT trying to produce a solid argument ABOUT these matters here... he is showing us that there has been carved a deep chasm between things that ought to have remained firmly linked.

One does not have to be an epistemologist (a student of the knowledge about knowing) to know that science is about knowing (Latin scientia = knowledge) - knowing the truth of natural things. But science cannot answer whether a given action, experiment, or device should be performed or built. It is just as true to say that moral theology does speak to the question of whether actions are permitted, but by no means can it tell you how to plant corn, how to purify water, or how to make a smoke detector - which happens to rely on nuclear physics. For much more on this right order of the fields of knowledge, see Newman's Idea of a University - which talks about the order, the right arrangement of the various disciplines.

Ah! Now, maybe you see? It's a matter of - let us say - "the heart being (or not being) in the right place".

Or - how about the people who wish to fix the drug problem by legalising all such things? (Excepting, I may guess, tobacco and alcohol.) GKC already has you beat there - or rather I ought to say Mr. Blatchford, who (as GKC reports),

is mad on one Christian virtue: the merely mystical and almost irrational virtue of charity. He has a strange idea that he will make it easier to forgive sins by saying that there are no sins to forgive.
[CW1:233-4]

If you desire the parallel fictional discussion, please read "The Chief Mourner of Marne" in The Secret Of Father Brown. In Mr. Blatchford's case, he points out, "the pagan accusation is really true: his mercy would mean mere anarchy. He really is the enemy of the human race - because he is so human." [CW1:234]

You ought to expect, in GKC's casual introduction, the corresponding opposite - and sure enough, we have it: "As the other extreme, we may take the acrid realist, who has deliberately killed in himself all human pleasure in happy tales or in the healing of the heart." [CW1:234] I think we may know some people like that.

Then we come to another firework, even more provocative than the mention of science, for it brings up the Inquisition - yet, "in Torquemada's time there was at least a system that could to some extent make righteousness and peace kiss each other. Now they do not even bow." [CW1:234; cf Ps 84(85):11] Since it was based on a Christian, and not a natural view of human nature, the Inquisition had far better protections than any of the then-existing state judicial systems, and far better than most of our own - but that is another topic, and we must not lose sight of what GKC is getting at. Just in case you are, he takes up another topic, which I have already displayed for you in my introduction: the idea of humility.

I shall give you the whole next paragraph, for I cannot imagine anything I can add to its jewel-like brilliance:

It is only with one aspect of humility that we are here concerned. Humility was largely meant as a restraint upon the arrogance and infinity of the appetite of man. He was always outstripping his mercies with his own newly invented needs. His very power of enjoyment destroyed half his joys. By asking for pleasure, he lost the chief pleasure; for the chief pleasure is surprise. Hence it became evident that if a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small. Even the haughty visions, the tall cities, and the toppling pinnacles are the creations of humility. Giants that tread down forests like grass are the creations of humility. Towers that vanish upwards above the loneliest star are the creations of humility. For towers are not tall unless we look up at them; and giants are not giants unless they are larger than we. All this gigantesque imagination, which is, perhaps, the mightiest of the pleasures of man, is at bottom entirely humble. It is impossible without humility to enjoy anything - even pride.
[CW1:234]

We can find the fictional counterpart in a Father Brown story, written in nearly the same time frame:

Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.
["The Hammer of God" in The Innocence of Father Brown]

Wonderful, you say. Clear. Exciting. (It gives you a real "hiking" feel, doesn't it?) But then, what's the problem?

In a blunt statement, nearly as stunning as anything in the last chapter about lunacy, GKC tells us:

But what we suffer from to-day is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed.
[CW1:234-5, emphasis added]

Oh, it gets worse. Those of you who have bowed at the altar of "self-esteem" and "self-assertion" might now wish to turn to another book - but you must now take your medicine:

Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert - himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt - the Divine Reason. Huxley preached a humility content to learn from Nature. But the new sceptic is so humble that he doubts if he can even learn.
[CW1:235]

A quick aside: Who is Huxley? GKC: "I think Huxley was a great man and Herbert Spencer a very small man. Many of their contemporaries worshipped both of them; and I do not very greatly agree with either of them. But Huxley held the very ancient agnostic philosophy; and it is a large though a negative philosophy. And Huxley could write; that is, he could write that large philosophy on a small scale." [ILN Feb 26, 1927 CW34:263] He was "Darwin's bulldog" - a kind of preacher of the Darwinian philosophy, or rather anti-philosophy. But GKC, always seeking truth, points out how he was right, and honours his guide for GOOD science - "humility content to learn from nature". Would that more scientists, more intellectuals, were that way! But let us resume.

Oh - are you stuck? Confused about this "wrong" form of humility? GKC gives another example in a metaphor:

The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a nail in his boot that prevented him from going on. For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether.
[CW1:235]

Oh, boy! Goal-driven, purpose-driven - ooh, teleology! Dic cur hic! Tell why you're here! But where is here? Quo vadimus? Where are we going? (We are going somewhere, aren't we?) Yes, but it's hard to go anywhere if you have no aim, no destination. Elsewhere GKC told us: "A man might measure heaven and earth with a reed, but not with a growing reed." [GKC Heretics CW1:117]

Wait, Doctor, you say - this is complex.

Uh, no - not really.

In order to explain, let us take a quick humour break. As you may know GKC often gave lectures - which people went to, because they were looking forward to the Question and Answer period at the end, when they'd ask GKC all kinds of things just to see how he'd respond. Remember how he argued with his brother? Or how he pointed out that the "Schoolman" (meaning the philosophers of the Middle Ages like Aquinas) "heckled himself for hundreds of pages"! [GKC Chaucer CW18:367] One of the best of the recorded give-and-takes, in my estimation, is this:

Q: I feel, Mr. Chesterton, that there is one important matter you have not quite covered: in the event of your having to change your original position, what tactics do you adopt?
GKC: On such occasions I invariably commit suicide.
[Ward, Return To Chesterton 152]

Or perhaps you've seen the famous bumper sticker, I don't know if it was a quote from Lucy Van Pelt: "Everyone has a right to MY opinion." You've surely seen or heard comments in bloggs, or anchormen giving weighty responses about such things.

What is the problem? The problem is that, for 100 years now, these grand statements of opinion are weakened by the postscript, "I may be wrong."

So?

So, here's what GKC says:

At any street corner we may meet a man who utters the frantic and blasphemous statement that he may be wrong. Every day one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one. Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view. We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being a mere fancy of their own. Scoffers of old time were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced. The meek do inherit the earth; [see Mt 5:4 KJV] but the modern sceptics are too meek even to claim their inheritance. It is exactly this intellectual helplessness which is our second problem.
[CW1:235]

You may now sigh with relief - for there you have it, the signpost for this chapter: the Suicide of Thought, or intellectual helplessness.

Do not despair, dear friend. You are about to face some very rough terrain - but you will find new tools, some awesomely GRAND views, some dramatic figures of speech - even hints of even papal writings. One wonders whether John Paul II had this chapter in mind when he wrote Fides et Ratio...

For now, however, think a bit about Euclid's starting point (puns intended), and bear this in mind:

...only a man who knows nothing of reason talks of reasoning without strong, undisputed first principles. ... reason is always reasonable, even in the last limbo, in the lost borderland of things. I know that people charge the Church with lowering reason, but it is just the other way. Alone on earth, the Church makes reason really supreme. Alone on earth, the Church affirms that God himself is bound by reason.
["The Blue Cross" in The Innocence of Father Brown]

--Dr. Thursday

Celebrating 100 Years of Orthodoxy: Free Digital copy of Book

Follow this story and link to get your free copy of Orthodoxy.

New Reprint to read before the elections

Cecil Chesterton was Gilbert's brother, Hilaire Belloc his best friend. Although Gilbert didn't help write the book, I can't help thinking he'd have discussed these ideas with his friend and his brother.

Pertinent to this year's election, The Party System looks like a good read for 2008.

The Party System (Paperback)
by Hilaire Belloc (Author), Cecil Chesterton (Author), Ron Paul (Foreword), Sforza Ruspoli (Preface) Find out more.


* Paperback: 160 pages
* Publisher: IHS Press (March 1, 2008)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 1932528113
* ISBN-13: 978-1932528114


Book Description
Pertinent to America, Britain, and other Western democracies, this book explains that what people believe happens in national assemblies and parliaments is radically different from the reality. Instead of being places where debate is intense, passionate, and aimed at the national interest, the fact is most members of these institutions act on behalf of powerful, unelected interests. They know, implicitly, who really runs the country—and their only real task is to decide if they want to try and rock the boat (thereby risking their salary, their reputation, their future), or stay silent for fear or favor. The book demonstrates beyond any doubt that the very nature of the system is hostile to democracy as laypeople understand it.

About the Author
Hilaire Belloc was twice elected to the British Parliament and is a prolific author on a wide range of political, economic, social and historical issues. Cecil Chesterton was and journalist and editor who was associated with the Fabian Society and later worked almost exclusively for The New Age, where he was an important contributor. In 1911, he became assistant editor on Hilaire Belloc's new weekly, The Eye-Witness, and when it folded in 1912, he bought the paper and renamed it The New Witness, which he edited until when he went off to war. His books include Gladstonian Ghosts, G. K. Chesterton: A Criticism, and A History of the United States. Congressman Ron Paul served in Congress during the late 1970s and early 1980s, where he served on the House Banking committee. He returned to Congress in 1997 where he serves on the Financial Services Committee as the vice-chairman of the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee. He is also the author of several books, including Challenge to Liberty; The Case for Gold and A Republic, If You Can Keep It. He lives in Lake Jackson, Texas. Prince Sforza Ruspoli is the prince of Cerveteri, Italy, the count of Vignanello, and the honorary vice president of the promotional committee of the Banca del Mezzogiorno at the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance. He served as ambassador of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta to the State of Malta, of which order he is currently a Knight, and is a member of the Executive Committee of the Bank of Rome and the founder of the Centers of Agrarian Action.

Prayers

Please pray for the mother of Chestertonian and eloquent Distributist Roy Moore, who is in the hospital.

Thanks.