Jill K. and the Midwest Atlantic Popular Culture Association

As reported here, Jill Kriegel from the Florida Atlantic University organized a Chesterton panel at the conference. Jill spoke brilliantly at a Chesterton Conference on her Masters Thesis which discussed a Chestertonian view of Dickens' work Dombey and Sons.

Jill's article reporting on this panel is in the latest Gilbert magazine, and we were mentioned as being helpful to her, which was pretty nice, since all I did was, well, mention it.

The very links.

The Subject of Cheese in Poetry

I think we can now agree that poets are no longer silent on the subject of cheese, perhaps inspired by our man Chesterton.

David Z. recently sent me a pdf file of a Chestertonian Literary Cheese Poetry Contest event which his friends hosted. This event was hosted in the grade state of Wisconsin, land of cows and therefore, cheese. You must also know that Wisconsinites are often depicted, lovingly, with a large triangular block of cheese on their heads, as a nickname for Wisconsinites is "cheeseheads", owing to the large dairy consumption in the state. The picture will give you an idea of what such a "hat" looks like.

So the grand prize of the above mentioned event was a statue of Chesterton with a slab of cheese on his head. Some of the contestants also came in this attire.

The event summary, to which I was privy, is quite good reading. And proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that poets truly are no longer silent, or even quiet, on the subject of cheese.

Beyond this, many Chestertonians have been inspired to wax eloquent on the subject, including one very moving poem, which I reported on here, Ballade Against Cheesemongery.

I almost think we are getting to the point now where we could have a book of Chestertonian-inspired Cheese Poetry, don't you?

Pagan Gods in Your Kitchen, and Christ's Literary Style

One of the more curious things about being a computer scientist - something that germinated for me in the dim mists of grade or high school - is a delight in language, be it human (like Latin, or Greek, or Egyptian hieroglyphics) or the powerful notation of music, or of mathematics. And every Chestertonian ought to have this delight in his backpack - when you have it you can never be bored, as any word at all will provide untold enthusiasm for you, even if you know very little of any other language:

I myself have little Latin and less Greek. But I know enough Greek to know the meaning of the second syllable of "enthusiasm," and I know it to be the key to this and every other discussion.
[GKC The Thing CW3:139]

The second syllable of enthusiasm comes from the Greek word QeoV, "Theos" which means "God".

In the delightful story called The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley, you will find two mentions of GKC. One of them you will find on a card, pinned prominently by the entrance, in the list of suggestions for books to explore. You will also find this:

One who loves the English tongue can have a lot of fun with a Latin dictionary.

And you can. I have Lewis and Short for Latin, and for Greek I have Liddell and Scott. (See here for an example!) For today, I wish to mention two words, one Latin, one Egyptian, to start us on our journey.

Somewhere or other I read a book which examined the sources of various English words. One of the more curious lists was the words arising from ancient Egyptian, which is a bit surprising to think is still around. But one of the words is rather common, and its variants often come up in chemistry. And you may be a bit shocked to realize that you may have something in your kitchen named for an Egyptian god! Actually, it's very likely you also have something there which is named for a Roman goddess. Yes, even very deeply religious Christians might possess - and use - these things. It's very funny.

But you need not call in a priest to do an exorcism. These things are worn-down names, not old pagan worship items.
The name of the Egyptian god "Ammun" or "Amon" is repeated in the chemical and cleaning fluid "ammonia" (and in related words like "amino acid"). Why? Because a kind of white powdery stuff like salt was found near a temple of Ammon, so they called it "Ammun's salt", or "sal ammoniac" - which is the chemical we know as ammonium chloride, NH₄Cl.

The name of the Roman fertility goddess "Ceres" appears in the breakfast food called "cereal". Why? Because she was worshipped as the goddess of grains, who fructified the wheat (the "cereal" crops).

In today's excerpt, we shall hear about another pagan topic, larger than cereal or ammonia, and quite a bit harder to discuss. GKC provides this, his third example, against the argument of the outsider against Christianity. And despite its largeness, and rather paradoxical character, we shall not stop there. We shall hear GKC's elegant summary, the form of which provides (as I mentioned previously) the great master outline of his 1925 masterwork, The Everlasting Man. But - and the pace is getting faster now - we shall hear GKC immediately propose three more challenges from his opponent! (Remember, the Scholastic method is to know your opponent's argument perfectly - and then respond.) We shall see two of them today. And in the first, you will hear some very startling insights about Jesus Christ, not found in typical bible study texts, and which are treated at greater length in The Everlasting Man... Yes, in particular you will hear GKC, a master of words, consider the literary style of the Word Made Flesh. Once before I said GKC was a heretic - between this stuff about pagans and this even more startling stuff about Christ, maybe you won't want to read any more. Then get out the ammonia and sterilize your keyboard, pour yourself a bowl of cereal and go back to sleep...

(( Otherwise, when you wish to be surprised, click here... ))


We begin with the third of GKC's instances of the outsider's complaints against Christianity, in which we shall consider one of life's chief paradoxes. (I told you before that the paradoxes are NOT made by Chesterton; he merely records them.) It is the idea of how Christianity preserves the festive, party-like fun of paganism. It is quite in keeping with Lent, which dignifies both the fast as well as the feast, by putting them together sensibly, not as the common medically sanctioned diet, or the strange hypercontrol of the typical sports regimen. GKC's short treatment gives us one of his most well-known (and hard to find) vignettes, the famous "Christianity as kids in a playground" scene:

And if we took the third chance instance, it would be the same; the view that priests darken and embitter the world. I look at the world and simply discover that they don't. Those countries in Europe which are still influenced by priests, are exactly the countries where there is still singing and dancing and coloured dresses and art in the open-air. Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground. Christianity is the only frame which has preserved the pleasure of Paganism. We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff's edge they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased.
[CW1:350]

It would be the work of a book to treat the deep philosophical point GKC made: the idea that Law and Rule produce freedom and liberty! (I told you GKC didn't make these paradoxes.) GKC's short story "The Yellow Bird" in The Poet and the Lunatics is an entire parable about the idea; it contains this succinct definition:

What exactly is liberty? First and foremost, surely, it is the power of a thing to be itself.

And in the one big topic which everyone seems to think is the only human activity worth pursuing (and which Dorothy Sayers makes a joke about, as if the Church condemns it alone!) - you know what I mean... I shall not use the explicit word myself, but you'll see it shortly when I quote GKC. It is a vast and very important matter, sometimes considered proper only for "mature" or "adult" audiences - and in a manner of speaking, it is something Pagan that the Church preserves.... No pagan who worshipped Ceres or the other gods and goddesses of Fertility had any doubt just what was desired... it was, after all, what God commanded in Eden: "Be fruitful and multiply." And, at the risk of touching on very well-known but sensitive and secret matters (see ILN Aug 10 1907 CW27:524), I shall quote GKC at length, for it is of grave concern to us in our day:

In one way all this ancient sin was infinitely superior, immeasurably superior, to the modern sin. All those who write of it at least agree on one fact; that it was the cult of Fruitfulness. It was unfortunately too often interwoven, very closely, with the cult of the fruitfulness of the land. It was at least on the side of Nature. It was at least on the side of Life. It has been left to the last Christians, or rather to the first Christians fully committed to blaspheming and denying Christianity, to invent a new kind of worship of Sex, which is not even a worship of Life. It has been left to the very latest Modernists to proclaim an erotic religion which at once exalts lust and forbids fertility. The new Paganism literally merits the reproach of Swinburne, when mourning for the old Paganism: "and rears not the bountiful token and spreads not the fatherly feast." The new priests abolish the fatherhood and keep the feast - to themselves. They are worse than Swinburne's Pagans. The priests of Priapus and Cotytto go into the kingdom of heaven before them.
[GKC The Well and the Shallows CW3:501-2, emphasis added; that last sentence is paraphrasing Mt 21:31]

It is strange that both celibate clergy and big Catholic families are criticized by those who have abandoned the duties of matrimony, but not its privileges. (If you want to hear more from GKC on this, see the volume I just quoted, also Eugenics and Other Evils in CW4.)

Serious stuff, yes. But remember, we were just dealing with one example - what we might call how "Christianity baptised the pagan life" and we have now finished. As usual, then, GKC reviews:

Thus these three facts of experience, such facts as go to make an agnostic, are, in this view, turned totally round. I am left saying, "Give me an explanation, first, of the towering eccentricity of man among the brutes; second, of the vast human tradition of some ancient happiness; third, of the partial perpetuation of such pagan joy in the countries of the Catholic Church." One explanation, at any rate, covers all three: the theory that twice was the natural order interrupted by some explosion or revelation such as people now call "psychic." Once Heaven came upon the earth with a power or seal called the image of God, whereby man took command of Nature; and once again (when in empire after empire men had been found wanting) Heaven came to save mankind in the awful shape of a man. This would explain why the mass of men always look backwards; and why the only corner where they in any sense look forwards is the little continent where Christ has His Church. I know it will be said that Japan has become progressive. But how can this be an answer when even in saying "Japan has become progressive," we really only mean, "Japan has become European"? But I wish here not so much to insist on my own explanation as to insist on my original remark. I agree with the ordinary unbelieving man in the street in being guided by three or four odd facts all pointing to something; only when I came to look at the facts I always found they pointed to something else.
[CW1:350-1]

In that paragraph, in the line beginning "twice was the natural order" we hear the master outline for The Everlasting Man, which he divides into two: "Part One, On the Creature Called Man" and "Part Two On the Man Called Christ".

(An aside, about Japan. Let no one misread this. GKC is NOT harping against Japan. I might call your attention to the topic our esteemed bloggmistress recently researched, about GKC and Gandhi. As in the case of India, GKC thinks Japan is better being Japanese, not as a mere pretence of a colony of some other country. But you can find more about all this elsewhere.)

In the last sentence, GKC applies a very important strategy of Scholastic argument, which (as we know) is merely the pursuit of truth. It doesn't quite have a name (or if it does I don't know it) but when it fails the rebuttal is Non ad rem - "Not to the thing [under discussion]". It's like that famous order from "Star Wars": "Stay on target!" Chesterton heard someone raise a complaint, so he looked into the issue, and then replied "Non ad rem". They were WAY off target. No cigar.

Now that we've seen GKC's treatment, we might expect to advance. But this is a wonderful tool, and it worked so well... but his opponents are still after him! So, he will come right back. Let's see how well we can do with three more challenges:

I have given an imaginary triad of such ordinary anti-Christian arguments; if that be too narrow a basis I will give on the spur of the moment another. These are the kind of thoughts which in combination create the impression that Christianity is something weak and diseased. First, for instance, that Jesus was a gentle creature, sheepish and unworldly, a mere ineffectual appeal to the world; second, that Christianity arose and flourished in the dark ages of ignorance, and that to these the Church would drag us back; third, that the people still strongly religious or (if you will) superstitious - such people as the Irish - are weak, unpractical, and behind the times. I only mention these ideas to affirm the same thing: that when I looked into them independently I found, not that the conclusions were unphilosophical, but simply that the facts were not facts. ...
[CW1:351]

I break the paragraph here so you can make your own attempt at answering. It might be fun for you to try... but more likely you'll prefer to see how GKC does it.

Also, I broke off so as to put the first question into its own little light, as you shall see. I leave all my footnotes in, just in case you want to check the verses he alludes to. (N.B. they are mine, not his; I hope they are accurate.) And now, got your Bible in hand? Here we go!

... Instead of looking at books and pictures about the New Testament I looked at the New Testament. There I found an account, not in the least of a person with his hair parted in the middle or his hands clasped in appeal, but of an extraordinary being with lips of thunder and acts of lurid decision, flinging down tables [Jn 2:15], casting out devils [e.g. Mk 1:25, 5:8, 9:25], passing with the wild secrecy of the wind from mountain isolation to a sort of dreadful demagogy [Lk 6:12-17]; a being who often acted like an angry god - and always like a god. Christ had even a literary style of his own, not to be found, I think, elsewhere; it consists of an almost furious use of the a fortiori. His "how much more" [e.g. Lk 12:28] is piled one upon another like castle upon castle in the clouds. The diction used about Christ has been, and perhaps wisely, sweet and submissive. But the diction used by Christ is quite curiously gigantesque; it is full of camels leaping through needles [Mt 19:24, Mk 10:25, Lk 18:25] and mountains hurled into the sea [Mt 21:21, Mk 11:23]. Morally it is equally terrific; he called himself a sword of slaughter, [Mt 10:34] and told men to buy swords if they sold their coats for them. [Lk 22:36] That he used other even wilder words on the side of non-resistance [Mt 5:39] greatly increases the mystery; but it also, if anything, rather increases the violence. We cannot even explain it by calling such a being insane; for insanity is usually along one consistent channel. The maniac is generally a monomaniac. Here we must remember the difficult definition of Christianity already given; Christianity is a superhuman paradox whereby two opposite passions may blaze beside each other. The one explanation of the Gospel language that does explain it, is that it is the survey of one who from some supernatural height beholds some more startling synthesis.
[CW1:351-2]

You really need to pause here, and give thanks. It is so wonderful. It's almost as if we got a chance to peek at the answers in the back of the book...

And, I expect you may want more. You can find it in The Everlasting Man, in its second part - here's just a tiny taste:

Even in the matter of mere literary style, if we suppose ourselves thus sufficiently detached to look at it in that light, there is a curious quality to which no critic seems to have done justice. It had among other things a singular air of piling tower upon tower by the use of the a fortiori; making a pagoda of degrees like the seven heavens.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:332]

The Latin "a fortiori" means "with the greater force", "all the more". But that is all an aside, and an advertisement for future work. Please go back and read our excerpt again. If there was no other mention of Jesus Christ elsewhere in Orthodoxy, this one paragraph stamps it unmistakably as "Authentically Christian". Have you ever heard such daring? Have you ever speculated - as honorably, and as accurately - as this, about our Lord? And it is not simple speculation, nor simple analysis. It is very plain, as plain and as fair a series of remarks as one might make about a friend, a parent, a benefactor... or a God. Read it again, and then the next time you hear or read any part of the Gospel, recall what GKC said, and consider it in the same way. You will find Jesus comes closer to you - I mean, you will find yourself drawn closer to Jesus. This is why... but I cannot go into that today.

And that was just one little paragraph - part of a paragraph - in a trio of examples. Let us see the next, one which might get people riled. (If I didn't rile someone with pagan deities or with literary criticism of Jesus, well, maybe you're asleep.) I mean - hey - the Dark Ages, honestly! Let's go:

I take in order the next instance offered: the idea that Christianity belongs to the Dark Ages. Here I did not satisfy myself with reading modern generalisations; I read a little history. And in history I found that Christianity, so far from belonging to the Dark Ages, was the one path across the Dark Ages that was not dark. It was a shining bridge connecting two shining civilizations. If any one says that the faith arose in ignorance and savagery the answer is simple: it didn't. It arose in the Mediterranean civilization in the full summer of the Roman Empire. The world was swarming with sceptics, and pantheism was as plain as the sun, when Constantine nailed the cross to the mast. It is perfectly true that afterwards the ship sank; but it is far more extraordinary that the ship came up again: repainted and glittering, with the cross still at the top. This is the amazing thing the religion did: it turned a sunken ship into a submarine. The ark lived under the load of waters; after being buried under the debris of dynasties and clans, we arose and remembered Rome. If our faith had been a mere fad of the fading empire, fad would have followed fad in the twilight, and if the civilization ever re-emerged (and many such have never re-emerged) it would have been under some new barbaric flag. But the Christian Church was the last life of the old society and was also the first life of the new. She took the people who were forgetting how to make an arch and she taught them to invent the Gothic arch. In a word, the most absurd thing that could be said of the Church is the thing we have all heard said of it. How can we say that the Church wishes to bring us back into the Dark Ages? The Church was the only thing that ever brought us out of them.
[CW1:352]

Science. Medicine. Hospitals. Universities. Nations. All these were began or rebuilt or vastly enlarged in that era. (Far, far more on this another time and place, but start with Jaki's Science and Creation chapter 10 if you want more now.) This topic also is considered at length and with larger scope in the second part of The Everlasting Man. Consider just a sample:

I have said that Asia and the ancient world had an air of being too old to die. Christendom has had the very opposite fate. Christendom has had a series of revolutions and in each one of them Christianity has died. Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a god who knew the way out of the grave. But the first extraordinary fact which marks this history is this: that Europe has been turned upside down over and over again; and that at the end of each of these revolutions the same religion has again been found on top. The Faith is always converting the age, not as an old religion but as a new religion.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:382]

What a great thing to put on a tombstone:

"My God knows the way out of the grave."

Oh yes. And that's what Lent and Easter is all about, Charlie Brown.

But read it for yourself. Again you will be surprised.

Next time we shall hear GKC respond to the third challenge...

Pope Preparing Economic Letter: Chesterton

According to the Vatican Insider, the Pope is preparing a social encyclical about the global economic crisis and the Church's ideas about the economy. From the article:

We also note the contribution of Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936, photo left), one of the most influential English writers of the 20th century. Chesterton championed the economic theory of "Distributism." Distributism is a "third-way" economic philosophy (between or beyond capitalism and communism/socialism) formulated primarily by Chesterton and his friend, Hilaire Belloc, to apply the principles of Catholic social teaching in the early 20th century.

According to distributism, the ownership of the means of production should be spread as widely as possible among the general populace, rather than being centralized under the control of the state (indirect socialism) or a few large businesses or wealthy private individuals (capitalism). A summary of distributism is found in Chesterton's statement: "Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists."

While socialism allows no individuals to own productive property (it all being under state, community, or workers' control), and capitalism allows only a few to own it, distributism seeks to ensure that most people will become owners of productive property.

Let's Talk Gilbert

By now, everyone should have their "Food" issue (Jan/Feb 2009) with the great art work which you can buy for your home or office (or even stationary) here.

If you are like me, you received your copy on Ash Wednesday, a day of fast and abstinence, and after suffering through various mouth-watering articles, had to set it aside and wait to read the remaining articles until Thursday.

What did you enjoy about this issue? Wasn't it fun to read the mini "food" articles by the various Gilbert writers? And I also enjoyed the Gilbert food quotes about breakfast (and how every meal, technically, could be called break-fast). Ted's graphics, once again, were terrific. What did you enjoy?

St. Louis Chesterton Meeting March 16

From Scott:

I have posted some things that pertain to the March 16th meeting's topic. Please take a look and add your information/comments/observations. Looking forward to seeing lots of people on St. Patrick's Day Eve!

The Feast Day of Subsidiarity

As I wrote on this day in 2006, no, you did not miss a special announcement. I am well aware that it is Lent. (It's not really that kind of feast day.) But for me and my friends, and perhaps for a growing number of people such as a certain junior theology class at Gross Catholic High in Omaha, Nebraska, March 2 shall ever be known as the "feast day" of Subsidiarity.

For it was on Thursday March 2, in 2000, perhaps about 11:30 AM, that our system for local ad insertion and spot delivery for cable television went live and began its work which it did 24/7 for over five years, supplying the needed spots to dozens of remote locations over a satellite communications link. That system did its work according to the precise description given by John Paul II in his Centesimus Annus.

You don't believe me? Here's just a bit of the actual source code from the program that did the work:

/*
The principle of subsidiarity:
A situation is always dealt with at the lowest possible level.
"Here again the principle of subsidiarity must be respected: a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good."
John Paul II: Centesimus Annus, 48

We apply this principle in the FIELD by satisfying needed spot requests from within the "local" subtree - IF we can.

Otherwise we must make a request to HOME.

The HOME side proceeds in this manner:

When we get that request (via a PSR) we see if it exists in the Master Library.
If it's there, we send it to all machines requesting it.

Otherwise, it needs to be encoded, and so we must appeal to a Higher Authority...

*/


excerpted from a version of PUMP dated January 14, 2000

If you'd like to know more, please see the e-version of my book called Subsidiarity. Or perhaps you'd prefer a less academic version, in which case you'll get a very good idea from my novel. (You can ignore all the exciting mystery parts, or the descriptions of food and music.)

The students who examined the academic form brought up a very good point: what happens when the method fails? Or, perhaps more precisely, how does one deal with failure within a system of Subsidiarity? Here, my own discipline of computer science can assist, as well as the Chestertonian tools of Scholastic Philosophy: the power of distinguo = "I distinguish" must be brought to bear, since this issue has a variety of cases. The failure might be a violation of a rule of Subsidiarity, or of the rules of the system (whatever the particulars are of the industry or club or country or society) or of the more fundamental rules, be they natural, moral, civil, social, or even physical. It is an important point, and I am preparing an additional chapter for my book. (My special thanks to Jim and his students!)

But in the meantime, I was poking through things, and found that my novel contains a miniature of how subsidiarity deals with failure, at least in one case. It may be interesting for you to read about it.

The scene occurs when one of the infomercials (those half-hour long advertising shows) on a remote site is found to be corrupt. The transport machinery (PUMP) was not permitted to send infomercials, because it would take a very long time to send them, and so it would get in the way of more important things that needed to be sent. (That's vaguely comparable to the "triage" performed in emergency rooms, which puts some problems ahead of others.) So we had to deliver those large items by what is called "sneaker net" - that is, someone had to drive there with a disk or tape.

There's also an example (easy to miss) of human subsidiarity in the second scene, where Joe (our hero) tries to deal with the problem, asks Andy (a more experienced co-worker) and Jeff (his boss) for help, but these cannot solve it and must call in "Doc" and Paul (the specialists), who in turn need to consult Ian (their boss) to decide what is to be done.

“Uh,” Joe struggled to think of a delaying move as Ian got up. “Doc, will that – uh – ‘sub’ thing handle these new inserters?”
“Ah!” the Doctor smiled, and sat back down. “Very good. You mean Subsidiarity? You’ve been thinking, I see. Well, it would, for the normal sizes of spots. Except that we daren’t send the infomercials over the satellite at present – a half-hour show is about a gig, so it would take too long to transport. Might interfere with the rest of the Field. We have PUMP rigged so it won’t even try. But they’ll show up on your ‘needed spots’ list, like any other spot. That means one of our loyal Field Techs have to do transport the old-fashioned way – right, Ian?”
“Don’t remind me, Doc,” he moaned. “They call it ‘sneaker-net’... That means they have to drive there with the tape, and load it manually.”
“Still,” Jeff jumped in, “It’s a backup tape with the MPEGs, not an analog tape of the actual spots – like in the good old days.”
Ian shook his head. “Please, Jeff. Nobody will believe that’s how it used to work.”

...

In the middle of things Friday afternoon, the new WLUK sites went red. Joe connected to the machines by telephone, just as he had for DIXO, but could not understand what was going wrong. The handbook was no help, either, and not even Jeff and Andy together could interpret the situation. So they called in the “big guns” and soon Doc and Paul were peering at the monitor, exploring the problem. Eventually, they decided that one of the infomercials was corrupt. At that point, they called Ian in to consider the options. They couldn’t merely remove it, since it was needed – people were paying money to have it played! Neither could they let it remain in its corrupt state, playing just a few minutes and then failing again – which was worse than not playing at all. The people at WLUK were extra-sensitive about the new arrangement, and so something had to be done. It was an extreme situation – could they use PUMP to send out a replacement?
“But it’s Friday afternoon! Look at that To-Be-Sent list! We can’t take PUMP down with all these spots to go out,” Jeff insisted.
So Larry was sent on the road with a fresh copy.

Excerpted from Joe the Control Room Guy, chapter 21 and
chapter 23.

The important point I would like you to grasp is not how to deliver cable TV spots, but that Subsidarity has been shown to be practical, useful, and efficient. It is no longer a mere abstraction, existing merely in some theoretical dream, but a tested tool. Alas that it is being ignored, to the peril of modern industries, governments, and societies (to say nothing of cable TV companies).

And if you are wondering why I bring it up on the ACS blogg, you can find out by reading what I've written. It's very Chestertonian, because I also used his design methodology, the highest-tech method I've seen. Here it is:

I revert to the doctrinal methods of the thirteenth century, inspired by the general hope of getting something done.
[GKC Heretics CW1:46]

Chestertonian computing? Scholasticism in software? Papal-based programming? Are you insane, Doc? (I sure am - ask the Field Techs.)

But in the 2000 days our system ran, it delivered about 200,000 spots to some 80 sites, which played them around 250,000,000 times. It's not exaggerating to say that this method gets things done.

And since all Chestertonians know how important gratitude is, I take this opportunity to thank my good friends: in particular the two Joes and Diane, Traffic, the Field Techs, and the Control Room guys, for their hard work.

We used Subsidiarity. It works. Learn about it, then put it to work for you.


P.S. I am putting in this postscript for Kevin, a great Chestertonian actor, who will appreciate it. Our system was also Shakespearean:

LADY MACBETH: Out, damned spot!
Macbeth, Act V Scene I

(Hee hee!)

Rock Island Chesterton Society (Quad Cities) Meeting on Tuesday, March 3rd

From the news:

Quad Cities GK Chesterton Society Invites Newcomers

Rock Island, The Quad Cities Chesterton Society is inviting anyone interested in knowing more about GK Chesterton or about the local Chesterton Society to its next meeting, Tuesday, March 3rd, 7 pm, at Trinity Church, 1818 6th Ave, Rock Island.

The group will hear and discuss a recorded presentation by Dr. William Oddie called, "Authority and the Adventurer: Landmarks on the Road to Orthodoxy," delivered at the annual Chesterton conference in St. Paul on June 14th, 2008.

Dr. Oddie just released what many consider to be the finest scholarly biography of Chesterton"s early years, "Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy: The Making of GK Chesterton, 1874-1908." He is a former editor of The Catholic Herald and author of numerous books on literary and theological themes.

The Quad Cities Chesterton Society was organized in the summer of 2008 to explore and discuss the writings of famed English author and Catholic apologist, GK Chesterton. The group recently finished reading and discussing Chesterton"s brilliant biographical sketch of St. Thomas Aquinas. Anyone interested in Chesterton is welcome to join. There are no dues. For more information call Jerry or Donna Schroeder at 309-764-8657.

A Chestertonian Lenten Prayer Request

From Dale Ahlquist:

A blessed Lent to all my Chestertonian friends,

Since you will be cranking up your prayers into a higher gear during the next 40 days, I have a special intention that I would like you please to add to the list.

Next week, we begin filming “Manalive”, the first ever movie adaptation of a Chesterton novel. This has the potential of doing a great deal of good, bringing attention to the writings and ideas of GKC to an entirely new audience, and possibly the widest audience we have ever been able to reach. We want to honor God with this work, and we ask that you pray that our efforts will be blessed. Pray that the cast and crew will be protected as they work together to bring this novel to the screen.

For more information about the film, click here.
And spread the word!

Chestertonian Artwork

If you liked the cover of the latest Gilbert, if you like the cover of the Father Brown Reader, then you like the artwork of Gilbert Art Director Ted Schluenderfritz. Please consider buying his artwork for your home, mug or stationary needs. Find his work here. Thank you.

Chestertonian Futurist David Zach quoted in Business Week this Week!

Although he mentioned Chesterton in his interview, apparently they left the big guy out of the conversation. From Dave:

Alas, though I mentioned Chesterton in the interview, for some reason Mr. Joseph is not yet aware of how important the big guy is for the field of innovation.

Loras College (Iowa) to host Chuck "GKC" Chalberg

1-man show scheduled at Loras

Loras College will host a free performance of Chuck Chalberg's one-man show, "A Visit from G.K. Chesterton," 4-5:30 p.m., Sunday, March 1, in the Marie Graber Ballrooms A and B.

Chesterton, who died in 1936, was an English essayist, biographer, journalist, Catholic theologian and mystery writer. His work includes the "Father Brown" detective series.

For all you interested Iowans.

True Confessions of a EWTN Show Host

Well, I've been told by someone who knows that Dale does NOT wear lipstick. Of course when Dale told me that, I didn't believe him. But he's always joking around so why should I? Naturally, he wouldn't want anyone to *know* if he did wear lipstick, so it would be natural to deny wearing any, even if he really did. Or he could use psychology and think he was wearing "lip color" or "TV lip enhancing solution" or even "professional lip balm" or some other such thing.

However, it is confirmed by Kevin O'Brien, Professional Actor and person who is on the set with Dale, that Dale does not, not now, not ever, wear lip makeup. Thank you for the clarification, Kevin.

Our Lenten Adventure

We embark upon Lent 2009 - and we likewise embark upon the last and ninth of the chapters of GKC's Orthodoxy, which we began to study about a year ago, in celebration of the centennial of its publication. As divine providence has arranged, I expect that we shall finish both Lent and our study at the same time, barring unforseen complexities or diversions.

In this chapter we shall see some of the most amazing of GKC's verbal fireworks, some of his extreme and mystic insights into the New Testament, and some distant hints (in fact the high-level outline) of what he will say at greater length in his co-masterpiece, The Everlasting Man. We shall hear some powerful logic, such amazingly strong reasoning, that you will be jotting down quote after quote for use the next time you hear the silliness that GKC also heard - and tore apart.

This chapter, the ninth, is called "Authority and the Adventurer" - and it is indeed an adventure. We ought to recall GKC's own words about such things:

Adventures are to those to whom they are most unexpected - that is, most romantic. Adventures are to the shy: in this sense adventures are to the unadventurous.
[GKC Heretics CW1:74]

These words, of course, will echo for all who have gone down the Road, "There and Back Again", by reading J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. Like Bilbo Baggins, GKC once struggled with some unexpected events (in GKC's case it was a flood caused by some two inches of rain falling within 24 hours) and like Bilbo he tried to make the best of things, even though he was not affected. He got a wonderful ILN essay out of it, with these most Hobbit-like insights:

I do not think that it is altogether fanciful or incredible to suppose that even the floods in London may be accepted and enjoyed poetically. Nothing beyond inconvenience seems really to have been caused by them; and inconvenience, as I have said, is only one aspect, and that the most unimaginative and accidental aspect of a really romantic situation. An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.
[ILN July 21 1906 CW27:242 emphasis added]

But, as we may expect from our Uncle Gilbert, he has more than inconvenience in mind. He has - what do you expect?

Why, Christmas, of course!

...the return of old things in new times, by an established and automatic machinery, is the permanent security of men who like to be sane. The greatest of all blessings is the boomerang. And all the healthiest things we know are boomerangs - that is, they are things that return. Sleep is a boomerang. We fling it from us at morning, and it knocks us down again at night. Daylight is a boomerang. We see it at the end of the day disappearing in the distance; and at the beginning of the next day we see it come back and break the sky. I mean, we see it if we get up early enough - which I have done once or twice. The same sort of sensational sanity (truly to be called sensational because it braces and strengthens all the sensations) is given by the return of religious and social festivals. To have such an institution as a Christmas is, I will not say to make an accident inevitable, but I will say to make an adventure recurrent - and therefore, in one sense, to make an adventure everlasting.
[GKC ILN Dec 20 1913 CW29:602]

Hmm: Christmas recurs so as to make an everlasting adventure! So that must mean... well, I can't go into that just now. (Ahem!) Perhaps you found that too long? Try this:

...even an adventure must have an aim.
[GKC New York American Aug. 6, 1932 reprinted in Chesterton on Shakespeare]

But perhaps this probing into the nature of "adventure" does not yet remind you of Christianity, despite the mention of Christmas, and all the inferences one might make from such profundity. Then perhaps this next bit will give you a steer to the direct road:

It is when you have groups of men chosen irrationally that you have men. The element of adventure begins to exist; for an adventure is, by its nature, a thing that comes to us. It is a thing that chooses us, not a thing that we choose.
[GKC Heretics CW1:74]

And now (drum-roll, please) you may also hear another Voice:

You have not chosen me: but I have chosen you...
[Jn 15:16]

Ah, ha. Just to set the stage, as it were, remember this is from the "Priestly Prayer" after the Last Supper. Yes, this really is an adventure, (though somehow inconvenient) and we recur to the memory of that Great Adventure, as He commanded [Lk 22:19] But we must defer study of that matter to another time and place. For now, let these hints of a future study suffice, and link up to our previous hints about the Great Story:

The life of man is a story; an adventure story; and in our vision the same is true even of the story of God. The Catholic faith is the reconciliation because it is the realisation both of mythology and philosophy. It is a story and in that sense one of a hundred stories; only it is a true story. It is a philosophy and in that sense one of a hundred philosophies; only it is a philosophy that is like life. But above all, it is a reconciliation because it is something that can only be called the philosophy of stories. That normal narrative instinct which produced all the fairy-tales is something that is neglected by all the philosophies - except one. The Faith is the justification of that popular instinct; the finding of a philosophy for it or the analysis of the philosophy in it. Exactly as a man in an adventure story has to pass various tests to save his life, so the man in this philosophy has to pass several tests and save his soul. In both there is an idea of free will operating under conditions of design; in other words, there is an aim and it is the business of a man to aim at it; we therefore watch to see whether he will hit it.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:378]

Excited? You should be. It keeps on getting better... providing you keep your aim.

(( Take aim, and then click here to proceed ))


GKC begins his conclusion by a quick look back at what he accomplished in the previous chapter, which you may recall was called "The Romance of Orthodoxy". (True romance, one might point out, is always an adventure, and the best adventures are romantic. Don't forget the "Adventure and Romance Agency" in GKC's The Club of Queer Trades and the above Hobbit-like quote from Heretics, and the discussion we saw some time ago when we considered how rules are necessary even in order to have fun: "Now betting and such sports are only the stunted and twisted shapes of the original instinct of man for adventure and romance, of which much has been said in these pages." [CW1:328] (By now you may realize how big a topic this is.) But let us proceed into today's excerpt:

The last chapter has been concerned with the contention that orthodoxy is not only (as is often urged) the only safe guardian of morality or order, but is also the only logical guardian of liberty, innovation and advance. If we wish to pull down the prosperous oppressor we cannot do it with the new doctrine of human perfectibility; we can do it with the old doctrine of Original Sin. If we want to uproot inherent cruelties or lift up lost populations we cannot do it with the scientific theory that matter precedes mind; we can do it with the supernatural theory that mind precedes matter. If we wish specially to awaken people to social vigilance and tireless pursuit of practise, we cannot help it much by insisting on the Immanent God and the Inner Light: for these are at best reasons for contentment; we can help it much by insisting on the transcendent God and the flying and escaping gleam; for that means divine discontent. if we wish particularly to assert the idea of a generous balance against that of a dreadful autocracy we shall instinctively be Trinitarian rather than Unitarian. If we desire European civilization to be a raid and a rescue, we shall insist rather that souls are in real peril than that their peril is ultimately unreal. And if we wish to exalt the outcast and the crucified, we shall rather wish to think that a veritable God was crucified, rather than a mere sage or hero. Above all, if we wish to protect the poor we shall be in favour of fixed rules and clear dogmas. The rules of a club are occasionally in favour of the poor member. The drift of a club is always in favour of the rich one.
[CW1:346]

Besides the very interesting verbal fireworks summarizing chapter 8, there is that very important line (important for us as we begin Lent) about how a God was crucified. In The Everlasting Man GKC will point out the real reason that Jesus came:

The primary thing that he was going to do was to die. 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]

My own footnote for that first line adds Mt 16:21, Lk 12:49-50; that first reference results in Jesus admonishing Peter who objected to this very blunt and tragic intention - we ought to bear this in mind as we proceed.
But there is also that curious insight about rules and clubs... you might try applying it for yourself to any convenient issue involving "government". As important as the organizations of Man are, GKC is getting to much larger and more profound matters...

And now we come to the crucial question which truly concludes the whole matter. A reasonable agnostic, if he has happened to agree with me so far, may justly turn round and say, "You have found a practical philosophy in the doctrine of the Fall; very well. you have found a side of democracy now dangerously neglected wisely asserted in Original Sin; all right. You have found a truth in the doctrine of hell; I congratulate you. You are convinced that worshippers of a personal God look outwards and are progressive; I congratulate them. But even supposing that those doctrines do include those truths, why cannot you take the truths and leave the doctrines? Granted that all modern society is trusting the rich too much because it does not allow for human weakness; granted that orthodox ages have had a great advantage because (believing in the Fall) they did allow for human weakness, why cannot you simply allow for human weakness without believing in the Fall? If you have discovered that the idea of damnation represents a healthy idea of danger, why can you not simply take the idea of danger and leave the idea of damnation? If you see clearly the kernel of common sense in the nut of Christian orthodoxy, why cannot you simply take the kernel and leave the nut? Why cannot you (to use that cant phrase of the newspapers which I, as a highly scholarly agnostic, am a little ashamed of using), why cannot you simply take what is good in Christianity, what you can define as valuable, what you can comprehend, and leave all the rest, all the absolute dogmas that are in their nature incomprehensible?" This is the real question; this is the last question; and it is a pleasure to try to answer it.
[CW1:346-7]

Ah, finally. This is the real cutting issue. It bothers even more people these days than it did 100 years ago: "Why don't we just have that nice warm and fuzzy 'unconditional love' and avoid all the hassle with those hard-line dogmas, doctrines and rules?" Let's see what GKC has to say:

The first answer is simply to say that I am a rationalist. I like to have some intellectual justification for my intuitions. If I am treating man as a fallen being it is an intellectual convenience to me to believe that he fell; and I find, for some odd psychological reason, that I can deal better with a man's exercise of free will if I believe that he has got it. But I am in this matter yet more definitely a rationalist. I do not propose to turn this book into one of ordinary Christian apologetics; I should be glad to meet at any other time the enemies of Christianity in that more obvious arena. Here I am only giving an account of my own growth in spiritual certainty. But I may pause to remark that the more I saw of the merely abstract arguments against the Christian cosmology the less I thought of them. I mean that having found the moral atmosphere of the Incarnation to be common sense, I then looked at the established intellectual arguments against the Incarnation and found them to be common nonsense. In case the argument should be thought to suffer from the absence of the ordinary apologetic I will here very briefly summarise my own arguments and conclusions on the purely objective or scientific truth of the matter.

If I am asked, as a purely intellectual question, why I believe in Christianity, I can only answer, "For the same reason that an intelligent agnostic disbelieves in Christianity." I believe in it quite rationally upon the evidence. But the evidence in my case, as in that of the intelligent agnostic, is not really in this or that alleged demonstration; it is in an enormous accumulation of small but unanimous facts. The secularist is not to be blamed because his objections to Christianity are miscellaneous and even scrappy; it is precisely such scrappy evidence that does convince the mind. I mean that a man may well be less convinced of a philosophy from four books, than from one book, one battle, one landscape, and one old friend. The very fact that the things are of different kinds increases the importance of the fact that they all point to one conclusion. Now, the non-Christianity of the average educated man to-day is almost always, to do him justice, made up of these loose but living experiences. I can only say that my evidences for Christianity are of the same vivid but varied kind as his evidences against it. For when I look at these various anti-Christian truths, I simply discover that none of them are true. I discover that the true tide and force of all the facts flows the other way. ...
[CW1:347-8]

Please note. Here you have it, right from GKC's pen: Orthodoxy is not a book "of ordinary Christian apologetics". (Of course, we now know it's quite extraordinary; some people may still call it apologetics but let's not worry about that here. Hee hee.)

In other words, his belief is based upon reason, which is common sense. It's what St. Paul refers to as logike latreia = "reasonable service" [Rom 12:1] - which Fr. Jaki explains as "a worship that satisfies all legitimate demands of a human mind created in the image of an infinitely rational God" [Bible and Science 211]

Why?

Read GKC's answer again:

[I reply] "For the same reason that an intelligent agnostic disbelieves in Christianity." I believe in it quite rationally upon the evidence.

That may seem a bit pompous, but it isn't. For I have split the paragraph, so I could give some comments here, but GKC immediately goes on with examples as we shall see in just a moment.

But I must call your attention to one other line, perhaps the most elegant of all GKC's lovely phrases and the most stunning of all his verbal fireworks in our text. It's not quite an epigram, and is a bit tricky to grab hold of, but please look at this, especially the part I put in bold:

I mean that a man may well be less convinced of a philosophy from four books, than from one book, one battle, one landscape, and one old friend. The very fact that the things are of different kinds increases the importance of the fact that they all point to one conclusion.

This is what is called "converging evidence". It is an incredibly powerful means of argumentation, and is used in all kinds of sciences, as well as philosophy and the liberal arts. It is why I bother calling your attention to parallel arguments in GKC's fiction, used often quite casually or in passing - but it shows that these ideas and arguments truly represent his thought, and are not some trick of pedantry, and the more we see them, the more important they loom.

Now, let us hear GKC's three examples.

... Let us take cases. Many a sensible modern man must have abandoned Christianity under the pressure of three such converging convictions as these: first, that men, with their shape, structure, and sexuality, are, after all, very much like beasts, a mere variety of the animal kingdom; second, that primeval religion arose in ignorance and fear; third, that priests have blighted societies with bitterness and gloom. Those three anti-Christian arguments are very different; but they are all quite logical and legitimate; and they all converge. The only objection to them (I discover) is that they are all untrue. ...
[CW1:348]

Again, I have split the paragraph, since I would like you to examine these three cases for yourself. They are not what most typical Christians would expect to hear launched against Christianity, but they are certainly common enough - one can hear them all too often in the Media these days.

Next, look at what GKC says about them. You may seem to hear Aquinas as GKC says these issues "are all quote logical and legitimate"! Look at them again, and consider. Do you see that this is true? But - yes, there's going to be a "but". Logic isn't enough, and so I heartily shrug off the famous "logic" of the green alien:

Logic and truth, as a matter of fact, have very little to do with each other. Logic is concerned merely with the fidelity and accuracy with which a certain process is performed, a process which can be performed with any materials, with any assumption. You can be as logical about griffins and basilisks as about sheep and pigs. ... Logic, then, is not necessarily an instrument for finding truth; on the contrary, truth is necessarily an instrument for using logic - for using it, that is, for the discovery of further truth and for the profit of humanity. Briefly, you can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.
[GKC Daily News, Feb. 25 1905 quoted in Maycock, The Man Who Was Orthodox]

In other words, you can be quite logical, and yet quite wrong.

So, you need something more than logic. You need truth. And GKC proceeds to deal with the falsehoods of each of these three questions.

... If you leave off looking at books about beasts and men, if you begin to look at beasts and men then (if you have any humour or imagination, any sense of the frantic or the farcical) you will observe that the startling thing is not how like man is to the brutes, but how unlike he is. It is the monstrous scale of his divergence that requires an explanation. That man and brute are like, is in a sense, a truism; but that being so like they should then be so insanely unlike, that is the shock and the enigma. That an ape has hands is far less interesting to the philosopher than the fact that having hands he does next to nothing with them; does not play knuckle-bones or the violin; does not carve marble or carve mutton. People talk of barbaric architecture and debased art. But elephants do not build colossal temples of ivory even in a rococo style; camels do not paint even bad pictures, though equipped with the material of many camel's-hair brushes. Certain modern dreamers say that ants and bees have a society superior to ours. They have, indeed, a civilization; but that very truth only reminds us that it is an inferior civilization. Who ever found an ant-hill decorated with the statues of celebrated ants? Who has seen a bee-hive carved with the images of gorgeous queens of old? No; the chasm between man and other creatures may have a natural explanation, but it is a chasm. We talk of wild animals; but man is the only wild animal. It is man that has broken out. All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of the tribe or type. All other animals are domestic animals; man alone is ever undomestic, either as a profligate or a monk. So that this first superficial reason for materialism is, if anything, a reason for its opposite; it is exactly where biology leaves off that all religion begins.
[CW1:348-9]

When we come to study The Everlasting Man we shall see GKC examine this matter in much greater detail, as he rebuts the famous Outline of History by H. G. Wells. (See especially CW2:169 on birds building nests.) But there is another essay, from almost the same time as our text, which brings this argument to bear against those who condemn what they call "alcohol" but GKC and the Common Man calls "beer":

Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head. In neither case can we really argue very much from the body of man simply considered as the body of an innocent and healthy animal. His body has got too much mixed up with his soul, as we see in the supreme instance of sex. It may be worth while uttering the warning to wealthy philanthropists and idealists that this argument from the animal should not be thoughtlessly used, even against the atrocious evils of excess; it is an argument that proves too little or too much. ... Man is always something worse or something better than an animal; and a mere argument from animal perfection never touches him at all. Thus, in sex no animal is either chivalrous or obscene. And thus no animal ever invented anything so bad as drunkenness - or so good as drink.
[GKC ILN April 20, 1907 CW27:445]

Read it in its entirety, you will be amazed. But let us proceed.

It would be the same if I examined the second of the three chance rationalist arguments; the argument that all that we call divine began in some darkness and terror. When I did attempt to examine the foundations of this modern idea I simply found that there were none. Science knows nothing whatever about pre-historic man; for the excellent reason that he is pre-historic. A few professors choose to conjecture that such things as human sacrifice were once innocent and general and that they gradually dwindled; but there is no direct evidence of it, and the small amount of indirect evidence is very much the other way. In the earliest legends we have, such as the tales of Isaac and of Iphigenia, human sacrifice is not introduced as something old, but rather as something new; as a strange and frightful exception darkly demanded by the gods. History says nothing; and legends all say that the earth was kinder in its earliest time. There is no tradition of progress; but the whole human race has a tradition of the Fall. Amusingly enough, indeed, the very dissemination of this idea is used against its authenticity. Learned men literally say that this pre-historic calamity cannot be true because every race of mankind remembers it. I cannot keep pace with these paradoxes.
[CW1:349-50]

A note about Isaac and Iphigenia, which are two dramatic stories of human sacrifice. God orders that Isaac, the only son of Abraham and Sarah, be sacrificed; you can read the story in Genesis 22 (I omit the ending in case you've forgotten what happens.) "Iphigenia" is a play by Euripides (ca. 406 B.C.) in which she is to be sacrificed to obtain favorable winds on the sea. (It's connected with Troy and all that, but I don't have time to give even a synopsis; again I omit the ending.)

But please consider the even more dramatic point GKC makes about the Fall! "History says nothing; and legends all say that the earth was kinder in its earliest time. There is no tradition of progress; but the whole human race has a tradition of the Fall. ... Learned men literally say that this pre-historic calamity cannot be true because every race of mankind remembers it." Ha, ha!

You are now expecting GKC's third example, but we shall defer that until next time.

Lent

Here is a good lenten post to read.

Today, Ash Wednesday, marks the beginning of the penitential season of Lent. I plan to pray for all the blog readers here every day, and ask that you remember me, too, when you think of it, in your prayers.

Audio Archive of Chesterton Materials

Check out some Apostle of Common Sense episodes for MP3.

Milwaukee Area Chesterton Society

The Milwaukee, WI area is going to try again for a Chesterton Society meeting, the plan is for March 7th in downtown Wauwatosa at the Little Read Book Store 7603 W. State St. 414-774-2665

If anyone is interested, please contact me or the book store.

New Gilbert arrives at homes across the nation...

I've heard it already said that it is ironic that the "Food" issue of Gilbert should arrive just prior to the Lenten season. We planned it that way, naturally, on purpose, to test your powers of overcoming temptation.

But this *is* the time to eat, drink, and be merry, prior to the upcoming Wednesday of Ashes.

I await my mailman, who will probably read my issue before delivering it some time next week.

Dale Denies Wearing Lipstick

Yes, Dale answered the questions (badly) and denies wearing lipstick, but I think we all *wink* know better.

Saying, for example, that there were no bloopers. Ridiculous. There are no stars. Uh-huh. Yeah, I didn't mean Dale there, I meant Kevin and Chuck. That the DVD extras will come out in season 25. Dream on.

I'm thinking season five better have some extras, or there will be riots.

Subidiarity, Dr. Thursday, and a High School Class

Dr. Thursday writes us today:

My book Subsidiarity (partially available on the web here) is being used in a high school theology class! Several have already made comments, including one which surely suggests an addition (what happens if rules are broken) and another on the use of Subsidiarity in "Spongebob" !!!

What a great joy this is! Young people will learn about WATCHER, PUMP, spot delivery and ad insertion - but more importantly, they will learn the principles of this important idea. (and with just a couple of weeks to go before its ninth anniversary (March 2)...

Finally, I wish to once again express my sincere thanks to my friends who helped make this work possible, especially the two Joes and the Control Room guys...

I tried to look up the Spongebob episode (thinking perhaps it is on Youtube) and if anyone knows how to find that episode, please let me know. Thanks.