Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy: A Review

Prayer Request

I have just received word that Father Stanley Jaki, O.S.B., is in a hospital in Madrid awaiting surgery. Please pray for a fellow Chestertonian and diligent student of history, science, religion, and philosophy.

New! Manalive Teaser Trailer

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Hot Off the Press: Scholarship Deadline Extended!

Application Deadline for Scholarship Extended to May 31st

Application deadline for the Gilbert and Frances Scholarship has been extended from March 31st to May 31st. This scholarship, named for Gilbert Keith Chesterton and longtime Chestertonian and Gilbert Magazine Contributing Editor Frances Farrell, is generously endowed by Bob and Joan Farrell in honor of Mrs. Farrell. Its purpose is to assist Christian college students to engage the world on controversial issues and encourage them to pursue a career in journalism. Two scholarships of $2500 each are awarded every year: one to a high school senior who is entering college the following year; and another to a college freshman, sophomore, or junior who is continuing in college the following year. Competition for the Gilbert and Frances Scholarship is open to students majoring in any subject. For more information and to apply, visit http://chesterton.org/scholarship.html.

A Very Clever Piece

One of the fiction stories I thought was very clever came from the talented James G. "Gerry" Bruen, Jr., titled "The Jackass".

The pun caught me off guard, and surprised me at the end of the story, and as I love surprises, I thought the story worked our quite well. Good work, Gerry!

GKC and the Fifth Ghost

We are nearing the end - the very end - of our study of Orthodoxy, and just as one expects to find more and more grand chords at the end of the symphony, more dangerous car chases and literal cliff-hangers at the end of the movie, or terribly stark and unexpected revelations at the end of the detective novel, we are finding such things here.

But unlike those things, instead of getting wilder, GKC is getting closer and closer to the heart - and to the hearth. In ancient Roma, the "household gods" were kept at the focus - the hearth, the fireplace for food and for heat - where the family fire burned, since they stood for the ancestors who guided and guarded the family. In Christian Roma, our worship does not require a fire, or even a fireplace. We still need the food, and the heat - but instead of looking to the ancestors for guidance, we look to the Child...

(( click here to read more ))

It is true that I am grossly anticipating the study GKC will make in The Everlasting Man - but as we have seen that study is anticipated here. And in the next paragraph, we shall hear something very startling. If this was a symphony, we would hear again the "questing theme" which opened the first movement - then it was heard in doubt and dissonance, but now that it is set in its place, with the complete accompaniment, we understand its full glory. It's the search for Home. It's quite misleading to think of this as a Dorothy-like "over the rainbow" thing. It's not. Kansas was where she lived, but she was right in thinking there was another Place, a good and glorious place, ruled by a great and unseen Power, Who fought against dark Witches and their minions, and Who gave incomparable gifts of intellect and heart and will... (Hmm... maybe we Christian Romans do have a fire, at that! See Acts 2:3.) But I cannot give a Chestertonian review of "Oz" here! Besides, I am getting ahead of myself, and of the actual text.

Remember, the last time we heard about miracles and GKC's belief in them - about the question whether the "spiritual realm" makes itself evident in this world. We are now going to hear a very brief review of several points which we have seen in greater detail earlier: the idea of evolution, the idea of evidence, and the curiously complex character of human beings... and then - GKC reintroduces that opening theme, about the man who went on an adventure, and discovered England! (We're also going to find out he discovered something else, which is alluded to in my spooky title. Hee hee.)

Ready? Let us proceed...

Given this conviction that the spiritual phenomena do occur (my evidence for which is complex but rational), we then collide with one of the worst mental evils of the age. The greatest disaster of the nineteenth century was this: that men began to use the word "spiritual" as the same as the word "good." They thought that to grow in refinement and uncorporeality was to grow in virtue. When scientific evolution was announced, some feared that it would encourage mere animality. It did worse: it encouraged mere spirituality. It taught men to think that so long as they were passing from the ape they were going to the angel. But you can pass from the ape and go to the devil. A man of genius, very typical of that time of bewilderment, expressed it perfectly. Benjamin Disraeli was right when he said he was on the side of the angels. He was indeed; he was on the side of the fallen angels. He was not on the side of any mere appetite or animal brutality; but he was on the side of all the imperialism of the princes of the abyss; he was on the side of arrogance and mystery, and contempt of all obvious good. Between this sunken pride and the towering humilities of heaven there are, one must suppose, spirits of shapes and sizes. Man, in encountering them, must make much the same mistakes that he makes in encountering any other varied types in any other distant continent. It must be hard at first to know who is supreme and who is subordinate. If a shade arose from the under world, and stared at Piccadilly, that shade would not quite understand the idea of an ordinary closed carriage. He would suppose that the coachman on the box was a triumphant conqueror, dragging behind him a kicking and imprisoned captive. So, if we see spiritual facts for the first time, we may mistake who is uppermost. It is not enough to find the gods; they are obvious; we must find God, the real chief of the gods. We must have a long historic experience in supernatural phenomena - in order to discover which are really natural. In this light I find the history of Christianity, and even of its Hebrew origins, quite practical and clear. It does not trouble me to be told that the Hebrew god was one among many. I know he was, without any research to tell me so. Jehovah and Baal looked equally important, just as the sun and the moon looked the same size. It is only slowly that we learn that the sun is immeasurably our master, and the small moon only our satellite. Believing that there is a world of spirits, I shall walk in it as I do in the world of men, looking for the thing that I like and think good. Just as I should seek in a desert for clean water, or toil at the North Pole to make a comfortable fire, so I shall search the land of void and vision until I find something fresh like water, and comforting like fire; until I find some place in eternity, where I am literally at home. And there is only one such place to be found.
[CW1:358]

We have already heard plenty about evolution (see CW1:237-8 if you have forgotten); I shall not deal with the allusion to Disraeli; I think the CW edition has a footnote anyway. But that was an aside, and not the thrust of the argument. Rather, please consider the strange inversion GKC paints of "sunken pride and the towering humilities of heaven".

But now - watch the supreme mastery of the artist. How this theme easily modulates over to that of the opening, the adventure-search. Again it would be elegant to refer to any astronomy text about the strange (yet convenient) truth that the sun and the moon are same size - or even quote Fr. Jaki about why that matters in the history of science (and it DOES, in a really big way!) - but like the bit about evolution and Disraeli, that also is an aside. GKC is painting with his full palette of instruments (to mix my metaphor, hee hee) and quoting themes from the other movements.

Isn't his last line charming? It is the master theme of this book. Let us be like the little child and demand "Do it again!" (CW1:263)

I shall search the land of void and vision until I find something fresh like water, and comforting like fire; until I find some place in eternity, where I am literally at home. And there is only one such place to be found.

Next comes a very curious little note, which almost looks like a recanting of his argument. But it is not. GKC is restating his argument about miracles, but also pointing out that there is more to the matter. You may recall the term "converging evidence", that powerful tool used in science and other disciplines when one is faced with a multitude of issues all dealing with one topic. It is more than that. We are going to hear something startling about this strange journey that GKC has undertaken...

I have now said enough to show (to any one to whom such an explanation is essential) that I have in the ordinary arena of apologetics, a ground of belief. In pure records of experiment (if these be taken democratically without contempt or favour) there is evidence first, that miracles happen, and second that the nobler miracles belong to our tradition. But I will not pretend that this curt discussion is my real reason for accepting Christianity instead of taking the moral good of Christianity as I should take it out of Confucianism.

I have another far more solid and central ground for submitting to it as a faith, instead of merely picking up hints from it as a scheme. And that is this: that the Christian Church in its practical relation to my soul is a living teacher, not a dead one. It not only certainly taught me yesterday, but will almost certainly teach me to-morrow. Once I saw suddenly the meaning of the shape of the cross; some day I may see suddenly the meaning of the shape of the mitre. One fine morning I saw why windows were pointed; some fine morning I may see why priests were shaven. Plato has told you a truth; but Plato is dead. Shakespeare has startled you with an image; but Shakespeare will not startle you with any more. But imagine what it would be to live with such men still living, to know that Plato might break out with an original lecture to-morrow, or that at any moment Shakespeare might shatter everything with a single song. The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare to-morrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before. ...
[CW1:359-60]

I have a couple of notes here before we proceed. We saw a little earlier about the "shape of the cross" - there is more in The Everlasting Man, and a whole elegant dialog/debate in the opening chapter of The Ball and the Cross. The whole point about the shape of Gothic windows is simple: they come to a point, and we heard GKC on this before:

...for me all good things come to a point, swords for instance.
[CW1:266]

But there's another reference worth quoting here, since it unites more of our themes in one of GKC's trademark analogies of art:

Both romance and religion see everything as it were foreshortened; they see everything in an abrupt and fantastic perspective, coming to an apex. It is the whole essence of perspective that it comes to a point. Similarly, religion comes to a point - to the point. Thus religion is always insisting on the shortness of human life.
[GKC Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens CW15:254]

There is some hilarious discussion about beards in The Thing, which simultaneously recalls the "Calvin and Hobbes" comic where Calvin tells his mom he wants to grow a beard: "a long one, like the guys in ZZ Top" and GKC's dictum that "You cannot grow a beard in a moment of passion." [GKC "How I Met The President" in Tremendous Trifles] And if you did not know, a mitre is the conical (NOT comical!) hat worn by bishops; those also come up from time to time in GKC's writing, perhaps because people seem to find the conical comical, or at least curious. Hee hee. Yes. But let us proceed to our discussion.

The Church provides a "living teacher, not a dead one." Yes. All this time we have had a Guide - invisible most of the time - but active. Now, this is not about a Ghost - or if it is, it is the mystical Fifth Ghost of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, whom I am sure you were not aware of!

Huh? you gasp.

Oh yes. There's a Fifth Ghost.

You are now trying to figure out what I mean. You think through the story. Marley (that's one) and the Ghosts of Christmas Past (two) Present (three) and Yet To Come (four). Who is it?

Ah. I knew you would forget. Hee hee! But that's GKC's point too.

Now you are lost, wondering what allusion I am making. You got diverted, just as you did by GKC's mention of Plato and Shakespeare, and expect he is making some point about the awful plays and the even more awful philosophy they spawned. (You see - you are getting distracted again! Pay attention.)

There is someone else in the picture, and GKC proceeds to tell us, rather elegantly.

... There is one only other parallel to this position; and that is the parallel of the life in which we all began. When your father told you, walking about the garden, that bees stung or that roses smelt sweet, you did not talk of taking the best out of his philosophy. When the bees stung you, you did not call it an entertaining coincidence. When the rose smelt sweet you did not say "My father is a rude, barbaric symbol, enshrining (perhaps unconsciously) the deep delicate truths that flowers smell." No: you believed your father, because you had found him to be a living fountain of facts, a thing that really knew more than you; a thing that would tell you truth to-morrow, as well as to-day. And if this was true of your father, it was even truer of your mother; at least it was true of mine, to whom this book is dedicated. Now, when society is in a rather futile fuss about the subjection of women, will no one say how much every man owes to the tyranny and privilege of women, to the fact that they alone rule education until education becomes futile: for a boy is only sent to be taught at school when it is too late to teach him anything. The real thing has been done already, and thank God it is nearly always done by women. Every man is womanised, merely by being born. They talk of the masculine woman; but every man is a feminised man. And if ever men walk to Westminster to protest against this female privilege, I shall not join their procession.

For I remember with certainty this fixed psychological fact; that the very time when I was most under a woman's authority, I was most full of flame and adventure. Exactly because when my mother said that ants bit they did bite, and because snow did come in winter (as she said); therefore the whole world was to me a fairyland of wonderful fulfilments, and it was like living in some Hebraic age, when prophecy after prophecy came true. I went out as a child into the garden, and it was a terrible place to me, precisely because I had a clue to it: if I had held no clue it would not have been terrible, but tame. A mere unmeaning wilderness is not even impressive. But the garden of childhood was fascinating, exactly because everything had a fixed meaning which could be found out in its turn. Inch by inch I might discover what was the object of the ugly shape called a rake; or form some shadowy conjecture as to why my parents kept a cat.
[CW1:360-61]

Do not get entangled with that very wonderful encomium (that means a note of praise) about women! If you want to hear more about that, you can find it elsewhere, especially in GKC's What's Wrong With the World in CW4. Though that of course sounds misleading; he is NOT saying "women" are what's wrong, but the MISTAKE about women. But the point is simply that a man's mother is much more important to him than most anyone ever realizes - especially the feminists. I always laugh when people moan about words like "chairman", which they say is "sexist" though they never seem to complain about MANageMENt. But even more important the easily overlooked fact that his MA is a big part of every MAN. (hee hee)

Ahem. I've wanted to get that into print for some time, and it certainly fits nicely here. But again, the thrust of the argument is not (strictly) a discussion of feminism, or of the importance of women, or of mothers. It is a larger concept. And yes, there is a veiled encomium of science, too: the idea that the world (be it the child's garden, or the physicist's cosmos) is rational and reasonable - we have a clue to it. But though relevant that will take us into another kind of discussion, which you can find in Fr. Jaki's books; perhaps another time and place I can deal with it. For the point is not (simply) about the use of reason to grasp the mysteries of our world. It is far more profound, though both the ideas of "mother" and of "science" are part of the larger point GKC is making.

It is the sense of the presence in one's learning life of a living Guide and Teacher - and even more than a father, a mother is the chief exemplar of this natural and human truth. Likewise, one cannot have science if one cannot reliably "know" things: sciencia is Latin for knowledge.

And of course that's the whole point of these paragraphs, like the presence of the Fifth Ghost in Dickens...

WHAT? Hey, c'mon Doc, you can't close off this posting until you explain! Who is that Fifth Ghost?

Well, I guess I will have to quote it out for you. It rather blows a bit of "The Surprise" but then you really need to read the playscript (in CW11). Well, maybe it won't blow it at all. But you ought to be able to work it out for yourself given my continual references to Tolkien and the idea of Story. The scene you are about to read is Scrooge's bedroom, just before the first of the three Christmas Ghosts appears:

Light flashed up in the room upon the instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn. The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a hand. Not the curtains at his feet, nor the curtains at his back, but those to which his face was addressed. The curtains of his bed were drawn aside; and Scrooge, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow.
[Dickens, Stave 2, A Christmas Carol, emphasis added]

Aha! you say. Yes, the Fifth Ghost is Dickens, the author of the story.

You see, we have the Author still with us. Our Guide made the trail we travel:

Et ecce ego vobiscum sum omnibus diebus usque ad consummationem saeculi.

And behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.
[Mt 28:20]

Movie Update: Manalive

Kevin O'Brien reports:

While I had my doubts about this project, its executive producer, Dale Ahlquist, was always filled with faith in it. Dale abandons himself to Divine Providence in a way that makes cynics like me wonder. And in this case, once again something that has no reason to be happening – a movie made by a first time screenwriter and director, on a shoestring budget, on a very tight schedule – actually shows promise, at least on set. There is something wonderful and hopeful about making a movie, something that draws from us great acts of trust –

Read more by clicking here.

March Gilbert Editorial

Dad49hobbits requested that this month's lead editorial be published on line so that he could send links to friends and family to read. His wish is our command. Here is the editorial in full (and here is the link):

Editorial 12.5

“Ideals,” says G.K. Chesterton, “are the most practical thing in the world.” This is why we still defend the family. This is why we insist on the ideal of marriage as a permanent union between... read more...one man and one woman that creates the only proper setting for bringing new souls into the world. Governments and other institutions outside the family must not interfere with this purely natural act.

In the last century, social trends have steadily moved in the opposite direction. Attacks upon marriage and the family are no longer a matter of a few loud critics getting testy at quaint ideas of morality; the ideal of traditional marriage has gone from being attacked to being brazenly ignored. But if society at large does not understand the moral arguments for the family, perhaps it will gain some appreciation for their practical application. And the recent bad news has been good news in this regard. Arguments in favor of marriage and the family have received a significant boost with the collapse of the world’s financial markets and the continuing economic fallout.

An economy built on massive lending and spending cannot be sustained. The reason it cannot be sustained is not merely economic, but moral. A purely consumer economy embraces material wealth as its ultimate goal, and regards people as a commodity to be bought and sold to achieve that goal. Such an economy is selfish and therefore self-destructive.

An economy based on the family is self-sustaining. Its focus is on the nurturing and training of children and not on the mere acquisition of goods. The family ideal as defended by Chesterton is something quite different from the industrialized consumer family, where family members leave the house each morning by the clock and on a strict schedule to pursue work and recreation and a life outside the home. Chesterton's ideal is the productive home with its creative kitchen, its busy workshop, its fruitful garden, and its central role in entertainment, education, and livelihood. Unlike the industrial home, life in a productive household is not amenable to scheduling. It is anything but predictable.

The only thing surprising about this ideal is that it was once shared by almost everyone. Children used to be considered an asset; at some point they began to be seen as a liability.

Chesterton saw the beginning of this problem when he noticed people preferring to buy amusements for their own enjoyment rather than to have children. He pointed out prophetically that children are a far better form of entertainment than electrical gadgets. The irony today is that the retailers that sell the electronic amusements are going out of business because there are not enough people to buy their merchandise.

But there is another reason why children are now considered a liability. The presence of children doesn’t merely make other material desires cost-prohibitive; they are cost-prohibitive in themselves. Children must be educated, and the costs of educating them have become crushing. A college education is the most overpriced product on the market, and the most over-rated as well. Many parents sacrifice nearly everything to send their children to college, where their heads are filled with doubts and destructive ideas that undermine all their parents have taught them.

But there are fewer parents because there are fewer children.

When social security was instituted, each retiree was supported by fifteen workers. Now each retiree is supported by three workers. Those of us who are still working spend fifteen percent of our income to support those who aren’t working.

The lack of domestic life in modern culture is reflected in the fact that its participants don’t have a domestic economy. We don’t produce anything. Workers are now experiencing massive layoffs, but the people losing their jobs (no offense to them) were not producing anything. They were selling things that other people made, or paid with borrowed money to sit at a desk and computer terminal, their wages calculated in such a way that they might also go into debt. Now the financial center of the country has moved from New York to Washington, DC, as Gudge has passed the baton to Hudge, who has promised that all the problems that were caused by too much borrowing will be solved by even more borrowing. Whom shall we borrow from? Our own grandchildren.

But the younger generation cannot pay the debts of the older generation because we have committed demographic suicide. We are paying a very high price, not only for slaughtering our unborn children but for preventing their conception in the first place. In fact, we have demonstrated that we cannot afford the high price.

We have seen the natural consequences of unnatural acts. We are witnessing a monumental economic disaster that is not the result of inflation or recession but of the devaluation of children.

Chesterton reminds us that every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things. The obvious things are the ordinary things, and we have forgotten them. The world we have created has brought about such great strain and stress that even the things that normal men have normally desired are no longer desirable: “marriage and fair ownership and worship and the mysterious worth of man.” Those are the normal and ordinary things. Those are the things we have lost, and we need to recover them.

“The disintegration of rational society,” adds Chesterton, “started in the drift from the hearth and the family; the solution must be a drift back.”

Gilbert Magazine March 2009

Trivia Question: What's funny about the illustration at the head of the Lunacy & Letters section of Gilbert?

Someone mentioned that for the first time ever, we had a listing of Dale's speaking engagements. Two people so far clapped heartily to see this, hoping to get to see Dale in person some day soon. How about you?

And speaking of people responding to the magazine, I am hoping to entice a few of you to take some time and write a letter to the editor. Praise, criticism, critique, horror, send it here.

Gilbert Magazine March 2009

If you like the cover, you can buy it here. And by doing that, you support our local Gilbert artist, illustrator and art director, Ted. Thank you.

Quiz question: What is the meaning of the cover? What article inside this issue of Gilbert is relevant to it?

St. Austin Review Blog

Joseph Pearce is having contributors blog for his magazine, the St. Austin Review. It's getting pretty good - kind of like the First Things blog, but better. The revival of Catholic culture from a variety of perspectives. Kevin O'Brien is one of the bloggers, and he shares his adventures on the road with wacky actors and Catholic playgoers.

New Gilbert races out to mailboxes

It feels like I just got an issue, and now I'm hearing that some people have a *new* issue of Gilbert!

Did you get yours yet?

I like the cover [click it to see it larger]...can't wait to see the inside.

Chesterton's Uncertainty Principle?

(subtitled, "the Story - Preparation for Miracles")

Happy Feast of St. Joseph!

Here's a riddle for you: How is St. Joseph like a detective novel? And what does that have to do with miracles? Or, if you don't care for that one, how about this: What good is counterfeit money? Oh, that's tricky. Hee hee.
St. Joseph, husband of Mary the mother of Jesus, is the silent witness to the greatest miracle that ever occurred: the incarnation of the divine Word, which we shall celebrate next Wednesday. And so it is very fitting that we spend some time today with three very powerful and deep paragraphs from Orthodoxy about miracles...

(( click here when you are prepared... ))


Last time we concluded with this lovely cliff-hanger:

...there is another argument that the unbeliever may rationally use against miracles, though he himself generally forgets to use it.
[CW1:356]

Remember GKC's main argument for miracles "is not a mystical belief at all; I believe in them upon human evidences as I do in the discovery of America." [CW1:355] And I pointed to stories like "The Trees of Pride" (in CW14) or "The Miracle of Moon Crescent" in The Incredulity of Father Brown, which is well worth your time in reading (or re-reading), for seeing the context of these incomparable words:

"But I thought you believed in miracles," broke out the secretary.
"Yes," answered Father Brown, "I believe in miracles. I believe in man-eating tigers, but I don't see them running about everywhere. If I want any miracles, I know where to get them."

Ah: "If I want any miracles, I know where to get them." We might pray that as an antiphon at Mass. And this, perhaps even more striking: "Lying may be serving religion; I'm sure it's not serving God." Which gets to the heart of the issue. In that last paragraph (and in the stories I have mentioned, GKC points out that serious court cases, trials for vast sums, or even ending with death sentences, are based strictly upon the testimony of ordinary people - who are trusted to tell the truth. Yet, there is an issue about this "truth", when it comes to the testimony of an ordinary person - even of a trained observer. (See Jaki's God and the Sun at Fatima or Carrel's Journey to Lourdes for more on that.) But the evidence... is there something that has been overlooked there?

Yes - in Scholastic manner, GKC voices yet another rational argument against miracles:

He may say that there has been in many miraculous stories a notion of spiritual preparation and acceptance: in short, that the miracle could only come to him who believed in it. It may be so, and if it is so how are we to test it? If we are inquiring whether certain results follow faith, it is useless to repeat wearily that (if they happen) they do follow faith. If faith is one of the conditions, those without faith have a most healthy right to laugh. But they have no right to judge. Being a believer may be, if you like, as bad as being drunk; still if we were extracting psychological facts from drunkards, it would be absurd to be always taunting them with having been drunk. Suppose we were investigating whether angry men really saw a red mist before their eyes. Suppose sixty excellent householders swore that when angry they had seen this crimson cloud: surely it would be absurd to answer "Oh, but you admit you were angry at the time." They might reasonably rejoin (in a stentorian chorus), "How the blazes could we discover, without being angry, whether angry people see red?" So the saints and ascetics might rationally reply, "Suppose that the question is whether believers can see visions - even then, if you are interested in visions it is no point to object to believers." You are still arguing in a circle - in that old mad circle with which this book began.
[CW1:356]

Hmm, it is the feast of St. Joseph, yet we are in Lent - the season of preparation for Easter - this is a very curious junction of ideas here.

Even more so, (as AMBER reminds me) because it joins with what for the pleasure of the pedantry I shall call the Chesterton-Tolkien Theory of Story, as GKC stated in his important essay on Secrets:

There are three broad classes of the special things in which human wisdom does permit privacy. The first is the case I have mentioned - that of hide-and-seek, or the police novel, in which it permits privacy only in order to explode and smash privacy. The author makes first a fastidious secret of how the Bishop was murdered, only in order that he may at last declare, as from a high tower, to the whole democracy the great glad news that he was murdered by the governess. In that case, ignorance is only valued because being ignorant is the best and purest preparation for receiving the horrible revelations of high life. Somewhat in the same way being an agnostic is the best and purest preparation for receiving the happy revelations of St. John.
[GKC ILN Aug 10 1907 CW27:524]

Remember, being agnostic is not a denial - an affirmation of the negative of a statement - it is rather a state of the lack of knowledge. But, as we see so dramatically in the story of St. Joseph, it is a state which is very hard to endure, and which cries out for light, for revelation... However, to keep within the context of the Theory of Story, GKC is saying it is very pointless to say "the mailman did it" or "the murderer used a vacuum cleaner" or "the horse was stolen by its trainer" or whatever the secret of the detective mystery may be - if you haven't read the rest of the story, the secret itself tells you NOTHING, and so is not even a secret. I might as well tell you that the system password at my second job was "CAMRY". It is a key to no lock. It helps explain that moving line in "O Little Town of Bethlehem", about "the hopes and fears of all the years"... if we do not understand the story of the Jews, from Abraham to Moses to David and all the rest, it is very hard to see the point of Bethlehem - or of Calvary.

Now, there is something more to this issue. GKC comes at it rather sideways, but it is a very striking insight, and touches on a very interesting part of modern physics:

The question of whether miracles ever occur is a question of common sense and of ordinary historical imagination: not of any final physical experiment. One may here surely dismiss that quite brainless piece of pedantry which talks about the need for "scientific conditions" in connection with alleged spiritual phenomena. If we are asking whether a dead soul can communicate with a living it is ludicrous to insist that it shall be under conditions in which no two living souls in their senses would seriously communicate with each other. The fact that ghosts prefer darkness no more disproves the existence of ghosts than the fact that lovers prefer darkness disproves the existence of love. If you choose to say, "I will believe that Miss Brown called her fiancé a periwinkle or, any other endearing term, if she will repeat the word before seventeen psychologists," then I shall reply, "Very well, if those are your conditions, you will never get the truth, for she certainly will not say it." It is just as unscientific as it is unphilosophical to be surprised that in an unsympathetic atmosphere certain extraordinary sympathies do not arise. It is as if I said that I could not tell if there was a fog because the air was not clear enough; or as if I insisted on perfect sunlight in order to see a solar eclipse.
[CW1:257]

What is a periwinkle? It's a "trailing evergreen herb" with flowers - there are several kinds. One type is called myrtle in the U.S. I seemed to recall that GKC used it in an important context, and was rather amazed to find it appears only three times in AMBER, and the other two are indeed important, so I shall give them to you:

The greater and stronger a man is the more he would be inclined to prostrate himself before a periwinkle.
[GKC Heretics CW1:68]

The interest in race, the interest in genealogy, which were professed by the ancient aristocratic world, were not bad things; they were in themselves good things. It is, at least, as reasonable to investigate the origin of a man as to investigate the origin of a cowslip, or a periwinkle, or a prairie dog; the herald with his tabard and trumpet holds his perfectly legitimate place beside the botanist and the conchologist and the natural history expert.
[GKC Daily News Nov 28, 1902 in The Apostle and the Wild Ducks]

Remarkable... these lend a very deep mystical ornamentation to our feast. It is one of the lesser biblical mysteries to ponder the two long genealogical lists, often called the "begats" which give the family tree of Jesus. One explanation might be grasped by recalling a very famous line of Chesterton:

"A Social Situation."
We must certainly be in a novel;
What I like about this novelist is that he takes such trouble about his minor characters.
[from GKC's "Notebook" quoted in Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton 63]

Again this is an enrichment of our Lenten study: in thinking of St. Joseph, we learn how Jesus consented to have this long list of nobodies and criminals recorded as His family. But then as St. Paul tells us,

Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man. He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross.
[Philippians 2:5-8]

Which of course is not too far away from the topic GKC mentions, of communication between the dead and the living... But I am going a bit far from the topic.

I wonder whether anyone has looked into the connection - from this very scientific insight of our Mr. Chesterton, to the famous "Uncertainty Principle" formulated by Heisenberg in 1927. I have not as yet found anything on it by Jaki, though he brings up some very important points, since it gets into issues of philosopy beyond its relevance for physics. For example Heisenberg ought to have called it "the principle of imprecision of measurement" [Jaki, Catholic Essays 159] But as I read this excerpt it certainly (hee hee) seems that GKC has anticipated Heisenberg. (Whew... another project for another time.)

I have brought up physics - and so (to my surprise) does GKC...

As a common-sense conclusion, such as those to which we come about sex or about midnight (well knowing that many details must in their own nature be concealed) I conclude that miracles do happen. I am forced to it by a conspiracy of facts: the fact that the men who encounter elves or angels are not the mystics and the morbid dreamers, but fishermen, farmers, and all men at once coarse and cautious; the fact that we all know men who testify to spiritualistic incidents but are not spiritualists, the fact that science itself admits such things more and more every day. Science will even admit the Ascension if you call it Levitation, and will very likely admit the Resurrection when it has thought of another word for it. I suggest the Regalvanisation. But the strongest of all is the dilemma above mentioned, that these supernatural things are never denied except on the basis either of anti-democracy or of materialist dogmatism - I may say materialist mysticism. The sceptic always takes one of the two positions; either an ordinary man need not be believed, or an extraordinary event must not be believed. For I hope we may dismiss the argument against wonders attempted in the mere recapitulation of frauds, of swindling mediums or trick miracles. That is not an argument at all, good or bad. A false ghost disproves the reality of ghosts exactly as much as a forged banknote disproves the existence of the Bank of England - if anything, it proves its existence.
[CW1:357-8]

On the hint about "concealing" I have already quoted that important essay on secrecy. There is also an echo from a previous essay:

No conceivable number of forged bank-notes can disprove the existence of the Bank of England.
[GKC ILN Apr 14, 1906 CW 27:164]

If you find yourself thinking that GKC was in any way opposed to Science, you ought to read Jaki's Chesterton a Seer of Science, especially the chapter called "Antagonist of Scientism". There's a big difference. It's not opposing Science to expect a scientist to act, speak, and write "scientifically" - that is, with a healthy amount of reason, thought, and care for making sense. And yes, sometimes scientists (good ones, too!) say things that are quite senseless, and need someone to grab the sleeve of their lab coats and show them their error. Let me give just one example, which resonates with this bit about ghosts:

Mr. Edison as reported does not say much about whether we "live again," but in a few well-chosen words he disposes of the soul: "My mind is incapable of conceiving such a thing as a soul. I may be in error, and man may have a soul; but I simply do not believe it. What a soul may be is beyond my understanding." So far, so good; all right; amen. But I ask the reader to remember this agnostic statement in considering what follows. He then goes on to deal with the origin of life; or rather, not to deal with it. The following statement is of such fearful intensity and importance that the interviewer prints it all in italics, and I will so reproduce it. "I believe the form of energy that we call life came to the Earth from some other planet or at any rate from somewhere out in the great spaces beyond us." In short, there will henceforth be branded upon our brains the conviction that life came from somewhere, and probably under some conditions of space. But the suggestion that it came from another planet seems a rather weak evasion. Even a mind enfeebled by popular science would be capable of stirring faintly at that, and feeling unsatisfied. If it came from another planet, how did it arise on that planet? And in whatever way it arose on that planet, why could it not arise in that way on this planet? We are dealing with something admittedly unique and mysterious: like a ghost. The original rising of life from the lifeless is as strange as a rising from the dead. But this is like explaining a ghost walking visibly in the churchyard, by saying that it must have come from the churchyard of another village.
[GKC ILN May 3 1924 CW33:321-2]

Which somehow brings up one of GKC's famous quotes, the solution of which I think is in its context:

Atheism is, I suppose, the supreme example of a simple faith. The man says there is no God; if he really says it in his heart, he is a certain sort of man so designated in Scripture. [see Ps 13(14):1] But, anyhow, when he has said it, he has said it; and there seems to be no more to be said. The conversation seems likely to languish. The truth is that the atmosphere of excitement, by which the atheist lived, was an atmosphere of thrilled and shuddering theism, and not of atheism at all; it was an atmosphere of defiance and not of denial. Irreverence is a very servile parasite of reverence; and has starved with its starving lord. After this first fuss about the merely aesthetic effect of blasphemy, the whole thing vanishes into its own void. If there were not God, there would be no atheists.
[GKC Where All Roads Lead CW3:37-8]

But we need not belabour this, as we have already heard GKC say "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." [CW1:343]

Tales from the Quotemeister

Yesterday was the first time in 13 years (since we instituted the Quotemeister online) that I did not get an inquiry as to the source of “The Great Gaels of Ireland” quote.

Distributism Meeting in New York

CATHOLICISM AND ECONOMICS:
CAPITALIST-DISTRIBUTIST-SOCIALIST DEBATE
Garden City, NY, USA. A conference hosted and sponsored by the Nassau Community College Center for Catholic Studies in Long Island, New York, is confirmed for April 4th, 2009 at the College Center Building.

The debate will present and contrast the Capitalist, Socialist, and Distributist positions in economics. The Conference, Catholicism and Economics, will present and compare the intellectual arguments about the compatibility of Catholicism with, respectively, democratic socialism, democratic capitalism, and distributism. Read more.
Thomas Storck will speak for the distributist position. Dr. Charles Clark will be the speaker on democratic socialism. Michael Novak will be the main speaker for the democratic capitalist position.
From 11:30am until 12:30pm there will be a luncheon for all in attendance (speakers and audience) including sandwiches, salads, cake, coffee/tea/cold beverages. Following lunch, there will be a brief tribute to the recently deceased Catholic scholars, Cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J., and Msgr. Michael Wrenn. The debate will begin at 1pm with a half hour presentation by each participant. Subsequently, there will be an opportunity for the participants to respond critically to one another, with a brief summary statement made by each main speaker. Dr. Stephen M. Krason, President of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists, will close the event with a short reflection on the conference from the perspective of Heinrich Pesch and Solidarism. The event will conclude by 4:30pm.
Thomas Storck is an author, a member of the Editorial Board of the Chesterton Review and of The Society for Distributism.
Dr. Charles M.A. Clark is a Professor in the Department of Economics and Finance, Peter J. Tobin College of Business, St. John's University, Jamaica, Queens, New York.
Michael Novak is the George Frederick Jewett Chair in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute of Washington, D.C.
Stephen M. Krason is Professor of Political Science and Legal Studies at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio.

All conference attendees must register. In order to register for the conference, contact:
Nassau Community College
Office of Life Long Learning
One Education Drive
Garden City, New York, 11530
1-516-572-7472.

The Office of Life Long Learning will send you registration material and a mandatory parking permit through the mail. Parking on campus without a valid permit could result in being issued a parking ticket. Those lost on campus and in need of directions to the College Center Building can contact the Office of Public Safety, 1-516-572-7100.

A Little Creepy, but with a possible new recording of Chesterton

H/T: Dave Z. This is the first time I've heard this recording of Chesterton (is it Chesterton's voice?) but the animation is a little creepy, don't you think? It's a section of The Ballad of the White Horse.

Chestertonian Explanation of the Fall of AIG

From Paul Cella, on the Red State Blog:

G. K. Chesterton, demonstrating his genius at the art of paradox, once referred to optimism as “morbid.” Since the moment I read that (it appears in the second chapter of The Everlasting Man, I have felt in my bones that it is true, and have accordingly nurtured a healthy repugnance for the braggarts of optimism. But as with many paradoxes... Read more ...it is difficult to explain without vitiating its power to surprise and thus enlighten. A true paradox is not a mere turn of phrase, a linguistic subtlety. It is attempt to fill a gap in man’s power of understanding. It is a rhetorical reach, a heuristic device to explain what is in the end a mystery to our meager powers of mind. The paradox is a human reflection of the mystery of being.

So in the hands of a master like Chesterton, the paradox becomes an instrument of extraordinary explanatory power. It can show us, as in a flash, a principle or precept which might by other means requires hours of lecture to impart. (There is an obscure masterpiece, long out of print, called Paradox in Chesterton, by a critic named Hugh Kenner, which lays all this out with great elegance. It ends with the astonishing claim for GKC that he be called a Doctor of the Church; and more astonishing still, the reader finds himself convinced.)

In this case of the problem of optimism, Chesterton’s paradox opened my mind’s eye to the surprising truth that optimism, being so engrossed with the potential for good things, courts ruin and despair by minimizing bad things — or, in the parlance of finance, by minimizing the downside risk. Especially when abetted by the modern doctrine of progress, optimism is morbid because of its tendency to induce blindness concerning man’s limitations.

Now I have a concrete, factual illustration of the problem of optimism, right in front of everyone’s eyes.

As I understand it, AIG was basically ruined by the wild bets of a 300-man unit out of London, the Financial Products office. This 300-man operation lost the equivalent of a big state’s budget and more, all by themselves. [Click here to read it all.]

Happy St. Patrick's Day

I was looking to see what Chesterton had to say about St. Patrick's Day so I googled "Chesterton St. Patrick" and discovered there is a St. Patrick's parish in Chesterton, Indiana.

For your reading pleasure, try Irish Impressions, by GKC.

Frank and Ann Petta: The Wall

Miki Tracy writes:

I took a couple of photos of 'the wall' in the kitchen at Frank and Ann's house. I couldn't resist. It was one of the best things about that house! Almost of the books and art were already gone by the time I got there, so it didn't really feel like 'the Pettas'' anymore, but the wall is one of a kind, so I memorialized it.

Click on picture to enlarge.

The Last Bottle of Petta Wine

From Sara B:

Miki Tracy led us in toasts to Frank and Ann with the last bottle of last year's Petta wine -- found unopened in Ann's refrigerator, and just enough for the group's toasts.

Art Livingston regaled our table with tales of early Chicago meetings, including Frank Sheed's appearance. Read more.

I called Bernice Haase, who mothered us through the Milwaukee conventions and took such good care of Fr. Dave Wilbur. She sends on her best to all of you. She is still shoveling her own snow, which doesn't surprise any who know her. She opines that milking cows in the early morning, as she did as a young woman, is far more conducive to a long and active life than sitting at a computer. Amen.

Ann's niece will send out corrected holy cards to those who left addresses in the condolence book. I'm sure Ann got a good laugh from having two years subtracted from her age.

Old timers would have known Bernice from the Milwaukee days. She sat at the back door of the Cousins Center to make sure people weren’t locked out and got their room keys while the rest of us were down the hall at the conference – many met her before they met the rest of the Chestertonians. I don’t think she got to hear a substantive lecture the whole time we were in Milwaukee. I got Dale and Laura to get flowers for Bernice, Frances and Ann one early year in St. Paul as the mothers of the Chesterton conference. Thanks Sara B. for this report.