Just Finished Listening

I just finished listening to an audio book of The Man Who Was Thursday, found on iTunes, recorded by Zachary Brewster-Geisz (Thanks for doing that Zach! Great voices!) for Librivox on my iPod.

There are 15 chapters to this book, and I would listen to a few chapters every day for about a week, as I did other work.

This recording is very good, the guy recording it has a nice voice, he does a good variety of other voices (and keeps them straight as far as consistently doing the gravely voice for Dr. Bull, the cockney voice, etc.) so it was entertaining as well as interesting to listen to the whole thing on audio.

If you have an iPod and want something different to listen to, I recommend this one.

Go to Project Gutenberg, scroll down to the iTunes recordings.

Innocent Smith News

This just in:

Ellen Finan, of the Warren, Ohio, Chesterton Society, has discovered something interesting about some Dominicans who have completed their novitiate in Cincinnati, Ohio:

At the August 15th Mass of Simple Profession celebrated at St. Gertrude's Church in Cincinnati, OH. During the Mass, Fr. Brian Mulcahy, O.P., the Vicar Provincial, received the vows of the nine brothers completing their novitiate. The nine brothers making their simple profession were: Br. Thomas More Garrett, O.P.; Br. John Devaney, O.P.; Br. Boniface Endorf, O.P.; Br. Joseph Fussner, O.P.; Br. Benedict Joseph Freeman, O.P.; Br. Sebastian White, O.P.; Br. Gabriel Torretta, O.P.; Br. Paul Marich, O.P.; and Br. Innocent Smith, O.P.


Ellen writes: “I'm glad to see Innocent Smith made it through his novitiate year.”

This news makes me want EWTN

From Dale:

The 5th Season of the Apostle of Common Sense premieres on Sunday, September 6, 8 pm CDT. (9 Eastern)

This season features episodes on Language, the Problem of Evil, America, Islam, War, Parenthood, Priesthood, Modernism, and more. There will be a special episode on the Toy Theatre that you will NOT want to miss, there will be a whole new batch of “Ask Mr. Chesterton” and look for multiple appearances by that ex-seminarian Stanford Nutting. The kickoff episode will be about something called Truth. And, as always, we’ll be pre-empted by the Pope on a regular basis.

I hope *you* have EWTN so you can catch these episodes. Have you noticed how these just keep getting better and better?

Last season's "Ask Mr. Chesterton" was the best episode ever. But I suspect this new season's will be even better. And Standford is not to be missed.

Check it out-Catholic Moments #116

Catholic Moments, and host Lisa Hendey, a great podcast by the way, has allowed me to test the waters of podcasting by hosting a 3 minute "Chesterton Moment" on her show from time to time.

The first one is here (on a libsyn page, just like ours will be soon) and just go ahead and listen to the whole show. Our segment is towards the middle of the podcast.

Our New Adventure: GKC's What's Wrong With the World

Yes, it is Thursday and so, as promised (or threatened!) we begin a new adventure...

Welcome to the first installment of our study of What's Wrong With the World, the soon-to-be-100-year-old text by G. K. Chesterton!

Please be patient while our assistants check your backpacks and other hiking gear - be sure to have your sunglasses and other safety equipment as this is going to be a challenging expedition. I will be using the CW4 edition by Ignatius Press, available through the ACS; there is also a nice edition available from Dover. However, since this text is divided into about 45 rather small chapters, we may not really require page numbers - we'll have to see. It's a lot of very little, but very steep and strenuous hikes... be sure to have your compass, your plumb bob, your magnifying glass, some snacks, and (very important) your notebook and writing implement... Ready? Forüt!

The first item on our agenda is to consider the title. It may come as some surprise to you that "What's Wrong With the World" was not what GKC wanted to call this book... but perhaps I ought to let him explain, since he actually wrote a very interesting and hilarious explanation for us, which he called:

"What is Right With the World"

The above excellent title is not of my own invention. It was suggested to me by the Editor of this paper, [T.P.'s Weekly] and I consented to fill up the bill, partly because of the pleasure I have always had from the paper itself, and partly because it gives me an opportunity of telling an egotistical story, a story which may enlighten the public about the general origin of such titles.

I have always heard of the brutality of publishers and how they crush and obscure the author; but my complaint has always been that they push him forward far too much. I will not say that, so far from making too little of the author, they make too much of him; that this phrase is capable of a dark financial interpretation which I do not intend. But I do say that the prominent personalities of the literary world are very largely the creations of their publishers, in so far as they are not solely the creations of their wives. Here is a small incident out of my own existence. I designed to write a sort of essay, divided into sections, on one particular point of political error. This fallacy, though small and scholastic at first sight, seemed to me to be the real mistake in most modern sociological works. It was, briefly, the idea that things that have been tried have been found wanting. It was my purpose to point out that in the entanglements of practice this is untrue; that an old expedient may easily be the best thing for a new situation; that its principle may be useful though its practice failed; that its practice may have failed because its principle was abandoned; and so on. Therefore, I claimed, we should look for the best method, the ideal, whether it is in the future or the past. I imagined this book as a drab-coloured, decorous little philosophical treatise, with no chapters, but the page occasionally broken by section-headings at the side. I proposed to call my analysis of a radical error "What is wrong", meaning where the mistake is in our logical calculation. But I had highly capable and sympathetic publishers, whose only weakness was that they thought my unhappy monologue much more important than I did. By some confusion of ecstasy (which entirely through my own fault I failed to check) the title was changed into the apocalyptic trumpet-blast "What's Wrong With the World". It was divided up into three short, fierce chapters, like proclamations in a French riot. Outside there was an enormous portrait of myself looking like a depressed hairdresser, and the whole publication had somehow got the violence and instancy of a bombshell. Let it be understood that I do not blame the publishers in the least for this. I could have stopped it if I had minded my own affairs, and it came out of their beautiful and ardent souls I merely mention it as an instance of the error about publishers. They are always represented as cold and scornful merchants, seeking to keep your writers in the background. Alas (as Wordsworth so finely says), alas! the enthusiasm of publishers has oftener left me mourning.

Upon the whole, I am rather inclined to approve of this method of the publisher or editor making up the title, while the author makes up the remarks about it. Any man with a large mind ought to be able to write about anything. Any really free man ought to be able to write to order. ...
[GKC T. P.'s Weekly, (Christmas) 1910 in The Apostle and the Wild Ducks, 161-2]

As we shall see next week, when we examine the dedication, there was some other humour to be gotten from this title. But let us proceed a bit further, since the title is our schema, our outline, for the entire series of hikes we are embarking on.

As I mentioned, there are some 45 little chapters, which are grouped under five major heads:
1. "The Homelessness of Man"
2. "Imperialism, or the Mistake About Man"
3. "Feminism, or the Mistake About Woman"
4. "Education, or the Mistake About the Child"
5. "The Home of Man"
There are also three short "notes" which conclude the text.

But what really is the thrust of the text? What IS wrong with the world?

One very speculative view (submitted by a ridiculous computer scientist who likes to read GKC) is that WWWTW is a kind of extended commentary on something from GKC's earlier book, Orthodoxy. Now, you are all geared up for a new adventure, and no doubt do not wish to review the hikes of yesteryear... but I think it's the same mountains we are facing: "Most probably we are in Eden still. It is only our eyes that have changed." [GKC The Defendant, 3] And I mention Eden for good reason, for that is the clue to what is wrong:

Christianity spoke again and said: "I have always maintained that men were naturally backsliders; that human virtue tended of its own nature to rust or to rot; I have always said that human beings as such go wrong, especially happy human beings, especially proud and prosperous human beings. This eternal revolution, this suspicion sustained through centuries, you (being a vague modern) call the doctrine of progress. If you were a philosopher you would call it, as I do, the doctrine of original sin. You may call it the cosmic advance as much as you like; I call it what it is - the Fall."

Christianity is that the ordinary condition of man is not his sane or sensible condition; that the normal itself is an abnormality. That is the inmost philosophy of the Fall. In Sir Oliver Lodge's interesting new Catechism, the first two questions were: "What are you?" and "What, then, is the meaning of the Fall of Man?" I remember amusing myself by writing my own answers to the questions; but I soon found that they were very broken and agnostic answers. To the question, "What are you?" I could only answer, "God knows." And to the question, "What is meant by the Fall?" I could answer with complete sincerity, "That whatever I am, I am not myself." This is the prime paradox of our religion; something that we have never in any full sense known, is not only better than ourselves, but even more natural to us than ourselves.
[GKC Orthodoxy CW1:321, 363, emphasis added]

Yes, as painful as it msut be for us, the short answer to what's wrong with the world is the FALL. (Yes, I am well aware that there is a famous "missing quote": some news editor who asked "What IS wrong with the world?" GKC is reputed to have written back "I am." It is not clear if this is hearsay or a not-yet-found item, but it does not seem to appear in AMBER.) Here we have a clear statement of GKC's sense of what is wrong - and it is consistent with his other writing:

These men were conscious of the Fall, if they were conscious of nothing else; and the same is true of all heathen humanity. Those who have fallen may remember the fall, even when they forget the height. Some such tantalising blank or break in memory is at the back of all pagan sentiment. There is such a thing as the momentary power to remember that we forget.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:226]

But it is also consistent with the writing of others, and to conclude our initial study today I shall give you three other links, both earlier and later than GKC's writing, to this very important matter:

What shall be said to this heart-piercing, reason-bewildering fact? I can only answer, that either there is no Creator, or this living society of men is in a true sense discarded from His presence. Did I see a boy of good make and mind, with the tokens on him of a refined nature, cast upon the world without provision, unable to say whence he came, his birthplace or his family connections, I should conclude that there was some mystery connected with his history, and that he was one, of whom, from one cause or other, his parents were ashamed. Thus only should I be able to account for the contrast between the promise and condition of his being. And so I argue about the world; - if there be a God, since there is a God, the human race is implicated in some terrible aboriginal calamity. It is out of joint with the purposes of its Creator. This is a fact, a fact as true as the fact of its existence; and thus the doctrine of what is theologically called original sin becomes to me almost as certain as that the world exists, and as the existence of God.
[J. H. Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua Part VII]

It must be first of all recognized that the condition of things inherent in human affairs must be borne with, for it is impossible to reduce civil society to one dead level. Socialists may in that intent do their utmost, but all striving against nature is in vain. There naturally exist among mankind manifold differences of the most important kind; people differ in capacity, skill, health, strength; and unequal fortune is a necessary result of unequal condition. Such unequality is far from being disadvantageous either to individuals or to the community. Social and public life can only be maintained by means of various kinds of capacity for business and the playing of many parts; and each man, as a rule, chooses the part which suits his own peculiar domestic condition. As regards bodily labor, even had man never fallen from the state of innocence, he would not have remained wholly idle; but that which would then have been his free choice and his delight became afterwards compulsory, and the painful expiation for his disobedience. "Cursed be the earth in thy work; in thy labor thou shalt eat of it all the days of thy life."[Gen 3:17]
[Leo XIII Rerum Novarum 17]

As a champion of the study of the thought of Thomas Aquinas, Leo XIII had most articulate views on the support which man's fallen nature has to take from the supernatural in order to cope with the natural order. Those views are most timely parts of his Encyclical at a time when Catholic theological, philosophical, and socio-economic discourse is cavorting with sheer naturalism. A pivotal part of that naturalism is the denial of original sin. Within the perspective of that denial (mostly by silence although at times vocal) any reference to original sin should appear most unscholarly, if not plainly ridiculous. Not so to Leo XIII. He devoted a full paragraph to the consequences of the Fall of which hard bodily labor was one... [here SLJ quotes RN 17, see above]
[S. L. Jaki "Beyond the Tools of Production" in The Gist of Catholicism and Other Essays 240]

Lest you think this is going to be a "theological" treatise, I would say that it is theological only because Man is theological. Remember when Holbrook Jackson wrote:

II. Theology and religion are not the same thing. When the churches are controlled by the theologians religious people stay away.
[HJ Platitudes in the Making 25]

Chesterton replied, in green pencil,

Theology is simply that part of religion that requires brains.
[GKC Platitudes Undone 25]

This book, What's Wrong With the World, is about Man, about the World, and about Man's rightful place in the World - which is how we can learn what is wrong. Why? Because when asked "what are you?" we must reply "God knows." And when asked, "What is the meaning of the Fall?" we must reply, "that whatever I am, I am not myself." And because we'll need to understand something about what's wrong in order to know what's right, and what to do in order to repair what is wrong.

Mission Accomplished!

OK, ok, you can stop donating now! Just kidding. Anything extra we get goes towards other great work like the EWTN shows, the website, the research, etc.

THANK YOU. You all humble me. Yes, we have enough to podcast. Thank you so much everyone.

I probably can't thank you enough, but please know that I do pray for all our blog readers. Your support is a wondrous thing.

Exciting Podcast news--

I'm thankful to God for helping me by sending wonderful people my way. YOU guys are fantastic for supporting podcasting. Thanks to those who have already donated. As far as I know, we are still $23.50 or so short, unless you've donated and not emailed me, then I don't know about it. If you can, please do.

However, very soon, quite soon, you are going to hear some very exciting podcasting news. I'll keep you posted, but meanwhile, pray for me to do a good job with this, and I'm praying for ALL OF YOU who read this blog. Thanks for being here.

And if you aren't subscribed to Catholic Moments with Lisa Hendey, you should be. That's a hint.

Voice (audio) Feedback

In preparation for the podcast, I've set up a phone line dedicated to accepting voice feedback. This service (which is free) sends me a .wav file of the audio, which I can incorporate into my podcasts.

But, just to try it out, you could call and leave me a voice feedback now. The phone number is 1-206-337-9049. For anyone outside of Seattle (where the service is based) it will be a long distance and charges will apply.

Maybe you could call and say: "Hi, this is [your first name] and I LOVE G.K.Chesterton"
or
"Hi, my name is [your first name] and I regularly read the blog of the American Chesterton Society."
or
"Hello, my name is [your name here] and I love Chesterton because..."
or
"Hi! I'm [your name] and my favorite Chesterton book is XYZ because of ABC..."

I think you get the picture. Try it out! Anything recorded there, unless you say so, could be used in a future podcast.

Fundraiser update

As far as I know, we have now raised $125.50. We still need $23.50. Any donation welcome. The 50 cents is from a very young person, which warms my heart!

A New Year at the Chesterton Academy

This just in from Dale:

This morning we began classes for Chesterton Academy’s second year. 20 students, grades 9, 10, and 11. (doubling our enrollment from last year) My wife will be teaching Spanish and Drama, my son Philosophy and History, and some math classes are being taught by Jim Carrico, who founded the Nevada Chesterton Society.

In addition to asking God’s blessings on the coming year, say a prayer of thanksgiving that this miracle is taking place right before our eyes.

Podcast Fund Raiser

Hi Everyone,
I hate to do this, but I need $149.

The American Chesterton Society is going to start podcasting soon, and I've got a great lineup of shows with talk, laughter, interviews with interesting people, clips of Chesterton's own voice, Chesterton, Chesterton, and more Chesterton.

You know this blog is free to run. No monthly fees, nothing. My time, yes, but no fees for storage or etc. Now it may load slowly for some of you, a complaint I've heard, but it's free, so we put up with it. So far. I have plans for someday getting something better, but for now, we're here.

Anyway, with podcasting, it's different. You have to have storage space on line so people can access the podcast anytime. And they take up space because they are audio files, which are bigger than just words. Even though they are just words. And some music, too.

The plan I need is at libsyn.com, and is $144/year, $12/month. The extra $5 is a one time fee to have a domain name so I can put up a link here, for example, or on FaceBook or Twitter, and people can go right there and download the new show.

If you think this is a worthwhile cause, and the American Chesterton Society is worthy of your hard-earned $$, please consider going here and making a donation and please, PLEASE specify "PODCAST" for your donation.

I haven't done a "Shea" to you before (he does quarterly fundraisers), but for this, I need to. Young people and commuters and people who exercise or whoever listens to podcasts may find ours (Uncommon Sense) and good things will follow. You know what I mean.

This donation is tax deductible.

Thank you!

Why I want to see Edinburgh - and something more

I saw something about GKC and Edinburgh recently - was it here ? I cannot recall. Anyway, I remembered that he has a fantastic description of the place, which has made me mark that city as a stopping-point for me if I ever get to the eastern side of the Atlantic. Here's just a little taste:

it is sometimes difficult for a man to shake off the suggestion that each road is a bridge over the other roads, as if he were really rising by continual stages higher and higher through the air. He fancies he is on some open scaffolding of streets, scaling the sky. He almost imagines that, if he lifted a paving-stone, he might look down through the opening, and see the moon. This weird sense of the city as a sort of starry ladder has so often come upon me when climbing the Edinburgh ways in cloudy weather that I have been tempted to wonder whether any of the old men of the town were thinking of the experience when they chose the strange and splendid motto of the Scotch capital. Never, certainly, did a great city have a heraldic motto which was so atmospherically accurate. It might have been invented by a poet - I might almost say by a landscape painter. The motto of Edinburgh, as you may still see it, I think, carved over the old Castle gate is, "Sic Itur ad Astra": "This Way to the Stars."
[GKC "The Way to the Stars" in Lunacy and Letters 76]

If you know Latin, you may recognize that this is from the ninth book of Virgil's Aeneid... it is a very powerful and tantalizing phrase. GKC uses it in a very important essay (how fast I forget them after I've read them!) which I think you ought to read for yourself. Here's the critical bit:

The materialism which idolatrised scientific machinery was followed by a natural, and on the whole healthy, reaction which cursed and condemned it. But, indeed, the mere denunciation of engineering or chemistry was as materialistic as the mere adoration of them. What matters is the motive and not the machine. The attempt to make science a sort of substitute for religion was simply ludicrous. A man said: "I can see no sense in anything; I hate the human race; I wish I was dead; but I am glad they have discovered the telephone: now I can ring up in the middle of the night and say something I don't value to somebody I don't like." This man was unintelligent. But it was even more unintelligent to blame the telephone because we had nothing to say in it that was worth saying. Similarly the hopes of physical research were silly hopes if they really meant that such a matter as aviation could make life worth living. Being stupid and wicked above the clouds is the same as being stupid and wicked under them: and there are clouds as well as stars in the very brain of man wherever he may go. If it is not the habit that makes the monk, still less is it the wings that make the angel. Yet the same innocent joy that is felt by a child in seeing "the wheels go round" may well be felt by an angel in seeing the worlds go round.

It has been touchingly reported that the little brother of the lost airman talks perpetually of the great aerial feat; and no one who knows anything of children will even need to be told so. It is this clear and stainless pleasure in science, as in a toy as big as the world, that we need rather than any displeasure at it. We can all remember it in the time when we cheered a passing railway-train or first stared at crystals through a microscope. We ought still to be able to cheer the railway-train. We still know that the diamond is beautiful, if the diamond-broker isn't. It was said that the Devil need not have all the good tunes: nor need he even have all the bad smells. Chemistry was as holy as hagiology when we were in the nursery. And in this sense, very different from the current one, there is such a thing as Christian Science. But the disinfectant of science is con-science, or conscience. When the moral air has been purified, as it has been by this all-annihilating storm, we recover the natural gladness in the magic made by man. And in no symbol is this more apparent than in the great symbol of the battle in the air, of which this one life and death will be the central and the fruitful legend.

We have done right and the heavens have not fallen: rather, we have re-inherited the heavens of our fathers. We have passed the midnight of materialism when the heavens were only vacant. The sky is what it was of old: a window of all the world and the entrance to immortality. Sic itur ad astra.
[GKC ILN June 26 1915 CW30:234-5]

I said in my title that there would be something more, and here it is.

Since Nancy herself voted for "A" in my poll, I take that as approval for my getting into some hot water - that is, for our study of What's Wrong With the World (hereinafter WWWTW) to commence on the coming Thursdays, as God may permit me to proceed.

So! If you do not have a copy of WWWTW, you might wish to obtain CW4 from the ACS, which also contains the important books called Eugenics and Other Evils and The Superstition of Divorce and the pamphlets called Divorce Versus Democracy and Social Reform Versus Birth Control. As I proceed I shall use the pagination in CW4, but I hope to cover its roughly 44 "chapters" by doing one each week, so it ought to be easy for you to keep up regardless of what edition you have. I am well aware that there are some very controversial parts to the text - some of them I may take up, others I may leave for you to discuss, in the comment-box, or in your own bloggs. But I will try to give at least a little bit larger of the view of this book, trying (as we did in our study of Orthodoxy) to see more of it as Chesterton did.

One final point I'd like to make. If you are so inclined to offer your own comments and produce your own discussions, on WWWTW or on any other Chestertonian matter, please remember that you are free to set up your own blogg... it was GKC himself who seemed to presage this marvel when he wrote:

This paper exists to insist on the rights of man; on possessions that are of much more political importance than the principle of one man one vote. I am in favour of one man one house, one man one field; nay I have even advanced the paradox of one man one wife. But I am almost tempted to add the more ideal fancy of one man one magazine ... to say that every citizen ought to have a weekly paper of this sort to splash about in ... this kind of scrap book to keep him quiet.
[GKC in GK's Weekly April 4, 1925, quoted in Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton 497]

After all:

I believe in getting into hot water. I think it keeps you clean.
[GKC ILN March 10 1906 CW27:142]

The moderator - er - instigator - intrudes...

As I am a bit in the role of moderator - or perhaps, to be fair, the instigator of this discussion I ought not get into it very deeply. But I will not intrude my OWN words much - my only role is to let GKC play at least a little larger of a part in the conversation, though I may have to help by way of some introductory grunts. For example:

The question of "What am I?" is not often understood - in fact is rarely understood, if ever by the individual, perhaps because few of us understand very much about philosophy, or science or any real study of what humanity is. People say they want to "discover themselves" - but this is an error. To put it simply, our being does not depend on our knowing about our being - but even more, my own desire, or my own guess, or my own interpretation of "me" (of what I "am") is almost never what I really am. This truth is sure to be a let-down to some, but then that's the nature of things... we're very good at misleading ourselves about our selves! Sure, we have a definite opinion about what we are, but that does not make us what we are. Yes, you can find this in vast detail in Aquinas and other philosophers, but it is easier to take a little-known book by GKC and find the simple answer there. In GKC's "green-pencil" annotations to .... er, hm. Let me start over, since this is not really easy to quote directly.

In the little collection of Holbrook Jackson's aphorisms called Platitudes In the Making you will find this:

No opinion matters finally: except your own.
[Holbrook Jackson, Platitudes in the Making, 15]

But GKC took a green pencil and scribbled in his own copy this slight revision:

"No opinion matters finally: except your own."
said the man who thought he was a rabbit.
[GKC/HJ Platitudes Undone 15]

Indeed!


Now, on the issue of GKC as a generalist.... Here you have given me an opportunity for a perfect demonstration of the scholastic distinguo.

Watch and see:

I distinguish "generalist" in two senses: (1) as a writer (2) in the unrestricted sense.

In sense (1) concedo - I concede the point. He wrote about just about every possible topic, wisely and insightfully, for "I would undertake to pick up any topic at random, from pork to pyrotechnics, and show that it illustrates the truth of the only true philosophy" [GKC The Thing CW3:189].

In sense (2) nego - I deny the point. Rather, he had such an intense "presence of mind" that he was utterly dependent on his wife for many of the common ordinaries of life. For example:

[Mrs. Mills, a friend] was struck by the placidity with which Frances accepted her husband's oddities in daily life. Both in London and when they stayed with one another in the country, a regular feature of each morning was a blood-curdling yell from upstairs, unutterably startling the first time you heard it. "It sounded," said Mrs. Mills, "like a werewolf." Frances would say, without a smile or the slightest sign of surprise, "Oh, that's Gilbert, he wants his tie tied." One morning he was very late. Frances went up to look and came down saying (again with no faint trace of surprise or amusement), "Gilbert dropped one of his garters [he was wearing knickerbockers and golf stockings], he went down on the floor to look for it and found a book there, so he began to read it."
[Ward, Return To Chesterton 75]

Ahem! Very funny. Now, on to the most important matter... the question, "what is man?":

Oh my, Brian, and Davy, and BlogNerd, you are on the verge of great discoveries: this is one of the most important questions facing humanity: WHAT IS MAN? (and its correlate, WHAT IS WOMAN?) Or, to be a little more general: What is the meaning of our existence?

But then, you might note, that this was asked of God in the exquisite Psalm 8:

O Lord, our Lord, how admirable is thy name in the whole earth! For thy magnificence is elevated above the heavens. Out of the mouth of infants and of sucklings thou hast perfected praise, because of thy enemies, that thou mayst destroy the enemy and the avenger. For I will behold thy heavens, the works of thy fingers: the moon and the stars which thou hast founded. What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him? Thou hast made him a little less than the angels, thou hast crowned him with glory and honour: And hast set him over the works of thy hands. Thou hast subjected all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen: moreover, the beasts also of the fields. The birds of the air, and the fishes of the sea, that pass through the paths of the sea. O Lord, our Lord, how admirable is thy name in the whole earth![emphasis added]

It is only by our working together that we shall begin to learn - as GKC did:

To the question, "What are you?" I could only answer, "God knows."
[GKC Orthodoxy CW1:363]

If this seems like a riddle, we are in a well-known path:

Every great literature has always been allegorical - allegorical of some view of the whole universe. The 'Iliad' is only great because all life is a battle, the 'Odyssey' because all life is a journey, the Book of Job because all life is a riddle.
[GKC The Defendant 47]

Now,I shall go off to instigate another riddle in some other corner of the e-cosmos...

The Best Conversation Ever

Seeing what's going on below, and the fact that we have 78 comments (a record for us) and more than two people involved in the conversation led me to wonder: What's the Best Conversation Ever? This one is certainly our blog's best. For example, we have people asking intelligent questions, and a few old standard questions, and some sill questions, and then we also have some really intelligent, well-thought-out, given-lightly answers.

I've been really please to see that no one has steam coming out of their ears, no on seems to be reacting in haste, if offense seems possible, I've seen apologies. It's really hard to carry on this kind of conversation over a blog because you can't see when someone is laughing or grinning as they type, knowing in their own minds they are composing a joke. On the other end, it may look like a sneer or a put-down, so these things can often go awry.

But let's get back to the topic. In-person conversations are really best, when you can have them, and I was wondering if you can recall your Best Conversation Ever. What were the elements that made it so memorable? Was there laughter? Intelligent exchange? New insights? Conversion? Wine? Cigars? Cards or scrabble involved?

Some of my Best Conversations Ever have actually taken place at ChesterCons at meals. I recall serious exchange of ideas blended with wine, and with laughter, and give and take, and some shouting and an occasional pounding of canes or sword sticks. I've also had some great conversations right here on line.

Tell us about your Best Conversation Ever. Where was it? When? Whom? How? Why?

Poll: study WWWTW for its upcoming centennial?

Here is the question for you:

2010 will mark the centennial of GKC's What's Wrong With the World. So:

(a) Do you want to explore it here, as we did Orthodoxy?
(b) Or would you prefer another book? Which one?
(c) Or would you prefer some other entertainment - if so what?

Wow - 62 and counting!

In the 1352 days since the beginning of this blogg, in the 1411 postings, there has never been one which has elicited such a series of comments as the recent casual excerpt from GKC's What's Wrong with the World - yes, 62 comments and counting. (For reference, the next most commented posting was on big box stores back in February of 2006 which got 40 comments.)

I mention 62 as it is a notable number: not because it is one more than the standard number of keys on a pipe organ, but it was GKC's age when he died. Ahem. It is not the number, but the quality, the truly Chestertonian - and yes, scholastic - tone of argumentation - the courtesy, the care to distinguo (I distinguish) and the more important care to be humble and to be respectful - this is an amazing achievement.

There were several points I felt inclined to respond to, but I think it better to give some additional tools - that is, let Chesterton have more of a say. Certainly, it appears that we could have a very spirited study of WWWTW - if that is desired , but let us reserve comment for that in another posting. The topics of Woman (writ large as Fr. Jaki liked to put it) and of Man - and of Education - are very important ones for us, and deserve our careful study and our honest discussion.

But for today, the feast of St. Bernard (1090-1153), the great Doctor of Clairvaux, I shall merely give a few excerpts froj Chesterton to assist the discussion. One non-Chestertonian thing I must point out - the question of the "ideal university" was raised - I strongly urge you to read Newman's The Idea of a University - which deserves a blogg or two to itself. (Yes, I meant BLOGG, not posting. It is exceedingly rich and a very important and powerful book.) I say it is non-Chestertonian only because it was written before he was born - but it is most Chestertonian in its import - or perhaps I ought to say GKC is most Newmanian. Someday perhaps someone will give us a study of the link between them.

Now, let us just consider a handful of quotes to aid (or stimulate) the discussion:

It is obvious that this cool and careless quality which is essential to the collective affection of males involves disadvantages and dangers. It leads to spitting; it leads to coarse speech; it must lead to these things so long as it is honorable; comradeship must be in some degree ugly. The moment beauty is mentioned in male friendship, the nostrils are stopped with the smell of abominable things. Friendship must be physically dirty if it is to be morally clean. It must be in its shirt sleeves. The chaos of habits that always goes with males when left entirely to themselves has only one honorable cure; and that is the strict discipline of a monastery. Anyone who has seen our unhappy young idealists in East End Settlements losing their collars in the wash and living on tinned salmon will fully understand why it was decided by the wisdom of St. Bernard or St. Benedict, that if men were to live without women, they must not live without rules. Something of the same sort of artificial exactitude, of course, is obtained in an army; and an army also has to be in many ways monastic; only that it has celibacy without chastity. But these things do not apply to normal married men. These have a quite sufficient restraint on their instinctive anarchy in the savage common-sense of the other sex. There is only one very timid sort of man that is not afraid of women.
[GKC WWWTW CW4:96]

What exactly is liberty? First and foremost, surely, it is the power of a thing to be itself.
[GKC "The Yellow Bird" in The Poet and the Lunatics]

To return to the Cyclostyle. I like the Cyclostyle ink; it is so inky. I do not think there is anyone who takes quite such a fierce pleasure in things being themselves as I do. The startling wetness of water excites and intoxicates me: the fieriness of fire, the steeliness of steel, the unutterable muddiness of mud. It is just the same with people.... When we call a man "manly" or a woman "womanly" we touch the deepest philosophy.
[GKC letter to Frances Blogg July 8 1899 quoted in Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton 108-9]

It is not in any such spirit of facile and reckless reassurance that we should approach the really difficult problem of the delicate virtues and the deep dangers of our two historic seats of learning. A good son does not easily admit that his sick mother is dying; but neither does a good son cheerily assert that she is "all right." There are many good arguments for leaving the two historic Universities exactly as they are. There are many good arguments for smashing them or altering them entirely. But in either case the plain truth told by the Bishop of Birmingham remains. If these Universities were destroyed, they would not be destroyed as Universities. If they are preserved, they will not be preserved as Universities. They will be preserved strictly and literally as playgrounds; places valued for their hours of leisure more than for their hours of work. I do not say that this is unreasonable; as a matter of private temperament I find it attractive. It is not only possible to say a great deal in praise of play; it is really possible to say the highest things in praise of it. It might reasonably be maintained that the true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground. To be at last in such secure innocence that one can juggle with the universe and the stars, to be so good that one can treat everything as a joke - that may be, perhaps, the real end and final holiday of human souls. When we are really holy we may regard the Universe as a lark; so perhaps it is not essentially wrong to regard the University as a lark. But the plain and present fact is that our upper classes do regard the University as a lark, and do not regard it as a University.
[GKC ILN Aug 17 1907 CW27:532-3]

...the differences between a man and a woman are at the best so obstinate and exasperating that they practically cannot be got over unless there is an atmosphere of exaggerated tenderness and mutual interest. To put the matter in one metaphor, the sexes are two stubborn pieces of iron; if they are to be welded together, it must be while they are red-hot. Every woman has to find out that her husband is a selfish beast, because every man is a selfish beast by the standard of a woman. But let her find out the beast while they are both still in the story of "Beauty and the Beast". Every man has to find out that his wife is cross - that is to say, sensitive to the point of madness: for every woman is mad by the masculine standard. But let him find out that she is mad while her madness is more worth considering than anyone else's sanity.

This is not a digression. The whole value of the normal relations of man and woman lies in the fact that they first begin really to criticise each other when they first begin really to admire each other. And a good thing, too. I say, with a full sense of the responsibility of the statement, that it is better that the sexes should misunderstand each other until they marry. It is better that they should not have the knowledge until they have the reverence and the charity. We want no premature and puppyish "knowing all about girls". We do not want the highest mysteries of a Divine distinction to be understood before they are desired, and handled before they are understood. That which Mr. Shaw calls the Life Force, but for which Christianity has more philosophical terms, has created this early division of tastes and habits for that romantic purpose, which is also the most practical of all purposes. Those whom God has sundered, shall no man join.
[GKC "Two Stubborn Pieces of Iron" in The Common Man 142-3]

Chesterton in Romania

From Steve:

I have met the acquaintance of Mircea Platon a distributist scholar-journalist who hails from Romania. I think that in the interest of international networking he would be an excellent contact.

He has in correspondence written,

Dear Stephen, we are trying to build an alliance between "middle
America" and "deep Romania". In November we'll publish in Romania an
anthology of American, Italian, English, Romanian, and Australian
Distributist writers. Anti-corporate and anti-Communist all the way!

See also, http://workstation3.blogspot.com/2009/07/drama-architecture-art-and-grace-evelyn.html

http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/?p=5288

Steve

O'Brien writes about the Conference

Kevin O'Brien's exuberance runneth over.

God's Philosophers

Announcing a very interesting and exciting new book: God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science by James Hannam, which is getting great reviews. I hope to read it very soon.

A Chesterton Center in Africa!

From our friend, Stratford Caldecott:

Dear Friends,

I wonder if I could ask you to give some publicity to this project among Chestertonians, by sending around a link to this web page?

www.secondspring.co.uk/economy/africaproject

Many thanks,

Stratford