“We Are Called Insane for Attempting to Return to Sanity.” —G.K

13 28 Miscellany of Men Avery Dulles 13 Rolling Road The Signature of Man 23 Valley of the Shadow 16 Art As Private Property 28

. VOL . NO.

20 7-8 $ 50 5 JULY/AUG 2017 “We are called insane for attempting to return to sanity.” —G.K. CHESTERTON For Clear Moral Judgments & Actions ✦ THE PORN MYTH ✦ DATING DETOX ✦ WHO AM I TO JUDGE? Matt Fradd Lisa and Kevin Cotter Edward Sri his is a non-religious response ired of toxic relationships, many n an age in which preference has Tto the commonly held belief that young adults want to clean up Ireplaced morality, many people pornography is a harmless or even theirT love lives. They desire to give fi nd it diffi cult to know and speak the benefi cial pastime. Fradd draws on their lives to Christ and turn away truth, afraid of the reactions they will the experience of porn performers and from sin—but without a concrete plan, receive if they say something is right users, and the expertise of neurologists, they quickly fall back into old habits. or wrong. Using engaging stories and sociologists, and psychologists to dem- Featuring daily refl ections and resolu- personal experience, acclaimed writer onstrate that pornography is destruc- and professor Edward Sri helps us tions, this forty-day detox provides tive to individuals, relationships, and understand the classical view of moral- a practical “cleanse” for those who society. He provides insightful argu- ity and equips us to engage relativism, want to purify themselves from the ments, supported by the latest scientifi c appealing to both the head and the research, to discredit the fanciful claims poisoned dating culture and live a life heart. Learn how Catholic morality is used to defend and promote pornog- of authentic freedom, respect, and love. all about love, why making a judgment raphy. He explains the neurological The Cotters off er compelling and clear is not judging a person’s soul, and why, reasons porn is addictive, helps indi- explanations of “God’s plans for love, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI, we viduals learn how to be free of porn, dating, and sex”, and give practical must courageously deal with the new and off ers real help to the parents and tools, habits, and strategies to live more “dictatorship of relativism” that has the spouses of porn users. virtuously with joy and freedom. emerged in society. POMY-P . . . Sewn Softcover, $17.95 DADE-P . . . Sewn Softcover, $14.95 WIJ-P . . . Sewn Softcover, $16.95

“Fradd does a great job of debunking “Everyone has experienced broken- “Too often our culture confuses love the myth that porn is harmless and ness in relationships. Through healing, with moral relativism, a dangerous even healthy. If you want to win a forgiveness, and personal stories, this misunderstanding. In this much-need- debate–or more importantly, a heart– book will help you fi nd the love you ed book, Dr. Sri shows us that true over the problem of porn, this book is have been searching for.” compassion can never be separated indispensable.” —Sarah Swaff ord, Author, Emotional from moral realities.” —Jason Evert, Author, Pure Manhood Virtue: A Guide to Drama-Free Relationships —Jennifer Fulwiler Author, Something other than God “One of the most compelling ways to “In a simple 40-day plan, the Cotters engage the culture on pornography help you form the habits you need to “Ed Sri heeds the clarion call to action is to meet it on the fi eld of scientifi c change the way you approach roman- and off ers practical tools to talk about research with level-headed arguments. tic relationships. Discover how the moral truth with greater conviction, Matt Fradd does just this.” real love you long for is possible.” clarity, and compassion in a world —William Struthers, PhD —Edward Sri, Author, Men, Women, saturated by relativism.” Author, Wired for Intimacy and the Mystery of Love —Curtis Martin, founder, FOCUS www.ignatius.com P.O. Box 1339, Ft. Collins, CO 80522 1 (800) 651-1531 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Volume 20 Number 7-8, July/August 2017

TREMENDOUS TRIFLES...... 2 ROLLING ROAD ...... 16 ALL IS GRIST Valley of the Shadow LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER . . . . . 3 Upsetting Nature...... 21 BY DALE AHLQUIST It’s All Connected JOE CAMPBELL BY DALE AHLQUIST THE SIGNATURE OF MAN...... 28 Art As Private Property REVIEWS LUNACY AND LETTERS...... 4 BY G.K. CHESTERTON BOOK REVIEWS...... 24 John Senior and the FEATURES COLUMNS Restoration of Realism STRAWS IN THE WIND ...... 5 REVIEWED BY DALE AHLQUIST SCHALL ON CHESTERTON ...... 14 Holidays In & Out of Utopia On The Primacy of Space Gosnell: The Untold BY G. K. CHESTERTON JAMES V. SCHALL, S. J. Story of America’s Most BALLADE OF GILBERT ...... 6 Prolific Serial Killer For Clear Moral THE FLYING INN...... 18 Not in Vain Post Trauma REVIEWED BY CHRIS CHAN BY G.K. CHESTERTON BY DAVID BERESFORD FEAR OF FILM...... 26 TRUTH IN THE STATE Judgments & Actions VARIED TYPES...... Look Out for the 19 ✦ ✦ ✦ OF TRANSMISSION...... 8 THE PORN MYTH DATING DETOX WHO AM I TO JUDGE? Definable Categories Golden Arches! Matt Fradd Lisa and Kevin Cotter Edward Sri Mystery and Good Manners BY CHRIS CHAN BY VICTORIA DARKEY his is a non-religious response ired of toxic relationships, many n an age in which preference has BY NATASHA ZINOS Tto the commonly held belief that young adults want to clean up Ireplaced morality, many people pornography is a harmless or even theirT love lives. They desire to give fi nd it diffi cult to know and speak the The Religion of Resurrection ALL I SURVEY...... 20 benefi cial pastime. Fradd draws on their lives to Christ and turn away truth, afraid of the reactions they will BY JONAH NIEMANN Mad Libs the experience of porn performers and receive if they say something is right from sin—but without a concrete plan, The Cave DAVID W. FAGERBERG users, and the expertise of neurologists, they quickly fall back into old habits. or wrong. Using engaging stories and sociologists, and psychologists to dem- personal experience, acclaimed writer BY LYNSEY ZENG Featuring daily refl ections and resolu- CHESTERTON UNIVERSITY ...... 22 onstrate that pornography is destruc- and professor Edward Sri helps us tions, this forty-day detox provides The Virtues of Roundness tive to individuals, relationships, and understand the classical view of moral- Visions of Life a practical “cleanse” for those who BY EMMA ARACHTINGI society. He provides insightful argu- ity and equips us to engage relativism, BY DALE AHLQUIST want to purify themselves from the ments, supported by the latest scientifi c appealing to both the head and the poisoned dating culture and live a life MISCELLANY OF MEN ...... 13 research, to discredit the fanciful claims heart. Learn how Catholic morality is THE DISTRIBUTIST ...... 30 ABOUT THE COVER: of authentic freedom, respect, and love. Charcoal drawing used to defend and promote pornog- all about love, why making a judgment A WASP Stung by Truth: by artist Luisa Neher, The Cotters off er compelling and clear How Not to Do It raphy. He explains the neurological is not judging a person’s soul, and why, BY DAVID P. DEAVEL Ojai, California reasons porn is addictive, helps indi- explanations of “God’s plans for love, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI, we BY G.K. CHESTERTON viduals learn how to be free of porn, dating, and sex”, and give practical must courageously deal with the new and off ers real help to the parents and tools, habits, and strategies to live more “dictatorship of relativism” that has PHOTO CREDITS: Page 2: Page 16,17: Pages 8-11: Page 13: the spouses of porn users. virtuously with joy and freedom. emerged in society. St. John Fisher College, Dave Hrbacek, Dale Ahlquist, courtesy of the students pictured, Fordham All other images to the best of our knowledge are in the public domain. POMY-P . . . Sewn Softcover, $17.95 DADE-P . . . Sewn Softcover, $14.95 WIJ-P . . . Sewn Softcover, $16.95 University PUBLISHER and EDITOR: Dale Ahlquist, President, ACS ART DIRECTOR: Ted Schluenderfritz MEMBERSHIP DIRECTOR: Linda Phillips SENIOR WRITER: Art “Fradd does a great job of debunking “Everyone has experienced broken- “Too often our culture confuses love the myth that porn is harmless and ness in relationships. Through healing, with moral relativism, a dangerous Livingston CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: David Beresford, Joe Campbell, John C. Chalberg, Christopher Chan, Victoria Darkey, David Paul Deavel, David W. even healthy. If you want to win a forgiveness, and personal stories, this misunderstanding. In this much-need- Fagerberg, James V. Schall SJ SUBSCRIPTIONS & RENEWALS: (See form p. 29) CREDIT CARD ORDERS: call 1-800-343-2425 or fax 1-952-8331-0387 E-MAIL: debate–or more importantly, a heart– book will help you fi nd the love you ed book, Dr. Sri shows us that true [email protected] LETTERS AND ARTICLES: Gilbert Magazine, American Chesterton Society, 4117 Pebblebrook Circle, Minneapolis, MN 55437, over the problem of porn, this book is have been searching for.” compassion can never be separated [email protected] Letters to the editor may be edited for length or clarity. indispensable.” —Sarah Swaff ord, Author, Emotional from moral realities.” —Jason Evert, Author, Pure Manhood Virtue: A Guide to Drama-Free Relationships —Jennifer Fulwiler Gilbert Magazine is published every eight weeks by The American Chesterton Society, a non-profit corporation established under Paragraph 501(c)(3) of the Author, Something other than God U.S. Tax Code. Donations to the American Chesterton Society are tax-deductible in the United States. Your contributions help support the publication of Gilbert “One of the most compelling ways to “In a simple 40-day plan, the Cotters Magazine. Please send your donations to: The American Chesterton Society, 4117 Pebblebrook Circle, Minneapolis, MN 55437. The views expressed by Gilbert engage the culture on pornography help you form the habits you need to “Ed Sri heeds the clarion call to action Magazine contributors are not necessarily those of the publisher, the editors, or the American Chesterton Society. is to meet it on the fi eld of scientifi c change the way you approach roman- and off ers practical tools to talk about research with level-headed arguments. tic relationships. Discover how the moral truth with greater conviction, Copyright ©2017 by The American Chesterton Society. Matt Fradd does just this.” real love you long for is possible.” clarity, and compassion in a world —William Struthers, PhD —Edward Sri, Author, Men, Women, saturated by relativism.” Author, Wired for Intimacy and the Mystery of Love —Curtis Martin, founder, FOCUS Donate to the American Chesterton Society • www.chesterton.org www.ignatius.com P.O. Box 1339, Ft. Collins, CO 80522 1 (800) 651-1531 The Magazine of the American Chesterton Society 1 TREMENDOUS TRIFLES by Dale Ahlquist

hen we begin Volume 21 in September, the mag- • We recently heard from a famous astronaut who provided azine will officially move to a six times a year us •with a very good trifle indeed. Captain Joe Kerwin was the format, even though we have effectively been science officer on Skylab, America’s first space station. He was operating on that schedule for the past few in space for 28 days, and he told us: “We got to bring along a years. It once came out eight times a year, mak- few books to read. I brought a Chesterton — but not Gilbert! ing us the world’s only month-and-a-halfly, but It was his little brother Cecil’s History of the United States. Why Wwe started to implement two double-issues each year, which so strange a choice? I had plenty of GKC’s books on my shelf, made for six annual mailings. The six-times-a-year schedule some from my parents’ collection. Heretics and Orthodoxy will continue, but you hold in your hands the last were favorites, but seemed a little heavy to bring double issue. when reading opportunities would be brief (and the earth in the viewing window as a constant at- ••Just as the last issue went to press, we were traction.) I would have picked Tremendous Trifles very saddened to learn of the death of one of the or another collection of essays. But, well, I’d nev- world’s great Chestertonians, Fr. Leo Hetzler. er read Cecil’s book and was curious. I hope you’ll A 2007 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement forgive me (G.K. has already.) Thanks for pub- Award from the American Chesterton Society, lishing Gilbert.” Easy to forgive! Since GKC wrote Fr. Hetzler, was a Basilian priest and a former the introduction to Cecil’s book, technically both Professor of Literature at St John Fisher College brothers made it into space. Thank you, Captain in Rochester, New York. He was a soldier in Kerwin. World War II and one of the few present at the end of the conflicts both in Europe and in the Fr. Leo Hetzler • This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Pacific. He was the first American to do a doctoral death• of Princess Diana, which means we are go- thesis on GKC, and his research uncovered Chesterton’s influ- ing to start seeing her face splashed across the tabloids ence on, of all people, Franz Kafka. There are many wonderful again. Frankly, I have never understood what the fascination stories connected to this joyful, blessed man, and he was full was with this woman, but for those of you who remain fasci- of profound and powerful insights, but the one that first came nated, here is why she qualifies as a tremendous trifle: You will to mind when I heard the news of his death was something he recall Chesterton’s close friend Maurice Baring, who, together said to me when I interviewed him for Gilbert several years ago: with GKC and Belloc, posed for the marvelous triple portrait by “Whenever I am not reading Chesterton, I think that maybe I’m Sir James Gunn, The Conversation Piece. Well, it turns out that overvaluing him. But whenever I am reading him, I keep think- Baring’s sister, the Honorable Margaret Baring, was married to ing, ‘What a mind! What a spirit!’” Charles Spencer, the 6th Earl Spencer, and their great-grand- daughter was none other than Diana, Princess of Wales which • But just as we lost a Chestertonian priest, another one re- makes Maurice Baring her great-great uncle. placed• him. Congratulations to Father Ben Wittnebel, who was ordained on May 27 in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and • In a now forgotten book, Criticisms of Life, by a now forgot- Minneapolis. Ben was once a Lutheran attending Luther ten• author, one Horace J. Bridges, G.K. Chesterton is dismissed College in Decorah, Iowa, when he started reading G.K. as “a weak logician, a poor reasoner, a dishonest controversial- Chesterton. Now he is a Catholic priest. Along the way, he ist and an unsound theologian.” Bridges says that orthodoxy is joined us as part of our acting troupe at EWTN when we filmed “unverifiable either by history or by present-day experience,” Season 6 of “The Apostle of Common Sense.” and considers Christianity a “materialistic fairy tale.” An anon- ymous reviewer in The Catholic World, November, 1915, re- sponds: “The chief reason why Mr. Bridges fails to understand Fr. Ben Wittnebel the reasoning of Mr. Chesterton lies in the former’s bitter hatred of all supernaturalism and his lack of any sense of humor.” Still true of most all of Chesterton’s critics: a hatred of the supernatural and no sense of humor.

G.K. Chesterton, writing about modern culture, 100 warned prophetically: “A semi-official reform- YEARS AGO er, flying round with a fad, might kill eighty ba- bies without having to bury any of them.” (New Witness, July 5, 1917)

2 Volume 20 Number 7-8, July/August 2017 LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER It’s All Connected

s much as I detest being drawn into discussions Health facilities from the indigent and suffering working class- of current events, for the simple reason that they es” under the current system. But he warns of three grave prob- seldom stay current long enough to hold anyone’s lems under this system. First, he says, “it is already abundantly sense of urgency, I am going to bring up two hot clear that the success of the Public Health Services has drawn button issues. One of them was hot a hundred the attention of the theorists to the population problem, and years ago and Chesterton wrote about it then, and that they, together with those who are alarmed by the bur- it has re-heated. The other is connected to it as a den of State Maternity expenses, advocate as a corollary the Anatural consequence, or rather an unnatural consequence, and artificial restriction of population. It is a logical and obvious Chesterton predicted it even though it would have been un- economy. Those who are not born will not need the services imaginable to the age in which he lived. It is still unimaginable. of the clinic or the panel doctor.” Secondly, the doctor gives The first issue is health insurance. The standard socialist way to the health official and a lot of crank ideas and medical view is that the government should provide health care to ev- fads. The poor have little power to resist the growing power of erybody. The standard capitalist view is that the government the State which will include the official medical establishment should stay out of it, that health care, whether it be to obtain in- of the State. “It will become even more difficult as the Public surance or to pay directly for medical services, should be a pri- Health Services are intensified, and compulsion is increased vate decision, and that the only health we need to worry about for one ‘vital-necessity-in-the public-interest’ after another.” is a healthy economy because then everybody has enough mon- Third, “State supplied medical assistance induces a state of de- ey to pay for everything, including health care. Those may be pendence in the recipient. When the poor come to regard this the standard views, but both socialists and capitalists, like all dependence as normal they will have no claim on a real liv- other idealists, do not live up to their own standards. And the ing wage which is a wage that troubles them to live and con- fact is, we do not live in either a purely Socialist or a Capitalist trol their own lives.” As wages have been reduced, Hudge and society, but rather a Servile State run by Hudge and Gudge— Gudge have to provide additional compensations: health insur- Big Government and Big Business. And currently we have hit ance, pensions, housing benefits, relief funds, and other pack- upon an unworkable solution wherein the State requires every- ages. “The logical sequel is the condition in which the work- one to buy health insurance—that is, where Hudge requires ev- men is not paid at all, but fed, housed and vetted like any other eryone to pay Gudge. The only argument is over what must be cattle in return for work done.” covered and what must not be. But however that debate ends, In other words, slavery. one problem remains: a huge section of the population, known But what is the other current issue that is connected to this as the poor, cannot pay for either insurance or medical services one? and so they have to depend on Public Health Services, whatev- Chesterton says, “The same age which tends to economic er the State decides it will make available—or make mandatory. slavery tends to social anarchy; and especially to sexual anar- Chesterton says he is opposed to Public Health Services in chy. So long as men can be driven in droves like sheep, they can principle “because they are in grave danger of producing Public be as promiscuous as sheep.” Health of body at the expense of Public Health of mind.” Chesterton says that the natural appetites “like industrial What does that mean? organization, bring all men to one level.” And it is the level of First of all, neither Hudge nor Gudge have an interest in beasts. And Hudge and Gudge do not worry about them. What keeping the public healthy, except to a minimum standard, they object to are the purely human appetites that set us apart along the lines of a minimum wage. Gudge wants to keep wag- from animals, the appetite for “liberty, honour, decency, and es low but also keep workers content enough to keep quiet. He private property.” So long as Hudge and Gudge “can make sure wants “efficiency.” It is very efficient when Hudge provides the that a man’s work is adequately monotonous and material,” they services to Gudge’s workers that Gudge doesn’t want to pay will allow him “the sort of pleasure that is really equally ma- for. Thus Gudge sees Public Health Services “as permanent- terial and even monotonous.” Humans become machines, and ly good...preserving the dependence and weakening the inde- pleasure-making becomes the work of machines. Chesterton pendence of the lower orders. In thus coming nearer to logi- says “The romance of the robot has just begun.” cal Capitalist theory he comes nearer to Socialist theory. For And with this levelling of everything, this monotony, we Socialist theory insists on Public Health Services...as it does on have lost the sense of distinction; “first the master’s sense of the all other Public Services.” difference between man and man and then the man’s sense of Chesterton says, “We may expect to see greatly extended the difference between woman and woman.” and intensified Public Health activities.” Thus, when Hudge and Gudge take over health care, tend- Even though Chesterton dislikes the principle of the State ing to the health of the body at the expense of the health of being a nurse for the poor, he knows it would be “not mere- the mind, the result is abortion, contraception, assisted sui- ly unreasonable but unjust and inhuman to withdraw Public cide, and transgenderism, all reduced to mere prescriptions.

The Magazine of the American Chesterton Society 3 LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER

Because life is not the ideal. Health is. without charity. And perhaps worst of why the American Chesterton Society Sex is connected to life, but when sex all, they offer no hope. All they want is is dedicated to continuing his work: is separated from life, you have sexual for the machine to run smoothly. Who As the prospects of this paper have anarchy. The spirit of this age is indis- can object to efficiency? Who can object grown more doubtful or even desperate, criminate. It does not know the differ- to things running smoothly? my own spirits have risen with a sense ence between men and women and it Chesterton says, “the waters are al- of the scale of the modern danger. When does not care. Chesterton says, “It can- ways smoothest and even most polished I began it, I merely thought it reason- not attack the good things in life. It can when they pour over the precipice.” able that there should be one ... paper only defile them.” Hopeless? Yes, if we continue the to represent a reasonable alternative to And our social and economic sys- way we’re going. But we don’t have to conventional Capitalism and academic tem has created a huge dependent class, do that. G.K. Chesterton is a writer of Socialism. But I now realize, with ever little different from slaves because they hope. Many of the Chesterton lines that increasing joy, that what we have tak- are not paid enough to achieve indepen- I have just quoted are from an essay in en on is something much bigger than dence but are provided public services G.K.’s Weekly, Mar. 9, 1929. His publi- modern Capitalism or Communism and benefits to keep them completely cation at this point is facing a huge fi- combined. I realize that we are trying to dependent. Among those services are nancial crisis, something with which I fight the whole world; to turn the tide of health and education. can sympathize. But he closes the essay the whole time we live in; to resist ev- Big Government and Big Business not with despair and sadness, but with erything that seems irresistible. make no room for faith. They operate hope and joy. His words explain exactly

LUNACY AND LETTERS

ere it not for you, God’s Tumbler and Fencing-Master, have been a Gilbert subscriber (off imagine Solzhenitsyn snorting with I would not have crossed the and on, mostly on) for about twen- laughter at this treatment of the prison W Tiber and returned to the play- ty years, and until now, have never camps? Even if the rest of the picture was ground which the Architecture of Spears I had an occasion to complain about uniformly excellent (which I don’t think creates and protects. Happy Birthday Sir. its content. But the review of the motion it was), that one blotch ought to have Matthew Shaddrix picture Kermit 99, Chaos 98 has raised been sufficient to turn a big thumb down my ire, and in six months it has not sub- on that unfortunate production. isdom is a commodity of in- sided. Hence this letter. Gregory Sampson creasing scarcity in our mod- The reviewer, Chris Chan, praised Carroll, Iowa ern world, even as every cor- the flick. If it was a simple matter of him P.S. Please don’t cancel my subscription. W ner of our lives is absolutely liking the movie and me not, my reac- inundated by information. It is one tion would have been quite ireless. The of God’s many blessings that the wis- problem is that Mr. Chan wrote several Best Birthday messages dom of the past is available to us, if only hundred words without mentioning the for GKC on May 29: we search for it. I am grateful that Mr. one feature of the film which in my opin- Chesterton left behind such a rich col- ion spoils the whole show. Specifically, May 29th 2017, the media tells me lection of thought and analysis for me to I was shocked to see the Gulag treated Is the centennial of the birth of review, evaluate, and enjoy. As tomor- with such lightness and frivolity. Can John F. Kennedy. row is unknown, and the past is our only you imagine the uproar that would oc- I’ll celebrate the birth of a man who reliable guide to what shape the future cur if there was a comic film trivializing is much more fun. may take, Mr. Chesterton gives me hope Andersonville—or Auschwitz? There is a Happy 143rd birthday, G. K. Chesterton! that Western Civilization can successful- place for humor. There are many places Linda Peterson ly navigate the treacherous seas of cultur- for humor, as GKC often pointed out. But Our beloved GKC al unrest washing over the surface of our to look upon the Gulag as a trivial little Would today be a ripe 143 planet, using in part ‘charts’ he left be- joke—a comic excess of a few Russians— Had he not ceased exhortations on politics hind to guide us. His wisdom is an ex- is beyond the pale. There was never any- With his worldly departure in 1936. cellent compass. Happy birthday, Mr. C. thing funny about the Gulag. Can you Mike Calteaux Richard Goodall

4 Volume 20 Number 7-8, July/August 2017 STRAWS IN THE WIND not the luck to live on our fantastic island An Essay by G.K. Chesterton where extremes meet. [Chesterton is here also describing Minnesota—Ed.] And, anyhow, if a holiday is a change, then a change of weather ought to be a holiday. I should like to see this inconsequent climate accepted as a substitute for foreign travel. I should like to see a man looking out of a window on a London Holidays In & Out of Utopia street in the recent spring-time, not gloomily or regretfully but gaily, trucu- By G. K. Chesterton lently and with a certain nautical swag- ger suggestive of a hornpipe, and saying: hy is it that Utopias always change in the summer holidays. “This little trip of ours to Iceland was chill the soul? I am no de- England has the weathers of all the very successful, eh?” Or, when it was no fender of the diseased in- world. We hardly need to go to other cli- longer necessary even to look out of the dustrialism of to-day with mates, for the other climates come to us. window, because a curtain like a close- all its sweating and swin- From the four quarters of the world they ly woven web of continuous grey rain dling; this Capitalist cha- come, as was said of the suitors of Portia, obliterated everything, I should like him Wos that can truly be called an age of con- to visit the lonely beauty of our valleys to say, with a certain lofty carelessness, fusion worse confounded. I am perfectly and our little hills. England attracts all like a chieftain tossing the eagle-feather ready to confound its politics and frus- weathers and all weathers fight for her. on his bonnet: “Yes, we always go to the trate its knavish tricks; I have never de- Hers is indeed the head, as was said of Western Highlands in August.” fended it: I have always denounced it. the Mona Lisa, on which the ends of Perhaps he might even put on a kilt to But compared with almost every Utopia the earth are come, especially the North say it in. I am sure that by this expedient I have ever read about, it seems to me a and South Poles; and it is not impossible he could manage to regard even the co- human and habitable thing. that towards the end of spring, if we may lourless grey rain as local colour. When Why does the perfect social state al- complete the quotation, her eyelids are a the rain became more violent he might ways seem to be a state of perfect bore- little weary. even regard it as the tremendous spec- dom stiffened only by self-righteousness? The tropics do not travel to England tacle of tropical rain, and change hastily The answer is in the title and subject of very often, but they paid her a brief but into tropical costume. When the streets this little essay. It is because the men who ardent visit last summer. But, anyhow, became decidedly damp and shiny in imagine these things have not under- people go to places merely for pleasure consequence, he has only to half close stood either the philosophy or the psy- which have the same extremes of which his eyes and heave a sigh of romantic and chology of holidays. Virgil, who had his we complain when they come to us. The sentimental satisfaction, having paid at own equally vague Utopia made more people living under some one or other of last his long-deferred visit to Venice. attractive by the mysterious felicity that these extremes have to endure that ex- We could all of us vastly widen our is in all fine poetry, described the hap- treme for months and months; they have continental travel and cosmopolitan pier age by saying redeunt Saturnia reg- na—“returns the Saturnian reign.” But whether or no we can have a Saturnian Constance Smedley, writing in T.P’s Weekly, reign we must have a Saturnalia. Nov. 12, 1909: A Saturnalia is a topsy-turveydom; a revolution or reversal of parts. The Fleet Street crowds have been used to the ways old Christmas holidays, the twelve days of great men since Dr. Johnson and Dean Swift that ended on Twelfth Night, inherited trod the paving stones. Chesterton is envel- and improved the old pagan idea of the oped in an abstraction so mighty that it neu- Saturnalia in mid-winter. But I am not tralises the attention of the passer-by. His huge sure that even the Christmas holidays figure, enveloped in its cloak and shade by a are now properly understood in their slouch hat, rolls through the streets unheed- Saturnian sense; that is, in the sense of ing his fellow beings. His eyes stare before him turning things upside-down. Yet ev- in a troubled dream; his lips move, muttering, composing, arguing. He is an ery doctor or father of a family admits imposing figure; of immense proportions, almost balloon-like with an fine the revolutionary idea when he uses impetuous head which rises over the surrounding crowds; his hair is prop- the common phrase that people “want erly shaggy, countenance open and frank, wearing indeed a curious child- a change.” But our fathers had a change like unconsciousness in spite of the thought intensity that clouds his brow. in the winter holidays, just as we have a

The Magazine of the American Chesterton Society 5 Ballade of Gilbert culture in this fashion. A broader expe- the one magic gift of English weath- Normal human nature therefore rience of the earth would expand around er. Such imaginations are like a more seems quite capable of accepting and us, a richer, reserve of travellers’ tales, a healthy substitute for opium; all the even desiring these natural inconve- larger style of lying than our petty and more because the visions are of a rather niences considered in themselves. It is parochial school of local lies. vaporous description. Indeed, this fancy not that these things are intolerable in All this immense world of imagina- of the fumes of some giant drug is per- themselves, it is that when they happen tion and illusion is open to us through haps the best evasion in the case of the in our own town we have the habit of one exception, where it is a little diffi- toleration them as we tolerate our own BALLADE OF GILBERT cult to fancy oneself in any foreign land. trade, our own toils and worries; and But for this, it would be hard to fancy there is a mood of tedium in which the a London fog as being anywhere but in tolerable seems worse than the intolera- Not in Vain London. ble. The associations of work, and espe- Some may think this welcome to all cially of overwork, are only capable of By G.K. Chesterton weathers in England, in the gay spirit of making the snow seem grey rather than travellers through all Europe, a little dif- white, because they are equally capable I hacked a block out of the coal ficult to carry out in detail. Perhaps it is of making the sunshine seem drab rath- And flung it on the grate, a thing rather suited to poets; which is er than gold. But it is all a matter of as- I took a book out of the shelf probably why there have been so many sociation, and associations are all a mat- And sat me down to wait. good poets in England. Perhaps it is a ter of the philosophy of life. The dark coal burnt and glowed as read thing to be commended to the roman- Now, although the normal remedy is As the light sunk in the West, tic and the visionary; and I will not in- a change of scene and change of air, it The book told, slow, its wondrous tale sist upon it. But it does contain a princi- is not the only kind of change. It is per- To cheer my wearied breast. ple that is of great practical importance fectly possible to have a change of habits; in the enjoyment of holidays. And that and a change of habits has much of the The fire burnt on and I read on, is the principle that things which may psychology of holidays. There are other As each had been a friend, be merely annoying in their normal as- methods of rejuvenation besides migra- Till the red glow sank in ashes grey, pect should be amusing in their holiday tion. In order to renew our youth like the And the book displayed The End. aspect. eagles, it is not necessary to renew it like I rose, my blood was leaping warm Tourists, to do them justice, very of- the swallows. And gone the freezing cold, ten do regard these various catastro- I do not know exactly how an eagle My brain was stored with something new phes of climate as part of the fun, when renews his youth, or indeed whether it is Won from that volume bold. they find them in strange countries, and the practice of the average existing eagle travel hundreds of miles for the plea- to do so. But I should not imagine that Long years ago in times long gone sure of being annoyed by them. Most it pretends to be something else, as for A man took pen to write, of them would be disappointed on vis- instance a swan or an owl or an ostrich. Long years ago, in ages past, iting Spitzbergen, to find that the snow The eagle certainly would not swim as A tree grew in the light. and ice had been melted merely for their well as the swan or run as fast as the os- The pouring though of the man’ mind convenience. trich or see in the dark as successfully as Formed letters on the sheet; When even the North Pole is turned the owl. But even these deficiencies of The sunlight coursed through, like veins into a health resort, in the new combina- the amateur might be of moral value in of gold, tion of commercial with scientific enter- producing in the eagle a Christian hu- The tree’s branched arms and free. prise, most visitors would feel there was mility not too common in the demean- something lacking if a scheme of central our of eagles. The writer wrote and lived and died, heating, radiating from that centre of But the ornithological parallel is also And turned to churchyard dust; longitude, had removed all traces of the a parable. For human beings also the The sun-veined tree drooped and died, field of ice. Even the American organiz- change of habits will be accompanied And ‘neath the marsh was thrust. ers would probably preserve an iceberg by difficult and even inferior conditions, And ages after ages pass in an ice-box. Some tourists carry rather but for all that it is as healthy as a holi- In dim and endless train to excess their conventional association day. I believe there are a large number of But the short hour yet comes, to prove of certain conditions with certain coun- people, who cannot command immedi- That neither lived in vain. tries or places; like the man who said he ate opportunities of travel or change of hoped to see Vesuvius in eruption, as scene, who would be astonished to find The sunlight stored in the dead tree he intended to spare no expense. Some how much refreshment there is in mere- Breaks forth and warms again; journalists are quite capable of expect- ly altering domestic arrangements and A voice long dead speaks from the leaves ing the Japanese to keep an earthquake daily routine. And calms a brother’s pain. for them, and produce it whenever they Just as the skies of all the world wanted a snapshot. come into an English garden with the

6 Volume 20 Number 7-8, July/August 2017 Ballade of Gilbert changes of the English weather, so the And that is why the awakening wind be the best place in which to wear ros- manners and customs of all the world of the true holiday never seems to blow es. And it is very characteristic of the can come into an English house with over the land of Utopia. These social vi- whole problem that when we pause upon very slight changes in its social setting. sions always suggest only the substi- that beautiful line of poetry, and imag- There are rich people driving out reg- tutions of good habits for bad habits. ine the whole town permanently paint- ularly every day and dining gorgeous- Sometimes they are limited even in their ed red, the impression is not only vulgar ly every night, and growing duller and vision of the bad habits. but dull. We can only get these coloured duller, who have no idea that they could For instance, Mr. H.G. Wells makes countries in glimpses, as in great lines see even their own houses from an an- his Utopian look back at the bad cook- of poetry, and the same would be true gle as new as the fourth dimension, ery that gave indigestion to the whole of any other colour. merely by suddenly sitting on the floor democracy in our own time. But this is When Shakespeare merely says the like Japanese or climbing on to the roof only true of a certain sort of industrial very simple words, “Come unto these like Yankees. democracy, which is a very undemocrat- yellow sands, and there take hands,” The notion of holidays is the nega- ic democracy. It is exactly where there there does instantly, but only instanta- tion of habits. When you go on a holi- is the best democracy that there is the neously, flash through my own fancy day do not fall to easily even into hol- best and commonest cookery, as among some world where everyone is young; iday habits. Do not submit too tamely the French. But the same common sense long lines of glowing golden sands un- even to the conventions of sport and en- that teaches a French peasant woman der the glamour of an endless evening, tertainments, which are sometimes the how to make an omelette teaches her not where lovers remain at the immortal in- most conventional of all conventions. to confine herself to making the same stant when they first touch hands. But I do not mean that you should revolt if I or anybody else were to settle down against them in any too revolutionary “Heaven in this to describing the maritime community or militant fashion. I do not absolutely living on that particular coastline, in a insist that you should stop suddenly in world has to be a prose essay or novel, those yellow sands the middle of a game of golf, and, hurl- would become as dry as the sands of the ing your club a hundred yards away, pro- vision…a flash of desert; even as the rose-red city would pose a game of leap-frog with the caddie. freedom of the fade like the rose. It would come as too much of a shock to Interesting as is the inversion in the most golfers to remind them that golf is unknown.” last Utopian romance, it is really impos- supposed to be a game. sible for us to take Utopia for granted I do not demand that when you are omelette, but to make special dishes for and dream of the world we know. The not with a shooting-party you should special feasts. In other words it is a good moment we do take Utopia for granted, pause to expatiate at length upon the thing to break away from good habits. it seems to be far emptier and more de- suitability of the woods for hide-and- But it is also a good thing to come back pressing than the world we know. The seek. In the proximity of firearms such to good habits, and the bother with the yellow sands become as obvious as ad- a protest might take on a character of mere Bohemian is that when he breaks vertisements of mustard. Worse still, the martyrdom. Moreover, moral consider- a convention he cannot mend it again. touching of hands in that elfin dance be- ations superior to social emancipation The Utopians try to be pagans, but they comes a calisthenic exercise advertised must prevent you from being so unso- have not discovered the best thing in all in the Socialist papers and possibly im- ciable as that. It might be quite allow- paganism: The Saturnalia. posed by the State. able to spoil your friend’s game if it were This need for contrast is not mere- Utopia cannot be a state; we can- a game, but it is your duty to respect his ly a convention, still less merely the re- not tolerate it as static. Its real name is religion. Courtesy and comradeship are sult of bad conventions. It is a part of Heaven, and in this world it has to be a more important even that a comprehen- the mind and even of the soul, at least vision, and even a vision visible only for sion of the psychology of holidays. But as the soul is in this world. It is as much an instant. In other words, it has to be a wherever you can tactfully and tenderly a law of the mind to see a pleasure most holiday; perhaps not even a half-holiday relax the strain of the religious mania of plainly against a plainer background as but rather a hundred-thousandth part of the unfortunate fanatic, it is a humane it is a law of the eye to see a figure most fraction of a holiday; but such as it is, a thing to do so. He has made the mistake plainly against a background of contrast- flash of a freedom unknown. That is why of allowing business habits to invade ed colour. it can be found in songs and not in nov- even his holidays, but some day, perhaps, The only real excuse for painting the els, in short phrases of poetry and not in through a series of hints, he may begin town red is that the country round it re- long pages of prose. It is because Utopia, to have some notion of what a holiday mains green When the poet spoke of “a or the land of eternal holidays, is for us a might be like. Then he will utter a loud rose-red city half as old as time” he was place emphatically for a flying visit, but cry and begin to live, for he will have a presumably describing a town which had not a home. holiday from habits, instead of merely a been painted red very early in history. From The London Magazine,August, 1924 habit of taking holidays. But, after all, a rose-red city would not

The Magazine of the American Chesterton Society 7 TRUTH IN THE STATE OF TRANSMISSION Unlike rules based on temporary manners, Christ’s teaching depends on the constant truth that has shaped reali- Mystery and Good Manners ty. But it is precisely this mysterious nature of Christian truths that makes G.K. Chesterton, Flannery O’Connor, and them trustworthy. Without God, there Fyodor Dostoevsky on Morality is no consistent morality. In the case of a pagan society, morality ends up being By Natasha Zinos based on the society itself. Christianity gives us an independent ystery appears to have he taught by heaven’s light rather than morality which does not depend on any nothing to do with real- earth’s. “[Paganism] was never a view of particular society. Chesterton explains ity but it is as a matter of the universe satisfying all sides of life; a how the Church outlines a consistent- fact the very thing that re- complete and complex truth with some- ly applicable morality, “We cannot pre- ality depends on. It is in thing to say about everything”. The pagan tend to be abandoning the morality of the nature of faith to be- morality fell through because, “the point the past for one more suited to the pres- Mlieve something without supporting evi- of the puzzle is this: that all this vague- ent. It is certainly not the morality of dence; these “unknowables” are the mys- ness and variation arose from the fact another age, but it might be of another teries that shape reality by making up that the whole thing began in fancy and world”. The teaching of the Church does for everything we cannot see in it. But in dreaming; and that there are no rules not rely on the changeable reality of the when you decide to tell the story your- of architecture for a castle in the clouds”. world but upon the eternal reality of the self, imagination does an unsatisfactory Pagan myths compel morals only next. However mystical Christ’s teaching job in the place of faith . as long as they interest the society. The might seem, it maintains its meaning in Flannery O’Connor writes: “Dogma faintest shift in the pagan manner of life a way pagan mythologies could never do. is an instrument for penetrating reality. topples that morality. On the other hand, Only faith could compel one to found his Christian dogma is about the only thing Christian morals follow the constancy of entire life on the morality of an unreal- left in the world that surely guards and divine mystery which avoids catching the ized world.“It is an ideal altogether out- respects mystery”. The world only makes side time; difficult at any period, impossi- full sense when you put faith in the ex- ble at no period”. It seems fantastic in the istence of mystery. Christian dogma al- face of real life except it is the only way lows exactly this view of reality. “What to make sense of the reality grounded in the denouncer of dogma really means,” truth itself. Of the Gospel, Chesterton says Chesterton, “is not that dogma is says, “It is full of sudden gestures evident- bad; but rather that dogma is too good ly significant, except that we hardly know to be true”. He pronounces the unspeak- what they signify; of enigmatic silences; of able joy of the Christian who can under- ironical replies” which teach Christians to stand the world only because he has faith appreciate those unknowable things that in his dogma. “Open and free observa- man has always tried to understand. tion is founded on our ultimate faith The weakness of all mythology is that the universe is meaningful, as the that, “This religion was not quite a re- Church teaches”. Faith admits to what ligion. In other words, this religion was is not apparent because atheism “is not not quite a reality”. Pagan mythology merely the denial of a dogma. It is the re- unravels when society finds it superflu- versal of a subconscious assumption in whirlwind of fashionable tastes and prac- ous. The child wearies of a game, accord- the soul; the sense that there is a mean- tices. A successful morality is one that ing to Chesterton when he “is tired of ing and a direction in the world it sees”. works in any society, it cannot depend ‘pretending’”: “It is then that he torments Paganism was invented by humans, on whatever are regarded as good man- the cat”. In The Brothers Karamazov, but Christianity was revealed to man ners at the time. Good manners change Smerdyakov’s pastime of hanging cats by God: “The moral of all this is an old and eventually turn out boring and ir- is symbolic of the collapse of unstruc- one; that religion is revelation. In other relevant. This is why pagan mythologies tured morals. This is the pagan who can- words, it is a vision, and a vision received are unable to support a society; before not uphold his collapsing myth any lon- by faith; but it is a vision of reality. The long, the pagans have to realize that their ger. “For one who does not believe in faith consists in a conviction of its real- myths are just stories which they hardly God, crime is inevitable”. There is no way ity...And that is the difference between believed in the first place. for the pagan morality to survive, the religion and mythology”. Christ came The great dispute whether “every- myth grows boring and, “There comes a with a morality that could apply to hu- thing would be permitted without God” time in the routine of an ordered civili- man society however it appeared because sets the stage of The Brothers Karamazov. sation when the man is tired of playing

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at mythology and pretending that a tree society-based morals could never real- criminal, it is only the law of Christ is a maiden…Men seek stranger sins ly prohibit sin. It is not the manners of speaking in his conscience”. or more startling obscenities as stimu- a particular society that carry Christ’s Having faith in Christian morality is lants to their jaded sense”. Zossima says, law, but Christ himself who saves so- redemptive to man as no other morality “If it were not for the Church of Christ ciety over and over as it dissolves and can be. As Chesterton says, “For the mass there would be nothing to restrain the falls back on his teaching. “If anything of mankind the main thing is to carry the criminal from evil-doing”, making the does preserve society, even in our time, conviction of the incredible compassion point that without God’s constant truth, and does regenerate and transform the of God”.

follow distinct stages: they are born, gain The Religion of Resurrection ascendency, grow old and well-estab- By Jonah Niemann lished, and finally wither or are thrown down by the newer, younger religion. But few years ago, I woke up from the never-ending nuisance of working not so with Christianity. the long doze of childhood, it all out myself, because before I could Europe has been turned upside-down and had a sudden, blinding start groping, I was offered a book to over and over again; and….at the end of realization: I do not like read. each of these revolutions the same reli- Catholics. I have always had The Everlasting Man endeavors to ar- gion has again been found on top. The a certain impatience with fel- gue for Christianity. Surprisingly, how- Faith is always converting the age, not as Alow members of the Church. ever, the narrative arrives an old religion, but as a new religion. Some of this of course stems at the conclusion not that from a certain impatience there is something believ- The truth of the argument is indis- with everything and every- able about this thing we putable. A few short sentences, and the one—alas, I too am a sin- call the Church—it con- doomsayers in the pews are refuted. The ner—but nonetheless when cludes that there is some- sincerely self-impressed, grave churchgo- I had the moment of clari- thing unique and unbeliev- ers who so happily gather in corners and ty mentioned above, I could able about it, which seems shake their heads in agreement that the name a source for it. My re- to defy explanation. Defies end is near—they are silenced. The local alization, such as it was: a logical or natural expla- prophets of apocalypse who deny the glo- Catholics, particularly those nation—and demands an il- ry of the Apocalypse itself—they are ex- laypeople who seem to nev- logical or supernatural one. posed as mere chatter. er cease discussing their reli- The Church is constantly be- This Englishman’s claim resonat- gion, are fearful. Fearful for the Church’s ing killed, or killing itself, or simply with- ed with me with the vibrancy and clar- integrity. Fearful for the Church’s life. An ering away. This is utterly natural. What ity only produced by truth striking the odd problem for professed believers in is so disconcerting about the Faith is that human soul. It was the explanation of resurrection. This moldering fear in the it then does the most unnatural thing in my earlier discontent with the believ- heart of so many Catholics made me dis- the world, and lives again. It is really not ers around me. With the same certainty like them; I also found that my view of easy—though I managed it—to fault with which I knew that they were wrong saints has followed a pattern that bears Catholics for lacking the theological vir- to fear for the Church, I knew that this out an ingrained distaste for ecclesias- tue of hope, when the faith they profess claim about the Church was entirely true. tical thantophobia. The Witness of the will sometimes fade away beyond hope I was struck dumb by the unutterable Martyrs always appealed to me not be- of return. Yea, it would be impossible to power of common sense. How could it cause such people were tragic witness- fault Christians for lack of hope, even de- be otherwise? Had Arianism not risen to es to the truth of a Church being per- spair, were it not that this same Church replace it at precisely the moment when secuted, but because they were calm, then rises victorious o’er the grave, time the Church should, by all historical pre- almost smug witnesses to the unassail- and time again. dictors, have been thrown out as a relic of able strength of a Church they knew to Reading this in the final chapter of the past? It had run its course as a popu- be undying, though it be killed five times the book, “The Five Deaths of the Faith,” lar religion for a while, it had grown old over. What I thought so unsatisfactory in was a revelation. Suddenly and com- and passed. Yet it not only reappeared; it the Catholics around me was their igno- pletely I understood why that fear in the emerged victorious, and Arianism died. rance of the comfort, hope, and glory I Catholics around me was so very irk- Did The Church not rot from the inside felt the Church offered. Certainly, they some. The fear for Mother Church’s sur- during the Dark Ages, its meaning lost were missing something fundamental vival is always in vain; she has been killed as nominalists pulled it apart piece by about our Faith; fortunately, I was saved many times over. Seemingly, all religions piece? Visibly, it did. And as “the Dark

The Magazine of the American Chesterton Society 9 Truth in the State of Transmission

Ages broadened into the daylight that way out of the grave.” This is the point Man, resurrected by His own power, res- we call the modern world,” certainly and climax of The Everlasting Man. urrected as foretold. It is Chesterton who the same rationalism should have swept The book is not called,The Everlasting reminds us of what was foretold in “The the last traces of it away. Instead, they Church, because it is not about the Five Deaths of the Faith”: that fear for the were swept away by the tide of young Church, it is about the Man. The Man Church is always unwarranted and igno- men rushing to “Aquinas in the chair of who could die in agony, and be resurrect- rant. Ignorant of the man who men call Aristotle.” How could it not happen that ed to live again forever. The Man called Christ. an apparently superior and militant phi- Christ. This is why the Church survives, I now realize that this fear and igno- losophy, that of the Moslems, would con- this is why it is ever being reborn after it rance is exactly why Chesterton wrote quer the dry and uninteresting world of dies; it is because the Man called Christ this book. He wrote it because he grasped the scholastics? And soon after, there has made the Church his Body. Truly and could refute what I could not even was the Renaissance and Enlightenment, the Church is both the Body and em- put into words. His arguments have when so many religions were perma- bodiment of the Everlasting Man. In the opened my eyes to exactly what I found I nently ruled out for their ridiculousness, most literal way we are His Body, con- disliked about Catholics, and I believe the Christianity among them. And did they stantly waxing and waning, developing arguments good, because they demon- not throw out the Faith as superstition? illnesses and dying from them, being poi- strate why I was wrong to dislike them And did Darwinism not finally and fully soned by the world, being struck down for it. Chesterton does not dislike the eliminate the need for God? and ground out of existence by the world, people for whom he wrote the book; he In every case, the answer is that the being strangled by the world, and dying does not bother to dislike them because Faith was killed as expected. And simi- and dying and dying, again and again— he is busy convincing them. Convincing larly, in every case it rose again, because yet unafraid. For what could we possibly them of the comfort, the hope, and glory Christianity “had a God who knew his fear; we are the Body of the Everlasting of the Everlasting Man.

of gazing at the wall, mistaking shadows The Cave for reality, and puppets for being. Yet, as By Lynsey Zeng Chesterton states, this absence of God is far more like a presence than an absence, and it is because the primitive man “The simplest truth about man is that language necessary to fully recognize his did not have a primitive mind that the he is a very strange being; almost in the nature. cave became the foundation for religion. sense of being a stranger on earth.” G.K. Any child can describe a cave. It is Perhaps it was because he could only see Chesterton always dark and damp, with jagged for- in dull hues of shadow and stone, that mations protruding from creviced walls. he began to exercise his imagination in s illustrated by G. K. Chesterton Seldom can any sound be heard, except order to complete what he instinctively in The Everlasting Man, the for perhaps the tremulous snoring of knew was lacking, and it was in this way strangeness of humanity is some vicious, hibernating that Paganism began to best understood by contem- beast. Yet, there are other flourish. plating the three stages of its things which may be con- As described by development. In the begin- sidered about a cave, and Chesterton, the sub- Aning, man has to realize that he is insuf- one of these things is that, stance of Paganism is ficient and that contentment can only in the apparent darkness, “an attempt to reach the be gained through the acquirement of a it becomes easy to spot divine reality through higher good. From this emerges the sec- the cracks and apertures the imagination alone.” ond stage in which man begins to ex- through which shines the Mythology was not an press the singularity of his nature by be- light. attempt at rational ex- coming creator as well as creature, and The world before planation. Rather, it was the third stage, that of the formation of Christ was the world of an arabesque of colorful religion, is the only natural conclusion the caveman. This was tales which served to dis- which may be drawn. By explaining the because the imprint of the tract civilization from the development of man in relation to the fallen angel and the fallen man had left a natural idea of a single truth and a sin- Incarnation, Chesterton procures a lens crater like a cave in place of the earth, gle God. Regardless, if the convolution of through which humanity and religion and the void of sin could only be filled Paganism was a fragmented mirror scat- can be viewed holistically. The story of up with the presence of a risen Lord. tering and distorting the light within the religion is the story of man, and it is only Without the light of the Incarnation to cave, the mind of man was subconscious- after the Incarnation that he acquires the guide him, man had fallen into the habit ly bent on repairing it. What mythology

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brought to light was that humanity had a the first brushstroke on the cavern wall, single truth that transcends all beauty. fascination with beauty, and that beauty it has been the endeavor of the human In the chaos of Paganism, art had be- is superficial and ephemeral so long as it race to reflect the creator with creation gun to form order. The shadows on the is not directly attributed to a source. The of his own. wall were no longer a satisfying form of hamartia of Paganism was that its my- Any individual who has thoroughly entertainment. Instead, the man in the thology gradually fractured into so many studied the progression of art through cave was beginning to struggle against fragments, that similarities began to history can reasonably ascertain that the the chains which prevented him from emerge between the pieces. Comparative art of a culture is representative of its re- turning away from the wall and its illu- religion could exist because distinct cul- lationship with God. Even the first, prim- sory silhouettes. The single remedy was tures had begun to adopt similar myths. itive paintings of cattle or reindeer can a religion which united beauty with reali- It was only a matter of time, then, before tell the viewer something of the won- ty, and rationality with the rigor of imag- man began to realize that these similar- der and simple curiosity which the cave- inative thought. ities could not be coincidence, and once man must have felt towards his fellow The solution to the problem of this was realized, the search for a single creation. humanity became apparent in the source and a single truth could begin. It is in the nature of man to construct most unlikely way imaginable; a cave The second stage of the development cathedrals like causeways when heaven in Bethlehem became the tomb of of humanity sprung directly up from becomes something physical and distant, Paganism, and the cavernous burial place this love of beauty. Chesterton says, “Art or cubist paintings in the image of disar- of the crucified Lord, the birthplace of is the signature of man,” and simple ob- ray when God’s guiding hand is believed true religion. The dark dampness of the servation can confirm that no other crea- to be absent. In this way, the love of beau- cave had made strikingly apparent the ture on earth attempts to re-create beauty, manifested in art, began to replace the single point of illumination by which the ty. Revisiting the cave, man had begun present absence of God with an actual human being had become a stranger on to piece together the shards of Paganism presence, strengthening the foundation earth. The history of humanity had be- in an attempt to more fully capture the for the formation of religion. It satiates come entangled with the history of reli- light. Chesterton states that man is not the desire of the measure of all things to gion, and the sun had risen to reveal an only the measure of all things, but the measure all things, and by ordering and empty tomb. mirror of all things, and ever since the constructing and piecing together, man is first troglodyte raised his hand to trace not only creating art, but an icon to the

2017 Chesterton Academy Essay Award Winner sought to do this through his writing. It is his roundness in knowledge and art which inspired me to grow as well. The Virtues of Roundness However, it was not in Chesterton that I first recognized this need for de- By Emma Arachtingi velopment. During one of my soph- omore Literature classes in which we Chesterton weighed hun- to form one’s own will to God’s. were discussing theology (the virtue of dreds of pounds, wrote Chesterton is exactly what my own hundreds of articles, es- ambition in life has become: to be round says, and books, and has and ever growing rounder. That is, to be changed the lives of hun- like Chesterton, knowing a great deal GKdreds by his own intellect and wit. And about most things and constantly yearn- yet, there was not just one story or phrase ing to know more about everything. he wrote which has changed me. It may Perhaps one of his most quoted have initially been some clever para- phrases from The Everlasting Man is “Art dox which made me take a closer look at is the signature of man.” He explains man G.K., but it was ultimately his life which as a creator as well as a creature and says inspired my formation during these years that man’s mind is like a mirror. The rea- at a high school named for Chesterton. son that man must create and grow is for G.K.’s life was dedicated to understand- the sake of Beauty and Truth. God has ing man and to helping man understand shown man what he ought to seek in his himself. When I realized that, it became life and that is to always strive towards Emma Arachtingi receiving clear that every person ought to examine what is True and Beautiful. Chesterton the 2017 Chesterton Academy Essay Award from Dr. Dale himself and seek self-knowledge in order seemed to understand this quite well and

The Magazine of the American Chesterton Society 11 Truth in the State of Transmission

of his days, and if one has only one good an integrated curriculum), my teach- memory left in one’s heart, even that may and poems. By his comprehension that er mentioned that man ought to always sometime be the means of saving us. man ought to create beauty just as God seek roundness and realness. It is not does, he was able to write and share his right for man to be content with his lack One’s life may be changed by even a knowledge. As I continue towards theosis of knowledge and to blame his human- faint memory of a time of grace. If one in my years after Chesterton Academy, ness for his own ignorance. Chesterton can hold onto a sweet memory, he may I will forever remember the first quote clearly showed that man must argue, rea- be saved and renewed by it. As I pre- that had a lasting effect on me. I read it son, and think for himself. When a man pare to leave Chesterton Academy, this in my Junior year. We followed the souls is able to make a thorough examination thought has been often in my mind. It in Purgatory up the mountain to heav- of his life and of his surroundings, he has is by the memories of Chesterton that en in Dante’s Purgatorio. They endured the possibility to understand himself and I hope to live and grow ever round- much suffering but with constant hope form himself to God’s will. er. When I leave to face the Culture of and continual knowledge of God’s love In The Brother’s Karamazov, which is Death, I will not fear losing my soul to it for them. When they completed the pu- perhaps the book which formed me most since I will forever have both the knowl- rification God had assigned to them, they during my years at Chesterton, Alyosha edge and the love which have been giv- were freed because their wills became gives a rather heart-wrenching speech en to me in my childhood at Chesterton. perfectly ordered to God’s own will. I at the memorial of his young friend. He I am grateful to have learned the im- hope these same words that they are told says to the children around him: portance of self-knowledge before the at the end of their journey will someday time I am graduated from Chesterton be true for me, and I thank Chesterton You must know that there is nothing Academy. It is by G.K.’s own example for putting me upon that path to a great higher and stronger and more whole- that I have learned this. He was a man roundness and a well-formed will. some and good for life in the future than whose own self-knowledge not only led some good memory, especially a memo- Await no more a word or sign from me. him along the path to sanctity, but also ry of childhood, of home. People talk to Your will is straightened, free, and whole influenced so many others. He will go on you a great deal about your education, but — and not influencing the lives of those who open some good, sacred memory, preserved To act upon its promptings would be themselves up to reason because he un- from childhood, is perhaps the best edu- wrong: derstood so well that man is a creator of cation. If a man carries many such memo- I crown and miter you lord of yourself. things. He shows this in his books, essays, ries with him into life, he is safe to the end

Mysticism ✦ ✦ Mysticism is the only enduring sanity of ✦ ✦ The best and last word of mysticism is an almost agonis- mankind. Mysticism is not to be commended ing sense of the preciousness of everything, the preciousness merely as the only thing that gives a value to the soul; mysti- of the whole universe, which is like an exquisite and fragile cism is the only that gives any certain value to the body. (Daily vase, and among other things the preciousness of other peo- News, June 22, 1905) ple’s tea-cups. The last and best word of mysticism is not lav- ishness, but rather a sublime and sacred economy. (“Sherlock ✦ ✦ Mysticism may be roughly defined as the belief that man Holmes,” A Handful of Authors) lives upon a borderland . . . Everybody knows, of course, and everybody feels (which is more convincing) that there are ul- ✦ ✦ Every great mystic goes about with a magnifying glass. timately things beyond our ken, but there is no hard and fast (William Blake) line to be drawn in the matter. (Speaker, May 31, 1902) ✦ ✦ What makes a real religion mystical is that it claims (truly ✦ ✦ The common man is a mystic. Mysticism is only a tran- or falsely) to be hiding a beauty that is more beautiful than scendent form of common sense. Mysticism and common any that we know, or perhaps an evil that is more evil. This sense alike consist in a sense of the dominance of certain gives another sort of intensity to common things, suggesting truths and tendencies which cannot be formally demon- something that is redder than red, or more white than white. strated or even formally named. Mysticism and common (Illustrated London News, Feb. 17, 1923) sense are like appeals to realities that we all know to be real, ✦ ✦ The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can under- but which have no place in argument except as postulates. stand everything by the help of what he does not understand. (“Thomas Carlyle” Varied Types) (“The Maniac,” Orthodoxy) ✦ ✦ Mysticism is the art of seeing everything as supernatural, ✦ ✦ The mystic passes through the moment when there is of seeing every material object encircled with a halo from a nothing but God. (“Le Jongleur de Dieu,” St. Francis of Assisi) secret sun. (Daily News, Aug. 30, 1901)

12 Volume 20 Number 7-8, July/August 2017 MISCELLANY OF MEN Carey labeled him a “moderate progres- sive” during the period from 1966-1974. At a certain point Dulles realized that A WASP Stung by Truth: criticisms of the pre-Vatican II era (including his own) were overdone and that Avery Cardinal Dulles, 1918-2008 a balance needed to be found. He later became known as a touchstone for or- By David P. Deavel thodoxy not only for Catholics, but many other Christians as well. hesterton once observed that a Catholic center for lay spirituality run His own shift perhaps began when Catholicism “is the only type by the charismatic Jesuit Leonard Feeney, he focused less on the thought of the of Christianity that really con- in his spare time. (Feeney would later de- German Jesuit Karl Rahner and more tains every type of man; even velop a rather restrictive view of the doc- on Thomas Aquinas and the Fathers the respectable man.” Avery trine that there is no salvation outside the of the Church. He also rediscovered Robert Dulles was certainly Catholic Church—which would be re- Chesterton. In a 2005 revision of his 1971 Cthe very type of the respectable man, a jected by the Catholic Church. His dis- A History of Apologetics, Dulles ranked New York White Anglo Saxon Protestant obedience of Jesuit superiors would re- Chesterton with Augustine, Pascal, and whose forebears were lawyers and pub- sult in his own excommunication. He Newman who also made a “cumulative lic servants. Both his great was reconciled to the Church case” for Christian faith: “The preemi- grandfather and great un- before his death, but Dulles nent Catholic apologist of [the first half cle were secretaries of state had no contact with him.) of the 20th century] was surely Gilbert (under Benjamin Harrison In World War II Dulles, Keith Chesterton.” Dulles discussed and Woodrow Wilson, re- who knew several languages Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Manin spectively). His pater- from his international school- depth before summarizing: “Chesterton nal grandfather was pres- ing and studies, served as a was a great debater whose writing ex- ident of the Presbyterian naval intelligence officer in posed the sham and pretense of secular Auburn theological semi- the European theater of oper- ideologies. He moved his readers by his nary in New York. His fa- ations. In addition to his war humor and his obvious joy in faith. He ther, John Foster Dulles, work, he found time to pen made them laugh with him at discover- served as secretary of state a memoir of his conversion ing the goodness hidden at the heart of under President Eisenhower and his un- to Catholicism, A Testimonial to Grace. things.” cle Allen Dulles was founding director After the war Dulles decided not to finish I was Dulles’s student at Fordham of the CIA. law school but instead enter another pro- University when John Paul II made him Young Avery, educated in Switzerland fession as a novice in the Jesuit order at a cardinal—the first American priest and then at Harvard College and Harvard Hudson, New York. While his early time made a cardinal to honor contributions Law, looked as if he would follow in the as a Jesuit was marked by some notori- to Catholic theology—in 2001. While I family footsteps, working for both the ety because of his family connections—a found that legends about his teaching Manhattan district attorney and future candidate running for U. S. Senator from (“Dull, duller, Dulles” was one phrase) presidential candidate Thomas Dewey New York against his father spread ru- were true, so too those concerning his during breaks from school. But the mors that John Foster had treated his erudition and faith. He usually knew WASP had been stung by truth. Catholic-convert son badly—it was not merely what book I needed for pa- When he arrived at Harvard, Avery more noted for his apostolic and intel- pers, but what chapter and sometimes was at best agnostic, but it was through lectual zeal. The young Jesuit spent much what page. And he, unlike some young- the study of philosophy—particularly time ministering to college students and er Jesuits, could often be found on his Plato, Aristotle, and the medieval scho- published book reviews and essays con- knees during a weekly adoration and lastics—that he began to travel the road stantly. He was sent to the Gregorian benediction hour—no mean thing for a back to religious faith. A moment of mys- University in Rome for his doctorate in former polio patient who walked with a tical clarity when he observed a tree on theology and returned to teach young cane. But he did it because his life wasn’t the banks of the Charles River starting to Jesuits at Woodstock Theological College his own. flower dispelled his doubts about a good on the eve of the Second Vatican Council When he was made a cardinal, a and omnipotent God forever. Further (1962-1965). cousin recounted hearing her father and study convinced him of the wholeness of In the years after the Council Fr. Avery’s once saying that the “best and the Catholic doctrine. He was received into Dulles, who ended up teaching at brightest of the family’s next generation” the Catholic Church in the fall of 1940, Catholic University of America and was throwing his life away in becoming and spent much of the next year-and-a- then at Fordham University for many a Catholic. “And, of course they were half studying law by day and organiz- years, was subject to the strangeness of right,” she concluded. “He did throw that ing activities for the St. Benedict Center, the theological era. Biographer Patrick life away. He threw it away for God.”

The Magazine of the American Chesterton Society 13 SCHALL ON CHESTERTON express myself) a physical communion with the Past by occupying the very spot Timely Essays on Chesterton’s Timeless Paradoxes which the past greatness of man or of event has occurred.” This passage, more than any, I suspect, explains why Belloc made it a point of honor to set his own feet on every battlefield, mountain, or scene of glory that he sought to understand in both its particularity and in its On The Primacy of Space theoretical meaning. We always find a poignancy in Belloc. James V. Schall, S. J. He begins this essay in this manner: “It is istance is measured by the our control. I hate to think that the vistas perhaps not possible to put into human light-years of time it takes of the Santa Clara Valley that I look out language that emotion which rises when to travel somewhere in out- on from where I live are somehow im- a man stands on some plot of European er space. Kant postulated that posed on what is out there by my mind. soil and can say with certitude to himself space and time were not as- I like to think that when I walk on the : ‘Such and such great, or wonderful, or pects or categories of things Valley floor, it is on the Valley floor that I beautiful things happened here.’” Dout there. They were forms of the mind am walking. Likewise, I like to think that With the current Muslim invasion imposed on reality’s flow to make it in- the other people out there are also walk- of Europe, these lines become especially telligible. We did not first observe some- ing on the same Valley floor that I am. nostalgic. From now on, every European thing in reality that corresponded to time In the Penguin 1956 collection of site from its churches to its buildings to or space and then seek to define what Belloc’s Selected Essays, we find a short its vineyards is subject to eventual de- they mean. Reality, it was claimed, did entry entitled: “The Absence of the Past.” struction like Mosul in Iraq or like St. not first provide us with something to The thesis of the essay, roughly, is that Peters itself to a future Hagia Sophia- know. We put any meaning on it from the past is always absent, but not space. type transformation in which what was our own minds. “Time does not remain, but space does, put there in the past will be eliminated Such a view, no doubt, makes the and though we cannot seize the Past as blasphemous. Its memory will have places on which we stand and the time physically, we can stand physically upon mostly been blotted out. of our days considerably less significant the site, and we can have (if I might so The “Present”, Belloc tells us, is nev- than we normally think them to be when er “really there”, for “even as you walk these things are just out there beyond across Trafalgar Square it is yesterday

Belgium ✦ ✦ The Belgians are not a roman- News, April 18, 1908) tic people. (Daily News, May 2, 1908) ✦ ✦ A town called Lierre seemed to consist ✦ ✦ Except for some fine works of art, which chiefly of bankrupt pastrycooks, who sold seem to be there by accident, the City of lemonade. (Daily News, May 2, 1908) Brussels is like a bad Paris, a Paris with ev- ✦ ✦ The sorrow of Belgium... affects me very erything noble cut out, and everything nasty strongly in my imagination and my hopes left in. When I had got into Brussels I began and fears. (“Prussian vs. Belgium Culture.” to make all necessary arrangements for get- Pamphlet, 1914) ting out of it again. (Daily News, May 9, 1908) ✦ ✦ Belgium died for Europe. Not only ✦ ✦ Medieval Belgium had something was the soldier sacrificed for the na- stronger than discipline: discipleship. Its tion; the nation was sacrificed for man- gold and glass, its pottery and pigments, its carving and kind. It is a sacrifice which is, I think, quite unique even its weaving were studied because they were the best. (New among Christians, and quite inconceivable among pagans. Witness, Sept. 3, 1914) (“A Plea for Belgium,” Letter to the Editor which appeared in papers ✦ ✦ If anyone asks “why the men of Bruges sacrificed ar- throughout England, Aug. 6, 1915) chitecture and everything to the sense of dizzy and divine ✦ ✦ I should say, in my simple and practical way, that the war heights?” we can only answer: “Because Nature gave them [World War I] was due to the men who declared war, to the no encouragement to do so.” The people of Belgium, who men who forced war on Serbia, to the men who forced war live in a country like a carpet, have, by an inner energy, de- on Belgium. (Illustrated London News, April 14, 1928) sired to exalt their towers until they struck the stars. (Daily

14 Volume 20 Number 7-8, July/August 2017 Schall on Chesterton

Chesterton for Today ✦ ✦ What on earth is the cur- ✦ ✦ The satirist cannot suggest fantastically anything that the rent morality, except in its lit- servile herds are not already told to take seriously. (G.K.’s eral sense—the morality that is always running away? (“The Weekly, Dec. 10, 1927) Eternal Revolution,” Orthodoxy) ✦ ✦ The trouble with the modern disputant is not that he does ✦ ✦ Men are perpetually talking about posterity, and our duty not understand the case for his opponent’s convictions. It is of looking to the next generation, and living for the next gen- that he does not understand the case for his own convictions. eration. And all the time they continue to look very coldly on He has never gone back far enough in his own argument; and the only institution in which people really do to a great ex- he has forgotten the very nature of first principles. First prin- tent live for and in their children: the respectable Christian ciples are the very last principles he is likely to think about. family. (G.K.’s Weekly, Oct. 13, 1928) (Illustrated London News, Nov. 4, 1933)

✦ ✦ Even Southern slavery had this one moral merit, that it was ✦ ✦ We must have mercy for animals and justice for men. (Daily decadent; it has this one historic advantage, that it is dead. News, April 21, 1906) The Northern slavery, industrial slavery, or what is called ✦ ✦ Unfortunately we have not only fallen out of the habit of wage slavery; is not decaying but increasing; and the end of understanding past experiences different from our own; we it is not yet. (Columbia, December, 1922) have even lost the power of understanding them when they ✦ ✦ A people can rule itself, but the more peoples you add to it are the same as our own. (New Witness, May 14, 1920) the fewer people will rule. (The (NY) Sun, Oct. 6, 1918)

and tomorrow that are in your mind, for us even to begin to know ourselves, Gainsborough painted her…” Her house the Present, I say, or rather the immedi- let alone others. remains. “She was under a law; she ate flow of things occupies you altogeth- Belloc recalls the place where the changed, she suffered, she grew old, she er.” On seeing sites still there, a mood Council of Kent met. He walked the died; and there was her place left emp- overcomes us, it is a mood “common to high road to Canterbury; the River Stour ty.” Non-living things remain, but what men who have read and who have trav- was familiar. He knew where the Tenth made them what they are, is gone. “The elled—in which one is overwhelmed by Roman Legion camped in Britain as well greater, the infinitely greater thing, was the sanctity of a place on which men have as the great road that stretched from subject to a doom perpetually of change, done this or that a long, long time ago.” Winchester to the Straits of Dover. Then and at last of vanishing. The dead sur- We do not know what we see in front of the barbarian invasions—“here began roundings are not subject to such a us if we fail to see there also what other the great history of England.” Belloc asks: doom. Why?” men before us saw and did there. “Is it not an enormous business merely to And this query, this why, is the Belloc speaks of a stone in West stand in such a place?” He adds: “I think theme with which Belloc ends. He re- minster Hall that reminded him of so.” It is difficult to think him wrong. calls a French chateau farmhouse by Charles Stuart. “When the soul is seized These are memorable words—the “enor- the name of Houtgoumont. Here British by such sudden and positive convictions mous business” of merely standing in a troops fought Napoleon at the Battle of the substantial past, it is overwhelmed. real place in this world. of Waterloo on June 15, 1815. He can And Europe is full of such ghosts.” Space The phenomenologist philosophers still “hear the boys who held the line.” allows these experiences to be spread out. devote much attention to the reality of These boys “will never be seen again. The Present is a flow, a fluxus, as Aquinas absence, to what becomes present when Their voices will never be heard—they called it. The soul can be struck by a past things once here are no longer found are g on e .” that is not there because the place where here. Belloc tells us that silence and dark- Still, this is not the end. “But what is something happened is still there. ness especially bring the past to our at- the mere soil of the field without them? “Philosophers can put into formu- tention. “By a paradox which I will not What meaning has it save for their pres- lae the crowd of suggestions that rush attempt to explain, but which all have ence?” I have called this essay, “On the through the mind when one’s soul con- felt, it is in silence and darkness that the Primacy of Space.” We make Belloc’s last templates the perpetual march and pas- Past most vividly returns, and that this words our own: “I wish I could under- sage of mortality,” Belloc wrote. “But absence of what was once possesses, nay, stand these things.” We have no hope they can do no more than give us for- obtrudes itself upon, the mind: it be- of understanding them if we cannot see mulae: they cannot give us replies What comes almost a sensible thing.” that the Past is not as absent as we might are we? What is all this business? Why In conclusion, Belloc recalls “a wom- think. does the mere space remain and all the an of charming vivacity, whose eyes were We can have a physical communion rest dissolve?” These are the classic ex- ever ready for laughter, and whose tone with the Past if we can stand on the same istential questions. Any failure to ask of addressed provoked the noblest of re- spot on which “the greatness of man or them of ourselves makes it impossible plies. Many loved her; all admired…. of event has occurred.”

The Magazine of the American Chesterton Society 15 ROLLING ROAD our unhinged college campuses and our twisted entertainment industry. They did a cover story on a seven-year-old trans- gender. The glorification of the mentally confused, enabled by deranged parents and the open endorsement of the permanent damage this is causing on human Valley of the Shadow souls is not something that I am going to support. It’s a pity because, well, I’m go- By Dale Ahlquist ing to miss reading the back issues, since my brother would always bring them up have been giving my brother a gift Why am I breaking this rather im- to our family cabin. But the real pity is that subscription to National Geographic pressive string? Because the editors of National Geographic has become a lost ex- every year on his birthday for the National Geographic, instead of properly plorer. Chesterton says that man has al- last 35 years. I was hoping to get devoting themselves to stunning photos ways lost his way, but now he has lost his to 50 in which case I imagined us of normal animal life with open-mouthed address. both being honored by the National hippos and brooding baboons or extreme All this reminded me of a journey I IGeographic Society. But I won’t be re- nature such as underwater Antartica and took many years ago—in 1993 to be ex- newing it this year. I’m going to have fold-outs of the world’s most recently dis- act—to a place that was once featured in to find another gift for him. Maybe a covered tallest tree or fascinating glimps- National Geographic, where I took my gift subscription toGilbert , which will es of the century-laden nomads of Asian own photo of a woman who once ap- boost our subscriber list by a much larg- wastelands, they have succumbed to the peared in that magazine. er percentage than it would for National trend that suddenly went from being tab- In my former life as a lobbyist I ven- Geographic. loid fodder to being the ardent cause of tured to a spot that was plagued by

Marta Beckett in front her Opera House.

16 Volume 20 Number 7-8, July/August 2017 Death Valley Junction. Marta Becket was the proprietor of age of 92. She was already old when I vis- the Opera House. A former ballerina, she ited her in 1993. low-flying military aircraft. One could had performed on Broadway and was a National Geographic did their story argue that if there was a spot where member of the Radio City Music Hall. on her in 1970, which was long before such training could be conducted with While traveling through Death Valley my brother ever got his gift subscription. no impact to an underlying popula- Junction in 1967, she had a flat tire, and Perhaps death was always in the air. tion, it would be Death Valley Junction, just decided to stay. She renovated the old God bless her. California, near the Nevada border. It opera house, and everyday she would put is as close to the middle of nowhere as on a song-and-dance show there, wheth- any place in the United States. The pilots er or not there was anyone in the audi- used the town as a convenient landmark ence. Sometimes the show included an- for a turning point in their low-altitude other resident, otherwise she’d go solo. routes, and it would shake the old adobe At one point, she cleverly painted an au- buildings to their foundations. It might dience on the walls who provided com- not have mattered if there were no one pany and a unique ambience. It became in the buildings, but that wasn’t the case. something of an attraction for the more Death Valley Junction is not quite adventurous tourist, something that had a ghost town. I’m sure there are plen- to be seen to be believed. But it was less ty of ghosts, but a few living persons than three hours away from Las Vegas, actually still inhabited that old western which also has to be seen to be believed, outpost. There were four full-time res- and even then it is hard on one’s faith. idents when I rolled into town, but it Marta Becket put on the show for once supported a population of at least more than forty years. She finally retired a couple hundred. Most of the buildings from the stage in 2012 but continued to stood empty. The streets were covered live in Death Valley Junction until she with the manure of wild horses. There passed away in January of this year at the were no stores. The closest gas station was 30 miles away. But there was a hotel and a cafe. And there was the Amargosa Valley of the Shadow: When Opera House. the sun sets below you

The Magazine of the American Chesterton Society 17 THE FLYING INN with a note of my own, the nub of which Home Rule at Home that I would no longer read any notes written on brightly colored paper left in my work area for me to find, like a never ending game of hide and seek. When I got back from lunch, the ball was gone, but again, broad hints on my part could elicit no acknowledgement that it even had existed, and the rain of notes con- Post Trauma tinued unabated. I was true to my word By David Beresford though, and I took pleasure in not reading them, tossing them in a pile behind I think a big shop is a bad shop. I think it in a manner that I suppose was designed the printer to see how big of a pyramid bad not only in a moral but a mercantile to get my attention. Often I would find I could build. sense; that is, I think shopping there is not torn notes under the bottom of my chair, Toronto is a city with a chip on its only a bad action but a bad bargain. I deny or stuck to my shoe when I got home. I shoulder, always comparing itself favor- that its large organization is efficient. Large saved some of the more interesting ones ably to cities like Pittsburg or Cincinnati. organization is loose organization. Nay, it (below): Editorials appear in the local newspa- would be almost as true to say that organi- Whenever I asked the gang of secre- pers (satirically called national papers) zation is always disorganization. taries who occupied the front desk, inter- each week that tell its the readers how —THE BLUFF OF THE BIG SHOPS G. K. CHESTERTON rupting their fruitful exchange of ribald Toronto is now a world class city, taking stories, none of them remembered post- as their model the mirror in Cinderella. got a job at an office building a The thing is that real world class cities while back in Toronto. I had to like Chicago, New York, London, Paris, commute by train which took me “Office etiquette is or even Sydney Australia do not need to two hours. This was my first job shout about it. It may or may not be a working for a large business, and a curious thing.” world class city, it certainly is spread out I was happy to have it. Office eti- over a large area, but as far as I can see quette is a curious thing. One of ing these on my desk—nobody in that of- that is all that is big about it. Ithe ways people communicated in this fice ever admitted to writing these. A popular myth is that you can find office was by sticking small pink or blue One day before going to lunch I gath- anything in Toronto. Perhaps. Once for pieces of paper with gummed edges onto ered up all the sticky notes and rolled lunch, I tried to buy a bowl of soup and a various places on my desk; these were them into a ball, adding the collection of grilled cheese sandwich, and after many called post it notes. I would arrive at rubber bands and paper clips that were fruitless searches over several days this work and find half a dozen of these mis- wantonly reproducing in my desk draw- quest became an obsession with me. I sives arranged randomly across my desk ers, and set this mass on the front desk could get hundreds of flavored wraps, which are a kind of industrial food designed by retired Soviet architects, or specialty sandwiches on novelty breads that cannot fit within a human jaw, any number of vegetarian monstrosities with exotic sounding names, but nowhere could I get a grilled cheese sandwich. I finally found one at a small basement pub with sticky floors, a pool table with ripped felt, and which played the same cassette tape of Rush far too loud. In spite of this, it was perfect! For 5$ I got a proper grilled cheese sandwich with pea soup and a cup of coffee. I posted the restaurant’s address on a bright orange note and left it on the bul- letin board back at the office in case any of my sophisticated colleagues wanted to broaden their culinary horizons beyond salads and wraps.

18 Volume 20 Number 7-8, July/August 2017 VARIED TYPES 2. The Tremendous Triflers: These are the folks who attend irregularly, always “No Devil Worshipers Please.” —G.K. CHESTERTON leaving the rest of us wanting more of their insights and company. 3. The Everlasting Men: Determined to sample every beer in the offering, these gentlemen are still able to maintain the highest levels of intellectual discourse. Definable Categories Some of our best discussions may be attributed to this group, but is it in spite of by Victoria Darkey or because of their everlasting thirsts?

Chesterton was a mas- Chestertonian fashion, the following 4. The Le-Pant-o’s: Frequently out ter definer. Definitions list of delightful definitions is one that of breath, these late arrivals swell our appear everywhere in I recently received, written by Doreen ranks with gladness and keep us from his writing. Defining Truesdell of the Albany Chesterton the sin of lying when we tell the wait- things was a funda- Society. I think it likely that many local ress, “Don’t worry, we’re expecting a few mental part of his ef- Chesterton society members resemble more!” Their conversation is winsome, GKfectiveness in crafting an argument. He these remarks. once they’ve regained their composures. would skillfully define his terms before Doreen writes: 5. The Flambeaus: Semi-fictional char- making his main point. Did you ever notice that members of the acters who appear on our email list but Definition of terms is an essential in- Albany Chesterton Society tend to fall too rarely in person. Like Fr. Brown, gredient in thinking and communicat- into several definable categories? ‘List, o we hope to convert them from their ing clearly. Thinking and communicating ‘list while I attempt to elucidate: invisibility. clearly are necessary if we hope to arrive at the Truth. 1. The Father Brown Noses: This group Do you see yourself in one or more of Nowhere is this more evident than NEVER misses a meeting (even when these? I hope so. But one last word to all in the discussions that arise in lo- we change the restaurant and don’t tell the Flambeaus out there. You know who cal Chesterton Societies. Most local them) unless it’s to attend ANOTHER you are…and you’ve been warned. Father Chesterton Societies are comprised of BOOK CLUB of equal or superior val- Brown is going to catch up to you, and people who hold a range of opinions on ue, such as Shakespeare. They have been then you’re going to have to jump cate- any given subject. The folks who gath- known to show up with photocopied gories…or fully convert and start a local er to read and discuss Chesterton un- notes to share. Chesterton Society near where you live. doubtedly bring a diversity of back- I’ll be looking for your email! grounds, experiences, and personalities to the table. While it is possible that the discussions could become heated, the reality is that most of the time they don’t. Lively? Yes. Spirited? Yes. Contentious? Not likely, because we gather in hon- or of the man who debated and argued, but refrained from quarreling. We gather in honor of the man whose rhetori- cal adversaries loved and respected him long after he had bested them and the debates were over. In the beginning we are united by an interest in what he said and how he said it. In the end, most of us agree that our goal is to arrive at the Truth. And to get there, we agree to follow the road map laid out by Chesterton, with ample definition of terms, and gen- erous amounts of humility, charity, and good manners. In addition to defining things, Chesterton was a keen observer of human nature and a wizard of wit. In

The Magazine of the American Chesterton Society 19 ALL I SURVEY say to him, “‘You are an Individualist; I, “It is true that I am of an older fashion; much that I love on the other hand…’ to which I can only answer, with heart-broken patience that I has been destroyed or sent into exile.” —G.K. CHESTERTON am not an Individualist, but a poor fallen but baptized journalist who is trying to write a book about Eugenists, several of whom he has met; whereas he has never met an Individualist.” Chesterton stakes his ground and refuses” to be turned from the discussion of that direct issue to Mad Libs bottomless botherations about Socialism and Individualism, or the relative advan- David W. Fagerberg tages of always turning to the right and always turning to the left.” he title of this issue’s column is “peace,” “diversity,” “prophet,” “brother- Remember that Chesterton thought not meant to name the emo- hood”, “integrity,” “courage,” “commu- “a man’s minor actions and arrange- tional state of a political party. nity,” “minorities,” “defend,” “our time.” ments ought to be free, flexible, creative; I am not contrasting mad lib- Why, it was as if all the speakers had re- the things that should be unchangeable erals w

“We Are Called Insane for Attempting      to Return to Sanity.” —G.K

“We Are Called Insane for Attempting to Return to Sanity.” —G.K