The Cricket Was Light of Limb and Wing, but the Cricket's Soul Was A

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Volume 14 Number 4, January/February 2011 $5.50

The cricket was light of limb and wing, But the cricket’s soul was a serious thing.

—G.K. Chesterton The 29th Annual G.K. Chesterton Conference Talks Are Here!

Dale Ahlquist (President of the American Chesterton Society) “In Praise of Jones” Qty

David Zach (Futurist) “A Great Many Clever Things: The Mistake about Technology” Qty

Richard Aleman (Editor of the Distributist Review) “The Mistake about Distributism” Qty

Joseph Pearce (Author) “The Mistake About Progress” Qty

James Woodruff (Mathematics Instructor at Worcester Academy) “GKC and Edmund Burke: The Regina Doman (Author) Mistake about Conservatism” Qty “The Evangelization of the Imagination”Qty

Tom Martin (Philosophy Professor at University of Nebraska-Kearney) Fr. Ian Ker (Theology Professor from Oxford University) “The Mistake about the Social Sciences”Qty “Chesterton and Newman” Qty

James O’Keefe (Independent Video Journalist) Fr. Peter Milward (Professor Emeritus from Sophia University, Tokyo) “The Mistake about the Social Services”Qty “Chesterton and Shakespeare and Today”Qty

Dr. William Marshner (Theology Professor at Christendom College) Nancy Brown (Author and ACS Blogmistress) “The Mistake about Theology” Qty “The Woman Who Was Chesterton” Qty

3 Formats: CDs: Single Talk: $6.00 each OR order the Complete set The American Chesterton Society of CDs for $60.00 (save $12) 4117 Pebblebrook Circle, Minneapolis, MN 55437 MP3 Format: Bundle: 12 Talks in MP3 format on 1 disc: 952-831-3096 • [email protected] $50 www.chesterton.org DVD VIDEO: Single Talk: $12 each OR Conference DVD Bundle: 12 DVDs for $120 (save $24) SHIPPING AND HANDLING: $3 for 1st disc, plus $1 for each additional disc; conference bundle $10 ❏ CDs ❏ MP3s ❏ DVDs # Single # Sets

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Great Location! Great Talks! Great Arguments! Great Fun! : Ta b l e o f C o n t e n t s : Volume 14 Number 4, January/February 2011

4 |:Tremendous Trifles: Chesterton and Conversion 38 |:Book Reviews: by Art Livingston 5 |:Lunacy & Letters: The Rage Against God ‘Girl, Please!’ Reviewed by Andrew Ratelle 7 |:EDITORIAL: by Lorraine V. Murray Defiant Joy & The The New Anarchists Quotable Chesterton 27 |:Chesterton University: 8 |:Straws in the Wind: Reviewed by Dale Ahlquist Quackery About The Family Hark! Laughter Like a Lion Wakes The Spirit of Christmas Murder in the Vatican by G.K. Chesterton Reviewed by Pasquale Accardo

28 |:The Signature of Man: 10 |:ALARMS AND DISCURSIONS: How God Changes Your Brain An Interview with Kevin Belmonte The Venus de Milo Reviewed by David Paul Deavel by G.K. Chesterton by Nancy Carpentier Brown 42 |:FEAR OF FILM: 29 |:the Flying Inn: 13 |:Ethics of Elfland: Bedazzled (1967) Teaching Science Reviewed by Art Livingston 14 |:SCHALL on CHESTERTON: by David Beresford On Men Being Like Gods 43 |:Magic: James V. Schall, S.J. 30 |:the Flying STars: A Magic Moment The Life of a Public Figure by James G. Bruen, Jr. 17 |:Ballad of Gilbert: by Nancy Carpentier Brown Lilies Of The Valley 44 |:the Distributist: by G.K. Chesterton 31 |:Jogging with G.K.: The Banishment of Agapé In the Dark by Richard Aleman 18 |:Tales of the Short Bow: by Robert Moore-Jumonville A Very Bad Dream 46 |:Chesterton’s Mail Bag: by John Peterson 33 |:ALL I SURVEY Ordinary Thinking and Medicine Man From Out of the Past, Muddle-headedness by James G. Bruen, Jr. Met in the Future by David W. Fagerberg 48 |:News With Views:

20 |:Rolling Road: England 34 |: the Detection Club: 50 |:Letter to America: by Kevin O’Brien Perfect Materialism by John Peterson by G. K. Chesterton 21 |:ALL IS GRIST: Chesterton’s Bloodthirsty Heirs Keeping Up by Steve Miller Cover illustration by T. Schluenderfritz by Joe Campbell The Father Brown Casebook Hawking’s Opinion Goes Against by Steve Miller Illustration on page 29 by David Beresford the Giants of Science, Philosophy The Blue Cross by Joseph Racioppi Rashomon in Los Angeles by Chris Chan

Publisher: Dale Ahlquist, President, ACS EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Sean P. Dailey art DIRECTOR: Ted Schluenderfritz LITERARY EDITOR: Therese Warmus COPY EDITOR: Susan Meister

Senior Writer: John Peterson Contributing Editors: Richard Aleman, David Beresford, James G. Bruen Jr., Nancy Carpentier Brown, Joe Campbell, John C. Chalberg, Christopher Chan, David Paul Deavel, David W. Fagerberg, Kyro Lantsberger, Art Livingston, Robert Moore-Jumonville, James V. Schall SJ “News with Views” Editors: Nathan Allen, Mark Pilon, Larry Pavlicek, Ted Olsen subscriptions: (See Coupon Page 6) Credit Card Orders: call 1-800-343-2425 or fax 1-270-325-3091 Letters and Articles: Gilbert Magazine, American Chesterton Society, 4117 Pebblebrook Circle, Minneapolis, MN 55437 [email protected] www.gilbertmagazine.com Letters to the editor may be edited for length or clarity.

Gilbert Magazine is published every six weeks by The American Chesterton Society, a non-profit corporation established under Paragraph 501(c)(3) of theU .S. Tax Code. Donations to the American Chesterton Society are tax-deductible in the United States. Your contributions help support the publication of Gilbert Magazine. Please send your donations to: The American Chesterton Society, 4117 Pebblebrook Circle, Minneapolis, MN 55437. The views expressed by Gilbert Magazine contributors are not necessarily those of the publisher, the editors, or the American Chesterton Society.

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 3 : T r e m e n d o u s T r i f l e s : by Sean P. Dailey

o kick things off, we remind you that the 30th Annual G.K. Chesterton Conference will be held August 4-6, one of the first collections of Chesterton quo- 2011, in St. Louis, Missouri, at the Sheraton West- tations was published. This is amazing since port Lakeside Chalet. The theme of the conference y100ears ago Chesterton had been on the literary scene is “Poet and Prophet.” Speakers currently scheduled includeT Pasquale Accardo, Christopher Check, Robert for only a decade. A Chesterton Calendar contained a Moore-Jumonville, Carl Hasler, Redd Griffin, Tod Worner, passage for each day of the year, including a few from Eleanor Donlin, Dale Ahlquist, and Leah Darrow, who is the The Ballad of the White Horse, which still had not been great-great-grand niece of Clarence Darrow. Yes, “turning published. The quotations were selected and arranged over in his grave” is a cliché, but Leah’s ancestor really must be spinning in his. Not only is his descendant a Catholic, but by Chesterton’s very own calendar girl, his wife Frances. she is speaking at a conference held in honor of a man who once trounced Clarence in a debate. This alone ought to be ¶¶In connection with the influence of the Father Brown worth the price of admission. But if that is not enough, this stories, this department does not believe that any Ches- year’s conference features talks on Lepanto, The Ballad of tertonian has followed up on a very intriguing suggestion the White Horse, William Butler Yeats, Winston Churchill, from Anthony Boucher, that Thomas Narcejac, coauthor vampires, and Chesterton as a Franciscan Thomist (or is of Diabolique, has written the most perceptive parody of that a Thomistic Franciscan?). Conference goers will be Father Brown [Ten Adventures of Father Brown, Dell, treated to a special performance of Chesterton’s play Magic. 1960]. Keep checking the American Chesterton Society Web page for full details, including registration information. ¶¶Speaking of the Web site (www.chesterton.org), the revamped and expanded store is online and open for busi- ¶¶From the Credit where Credit is Due Department: Clar- ness. You can buy books (by and about Chesterton), buy ence Darrow was a good sport, writing shortly before his merchandise, join the ACS, donate to the ACS, purchase death, “I was favorably impressed by, warmly attached to, DVDs or CDs of talks from the 2010 conference (DVDs and G.K. Chesterton. I enjoyed my debates with him, and found CDs of the 2011 conference will be available at a later date, him a man of culture and fine sensibilities. If he and I had of course), and, best of all, purchase single copies of our lived where we could have become better acquainted, even- most recent issue, November/December 2010, which was tually we would have ceased to debate, I firmly believe.” devoted exclusively to Distributism, while supplies last. Chesterton had that effect on a lot of people. ¶¶To describe his appearance, or the visible impression ¶¶John Peterson’s first collection of stories, The Return Gilbert Chesterton made, George Bernard Shaw was driven of Father Brown, is hot off the press and available by to compare him to Gulliver as seen by the Liliputians and mail (see ad on page 16) or through the ACS Web site. to note his resemblance to Honore de Balzac. “He is our Peterson’s wry humor and subtle wit have made his Father Quinbus Flestrin, the young Man Mountain,” Shaw wrote, Brown stories a longtime favorite among GM readers—get “a large, abounding, gigantically cherubic person who is your copy before they’re gone. not only large in body and mind beyond all decency, but ¶¶Please pray for the repose of the soul of Wilfrid Sheed, seems to be growing larger as you look at him—‘swellin’ son of Frank J. Sheed and Maisie Ward, who died in Janu- wisibly’ as Tony Weller puts it” (Complete Prefaces, V.I, ary at the age of eighty in Massachusetts. Penguin: 1993, page 188). From the January 19 obituary in the New ¶¶To all our Midwest readers: Kevin York Times: “Born to the founders of the Have a Trifle? Send it to O’Brien, who has played Father Brown on eminent Roman Catholic publishing house [email protected] EWTN in The Apostle of Common Sense Sheed & Ward, Mr. Sheed was from an early and the Theater of the Word series, will age thrown in with writers, intellectuals, and perform his one-man Hilaire Belloc show on Saturday, May serious thinkers about religion, among them the English 7, at St. Rose of Lima parish. Check www.saintrosequincy. writer G.K. Chesterton, who was his godfather. He mined org for more information. his resources industriously, making for himself a much- admired writing career.” Born in London and living most ¶¶Parting Trifle: in his 1979 study of the Oxford Inklings, of his adult life in the United States, Wilfred Sheed was a Humphrey Carpenter concludes that the mind of C.S. gifted and prolific writer in his own right, writing novels, Lewis had two aspects, the poet and the debater, and when biography, and history, as well as critical essays for Com- the debater was in ascendancy, Carpenter says, interest- monweal, New Yorker, the New York Times, and other ingly enough, Lewis showed the mark of Chesterton (The publications. May he rest in peace. Inklings, Houghton Mifflin, p. 221).

4 Volume 14 Number 4, January/February 2011 : L u n a c y & l e tt e r s : from Gilbert Magazine Readers

greatly enjoyed the 2010 Chesterton other things, Chesterton’s vision here Conference at Mount St. Mary’s, was stereoscopic. With one eye, he I and the summary of the conference could see the accumulated traditions of in the September/October issue of the past, and, with the other, he could Gilbert Magazine (page 17). That see the vision of the New Jerusalem. tradition Chesterton also believed in summary prompted me to revisit my Because of this, it is Chesterton—not the necessity of a permanent political thoughts on one of the presentations, Burke—who can help us see our way ideal, and could articulate it without that of Professor James Woodruff on forward. Burke, at most, can only tell falling back on a naturalist metaphor G.K. Chesterton and Edmund Burke. us where we are. that does not tell us anything about In his talk, Professor Woodruff argued Jason N. Workmaster whether a particular political develop- that Chesterton had been too hard Falls Church, Virginia ment is good or bad. As with so many on Burke and had failed to recognize ; ; ; him as an ally in the defense of both reform and tradition. Although I appreciate his effort to reconcile Burke and Chesterton, I disagree with Professor Chesterton for Today Woodruff’s thesis. ;;When somebody wishes to wage ;;Anything is good that makes us I believe Professor Woodruff’s a social war against what wage war fiercely, for then analysis misses the forest for the trees. all normal people have we shall wage it rarely. He is undoubtedly right that there regarded as a social Anything is bad that are a number of specific issues on decency, the very makes us wage war which Burke and Chesterton would first thing he does calmly, for then likely have agreed, such as Catholic is to find some we shall wage it emancipation. What bothered Ches- artificial term continually. Also terton about Burke, though, was not that shall sound (among other Burke’s position on any particular relatively decent. details) we shall issue. Rather, it was that Burke had (Illustrated London be beaten. (Daily no ultimate philosophical basis even News, June 30, 1928) News, 24, 1912) for his own reform program. In this ;;Nobody seems regard, as Professor Woodruff pointed ;;China [is] the out, Burke fell back on an organic to see the only real rival metaphor of natural growth to justify point about the to Christendom. change, comparing the British polity to peril of scientific (New York American, June an oak tree. The problem, of course, is legislation, as in 3, 1933) that one must have a theory of “oak- experiments by the ness” in order to determine whether Ministry of Health and ;;All the pleasure-hunt- any particular growth on the tree is a similar things. Of course, ers seem to be themselves good one or a bad one. In the case of scientific politics only means hunted. All the children of political philosophy, this means having popular science. Or rather, it means fortune seem to be chained to the a fixed vision of the ideal state. Burke politicians’ science, which is worse. wheel. There is very little that really expressly disclaims having any such (Illustrated London News, March 17, 1923) even pretends to be happiness in all this sort of harassed hedonism. (Illus- vision, but that is exactly what the ;;Men are not governed by laws at all; trated London News, April 28, 1928) French revolutionaries, for all their they are governed by loyalties. (Daily many faults, had. This is why I believe News, Aug. 27, 1904) ;;Let no one flatter himself that he that Chesterton, as a philosophical leaves his family life in search of art, matter, was sympathetic to their revo- ;;The very largeness of America or knowledge; he leaves it because he lution, even though, again, I am sure isolates and therefore imprisons them. is fleeing from the baffling knowledge he would have decried the excesses of For it is large things that really limit of humanity and from the impossible that revolution as much as Burke. us, because they prevent us even from art of life. (“A Defense of Bores,” Lunacy and Unlike Burke, Chesterton was not seeing anything beyond. (Illustrated London Letters) merely a traditionalist in his politi- News, Feb. 5, 1927) cal philosophy. Even as he respected

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 5 : L u n a c y & l e tt e r s :

fter listening to some stories about an exhibit in the National In Praise of Phrases APortrait Gallery in Washington, D.C, that depicts ants crawling on ”Half our speech consists of similes that remind us of no similarity; pictorial a crucified Christ, I needed reassur- phrases that call up no picture; of historical allusions the origin of which we have ance about the state of art in our forgotten.” —G.K. Chesterton culture, and reinforcement that we have not fallen off the cliff and into “The proof is in the pudding.” Peter Motteux (1663–1718) the abyss of cultural destruction. I found such refuge and consola- Most dictionaries of quotations list Cervantes’ late sixteenth century novel tion in the wonderful July/August Don Quixote as the source of this maxim, but it cannot be found there. The single issue of Gilbert Magazine (the art issue–ed) and was not disap- word “pudding” (Spanish pudín) cannot be found anywhere in its pages. The con- pointed. After rereading the articles fusion derives from Motteux’s inaccurate 1701 English translation of the novel, over a number of days, I came to which later scholars condemned as more of a fanciful retelling than a faithful re-appreciate the beauty, inspira- translation. A further irony in this mix-up is that Don Quixote contains a host tion, creativity, and positive aspects of maxims and catchphrases that have become as much a part of the English- of art based on beauty, values and speaking people’s language repertoire as “proof of the pudding.” Examples: inspiration as opposed to the “popu- “By the sweat of his brow.” “In a pickle.” “Too much of a good thing.” lar art” that seems based on hatred, “Not a wink of sleep.” “Give the devil his due.” “A wild-goose chase.” disrespect, and inanity. “Mind your own business.” “A hue and cry.” “Do not put all your eggs From the front cover to the last, in one basket.” “Within a stone’s throw.” “You haven’t seen anything I savored the artistic works of truly yet.” “Cried my eyes out.” “Split his sides with laughing.” “Forgive and gifted human beings. Chris Chan forget.” “I smell a rat.” “The fair sex.” “Forewarned is forearmed.” “A in his article “Do We Know Good needle in the hay.” “Turn over a new leaf.” “The Haves and the Have- Art? Do we Even Know What We Like?” (page 38) states, “There is a Nots.” “Honesty is the best policy.” “His word is his bond.” “A word to great disconnect between what the the wise is sufficient.” “The pot calling the kettle black.” “Mum’s the public wants and what the public word.” “Born with a silver spoon in his mouth.” gets.” Thank God we have Gilbert “The Proof is in the Pudding,” appeared in Part II, Chapter 24, of Mattreux’s Magazine to help correct the vast “translation.” What Mottteux wrote was, of course, “The proof of the pudding is disconnect. in the eating.” The shortened version that we hear today, as many commentators Dennis V. Sinclair have pointed out, is meaningless. Medford, Oregon

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6 Volume 14 Number 4, January/February 2011 : e d i T o r i a l : The New Anarchists

he Man Who Was Thursday is a funny book. G.K. order common to all men. The anarchy of our day is rela- Chesterton wrote it at a time when anarchists were tivism applied to the social order. If truth is relative and throwing bombs at people, yearning for the reign of “truth claims” are arbitrary assertions we impose upon the chaos. The joke is that chaos cannot reign. Chaos is world to suit our own tastes, then it logically follows that the destruction of all order—which means that noth- there is no common good. Thus men share no principles Ting rules. Anarchy is the denial of “archy,” the principle of interaction other than by chance with folks who happen of order or organization, which is inherent to reality. And to be of the same mindset. This is tribalism. so when we find in Chesterton’s novel anarchists organiz- How can one argue with tribalists? ing clubs and meetings with rigid rules and principles, we We can point out what has always happened when laugh—for we see that even anarchists are subject to the anarchy has been put into practice. Order will reassert very thing they deny. When we discover that one anar- itself, but not the order of good will and peace. This is the chist after another is actually a police officer in disguise, order of might. Anarchy is not democracy; it is, in prac- secretly devoted to the true order of reality and not the tice, bully-ocracy. If you want to see what fills the vacuum romantic disorder of our dreams, we begin to see revealed when centralized order is abandoned, spend a week in the the “hierarchy” or “holy order” led by Sunday, who is ghettos of North St. Louis or in the Mexican states now large enough to encompass even controlled by drug lords. When cen- rebellion in his system. tral authority abdicates, the vacuum This is all funny, in a profound These anarchists claim is filled not by groups of hippies way. But anarchists, both in Chester- not to be opposed to order living in harmony and following-their- ton’s time and our own, don’t get the bliss, and not by Austrian economists joke. A sense of humor is the one per se, but to centralized celebrating the free market and thing anarchy is most successful at order, or to the use of following-their-greed, but by thugs, by destroying. terror. There is a great upsurge of anar- force to compel obedience Or we can bring the issue home, chy in the world today that comes to centralized order. It is literally. If force to compel adher- both from the far left and the far ence to order is intrinsically wrong, right. I encountered a leftist anarchist not that they favor local and if renouncing force in all social who explained to me that all govern- government but that they relations between men is ideal, then ment should be abolished because parents that don’t discipline their the patriarchy of conservatives has want all government children ought to rear the most denied people the right to choose to be atomized. happy and peaceful of families. But their own sexual identities. But a do they? rightist anarchist I know feels that all Central authority acting within government should be abolished because the liberals have its proper limits is essential to the preservation of liberty. ruined our chance of salvation—which is found via rugged The right wing anarchy of individualism and the free individualism and the unfettered free market. market will lead to a bully-ocracy of wage slavery. The left Where do I meet these people? On the Internet, of wing anarchy of the “right” to choose one’s sexual identity course. But what strikes me is that anarchy is a siren song will lead to a bully-ocracy where tolerance is not enough, rebels of all stripes hear and follow, to their doom. It is and those who don’t approve will be jailed. What will both not so much that anarchy doesn’t make sense. People anarchies try to destroy? The family. have always believed things that don’t make sense. There We are passing from an age when men were at first is a romance to anarchy that has captivated the hearts of mournful under the dictatorship of relativism to an age rebels who are otherwise opposed in all other ways. when men adjusted to the dictatorship of relativism and These anarchists claim not to be opposed to order used it as a cover to indulge their vices. We approach an per se, but to centralized order, or to the use of force age where young idealists long for the institutionalization to compel obedience to centralized order. It is not that of the dictatorship of relativism. It is not merely their they favor local government but that they want all govern- humor that is missing but their entire philosophy that is ment to be atomized, believing that people should cluster vacant. It is centered on nothing, and they are fighting for according to their tastes, irrespective of other groups or of an expansion of the void. any principles of order that are common to all men; irrespective, as well, of family ties. Indeed, the postmodern —Kevin O’Brien for the Editorial anarchists do not believe that there are any principles of Board of Gilbert Magazine

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 7 : s T r aw s i n t h e W i n d : nobody says in any newspaper: “Dr. Binns, of Buffalo, has told us that, An Essay by G.K. Chesterton while aunts may be fond of nephews, great-aunts always have an instinctive hatred and aversion both for nephews and nieces.” But it is even more convincing than that if the information is anonymous in every way, and the writer merely states: “Recent science has Quackery About The Family shown that second cousins are natu- by G.K. Chesterton rally antagonistic, but that in second cousins once removed the antagonism an anything be done to dam, environment; and everything that is sometimes introverted into suicidal not to say damn, the deluge can be coloured by the pompous and mania.” Where all these statements of quackery that is now being pretentious polysyllables of Psychology come from, nobody knows. Where they poured out everywhere to and Education. all go to, everybody ought to know, inform what is called the igno- At least many of the old dogmas, since they go to everybody. But it is in Crance of the democracy? As the term right or wrong, were concerned with practice very difficult to discover what implies, it is not only democracy that cherubim and seraphim, with lost becomes of them, and whether they is ignorant; those who would inform it spirits and beatified souls; but these are really treated as wisdom or waste are more ignorant still, or they would dogmas always directly attack fathers paper. On the whole, I fear it is more not invariably say the democracy when and wives and children, without offer- likely that everybody believes them they mean the demos. Democracy ing either credentials or evidence. The than that anybody takes the trouble to does not mean the populace, or even general rule is that nothing must be check them. the people; it means government by accepted on any ancient or admit- This evil is wilder in America, but the people. Democracy is a very noble ted authority, but everything must I doubt if it is worse in America. It is thing, and it does not exist—at any rate be accepted on any new or nameless scattered all over our own Press and at present. Demos is a very jolly thing authority, or accepted even more public speech, and is all the more in its way, especially when it does eagerly on no authority at all. It is insidious because it is not so much all the things that ideal democrats quite satisfactory, of course, if any associated with the conspicuous generally abuse it for doing, such as drinking, shouting, and going to the Derby. But, whatever else it is doing, Our Mr. Chesterton it is not ruling; it is not teaching, but being taught. And there might be a Harandraneth Maitra, reasonable case for its being taught, editor of The Voice of India, were it not for the unfortunate fact visited G.K. Chesterton for that it is being taught bosh. Which an interview in 1916: “There brings me back, after this parenthesis is certainly nothing ordinary on the word democracy, to the more about his appearance. His face solemn and sacred subject of quackery. is that of a thinker. His eyes Quackery is false science; it is are deeply penetrating, but his everywhere apparent in cheap and smile is full of sympathy and popular science; and the chief mark of affection. The genuineness it is that men who begin by boasting that they have cast away all dogmas go of his laughter is infectious… on to be incessantly, impudently, and His continual struggle with his quite irrationally dogmatic. Let anyone eyeglasses, which seemed to run his eye over any average newspa- be constantly wanting to come per or popular magazine, and note the off, humorously suggested to number of positive assertions made in my mind the many difficulties the name of popular science, without encountered by a nature like the least presence of scientific proof, his in adapting itself to the or even of any adequate scientific manifold petty conventions of authority. It is all the worse because ‘civilization.’” the dogmas are generally concerned with domestic and very delicate human relations; with heredity and home

8 Volume 14 Number 4, January/February 2011 : s T r aw s i n t h e W i n d :

figures of picturesque charlatans and fantastic prophets, such as strut in The Chesterton Ad Agency V strange plumage about the plains of ;;“Try our trenches; they are a treat.” (“Vows and Volunteers,” The Outline of Sanity) the West. Anyhow, it is scattered so ;;“Buy Our Red Ties. Syndicalist Gents Suited.” (“The Second Trial of John Braintree,” widely both here and there that the The Return of Don Quixote) difficulty is to pick up any adequate

example. For the triviality of one ;;“We offer a Bath-tub in Every Home.” (“A Meditation in a New York Hotel,” specimen does not convey the tremen- What I Saw in America) dous and mountainous multitude of specimens. Here is one example, how- ;;“Soldier Solder; Holds On like Our Lads in Khaki.” (New Witness, Jan. 13, 1916) ever, which I find in a periodical of ;;“Beware of Bootle’s Beer; It Is Filthy.” (G.K.’s Weekly, Dec. 11, 1926) considerable intellectual pretensions,

to judge by its title. ;;“Don’t try Haroun Alraschid Cigarettes; I Have Tried Like most of these professed ‘Em.” (G.K.’s Weekly, Dec. 11, 1926) organs of thought, it is marked by a complete incapacity for any preci- ;;“My Mother Died of Tinker’s Tinned Foods,” (G.K.’s Weekly, Dec. 11, 1926) sion in thinking. But I mention it, not ;;“Shereef Sherry; the Worst Wine in the World.” (G.K.’s Weekly, Dec. 11, 1926) because it is worse than the rest, but because it is representative of the rest and all the rest are no better. The instructor informs us that there can be between parent and child a nega- to be the same as her coldness, may Balzac. I cannot understand why, in tive transference (the intense italics send the boy to the devil, goes on to logic, a great novelist is the exact are his) which seems to mean, not say that it may be a good thing that he contrary of a practical father. I do not merely that the child will hate the should go to the devil; in which case see why any child may not happen to parent, but that the child will love it was presumably a good thing that rejoice in the possession of a great somebody who is the opposite of the the mother should be cold. Revolt, we practical novelist-father. The children hated parent. “Thus a child who is are told, sometimes leads to new ways of Sir Walter Scott, for instance, to a treated coldly by his mother will come of life, and it may be highly satisfac- great extent did so, despite the acci- to reject all people like his mother and tory that the boy should seek for the dent which ruined his later fortunes. seek for her opposite. We will say the opposite of his mother. But what is the But it is not only false in the typical mother is good, honest, moral, even opposite of your mother? case of Scott, it is far from true even pious. The boy will gravitate to some- As a point of logic, it seems rather in the actual case of Balzac. Balzac one crooked, immoral, or even wicked. subtle; nor does the logician here had a decidedly “practical” side to In short, his mother’s goodness may instructing us give us very much help. him; he was not only busy, but busi- send him to the devil, though all the “A rebel boy may, of course, become, ness-like, in his own way; and, anyhow, time she may be wondering why her like the proverbial minister’s son, a all these crude contrasts about com- excellent precepts, her discipline, her good-for-naught or a crook; on the plex characters are all nonsense. goodness, are failing to develop like other hand, a boy like Balzac, who Balzac did not become a great traits in her son.” hated his practical father, became a novelist because his father had You will note the utter chaos of great novelist—his father’s opposite. Or annoyed him with practicality; he terminology and definition, even in in a different way, Beethoven, whose became a great novelist because he these few lines. Some of us, to begin father was a poor fiddler, a drunk- was a great man. Beethoven did not with, might hesitate to insist on the ard and ne’er-do-well, became one succeed because his father drank; goodness of a mother who treated a of the great composers of the world, it is much more likely that he was a child coldly. But what is meant by the doggedly determined to protect his composer for the same reason that mother being good, as distinct from mother and be as unlike his father as made his father a fiddler. These are her being moral? What is meant by possible.” If that was his object, we only a few random examples of these the mother’s mysterious rival being can hardly say that he succeeded random statements which are thrown immoral, as distinct from being very well. I am not quite sure what is about everywhere, that the people wicked? And what in the name of the “opposite” of a poor fiddler, but may learn Science from men who goodness (or morality) is meant by certainly it is not a great composer. have never learnt Logic. Now that the mysterious word “even,” which There may be many a great composer everybody is talking about the public is reserved only for wickedness and who has been a poor fiddler, and being informed of this or that, is there for piety? The transference of these many a poor fiddler who may yet be a any way of stopping the public being thoughts, from writer to reader, is great composer. misinformed in this endless and exu- a very negative transference indeed. The same mysterious use of the berant fashion? However, the writer, having said that word “opposite” darkens the other the mother’s goodness, which seems instance given from the career of From Illustrated London News, July 12, 1930

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 9 : ALARMS AND DIS C u r s i o n s : him the grace to make it all work—to commend our common faith in an age marked by deep skepticism and hostility to Christianity. We are heir An Interview with to the genial fusillade of his apologet- ics—the winsome, arresting, and utterly Kevin Belmonte original outpouring of his reasons by Nancy Carpentier Brown for belief.” GM Your first book is about William Wilberforce; what prompted you to GM Tell me a little about yourself, your write it? education, your family, your work, and your faith heritage. KB I had never heard of William Wilber- force during my high school years, and KB The best thing I can tell you about when I did read about him for the first myself is that I’m Kelly’s husband and time, just before heading off to college, Sam’s father. Kelly and I have been I was amazed that I hadn’t been taught married for twenty years, and our son about him. When I visited the set of Sam will turn five this March. Sam is Amazing Grace during the shooting the joy of our lives, and all the more of the film, in December 2005, its so since we never thought we’d have director, Michael Apted, told me what a child of our own. We were in the drew him to the story. To be sure initial stages of the adoption pro- there was the “political thriller ele- cess when we learned that Kelly was ment”—the epic twenty-year battle in expecting. God watched over mother the British Parliament. But then, there and child, and now Sam is a happy, was also the power of Wilberforce’s healthy preschooler. to the story I share in the opening personal example—his selfless devotion So far as my work is concerned, pages of my new literary biography of to something larger than himself—and I’m a full-time author and have been G.K. Chesterton, Defiant Joy. There the many trials he suffered in pursuit since 2002. Along the way, I’ve also I write: “Among his many endur- of that goal. For Michael, Wilberforce’s done script consulting work for two ing achievements, Chesterton was a story suggested the kind of transforma- BBC documentaries and another for champion of mere Christianity—that tive leadership modeled in the lives of PBS. For six years, I was the lead collection of great truths and doctrines, Nelson Mandela and Dr. Martin Luther script/historical consultant for the as C.S. Lewis has written, upon which King. It was fascinating to hear these motion picture Amazing Grace that nearly all Christians are agreed. As reflections on set. chronicled the twenty-year parlia- such, he is justly revered by Catholics mentary struggle led by William and Protestants alike.” GM Can you recall your first encounter Wilberforce to end the British slave Both streams of belief flow into with Chesterton? What was that like? trade. my own heritage of faith. My father KB When I was in seminary during the I’ve also done some work for attended parochial school and was con- 1990s, I remember seeing the library’s the NarniaFaith Web site, launched firmed within the Catholic Church. My complete collection (as of that time) of to coincide with the release of The mother was reared in a Baptist setting. The Collected Works of G.K. Chester- Voyage of the Dawn Treader. In that Two generations before, my Protestant ton. The hardcover volumes fully filled capacity, I feel privileged to have been great-grandfather and his elder brother one long bookshelf, and I remember asked to write the essay “Who is C.S. married Catholic girls and brought being very impressed by that. I had Lewis?” for the “Learn” section of the them home to Maine. I have often won- heard of Chesterton before, to be Web site, which is introduced by C.S. dered how those young brides fared sure, through the writings of Lewis, Lewis’s stepson, Douglas Gresham. among the often crusty and judgmen- and I remember thinking: “Someday Lastly, I’ve written several other tal Yankees they met. What I do know I’m going to carve out some time and books, including two previous books is that my great-grandfather and great- begin reading the books that so power- for Thomas Nelson: a literary biogra- grandmother were deeply devoted to fully influenced Lewis.” It took a while phy, John Bunyan, and a narrative each other and to God. In the context to get there—all of the years when I biography of educator and preacher of that devotion, they found a way to worked on Amazing Grace intervened. D.L. Moody. For my British pub- make it all work. I am heir to their But I got there in the end—and I’m lisher, Day One, I’ve written a newly devotion and faith. very glad I did! released biography of Billy Graham. Which brings me back to Ches- So far as my faith heritage is con- terton. His life and writings are an GM Why do you think there is such cerned, I attend a non-denominational apologetic of enduring worth to Catho- an upsurge in interest in Chesterton Protestant church, and I would point lics and Protestants alike. God gave today? In America? In the world?

10 Volume 14 Number 4, January/February 2011 : ALARMS AND DIS C u r s i o n s :

Kelly And Sam Belmonte

KB Chesterton thoroughly examined for me to put pen to paper. In reading the list of those who greatly respected symptoms of the tired and lifeless Heretics in particular, I felt as though him—T.S. Eliot, Graham Greene, modernity he saw all about him. Amid I was reading about schools of thought Orson Welles, and many others— the cacophony of worldviews that clam- and cultural trends that had been intrigued me. Lastly, Chesterton had a ored for his attention, he saw nothing pulled from periodicals and headlines great gift for friendship with those who so vital and alive as the Christianity he being written today. One hundred saw the world very differently from had embraced. And if in writing Her- years on so little had changed, and it him, people like Shaw and H.G. Wells. etics he described the maladies that seemed so clear to me that Chesterton They, in turn, treasured his friendship. afflicted his age, Orthodoxy was his had many things to say that spoke with Why was that? account of how he had found a time- power and poignancy to our historical Also, I wanted to explore how, less cure for them all: at the feet of a moment. I remember thinking that if I through contemporary newspaper risen Christ with healing in his wings. could do my part to re-introduce Ches- accounts, Chesterton had an impact When it came to Chesterton, all terton to a new readership, that would on his world. Then too, I wanted to of these things were augmented by a be time and effort very well spent. follow the trajectory of his life and deep reverence for truth. But that rev- thought through the publication of his GM At a time when there are fresh erence was also clothed in a high and books. I couldn’t touch upon them all, biographies of Chesterton available, obstinate regard for those with whom but I tried to discuss the books that how does your biography differ, or why he disagreed. On several occasions, he are deeply representative of who he was it important to come out with yet engaged in epic debates with George was. To follow the trajectory of Ches- another one? Bernard Shaw—as formidable an oppo- terton’s life though his books allows for nent as then bestrode the intellectual KB You’re absolutely right, the biogra- many moments spent in company with landscape. But their contests were phies of Chesterton that have appeared his best thoughts. Defiant Joy is rich anything but occasions for acrimony. in recent years are extremely valuable. in that kind of experience, because By turns robust and civil, witty and I’ve profited greatly from reading them, his great books take center stage. And profound—they were affairs in which and point my readers to their books in as a literary biography, it chronicles somehow no quarter was given, but the Preface to Defiant Joy. Chesterton’s interactions with his cel- both stepped away from the rostrum When it came to writing Defi- ebrated literary contemporaries. as friends. ant Joy, I wanted to approach things I found it fascinating to consult from a more focused literary angle. contemporary newspaper accounts. In GM So you discovered Chesterton, My undergraduate degree is in Eng- reading Defiant Joy, one gets a sense what then happened that you wanted lish literature, and I’ve always been of his life unfolding in real time. The to write a book about him? How did fascinated by the ways that one writer New York Times and The Times of he influence your life? Was any one can influence the life and writings of London wrote about him constantly, particular book important to you? Any other writers. Chesterton’s influence and so did some of the best and most particular biography? on writers like John Updike, Flannery interesting literary critics of the day. KB My reading of Heretics and Ortho- O’Connor, Dorothy Sayers, and Lewis— The Quotable Chesterton, for its part, doxy, I think, was the major catalyst to name but a few—was profound. And is meant to be a true companion work,

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 11 : ALARMS AND DIS C u r s i o n s : a ready-reference compendium that sured. He drank deeply of life, because to carry forward a model for apologet- covers the entire range of his pub- he had come to know its Giver. ics Chesterton had originated in the lished works. writing of The Everlasting Man. As I GM Chesterton creates bridges between chronicle in Defiant Joy, and also in GM You mentioned that you’ve seen Catholics and Protestants. How does an essay for The Quotable Chesterton, The Apostle of Common Sense on TV; this come about? Lewis often pointed Christian friends do you think Chesterton would be on KB Many Evangelicals rightly cherish and seekers to The Everlasting Man television were he alive today? Chesterton’s writings and legacy. And for many of the same reasons that KB I shouldn’t be surprised if he were. so far as detecting elements of “mere people so frequently recommend Mere After all, he spoke frequently on the Christianity” present in Chesterton’s Christianity today. BBC, and had a gift for that medium writing goes, one need look no further that I think anticipated and rivaled than someone like Lewis, who said GM Are you interested in telling your Lewis’s gift for giving radio addresses that in giving of his broadcast talks on young son Sam about Chesterton? a decade or so later. Then too, Ches- radio, which became the basis for his terton always thought of himself as a book Mere Christianity, he was trying KB Absolutely! I’ve already started. journalist. When it comes to television journalism, I think of someone like the late William F. Buckley, Jr., and the Firing Line program. In a setting like The Art of Debate that, Chesterton’s gifts and insights ;;A good cause deserves to be ;;That dangerous and sometimes would have shone. He was chari- defended by a good argument. (Illustrated soul-destroying phrase that there are table, witty, and had an incandescent London News, Dec. 17, 1921) two sides to a question is true, but is intellect. emphasized untruly. It is emphasized, ;;Nothing is so bright and cheering as that is to say, without the truth that GM How did your writing of one book a hostile statement that is really to the balances it. There are two sides to a morph into the writing of two books? point. (Illustrated London News, Feb. 2, 1929) question, but there is only one answer How did you choose which quotes to ;;[Modern men are] quite incapable to a question; that is, only one right include in your “quotable” Chesterton of seeing where their own line of answer. (Illustrated London News, June 3, 1911) book? argument is leading them; and I have ;;It is possible to speak much too KB I have my editor at Thomas Nelson, found that this particular sort of blind- plainly to be understood. Most men Joel Miller, to thank for The Quotable ness is very much more prevalent than with any convictions in a confused and Chesterton. I’d been thinking of doing I had myself supposed; perhaps much complicated age have had the almost such a companion book all the while more prevalent than the alternative of uncanny sensation of shouting at (modeled on Tyndale’s masterly com- sight. (Illustrated London News, June 21, 1930) people that a mad dog is loose or the pendium, The Quotable Lewis), but ;;The worst argument in the world is a house is on fire, to be met merely with had not as yet said anything about it. date. (Illustrated London News, July 13, 1935) puzzled and painful expressions, as if It was then that Joel called my the remark were a learned citation in agent, Bucky Rosenbaum, and asked: ;;One of the eternal marks of mad- Greek or Hebrew. (“The Amateur Historian,” “Would Kevin be willing to craft a ness or hysteria is arguing in a circle. William Cobbett) much needed anthology of Chesterton (Illustrated London News, Oct. 24, 1914) quotes, all traced back to their origi- ;;The difficulty is not so much to get nal sources? I’m thinking here of the people to follow a commandment as to model established by Tyndale’s book, get them even to follow an argument. The Quotable Lewis.” I was floored. (Illustrated London News, March 13, 1926)

GM Does “defiant joy” fill your life? Do ;;The only course, as in every quar- you read Chesterton to bring joy into rel, is to go back to first principles. I your life, or does Chesterton remind do not know how the thing might be us to remain joyful despite life? settled if it were left as a mere dispute about tastes…the only possible way of KB In Heretics, Chesterton wrote, debating these things in public is to “Paradox simply means a certain defi- ask for fundamentals or first prin- ant joy which belongs to belief.” I ciples. If there are such principles, it is really liked that when I first read it, best to debate on the basis of them. If and thought “defiant joy” would make there are no such principles, it is best a great title. And yes, I would have to not to debate at all. (Illustrated London News, say that my reading of Chesterton has Aug. 25, 1928) helped me understand what defiant joy looks like, and why it is to be trea-

12 Volume 14 Number 4, January/February 2011 : e T h i c s o f e l f l a n d :

“The Thinker,” a charcoal drawing by Kate Kellar, an 11th grade student at Chesterton Academy in St. Louis Park, Minnesota

Ethics of Elfland is reserved for submission from people younger than 18.

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 13 : S C h a l l o n C h e s T e r T o n : Moreover, we recall that Christ went to the desert alone to pray. Each Timely Essays on Chesterton’s Timeless Paradoxes of us is created to transcend the world. “But even the sanest poet will often wish to be away from men and alone with something else.” While we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, still something is always “not enough” in even our most intimate loves. They, too, On Men Being Like Gods open out onto something beyond themselves by being true to what they are. James V. Schall, S.J. “To teach people to believe in God may be in its highest sense a difficult very sin, in effect, is a repetition are, human beings, sense that human task even among Christians. But to of the sin found in Genesis. We beings, such as they are, are not the prevent people from thinking about make our own rule, not God’s, sole purpose of their lives. “For the God will be an impossible task even constitutive of the distinction special hungers of humanity are never among agnostics, or perhaps especially between good and evil. At first merely hungers for humanity,” as among agnostics.” The word “agnostic” Esight, if asked point blank, few would Chesterton put it. After all, the very literally means “not knowing.” Thus admit that they either want to be or word “humanity” is an abstraction from the logical question to ask an agnostic can be “like gods.” But if we watch an abstraction. We hunger after being, is: “What is it that you are unknow- them, or especially if we watch our- not abstractions. ing about?” He will have to say, “I do selves, we see that this temptation to be “like gods” is precisely one that is at the heart of every choice we make in life. Do we discover what is right In Praise of Phrases and follow it, or do we make what ”Half our speech consists of similes that remind us of no similarity; pictorial is right by doing what we choose? phrases that call up no picture; of historical allusions the origin of which we have Christ’s coming did not change this forgotten.” —G.K. Chesterton situation; it only provided a way freely to reestablish the law of God in our “Agree to disagree.” John Wesley (1703–1791) own souls once we had sinned. Implic- itly, we need to acknowledge that we are not gods. Wesley was an Anglican minister and theologian and one of the founders In August of 1989, the Chesterton of the Protestant denomination known as Methodism, an evangelical religious Review reprinted G.K. Chesterton’s movement popular throughout the United Kingdom as well as in North America. Introduction to Owen Francis Dudley’s In a sermon Wesley delivered on November 18, 1770, we find, book, Will Men Be Like Gods? (1925). There are many doctrines of a less essential nature, with regard That title was a provocative one. Ches- to which even the sincere children of God (such is the present terton begins with the remarkable weakness of human understanding) are and have been divided for comment that all the descriptions of many ages. In these we may think and let think; we may “agree a humanly made, god-like world—the to disagree.” But, meantime, let us hold fast the essentials of “the utopias, in other words—are “interest- faith which was once delivered to the saints.” ing,” but they are not “exhilarating.” The reason for this lack of exhilaration Those who object to “agree to disagree” as a form of timidity or a lack of is that the utopias limit their world conviction have forgotten that Wesley clearly recommended it for the inessential to “human things,” to what we can matters of doctrine and clearly not for what is essential. imagine. We thus have no sense of In a 1929 column for the Illustrated London News, G.K. Chesterton put the something breaking in from the out- matter as follows. side, which would be the case if we are really made for something greater than It is extraordinary to notice how few people in the modern world ourselves. can argue. That is why there are so many quarrels, breaking out If the object of our worship is again and again, and never coming to any natural end. People do man himself, however, especially not seem to understand even the first principle of all argument: man collectively, we are bound to be that people must agree in order to disagree. Still less do their disappointed. “It is not so much that imaginations stretch to anything so remote as the end or object of mankind is not enough as that man- all argument: that they should disagree in order to agree. kind has never felt it to be enough.” That is to say, the kind of beings we

14 Volume 14 Number 4, January/February 2011 : S C h a l l o n C h e s T e r T o n :

not know.” His theory requires him to doubt even his doubts. It is always interesting to notice that Christianity takes our minds seriously, yet with some humor. It sees no virtue in “not knowing” as such. It does not mind the man who doesn’t yet “get it.” But it affirms that knowing is what we are about, not “not knowing.” The very fact that we take the trouble to affirm that we do not know implies that we would like to know. By William Cobbett “The Apostle of Distributism” Dogmatic “not-knowing” is rather close to not wanting to know adamantly for William Cobbett, known to Chestertonians as “the Apostle of fear of what knowing requires. Distributism,” was a keen observer of his time. He documented “It is a paradox that it is more the economic and social shambles of an England caught in the throes of the Industrial Revolution and where distribution of possible to love men indirectly than to capital ownership was becoming increasingly concentrated. In love them directly.” Those whom we The Emigrant’s Guide, Cobbett offers his prescription: Go to love “indirectly” are categories, say, America. In early 19th century America, almost anyone could be- human beings, or all fat men, or all come an independent owner of capital. witty women. Actually, we can only Cobbett’s 1829 manual for new Americans describes American love Jane, George, or Harry, none of life from a perspective that complements Alexis de Tocqueville’s whom are perfect and a few of whom Democracy in America. This edition from Economic Justice may be downright obnoxious. With Media includes an extensive foreword adapting the principles of some amusement, Chesterton says that distributism to a modern economy. “few are fired with individual affection To Order for the five people sitting on the other The Emigrant’s Guide (240 pp, ISBN 978-0-944-997-01-7) is side of the railway-carriage.” available for $20 from Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble. Yet if we consult our faith and com, as well as by special order from local bookstores. For bulk/ take another look at these five in the wholesale orders (10 or more copies at a 20% discount), e-mail railway-carriage, or any five for that [email protected]. matter, “All these are sacred beings of equal value in the sight of God with the souls of Hildebrand and Shake- speare; but a man needs to be a little of a mystic to think so.” What a classic too knows that none is perfect, even it is something that is available to statement! And yet, as they sit there though each has the sense that there our understanding even though we in the railway-carriage, each may should be something more than he are far from practicing it in our own be pretty annoying in some way or already has. In being expelled from the lives. Revelation will take up and another. They scratch, talk incessantly Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve and deepen this transcendent theme, but on cell phones, snore, or want to sell their progeny were offered something it is already present to remind us that us something. they could not have anticipated. even the unlovable are lovable. They We find the ultimate things in the “Ordinary men find it difficult can indeed make themselves “unlov- oddest of people, even though we are to love ordinary men, at least in an able” by withdrawing from the human reluctant to admit it and cannot prove ordinary way.” Yet, they can love being good to lock themselves into their it exists. “That the halo will in any loved by anyone. We may not love each own self-defined good. But this with- case shine out of the interior of the other, but we may love those whom drawal, of course, implies the isolation fat farmer, by itself, and be visible to we recognize to be worthy. “Men can of hell where we are condemned to anybody anywhere, has never been sci- admit perfect charity before they live out our own definition of what is entifically demonstrated.” Yet, it may practice it.” We begin in imperfect good as that deviates from the good well be true that the halo is there. charity. We do not want men bickering that is in each human person, often “This vague charity or sense of with each other over all their defects. not accepted. sacred human values already points to Rather we want all men looking at a Ultimately, men will not be gods. a higher standard of sacredness. We third thing, at “the world’s desire and Rather they will remain what they are, have to look at men in a certain light the love-affair of all humanity, which individual human beings who, with in order to love them at all.” That is really the human sun that can shine others of their kind, behold what it light means that we love them as God upon the evil and the good.” is they seek unknowingly because, as loves them, yet God loves them also Chesterton calls this sense of they eventually discover, God had first in order that their sins be forgiven. He human worth a “human sun” because loved them.

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 15 44 New Mystery Stories Featuring G.K. Chesterton’s Incomparable Priest-Detective

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16 Volume 14 Number 4, January/February 2011 : B a l l a d o f G i l b e r t : The Poetry of G.K.Chesterton

Lilies Of The Valley (The Tragedy of An Idealist) Sic itur ad astra

Lilies white in the valley lay He scaled the heights of the lily’s crest, “Ladders to Heaven” the old wives say— And sat there silent and much impressed; “I will go up to Heaven,” the cricket said, On the top of a full-grown stalk you are “Though I’m bound to admit that I am not dead.” Terribly near to the morning star. The cricket’s colours were bright and blent, He gave one chirp out of life and limb His legs were many and excellent; To help the chaunt of the cherubim, The cricket was light of limb and wing, But a breeze blew sudden from Heaven knows where, But the cricket’s soul was a serious thing. And the stalk that swung in the wind was bare.

The beetle and mole, in the twilight dim, Found a moral at once for him, “There are heights too sacred for foot to press, Besides you die, and it makes a mess.” The cricket’s head in a pool they found, They collected his legs from the country round, But one thing troubled the beetle and mole, They never could find the cricket’s soul.

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 17 : Ta l e s o f t h e s h o r T b o w : to know about…to know about her dream. Her very bad dream. Beth wandered off into the kitchen, thinking to plan something for dinner. Then she thought she might attack her checkbook and A Very Bad Dream banking statement. Getting the numbers right always seemed to occupy by John Peterson more of her time than it should. “Where did I put that calculator?” she eth Corwin would not have in the house so far as Beth knew. Her asked herself. She could not remem- described her recurring dream husband was an incorrigible hunter ber and her searches were unavailing. as a nightmare—it did not and fisherman, and although he often She decided that Marshal would cer- frighten her. It was a very returned from the field or stream tainly have a calculator in his office. bad dream, and she certainly empty handed, he never seemed She did not often intrude there. She Bhated it. Each night she fervently discouraged by these failures. Beth believed that men for some unfath- hoped not to have the dream, yet did not begrudge her husband these omable reason need a space free every night, there it was. She was outings, but she missed him terribly, from the prying hands and eyes of considering the idea of seeing a even when he was away for just a their wives, and a certain amount of psychologist or counselor or even few hours. She was just grateful that clutter and confusion was required to a psychiatrist with the purpose of Marshal hadn’t taken up golf, that allow them to feel comfortable. There finding a way to stop her dreaming. It time-wasting, abominable silliness. Or was much about the male animal of was not something she felt she could poker. For her part, Beth spent her her species that mystified Beth, but discuss with Marshal. spare time knitting and quilting in she accepted these differences with She loved Marshal even more front of the TV, or trying to balance good humor. That’s just the way it is, than when they had first married, her checkbook. That was a monthly she told herself. though that very thought seemed task that she found embarrassingly Marshal’s desk displayed a radio, impossible. Beth simply adored the difficult. a daily planning calendar, an assort- man. She had no way of explain- Friends of the Corwins often ment of pencils and pens, and a ing why she would keep dreaming a referred to them as “the odd couple.” writing tablet. There was a computer dream in which she murdered him. Beth was short—not five feet tall—and with a large flat-screen display. Beth The dream made no sense. She didn’t she would readily admit that she was relieved to find that the com- think she was losing her mind—but carried a few too many pounds for puter and display were not turned on. then, she asked herself, is it a sign her height. Marshal was tall and thin, She was not a computer person. A of sanity to have such an ugly dream and Beth knew he was much more calculator was as close to electronic and to have it again and again? She intelligent and better educated than sophistication as she wanted in her did not have an answer. she was. She would also readily admit life, and the mysteries of the inter- Sometimes in her dream she they were not the most admired net held no attraction for her. Her found the gun hidden in a drawer, couple on the dance floor, but she approach was to let Marshal handle sometimes she found it on a shelf did not care. Their marriage, she the e-mails and the web and all those in a storeroom. Once it had been was absolutely convinced, was made other things she did not understand. lying beneath a newspaper on the in heaven. She did not want to understand them. kitchen table. In her waking life, Beth woke up at six o’clock as Beth quickly found a serviceable Beth had never fired a gun nor had she always did. She did not need an calculator in one of her husband’s she ever even held a real pistol in her alarm. Her husband was more of a desk drawers. She also noticed a note hands. Yet in the dream she calmly sleeper and needed waking up to written in a woman’s handwriting. It took hold of it—it was always a small get him off to work. This Saturday was brief and read as follows. “Yes handgun that she could handle easily morning he would have to be roused yes yes for Saturday morning, Mr. enough—and she carried it into the in time for breakfast and a trip to his Fisherman. Love you. PS, when when bedroom. There she took careful aim favorite stream for a few hours—prob- when are you going to find a way to and fired six shots into the back of ably wasted hours—of trout fishing. dump that stupid Beth?” The author her sleeping husband’s head. After She looked down at him fondly. of this message had pressed the that awful moment, she invariably fell Boy, he’s a sleeper, she murmured to notepaper to her mouth, and her red into a deep and restful sleep. This herself. She wondered if he was also lipstick made a kind of picture. It was struck her as strange. She wondered a dreamer. She had never thought to a slightly smudged picture of a kiss. why she did not wake up. ask him. The two had never discussed Beth stared at the note for several Marshal owned a rifle and a dreams, and Beth considered that a minutes. Then she looked into the shotgun, but there were no handguns blessing. She did not want Marshal drawer again and saw the gun.

18 Volume 14 Number 4, January/February 2011 : Ta l e s o f T h e s h o r T b o w :

ought to get its own house in order before telling the rest of us what Medicine Man to do.” by James G. Bruen, Jr. Dr. Cissal pushed past the priest into the hospital room, but stopped and turned back to face Fr. Petersen ot much use praying, Father,” what’s hereafter! Lunch. A Reuben as the priest responded. “The Church snickered Cy N. Cissal, MD. sandwich in the cafeteria. That’s houses many great sinners, even Standing in the doorway to what follows my rounds. Lunch is my among its clergy,” agreed Fr. Petersen. the hospital room, he did not hereafter!” “Heaven knows, I’m a sinner, too. But enter but smiled condescend- “You have a very limited perspec- judge the Church by her greatest Ningly at the priest who was already in tive, doctor,” laughed the priest. saints, not by her greatest sinners or the room, kneeling at the side of its “Perhaps your belly is your god?” He even by her mediocre members.” lone hospital bed with his back to the left the bedside and took a couple of “Wow!” snorted the doctor. “Talk door. “It doesn’t accomplish anything, steps toward the doctor. Looking the about stacking the deck.” you know,” added the doctor. doctor straight in the eye, he asked: “We don’t judge a medicine’s The black-clad cleric remained “Haven’t you ever considered what fol- worth by those who buy it but instead motionless for several seconds. Then lows this life?” by those who actually take it, doctor,” Fr. Paul Petersen made the Sign of “You’ve got to be kidding,” replied replied Fr. Petersen. “Similarly, judge the Cross before turning his head and the doctor. “I’m a man of science—a the Church by those who hear her shoulders to look at Dr. Cissal. “I’ve doctor of medicine, not a witchdoc- teachings and obey them, not by done all I can,” he said softly; “it’s up tor.” He struck the door jamb with her members who half-hear or who to God now.” his fist for emphasis. “I’m too busy disobey. Don’t judge the Church by “He’ll recover because of the healing people to worry about those Catholics who don’t take her medicines I’ve prescribed rather than whether they’re embalmed after they medicine.” the prayers you’ve said,” declared die, or cremated instead.” Dr. Cissal stared at the priest the doctor without moving from the “Embalmed? You’re quite a kidder for several moments before speak- doorway. “Faith healing doesn’t work; yourself, doctor,” observed the ing. “Look, Father, I’ve enjoyed our no use pretending it does.” priest. “I was, of course, speaking conversation. I really have. But it’s “Medicines are often effective,” of judgment, heaven, and hell, not going nowhere. It’s time I checked on conceded the priest as he stood to embalming or cremation.” my patient and finished my rounds. face the doctor, “but prayer is effica- “Look, Father,” sneered the Then I can go enjoy my hereafter.” cious, too.” doctor, “I’ve got no use for your He turned away from the priest and “Just clap your hands to show you mumbo jumbo or your hocus pocus. toward the hospital bed. believe, and Tinker Bell will come I’ve never understood why the hos- “Your patient?” said the priest. back to life!” laughed the doctor pital lets you religious types come “Oh, my. I ought have been clearer. while clapping his hands three times. in here anyway. You just get in the He died several minutes before you “What baloney,” he continued. “Sci- way and confuse people. You tell me: arrived, shortly after I anointed ence—not superstition, not séance, what’s going to heal this patient? him.” not fairy tales. That’s what will cure Medicine? Or the prayers of a church him.” full of pedophiles?” “I administered the Anointing of “A church full of—,” sputtered the the Sick to him,” said Fr. Petersen. priest, but the doctor interrupted “That’s a sacrament, not superstition. him. Many, including me, view it as an “I know. I know. You already said integral part of the greatest tale ever you don’t expect that your prayers told—a tale that’s too good to be true, will heal him,” laughed the doctor. but that nevertheless is true. “That takes you off the hook when “The Anointing’s one of the out- your praying doesn’t work, doesn’t ward signs instituted by Christ to give it? Well, let me tell you something: grace,” the priest continued. “Some medicine works.” times it does heal the sick person if “Prayer has a greater purpose that’s needed for his spiritual good; than just physical healing,” observed some times it strengthens him physi- the priest. cally and spiritually; and other times “Look, Father,” said Dr. Cissal it aids him on his journey to the sharply, “your church’s got no right hereafter.” to preach to the rest of us. It’s full “The hereafter?” snickered the of priests who like little boys. Maybe doctor. “The hereafter? I’ll tell you you’re not that type, but your church

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 19 : R o l l i n G r o a d : England by Kevin O’Brien

recently traced the footsteps of setting over Buckingham Palace, where Blessed John Henry Newman in I snapped a photo. and around Oxford, England, while But that is not what G.K. Chester- making a short film about his ton calls the sign of the world’s end. conversion. The true end of things is the appalling I Oxford seemed very much like and ridiculous conclusion the Anglican the England I got to know a bit on church has come to. The world may two visits twenty years ago. I was end in fire, or the world may end in impressed with the large crowds on ice, but the Anglican church is ending foot, many of whom were apparently in apathy, absurdity and self-parody. students in their twenties, with the I won’t go into details, but I can tell young ladies, who were very pert and you the feeling in Anglican churches attractive. It was the antithesis of a (formerly Catholic churches) is quite visit to Walmart. cold, with a kind of stolid refinement Frank C. Turner as John Henry Newman, Kevin O'Brien as Dominic Barberi We saw no traces of the Islamic of manners, a lingering melancholy, invasion, except in London, especially and an overwhelmingly sophisticated day, with long lines of penitents. Even at Heathrow Airport (of all places) complacency all about you. the ugly modern edifice named after where most of the counter workers And yet the Newman-affiliated Ora- Blessed Dominic Barberi in Littlemore are in Muslim regalia, asking for our torian Church in Oxford is filled with is staffed by serious-looking orthodox security documents. And there was the people at every Mass. Confessions are Catholic priests. ominous sight of an Islamic crescent offered almost non-stop throughout the The official Catholic publications in England and Ireland are liberal and downright anti-Catholic. But tellingly, the letters to the editor are all from the opposition—Catholics who take their faith seriously and who object to the false picture of the Church presented by these magazines and newspapers. Newman’s momentous conversion at Littlemore near Oxford 166 years ago was the beginning of the Catholic Literary Revival, and the opening of a door through which G.K. Chesterton entered and which led to the Second Spring beginning around us. Bar- beri’s fervent prayers have slowly and steadily been answered. Newman’s conversion has paved the way for many more, including, of course, Chesterton. Now that Newman has been beatified, Chesterton’s spirit is being revived. A faith and culture dead in the water are once again rising up, and a dove from above settles upon its shivering and dripping form. (View the short film, “To Follow the Light,” at the Web site of Theater of the Word Incorpo- rated: www.thewordinc.org.) Historic Oxford

20 Volume 14 Number 4, January/February 2011 : a l l i s G r i s T : to keep healthy. For as long as I can remember, the media insisted on it. But lately, they’ve reported that I can cut back. Maybe my body has learned to absorb water from the atmosphere. Whatever the reason, not having to Keeping Up guzzle it is a relief. When I guzzled it, by Joe Campbell I spent too much time in rest rooms, and I wasn’t resting. I used to smoke. I quit before it e were talking about hearts reported that eggs increase cholesterol. was widely reported that smokers are and how to keep them I kept on eating them despite what more likely than abstainers to get lung healthy. the media said. Oh, I know they now cancer and heart disease. It pleased “Drink red wine,” he report that eggs don’t increase cho- me to be ahead of the media for a advised. “It will shrink your lesterol, and I have a pretty good idea change. But only until they reported Wcholesterol.” why. I suspect that the negative public- that abstainers are more likely than “Thanks,” I said, and I drank it. ity embarrassed the chickens and they smokers to get Alzheimer’s disease. But it shrunk my brain. changed the recipe. I’d consider smoking again, but I can’t “So I got the wrong noun,” he said, I also suspect that cows changed remember where I left my pipe. when I complained. the recipe for milk, but not to our I’m not sure what to do about “You certainly did,” I replied. benefit. For more than a quarter the sun. When I was a boy, the media “Well, look on the bright side,” he century, the media reported that milk promoted tanning and every summer said. “At least I got the right verb.” prevents osteoporosis. Now, they say I turned several shades darker than That’s what I get for taking normal. In middle age, however, they medical advice from a grammarian. urged me to cover up, because sunlight Actually, it was second-hand medical If I’m lucky, the coffee can cause skin cancer. advice. The grammarian took it from I’ve been playing peek-a-boo with the media. will protect my brain the sun ever since. So you can imagine A while back, they reported that from the red wine my surprise when they reported that red wine protects the heart and may I need sunlight to produce vitamin lower the risk of getting cancer. Many and the red wine will D because, among other things, it of us began drinking red wine as a protects against internal cancer. Who result. Later, they reported that red protect my pancreas would have thought the sun could wine shrinks the brain. Few of us from the coffee. be that changeable? When I took stopped drinking red wine as a result. I astronomy, my teacher told me it was guess our brains had shrunk so much stationary. we didn’t have sense enough to stop. that it may cause osteoporosis. Unlike I hope I don’t lose sleep over it. I Maybe we should have drunk more the chickens, which don’t seem to care don’t sleep that well as it is. The media coffee. Recently, they reported that if we steal their eggs, the cows object if haven’t decided how much sleep we coffee protects the brain. Previously, we steal their milk, and they’re getting need. Too little or too much isn’t good however, they linked coffee to a higher back at us. for us, apparently. But nobody knows risk of pancreatic cancer, which usu- If that depresses you, eat dark how much is enough. It depends, they ally leads to a speedy demise. Never chocolate. The media say it will elevate say, on our circadian rhythms. As a mind, now they’re suggesting that your mood. If you eat too much, jazz musician, I’m more attuned to coffee can increase longevity. though, it will also elevate your weight, syncopated rhythms. Maybe that’s why So I’m thinking that I should drink but at least you’ll feel good about it. I’ve got insomnia. ample quantities of both beverages. If Of course, if the chocolatiers Medicine is advancing at such a I’m lucky, the coffee will protect my use low calorie sugar substitutes, you dizzying pace it’s amazing how the brain from the red wine and the red should keep your weight down. At least media keep up. Why, they often learn wine will protect my pancreas from the that’s what the media used to report. about the latest developments ahead coffee. If I’m unlucky, and each fails to Lately, however, they say that sugar of family doctors. Whenever I think counteract the harmful effects of the substitutes could prompt you to con- there’s something wrong with me, I other, I’ll at least have a healthy heart, sume more calories from other sources check with the media first so I can thanks to the red wine, and extra years and push your weight up. Which bring my doctor up to date. Of course, to abuse it, thanks to the coffee. suggests that sugar substitutes are as there’s such a shortage of doctors, Yes, if we insist on eating and vindictive as cows. many of us don’t have one. drinking, we risk abusing our hearts. I Thank goodness I no longer have I wonder if editors make house risked abusing mine after the media to drink eight glasses of water a day calls.

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 21 : a l l i s G r i s T :

Sir Isaac Newton, English physicist, mathematician and one of the Hawking’s Opinion Goes Against most influential persons in all history, believed in God. Although the laws the Giants of Science, Philosophy of motion and universal gravitation by Joseph Racioppi became Newton’s best-known discoveries, he warned against using them to “If there were no God, there would St. Thomas Aquinas, whose synthesis view the universe as a mere machine, be no atheists.” —G.K. Chesterton is generally recognized as one of the as though akin to a great clock. “Grav- greatest works of human thought. ity,” he wrote, “explains the motions tephen Hawking, the famous Aquinas’ titanic work, Summa of the planets, but it cannot explain British theoretical physicist Theologica, is famous for its five argu- who set the planets in motion. God and cosmologist, says God did ments for the existence of God. It is governs all things and knows all that is not create the universe. In his very difficult reading, but one of the or can be done.” new book, The Grand Design main points is that God is outside of Unknown to most is the fact that S(co-authored with Leonard Mlodinow), time, and has no beginning or end. Newton wrote more on religion than Hawking writes: “Because there is a Another is that we can demonstrate science and also attempted to decode law such as gravity, the universe can the existence of God from his effects, the Bible for hidden messages. and will create itself from nothing. i.e., whatever is in motion (the plan- The great French scientist, Spontaneous creation is the reason ets) was put in motion by another; if Louis Pasteur, famous for so many there is something rather than nothing, there is no first cause, there can be no landmark discoveries, including the why the universe exists, why we exist.” second causes. Therefore it is neces- germ theory of disease, believed in He adds: “It is not necessary to sary to admit a first efficient cause to God. He believed that philosophical invoke God to light the blue touch which we may give the name God. and religious questions could not be paper and set the universe going.” I can understand atheists ignoring analyzed by methods of science, and This bold and brash statement goes Aquinas, but what about Newton, argu- had little hope that science would against the teachings and writings of ably the most brilliant of scientists? reveal the ultimate nature of things. C N G… Adaptations of Chesterton’s Father Brown mysteries.

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Among other things, Pasteur disproved One cannot leave out the Italian one fell swoop he renders meaningless spontaneous generation, an obsolete physicist, mathematician, astronomer, the Bible, Moses, Christ, the cruci- theory regarding the origin of life from and philosopher Galileo Galilei who, fixion, heaven, hell, sin, atonement, inanimate matter. as most people know, was tried and prayer, morals and laws. “No God” Doesn’t spontaneous generation condemned by the Inquisition in 1633. would mean the world’s great religions sound like Hawking’s theory? And how “Galileo,” Hawking writes, “perhaps were all a sham, that the colossal does a universe form from nothing? more than any other single person, wrongs of the world will go uncor- Hawking admits that for his theory was responsible for the birth of rected; I can’t, and won’t accept that to work, gravity must exist—gravity is modern science.” Galileo was a devout premise. something, is it not? Catholic throughout his life. For it is only theology that can Philosopher Imanuel Kant noted We need not accept the notion attempt to answer big questions like that the ultimate nature of the uni- of no God; that we are here by acci- why we are here, do our lives have verse, the soul and God, fall outside dent. Hawking’s statement does seem any purpose, how should we live, and the range of rational knowledge. We extremely prideful and arrogant. In whether we shall live again. can maintain neither their existence nor nonexistence, and we are therefore justified in continuing to believe without need of proof in the existence of God and in the immortality of the soul. The great German mathematician/astronomer Johannes Kepler discovered the laws of planetary motion, which confirmed the helio- centric theory of Copernicus. Kepler calculated the true shape of the solar system, discovered the three basic laws of planetary motion, and laid the foun- dation for Newton’s physics. In Michael Hart’s ranking of the one hundred most influential persons in history, Kepler is ranked 75th (Isaac Newton is ranked number two). Kepler believed in God. “His life, his work, his mathematics were always about God. Everything he did was about God. Kepler found God in the hidden mathematical harmonies of the universe in as deep a way as he found God in the revelation of Scripture.” John A. Connor adds in his book, Kepler’s Witch: Thus, the heavens contain a celestial light that the ordered mind contem- plates and, in doing so, plumbs the secret places of God, revealing even the Creator to the observing mind, for only by design, a divine design, could such heavenly order come about. According to Conner, Kepler’s secret of the universe was possible for him only because he (Kepler) believed in a divine order to things, a “theory of everything” that was a direct projection of the mind of God. The planets were at these distances not because they happened to be there; they were there because God meant them to be there.

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 23 : a l l i s G r i s T :

Protestant. I converted to Rome in just this manner. Prayer and discernment Chesterton and Conversion one day culminated in the realization by Art Livingston that Anglicanism might not be the Western equivalent to the Eastern Orthodox Church, a belief that is the The High Churchman does not a century ago, dear to the hearts of nearly universal position of the Anglo- leave the Church of England because many of Gilbert Magazine’s readers. Catholic. As long as he thought himself he discovers for the first time that the G.K. Chesterton’s conversion from a Catholic already, where would be Church of Rome is Catholic. He leaves the Church of England because he Anglo-Catholicism to full communion his motivation to convert? The subject discovers that the Church of England with Rome follows the pattern of most appeared merely to be a discussion of is Protestant. That is the paradox; for such transformations. He wrote the the collegiality of bishops. he does so when he comes to think forgoing observation in 1933, three Many Chestertonians seem what the Protestants also think. While years before his death, having had amazed that even a man as insightful he disagrees with the Low Church- more than a decade after converting as Chesterton could not see through men, he remains with them; when to Rome to mull over his leaving of to the heart of the matter at a glance. he agrees with them, he leaves them. the Church of England, ample time In this they do not consider the quite —G.K. Chesterton for reflection. real quandary, that Chesterton might It seems a reasonable conclusion have encountered difficulties more he establishment in January of that more than a few pious plati- than chimerical. The primary question, the Personal Ordinariate of Our tudes about King Henry VIII and his then, is to face the truth of the matter, Lady of Walsingham in Eng- quite real iniquities were required to which is that Chesterton had believed land makes this a good time to convince Chesterton that the Angli- himself a catholic—note the lower case reflect on a conversion, nearly T can Communion is irreconcilably c—all along.

Poor Old Democracy

;;The seed of Democracy, the assembly of the village or the ;;Men are not equal in their realization of equality. (“The tribe, is as old as the world. (“The Winter Feast,” The Apostle and the Wild Unknown Warrior,” The Apostle and the Wild Ducks) Ducks) ;;A despot can execute a man; a ;;As I understand the democratic idea, Parliament can impeach a man. it is that the vast mass of ordinary But can anything except a democ- people, including all the poor people racy boycott a man? Yet the roots and the working people, should have of Irish prosperity today are very the maximum of direct effect upon probably due to that powerful use Government. (“Culture and the Coming Peril,” of public opinion. Oh yes, there is Speech, 1927) a people all right. Where there is no People, the visions perish. (New ;;The democratic movement of the Witness, March 12, 1914) last two centuries has not frozen, but loosened and liquefied. Instead of ;;Democracy drives its traditions becoming more pedantic in its old too hard; but democracy is the age, it has grown more bewildered. We only thing that keeps any tradi- have turned the freedom of democracy tions. (“American Notes,” Appreciations) into a mere scepticism, destructive of ;;Before Democracy is really everything, including democracy itself. destroyed, how about making a (“The Progressive,” George Bernard Shaw) real attempt to get it established? ;;I do believe in democracy. Since I Perhaps it is an overstatement happen to believe in it, I happen to to speak of its destruction, but I know what it is. I believe that, though for one am very conscious of its all human Governments are faulty, danger, and the more so because I that is least faulty in which the com- am one of the few who are so old- monest sort of men can ask most fashioned as to like it, and because directly for what they want and get it; it is heavily threatened, by the and where they are least at the mercy of a superior class. growth of Bolshevist ideas on the one side and Fascist ideas (Illustrated London News, May 5, 1917) on the other. (G.K.’s Weekly, Feb. 14, 1935)

24 Volume 14 Number 4, January/February 2011 : a l l i s G r i s T :

All too often one hears sincere monasteries under Henry, and who Chestertonians making statements were responsible for erecting the that make any Anglo-Catholic cringe, first modern police state, cared such as “Isn’t it amazing that Ches- little for religion. From the time terton wrote Orthodoxy in 1908, the Stuarts assumed the monarchy, considering that he didn’t become the Church of England, on the a Catholic until 1922?” Chesterton other hand, clearly had become a was a man of the mind always, but schismatic church, not a heretical his critics sometimes seem to discuss one. It is possible to extend this INTRODUCING GKC everything but what Chesterton in all discussion by answering potential likelihood believed. objections, but this is how the in the 21st Centrury Perhaps some understanding of argument appears as furniture in with quality products & services what Chesterton converted from may the Anglo-Catholic mind. This is be helpful for understanding why he also most likely what Chesterton changed his mind, and the mystery thought and believed for the first of his delayed conversion. From all two-thirds of his career. The impor- Chesterton Quote accounts, Chesterton became Anglo- tance of these matters here is that Catholic at least four or five years only a change of mind on the issue prior to writing Orthodoxy, and of catholicity could affect his alle- certainly the catholicity of that book giance to such a church. T-SHIRTS has never been questioned. It must We have a Chestertonian Wit & Wisdom to Wear! be emphasized that the majority of paradox here: One cannot convert Anglo-Catholics believe that they if belief doesn’t call for it; a man are part of a bridge church that has cannot move into his own house. the capacity to heal Christendom by He already lives there. Then at DAILY GKC QUOTE bringing all denominations to the some point the Anglican Church via Twitter, Facebook, and email table and restore unity; the question refuses to take the right stand on a is whether the Church of England as moral issue, or perhaps the poten- a whole believed this. Most likely not, tial convert questions the validity UNCLE CHESTNUT BOOK & but among those espousing this view of Anglican ordination. Certainly was John Henry Newman, who before something permits him to see his conversion to Rome emphasized that his real home is in Rome. A Anglican catholicity, a paradigm genuine grasp of Chesterton’s TABLE GYPE often repeated in the followers he left spiritual problem illuminates our for little ones & the young at heart behind. understanding of him and his work. A direct line from Newman’s A lot of glib talk about Henry’s Anglican perspective takes us to the wives, however, can throw potential MICROCAPITALISM: works of Dorothy L. Sayers, Charles converts into the Tiber instead of Williams, and C.S. Lewis, among helping them cross it. others. Lewis also tried to heal the As the Anglican church is even DISTRIBUTISM 2.0 breach that separates Christians and now dissolving in the midst of its Read the Manifesto for FREE! dubbed it “mere Christianity.” Lewis own contradictions, Catholics must was actually following Chesterton, be properly prepared to help these however, who rarely spoke of sectar- people, not drive them away, by ian matters until 1922, and after that understanding more completely CHESTERTON SEARCH not as often as one might expect. how they think. If a profoundly Search the text of GKC’s writings “But didn’t the Anglican Church religious thinker like Chesterton begin because Henry VIII wanted required twenty years of discern- to get a divorce?” I hear someone ment before converting, imagine ask. Well, no. Henry’s truly Protes- the confusion existing in the mind tant church came apart under Mary of the average Anglo-Catholic VISIT US ON THE WEB Tudor’s reign. The Elizabethan Settle- today. ment, as it was called, is far more We Chestertonians, in the EternalRevolution.com apropos to the point. The resulting manner of St. Paul as he preached persecutions and martyrdoms were the god unknown to the Greeks, indeed horrible, but the motiva- can begin to unravel the modern JOIN US ON FACEBOOK tions for these were more political Anglo-Catholic crisis by starting at facebook.com/EternalRevolution than religious. The offspring of the the most obvious place—the con- noveau riche who had plundered the version of G.K. Chesterton.

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 25 : a l l i s G r i s T :

date. And, of course, she is quite adept at ‘Girl, Please!’ confronting and conquering the bad guys. Castle himself appears physically A Meditation on Television’s Manly Women and Wimpy Men strong and quite fit, and certainly does not by Lorraine V. Murray fit the wimp stereotype. Still, the writers tame his masculinity by having Castle’s teen-age daughter—and his mother—fre- f I see one more GRRRL on TV, mild psychiatrist who slouches about in quently get the upper hand with him. Also, I swear I’m going to scream. In cute T-shirts and ridiculous little hooded he does not carry a gun when he accom- case you don’t know, a GRRRL is jackets more befitting a high-school panies Beckett, who is always armed. a female who is proficient in the sophomore than an M.D. There are, alas, many more examples. martial arts, who carries a gun at all There are many scenes with Dr. On Eureka, we have a female law- Itimes, and who is stronger and more Magnus and daughter Ashley with huge enforcement officer who is a definite courageous than any man around. and hefty guns in their hands as they stalk GRRRL complete with muscles and guns. Backed into a corner, she doesn’t go monsters, while poor Will trails limply On Battlestar Galactica, there are fright- “eek”; she growls. behind clutching a dinky little flashlight. ening numbers of muscular women who Curiously, these female warriors are So much for obvious Freudian symbols. think nothing of getting into fist fights not macho wannabes sporting crew cuts, Then there is Fringe, a show whose with men. big ugly boots, and female “partners.” On female protagonist, Olivia Dunham, is On such shows, the GRRRLs consis- the contrary, GRRRLs on TV tend to be a svelte blonde FBI agent with all the tently come out ahead while battling men wafer thin, busty, and drop-dead beautiful. earmarks of a GRRRL. twice their size. In some scenes, the meek It seems TV scriptwriters are Olivia belongs to the ranks of other and mild men are shown cowering on the taking the whole “femi-Nazi” thing one female FBI agents on TV who apparently floor after a skirmish with a woman half strange step forward by creating female exist in a world without hormones. These their size. characters who demonstrate traditional women are gorgeous and single, but never I have nothing against masculine behavior, while women using guns or self- demoting their male counter- defense techniques when under parts to weary, whiny wimps. attack. But this extreme role We find this dreadful reversal on TV is alarming on development on Sanctuary, many levels. It seems that the where the leading female stronger and more dominant character, Dr. Helen Magnus, the women become, the weaker is a brilliant, competent, and and more submissive the totally gorgeous research sci- men become. entist who also is courageous You may recall the old and cunning when stalking nursery rhyme that explored various monsters. what little girls and little boys With her arsenal of guns were made of. For boys, the and her total lack of fear, Dr. answer was snips and snails Magnus is a definite GRRRL, and puppy dog tails. For girls and so is her daughter, Ashley. it was sugar and spice and all Cornered by a malicious, maniacal seem to have a date. And even when they things nice. murderer with mayhem in mind, Ashley are paired off with available and attrac- Men were once featured in chivalric doesn’t hesitate to vanquish him with a tive men at work, they show nary a spark tales as knights in shining armor who swift kick in the face, which she accom- of romantic interest. This whole phe- were eager to rescue damsels in distress. plishes without scratching her designer nomenon started, of course with X-Files, Sadly, on too many TV shows today, they high heels. where it took countless shows before are demoted to weary wimps whining to In fact, whenever Ashley gets into Dana Scully and Fox Mulder realized be whisked away from all their worries a fight with a man, no matter how huge they were members of the opposite sex. by a woman. and horrible he happens to be, you can My third example is Castle, a show And it seems that in the case of bet good money that it will be the guy that I rather enjoy because the main GRRRLs we can forget the sweetness who limps away—and certainly not character, a mystery writer called Richard and spice. On TV, GRRRLs are made of this GRRRL. Castle, has a wacky and wise approach to knives and guns and a big hefty kick in On such TV shows it is not surpris- solving crimes. Sadly, though, Kate Beck- the face of tradition. And that really isn’t ing that men often get short shrift. After ett, the show’s female detective, displays so nice at all. all, a GRRRL does not need rescuing by the same mind-numbing mix of GRRRL a man. In fact, she’s usually the one to traits that TV writers seem to love. Lorraine Murray’s latest books are Death of a save him. A prime example is Sanctu- Beckett is shapely and beautiful, but Liturgist, and a biography of Flannery O’Connor, ary’s Dr. Will Zimmerman, a meek and she lives alone and never seems to have a The Abbess of Andalusia.

26 Volume 14 Number 4, January/February 2011 : C h e s t e r t o n u n i v e r s i t y : mocks it, feeds off it, dances frantically round it. But for one intense instant, An Introduction to the Writings of G.K. Chesterton by Dale Ahlquist everything stops, just as everything has to stop when a baby is born. Life is interrupted by life. Almost every line of every Ches- Hark! Laughter terton poem is a poem in itself. “The Truce of Christmas” begins, “Passion- Like a Lion Wakes ate peace is in the sky.” Now that’s a corker. We do not normally con- The Spirit of Christmas nect the adjective, “passionate,” with the noun, “peace.” But Christmas is hristmas is past, all of the antici- especially because this was a subject in founded on a paradox. It is a feast in pation and celebration banished which Chesterton’s charity seemed to defiance of winter. It is the story of a for another year. It is hard to shine most brightly. homeless family being celebrated in write about that magical and It was Marie Smith who finally every home. It is kings bowing down. It mysterious season right now. It carried out Maisie’s idea and created is (in Chesterton’s exquisite line that is Cwould be easier to write about it in the a book by Chesterton on Christmas. surprisingly not included in this book) summer. “Christmas in July,” means She went on to put together five post- that moment when “the hands that had something: it means you have an humous Chesterton collections, only made the sun and stars were too small expected gift, a celebration that seems one fewer than Dorothy Collins. The to reach the huge heads of the cattle.” out of place. “Christmas in March” Spirit of Christmas is probably the We begin to consider what it means: doesn’t mean anything. We can think most successful and possibly the most “passionate peace is in the sky.” about the crucifixion and resurrection satisfying. There is one of his Christmas anytime, and in fact, we are supposed This book could easily have been poems that grows more beautiful for to think about it rather pointedly at five times larger, but even though it me every time I read it. “The Wise least once a week. But we keep our represents only a fraction of Ches- Men.” It ends with a verse that epito- thoughts about Christmas confined terton’s Christmas writings, it is an mizes G.K. Chesterton: humble yet to one special season. Easter doesn’t excellent selection, containing both triumphant, with a joy that still rattles even stay in one place, but Christmas familiar delights and unusual gems. the world: is fixed on the calendar. The Crucifix is Presented in mostly chronological always on the wall, but the Nativity set order, Marie provides a pleasing layout Hark! Laughter like a lion wakes only comes out once a year. of poems, essays, stories and even To roar to the resounding plain, Children, of course, go a little the very rare play, “The Turkey and And the whole heaven shouts and crazy at Christmas. G.K. Chesterton the Turk.” When the book was pub- shakes, says they enjoy everything about lished in 1984, most of its material For God Himself is born again, Christmas—except getting smacked was appearing between the covers of And we are little children walking (which, he muses, is probably where a book for the first time. The other Through the snow and rain. that particular tradition began). And rarity, in addition to the mummer’s while children do indeed enjoy Christ- play, was the uncollected poem Gloria mas, Chesterton claims he enjoys in Profundis—the paradoxical “Glory Christmas more as an adult than he to God in the Lowest.” did as a child. The appreciation of As is evident in such selections domesticity, like the appreciation of as “The Shop of Ghosts” and “The Virgil, increases with age. He says, Modern Scrooge,” Chesterton shares “The fun of Christmas is founded on an intimate connection to Christmas the seriousness of Christmas.” with his favorite writer, Charles Dick- Each year for more than thirty ens. This is not surprising, since both years, Chesterton would write at least of them share this intimate connec- five or six articles on Christmas, along tion to Christmas with all the rest of with one or two poems and some other Christendom. Chesterton argues that odd piece, to be spread among the Dickens saved Christmas in England. journals for which he was a regular Chesterton helped save Dickens in contributor and Yuletide issues of other England, thereby preserving some of journals for which he was not. His biog- our Christmas traditions, including the rapher Maisie Ward once expressed snarling of seasonal fools whose senti- the desire to collect all of Chesterton’s ments amount to “Bah! Humbug!” writings on Christmas into one volume, The Nativity represents a detach- not only because there was such a won- ment from the world that the world Detail. Beatrice Wilczynski’s illustration of derful variety of material available, but cannot explain, even though the world “The Wise Men” by G.K. Chesterton (1976).

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 27 : T h e s i g n at u r e o f m a n : Chesterton on Art remind us of those dusty theologians of the seventeenth century who very nearly did burn Raphael. The great cartoons of Raphael were threatened by the Puritans, and only saved by a certain Pagan commonsense which was curiously mingled with the Puritan prejudices of Cromwell. The Venus de Milo But idiotic as such iconoclasm is, whether it calls itself Puritan or Prole- by G.K. Chesterton tarian, it seems to me more reasonable than another principle and practice, Venus of Milo; it would be like owning ertain works of art, such as which the same sort of people apply the moon. But I believe that an English the Venus of Milo, exhaust to a somewhat different sort of thing. oligarch would think owning the Venus our aspiration. We can deduce The Venus of Milo and the cartoons of of Milo quite natural, all in the day’s Venus from the torso of Venus. Raphael are very extraordinary things; work or absence of work. You cannot play the Venus of extraordinarily suggestive to most of There is a light as of antiquity over CMilo on the trombone. Shaw is like the us, extraordinarily provocative to the everything. The Parisii bring boards Venus of Milo; all that there is of him poet whose clear carol I have quoted to barricade the Venus of Milo against is admirable. above. Now it is conceivable that men iconoclasts. We have as good a National Gal- should propose to do without extraor- Even if the Prussian attempt on lery as anybody. But nobody has so dinary things; it is much stranger to Paris had not wholly collapsed as it many Unnational Galleries as we have. talk of doing without ordinary things. has, I doubt whether the Prussians Nowhere else in the civilised world are It is much stranger to find them abol- would have destroyed everything. I works of art of the most gigantic scope ishing, not only works of art, but works doubt whether they would even have and importance so easily thought of as of necessity. It is more rational to say destroyed the Venus de Milo. More the possessions of some private man. I that men can do without the Venus probably they would have put a pair believe strongly in the sentiment of pri- of Milo than that men can do without of arms on it, designed by some rising vate property; and have often defended arms, after the manner of the Venus German artist. And the two arms thus it. But there is a common sense and a of Milo. It would be better even to put added would look at once like the humour in the sense of property; if it Raphael’s cartoons in the fire than to arms of a woman at a wash-tub. loses these it must perish. I should feel pretend that we can do without the fire. Among the more horrible crimes very nervous if I owned the original Now these dehumanised intellectuals attributed to the Bolshevists is that do really want to do without the fire; of having produced the following four in the practical sense of the fireside. lines of poetry: They do want to amputate the arms In the name of our morrow we’ll burn of the woman; the arms that through Raphael, all ages have held up the child. In The museums destroy, crush the flow- other words, these moderns have some ers of Art, muddled idea that they can altogether For the maidens in glittering king- get rid of the minimum of labour and doms of the future responsibility required in daily life, and In their beauty will Venus of Milo especially in family life. surpass. I know what Coventry Patmore meant when he said calmly that it Nobody can object to the maidens would have been quite as Catholic of the future improving on the Venus to decorate his mantelpiece with the of Milo, especially in the matter of Venus of Milo as with the Virgin. arms. But we should like to know a little more about the glittering king- From “The Time of Transition,” Charles Dick- doms of the future, before we send the ens; “Maeterlinck,” Varied Types; Illustrated rest of the goddess to follow wherever London News, June 19, 1920; “The Irishman,” her arms have gone. All this is vulgar George Bernard Shaw; Illustrated London vandalism; but the only real interest, News, June 26, 1909; September 19, 1914; of course, is not in how new, but how “Letters to an Old Garibaldian,” The Appetite of old, this vandalism is. The gentleman Tyranny; Illustrated London News, Oct. 4, 1919; who announces that he is going to “The Real Obstacles,” The Catholic Church burn Raphael really only serves to and Conversion.

28 Volume 14 Number 4, January/February 2011 : t h e f ly i n G i n n : being creative in breaking it, and inter- Home rule at home preting the right shape for the use. The second lesson I was trying to teach is that we learn by imitation. This Teaching Science “learn by doing” approach circumvents those obstacles to a good scientific by David Beresford education such as thick glossy textbooks. If textbooks, as Neil Postman argued, “Frogs have no hair, there is a milk them; we were using the sticks to walk can interfere with education, this is shop in Praed Street, and camels with. I wanted the students to learn that especially true for a scientific education. cannot work miracles.” —G.K. Chesterton, modern tools have narrow uses whereas Scientific insights come from observing “A Fable in Bricks and Mortar” primitive tools have multiple uses. nature, and to do science requires think- Telling the children to put the ing and engaging all the senses to gain live on a farm. A local kindergarten sticks down would not have prevented new knowledge. teacher asked if she could bring her them from using them as weapons if Needless to say, my plan of search- students to our farm to learn about they wanted; the ground was littered ing in the creek for frogs was not science and nature. Of course, I with them. I trusted that the teacher allowed, nor was hiking through the agreed, and I organized the day of was not going to use a stick as a swamp, walking in the pond to catch Istudy accordingly. weapon, and I saw no a priori reason tadpoles, climbing trees to see a bird’s When the students arrived, I began why it was assumed that the children nest, picking up the limestone and gran- by giving a short talk on trees and were likely to do so. ite rocks (more weapons!), or drinking their names, and we set out for a walk. It is important for a scientific water from the spring. These activities I brought my walking stick, and we education that students learn by touch. were the whole point of the scientific ambled through a woods, a swamp, and Tools allow us to extend the reach of training I was trying to give the stu- arrived at an artesian well or spring. touch to explore both nature around dents: that pond water is cold and slimy, Here I showed them the water coming us and in the tool itself. Our whole that tree branches are rough and full up from the ground, and explained evolutionary history is associated with of ants and other insects, that spring what groundwater is. I then suggested developing tools from objects near at water tastes different than city water. that they collect some water bugs and hand. The most fundamental, consis- Mercifully, the children were allowed frogs from the creek. We climbed a hill tent, and unchanged tool from cave to hold a chicken, one at a time—my and looked at some fossils, compared to condominium is a wooden stick in purpose with this was to show them granite to limestone along the fence the hand. The hand naturally grasps that chickens have fast heartbeats, have rows, saw some cows, goats, pigs, and a ahold of a wooden stick and is satisfied alert eyes, and can feel fear if held too donkey. When we returned to the barn- in doing so. Every human hand, that tightly—after which they had to wash yard, everyone got to hold a chicken is, except those confined to a modern their hands in disinfectant. and then play in the sandbox. classroom to learn about nature. And yet, despite the palpable absur- This was my curriculum, none of There are many lessons about the dity of the regulations, the resilience it superfluous or unplanned; it was a world taught by grasping a walking of the children overcame the obstacles scientific focus using the methods of stick: that we need physical things, that placed in front of them and they learned, the peripatetic school, a pedagogy that we are tool makers, that reality is medi- answering all my scientific questions cor- is as old as human history, written and ated by things. The second idea is that rectly for the quiz. At the end of the day, unwritten. Yet half of my projected students learned by imitation—imitating the children were sad to be leaving and program of instruction was forbidden me by picking up a stick of their own, asked if they could come back again: but by the teachers for their own modern of course! administrative reasons. I do not criti- cize them in this, for they were simply following the rules they had been given. First, during the hike, lots of children picked up fallen cedar branches for walking sticks of their own so they could imitate me. We looked like a diminutive caricature of a 1950s scout troop out for the day. The teachers put a quick stop to this, saying that the sticks were weapons and not allowed during school time. Of course, sticks are weapons; they are in fact, like all ancient human implements, a multiuse tool. I was not planning a fight with

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 29 : t h e f ly i n G s Ta r s : crafted a pleasant little philosophy of gratitude for himself, when his ability “What do you call the man who wants to embrace the to understand himself as he was had chimney sweep?” “A saint,” said Father Brown. —G.K. Chesterton also developed. He was different. It was a good “different.” This happened to also coincide with his meeting a lovely lady who listened, conversed, and began to care. And as anyone who has fallen The Life of a Public Figure in love knows, once you get past the by Nancy Carpentier Brown getting-to-know-you period and enter the two-shall-become-one phase of a relationship, a couple develops a Chesterton lived largely Why did he hate school, and yet love you-and-me-against-the-world kind in the public spotlight, learning epic poetry and reading tales of attitude, which helps to cope and took his cheers and of chivalry so much? He knew he was with difficulties. G.K. his jeers with surprising different, but different how? Did he But the more amazing find is that ease. Or did he? have a brain defect? Chesterton must Chesterton rarely lost his cool. In Was there ever a time when Gil- have wondered. checking biographies, we find those bert and Frances stood in the kitchen, After reading all he’d read, he few times when Chesterton got upset snacking on sausages and sipping also must have wondered if he wrote are actually numbered and noted, not burgundy while talking over the day, differently. Other people wrote things because they occurred so frequently— and Gilbert might have confessed that which didn’t create a firestorm of criti- imagine if someone wrote down all the a reader wrote in a letter stating how times he was upset; could he stop at much he hated Chesterton’s writing? two or three?—but because they hap- “It is,” said an anonymous Chesterton rarely lost pened so rarely. reviewer in The Westminster Gazette, his cool. In checking An author noted that if one offered July 2, 1910, “quite useless to argue a hand to Gilbert to assist him up or with Mr. Chesterton.” biographies, we find down stairs, he protested. Another Wrote another unsigned reviewer those few times when remarked that if Frances offered in The Saturday Review on July 30, second helpings and Gilbert said no, 1910, “Mr. Chesterton’s most engag- Chesterton got upset and she asked, “Are you sure?” Gilbert ing quality is his extreme simplicity of are actually numbered would then become upset. Once Doro- mind. He always see the obvious thing, thy Collins refused to drink wine with and jumps to the obvious conclusion.” and noted, because they Gilbert, and that upset him, too. The reviewer goes on, “Born clever, he happened so rarely. These incidentals show us not has written a great deal too much.” that Gilbert was human and could Did readers ever call Chesterton become upset, but prove how gener- names? Did they promise to ruin cism. Other people wrote things which ally good humored he was. What about his career? Did they call him thick touched upon their family life or their the Marconi scandal? What about the or dense? Did they accuse him of personal beliefs without a tsunami of Boer War? What about his brother’s being a simpleton or an innocent? rebuttals and put-downs. What was untimely death? Did they unfriend or block him from wrong with him? The most amazing thing of all their newsfeeds? At some point during Gilbert’s about Chesterton is his good nature I am quite sure these occasions or young life, he accepted the fact that through thick and thin. This he was not their equivalents occurred, and that in he was different. Today people have born with, none of us have a “good” all the world, perhaps Frances might suspected Chesterton of having vari- gene. In fact, original sin means we have been the only one who knew ous disorders with names that didn’t all have a “bad” gene, that tendency whether these events bothered him exist back when Chesterton was living, towards doing what we know is not or not. like Asperger’s and Autism-Spectrum. right. Chesterton had a will to over- Certainly in the eyes of the world, Putting a label on a person doesn’t come this tendency, and to remind Chesterton took everything well: he prove anything or change anything. We himself of the joy of life more often rebuffed critics, he rebounded from still have to live with who we are, and than most people. Whether we are the verbal egg and tomato throwing, come to terms with the gifts and chal- public figures or not, we can learn from he most likely laughed when they said lenges God has given us in life—we all Chesterton to find joy in adversity, his brain was a lump of white fat. But have something. happiness in differing opinions, and somewhere inside, that comment may One might suspect that it was cheerfulness during mud-slinging. And have hurt young Gilbert. Was his brain after coming out of the dark period, that will make us “different” in this stupid? He wasn’t like other boys. the Slade School days, that Chesterton world, too. Good different.

30 Volume 14 Number 4, January/February 2011 : J o gg i n G w i t h G.K. : Facing darkness requires trust, faith, courage. We know enough to “Do not look at the faces in the illustrated papers. see just what’s in front of us. We Look at the faces in the street.” —G.K. Chesterton venture forth and, by faith, venture becomes spiritual adventure. We come to a place of humility, to a knowing that is unknowing, to the via negativa where we declare our creatureliness. There is nowhere we can flee from God’s presence; he In the Dark surrounds us and we confess: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it by Robert Moore-Jumonville is so high I can not attain to it.” For what is darkness to God? “The darkness is not dark to you,” O God; “the anuary 19, a cold day for that rats were going to nibble night is as bright as the day. Darkness an early morning run. At 7 through our walls and then eat me. and light are to you both alike.” So a.m. the bank marquee reads I’m sure at the time I deserved to we are invited to face the darkness, seventeen degrees. Two pair be eaten. I cried and threatened to to befriend it: “Deeper into darkness, of socks, tights, nylon shell tell mom. As I climbed out of the closer to the light,” sings Bruce Cock- pants,J under armor shirt, layers of bottom bed and sniffled toward the burn. We are invited into the “more fleece, vest, waterproof windbreaker, door, a crack of light streaming in than,” into the “more than we can balaclava, hat, ski goggles—in the from the hallway was just enough to see with our eyes,” into an expand- dark, we resemble a Special Forces partially illumine an old boot lying ing darkness, that grows bigger and unit ready to break up the Colum- on the floor. “Look out, a rat!” Neil clearer only as we step into it. bian drug ring operating out of the yelled as I stepped barefoot near St John of the Cross speaks of village post office. the boot. Terrified, I screamed and the dark night paradoxically as the One of the benefits of living at flew back to bed, knocking my head bright night, which essentially is the western end of the time zone is against the top bunk and wailing how G.K. Chesterton explained the that by February the days already even louder. I’m sure Neil deserved conversion of St. Francis, as a trans- shed light earlier and last longer. But whatever punishment he got. forming darkness (one that paralleled it’s not that running in the dark is What is it about the dark that Chesterton’s own early wrestling with all bad. A few weeks ago I ran eight worries us so? Sheol, the Old Testa- dark at the Slade School). miles solo late enough in the after- ment equivalent of hell, is a dwelling noon that my return home found me in darkness, at a deep level sym- Francis, at the time or somewhere striding across Lime Lake in moon- bolizing death, destruction, and about the time when he disappeared light under shining stars. That was abandonment. Perhaps we’re just as into the prison or the dark cavern, rather nice. A lamp-lit evening run afraid of the darkness within our- underwent a reversal of a certain on a fine urban jogging path gleams selves, what Jung called our shadow psychological kind; which was really Chestertonian in its romance, where self, and yet perhaps it’s because in like the reversal of a complete som- we “see the trees by the light of the those places where we wrestle with ersault, in that by coming full circle lamps,” to take a little license with ourselves we wrestle with God—as it came back, or apparently came a quote from The Man Who Was Jacob wrestled at the brook. Aslan is back, to the same normal posture. It is necessary to use the grotesque Thursday. But how awful that even good, but of course he’s not safe! In simile of an acrobatic antic, because on a well-lighted path in a modern the dark we face the numinous, the there is hardly any other figure city, a woman dare not jog at dusk holy, the boundaries of existence and that will make the fact clear. But in alone. our understanding. the inward sense it was a profound There is something fearful about In the mornings, running spiritual revolution. The man who the dark, some primal threat of into the dark is a venture into the went into the cave was not the man the unknown. What strange shapes unknown, a leaning into mystery. As who came out again; in that sense and phantoms appear to us on an Rilke writes: he was almost as different as if he unlighted path! So the Psalmist asks: were dead, as if he were a ghost or a blessed spirit. And the effects of this “Are your wonders known in the The dark embraces everything: on his attitude towards the actual darkness, your saving help in the shapes and shadows, creatures and world were really as extravagant land of forgetfulness?” me, as any parallel can make them. He When I was five I shared bunk people nations—just as they are. looked at the world as differently beds in a room with my older It lets me imagine from other men as if he had come brother Neil. One dark night before a great presence stirring beside me. out of that dark hole walking on his nodding off Neil taunted me, saying I believe in the night. hands.”

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See other prints and merchandise at www.5sparrows.com : A l l i s u r v e y : that its own word is the Word of God. When it is thus sweeping the world, it “It is true that I am of an older fashion; much that comes to a remote and rather barba- I love has been destroyed or sent into exile.” —G.K. Chesterton rous region somewhere on the borders of Russia; where it stops suddenly; smiles broadly; and tells the people there that they can have the strangest heresies they like...We might well suppose, therefore, that the Church says benevolently to these fortunate Slavs, “By all means worship Baphomet and From Out of the Past, Beelzebub; say the Lord’s Prayer back- wards; continue to drink the blood of Met in the Future infants—nay, even,” and here her voice falters, till she rallies with an effort of by David W. Fagerberg generous resolution, “—yes, even, if you really must, grow a beard.” t has been more than a hundred five years after Chesterton had become years since G.K. Chesterton burst a Catholic—he wrote an apologetic To repeat the title of the essay: on the scene with his book Ortho- work explaining why he had. The what do they think who think such a doxy in 1908. He had already been Thing: Why I am a Catholic contains thing? attracting attention with essays—par- an essay entitled “What Do They The reason why Chesterton, “the Iticularly a set of controversies with Mr. Think?” Chesterton is moved to ask hapless Catholic journalist,” despairs Blatchford three years earlier—but I the question so he can exercise one of explaining The Thing to these think most biographers treat the publi- of his favorite pastimes, which was to critics is because he does not know cation of Orthodoxy as a benchmark. back the discussion up one step from at what end of the sentence to begin A century. Seems like a long time heat to light, from prejudice to ground- in order to untangle their knot of ago, an impression confirmed by looking assumptions. confusion. “What is the good of his ing on the Internet, which contains The occasion for this question was laboriously beginning to explain a list of things in the decade follow- a sentence in an article of a London that a married clergy is a matter ing this benchmark. Instant coffee paper that “stated that Rome tolerates, of discipline and not doctrine, that in 1909, conveniently followed by a in her relation with the Russian Uniats, it can therefore be allowed locally pop-up toaster ten years later. 1913 ‘strange heresies and even bearded and without heresy—when all the time the saw two advances in fashion, the wedded clergy.’” Chesterton found man thinks a beard as important as a modern zipper and the bra. Something himself staring at those eight revealing wife and more important than a false slightly more useful for the advance words on the page. “Only a wild unrea- religion?” He wonders what apoplec- of civilization came in 1916, stainless son, about the whole way the thing tic shock the critic may go into if he steel. And exactly one decade after hangs together, could thus make even saw “a bearded Franciscan walking Orthodoxy came the superheterodyne the joints and hinges of that rickety through Wimbledon.” radio circuit, something you can’t statement rattle and creak with laugh- I do not know how many Angli- appreciate in itself but which became ter.” (The “thing” is Catholicism.) can priests and bishops wear beards, a standard component in every radio Chesterton began to see behind but I think the most recent gesture by and television. the phrase the misunderstanding in Pope Benedict XVI would be willing Such a list of items may put the the mind of the writer. There follows to accept their beards if he has gone reader in the frame of mind received an instance of classic Chestertonian so far as to also accept their wives. by walking into an antique store and prose, one of my favorites. At this writing, the newspapers are seeing dusty doilies and rusted radios. abuzz about the creation of Personal There is in the world, they would tell “The nineteen hundreds,” we gasp. I us, a powerful and persecuting super- Ordinariates for Anglicans who desire lived through half of them, but a near stition, intoxicated with the impious to enter into full communion with decade’s residence in the twenty-first idea of having a monopoly of divine the Catholic Church. I read, “Roman century makes them seem distant, truth, and therefore cruelly crushing Catholics are to allow married men indeed; even more so, I imagine, for and exterminating everything else as to become priests in a radical con- grade-schoolers who have no conscious error. It burns thinkers for thinking, cession to attract recruits from the memory of writing a “one” and a discoverers for discovering, philoso- troubled Anglican church.” And “the “nine” in the date line. phers and theologians who differ by a new churches’ bishops will be confus- So how does it happen that I find hair’s breadth from its dogmas; it will ingly named ‘Ordinaries’: they will Chesterton meeting me on the road tolerate no tiny change or shadow of be almost like real Roman Catholic variety even among its friends and fol- ahead, instead of the road behind? bishops, except that they may be lowers; it sweeps the whole world with In 1929—about the time the yo-yo one encyclical cyclone of uniformity; it married, like their clergy.” From out was reintroduced as a fad, Clarence would destroy nations and empires for of the past, Chesterton meets us in Birdseye introduced frozen food, and a word, so wedded is it to its fixed idea the future.

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 33 : t h e D e t e ct i o n C l u b : kids,” Sue said. “I don’t want any either.” “The mystery of life is the plainest part of it.” —G.K. Chesterton “But that’s not the point,” Millie said. “Look, Sue,” Alicia said, “if you let Warren dump you for Fiona, you can say goodbye to designer dresses and champagne for lunch. That’s the Perfect point.” “What can I do, then?” Sue asked. by John Peterson “Just kill her,” Millie said. “Kill Fiona.” ust kill her,” they both had said. law offices, they soon became a three- “It’s the only solution,” Alicia said. “It’s the simplest solution.” some for lunches and movies and “They say there’s no perfect crime,” Until that moment, life had excursions of various kinds. Millie said, “but there are dozens of been very good for Sue. She was “Tell me about what?” Sue had unsolved murders every day.” one fine looking lady—young, asked. “You just have to have the right blonde,J tanned, and full of vitality. “I hear things at the office,” Alicia plan,” Alicia said. “The trick is, keep Having married well, she could bask said, “and there’s been talk about your it simple.” in the reflected glow of her successful husband and Fiona Banks.” “I think I have to order a drink.” husband—living the good life, giving “Oh, I see,” Sue said. Sue said, pushing her champagne parties, shopping, playing golf and “No,” Millie said, “I don’t think you glass away. “A real drink.” tennis, and enjoying gossipy lunches do see. Alicia and I thought that as At ten thirty on the following with her friends. long as Warren was just playing around, Wednesday night, the police found It was a Friday, and she had found we weren’t going to tell you about it. Fiona Banks lying in a deserted those friends waiting for her at her We thought it was just one of those parking lot near the entrance to the favorite table at Le Bistro Pierre. “We stupid things that would soon blow municipal Park District office. Her have something serious to talk about,” over—kind of like you and the chauf- skull had been smashed in, presum- Millie said before Sue had even had a feur or you and that trombonist and ably with the tire iron someone had chance to sit down. so on.” dropped on the pavement not far from “What’s wrong?” Sue asked, taking “So it isn’t blowing over?” Sue her body. Fortunately for the police, in their long faces. “Who died?” asked, as she buttered a roll. a jogger had caught a glimpse of the “We didn’t want to tell you about “No, it isn’t,” Alicia said. “I’ve attack and was able to remember this,” Millie had said, “because we learned that Warren is making plans to the license number of the killer’s car. didn’t think it meant anything.” divorce you. I’m so sorry.” After he had convinced himself, this Sue’s husband Warren was a “Divorce me?” Sue said. “I’ll witness said, that the victim was really senior partner in a respected law firm, divorce him.” dead and beyond help, he had run and he was an enormously busy man. “Sure,” Millie said, “and then you to the nearest phone and dialed the He had made just one demand of can be a secretary like Alicia here police. No, he would not give his name. Sue—she was to run the household and and work sixty hours a week to earn He did not want to “get involved,” and never trouble him with any problems a forty-hour paycheck. Do you even anyway he had no further information from that quarter. know how to type?” to give them. Sue’s solution was simple. She “And don’t ever go into court They were waiting for Sue when hired Millie, a very bright and compe- against a man whose profession is she unlocked the door of her BMW tent divorcée, to run the household the law,” Alicia said. “You’ll get eaten outside of the movie theater. The for her. Millie supervised the kitchen alive.” police laughed off her story about and the housekeeping, planned the “I’ll tell Gordon,” Sue said. “He’ll how she had been watching a movie parties, hired people like plumbers do something about it.” the whole time. They read her the or caterers when they were needed, “Right,” Alicia said. “He’d divorce Miranda warning, and she confessed. and kept the books. Sue did nothing— Fiona in a heartbeat if he had the Millie and Alicia were questioned, except congratulate herself on having grounds to refuse a settlement, and of course, but they swore they were found Millie. then she’d be free to marry your just gossiping as women always do The two often did things together husband. You know how Fiona told over lunch. They were not serious in that had nothing to do with Millie’s Gordon she was pregnant to get him to suggesting that Sue should kill Fiona— job—things like having lunch or taking marry her? Well, it turns out she can’t it was just talk. They had thought in a movie when Warren was out of have babies at all, and she refuses to all of Sue’s chatter about a tire iron town or extra busy with a complicated go to a fertility clinic. Gordon would in a parking lot was just harmless case. Since they both liked Alicia, a love an excuse to dump her.” daydreaming on her part. The police single gal and a secretary in Warren’s “I don’t blame her for not wanting believed them.

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Sue was convicted of first-degree do you want?” he said. He did not over what Gordon calls our kill-two- murder. The case was soon forgotten, invite her to sit down. birds-with-one-tire-iron caper. It worked but not before Warren had filed for a “I’m closing the book on the to perfection, didn’t it?” divorce, which was quickly granted. past,” she said. “I’ve just come to say She wanted to tell him that she bore goodbye.” them no ill will, and that she hoped they ; ; ; “I suppose you knew that I mar- would all find happiness; but she could Surprisingly, the Sue who ried Millie,” he said, tonelessly, “and not get past the coldness she saw in his emerged from prison some years Gordon Banks married your friend eyes. “Goodbye, Warren,” she said, and later was strong and confident. She Alicia.” she left him there, alone with his lunch. had not collapsed under the burden “Yes,” Sue answered. “I knew all Had Warren wanted, he could have of prison life, as those who knew that.” told Sue that the joy in their success her might have predicted. She faced “Did you also know that I was had in the intervening years, quickly her challenges squarely. She learned the so-called jogger who phoned the and perhaps inevitably, given way to contrition, self-discipline, and how to police and turned you in?” mutual distrust and suspicion—and to reflect on her life and its purpose. “Yes, Warren, I figured that out.” paranoid fears about which of them She found Warren alone, eating “Well, Suzie old girl,” he said, “we might be the victim of the next perfect lunch in his favorite restaurant. “What four have often had a good laugh caper.

regular people on reality shows. Into Chesterton’s Bloodthirsty Heirs this tangled web appears the just-like-us “I should enjoy nothing more than always writing detective criminal gang headed by John Dort- stories, except always reading them.” —G.K. Chesterton munder. Recruited to be filmed while Brief Reviews of the Contemporary Mystery Scene by Steve Miller planning and executing a robbery, the crooks are perhaps understandably leery of being recorded perpetrat- Dan Brown. The Lost approximately his own age. ing a felony. All fears seem resolved Symbol (2009). When con- As in a good thriller, appar- when the studio agrees to let itself be spiracy novelist Dan Brown ent enemies may really be burgled. But while the station pre- wrote of the Catholic Church friends and vice versa, while pares a fake crime and adds actors to in Angels and Demons and unlocking one secret merely supplement Dortmunder’s crew, the The DaVinci Code, he felt means having another thieves are planning a real heist of loot comfortable accusing the puzzle to solve. Moloch, which their employers dare not report Vatican of systematic murder the villain, has the greatest stolen. Can’t crooks be trusted? Will to hide the truth. When the secret of all and the real Dortmunder and company finally get a conspirators are the Masonic object of his scheme is far payoff rather than dashed hopes? Will Order, he assures his readers from the standard path to they become TV stars? Will someone that apparent ritual slay- world domination. Ironically at the network realize that organizing ings are merely part of a in light of his other works, a crime is a crime? As the ever gloomy benevolent plan. Instead, the only real the blackmail threat he uses against John Dortmunder has long recognized, villain is a tattooed man of superhu- the Masonic Order and its supporters anything can happen and it will not man strength and cunning who easily in the U.S. government is bad public- be good. Sadly with Donald Westlake’s outwits the Masons, the CIA, and the ity. Since Catholicism survived both death, this is the last of the Dort- District of Columbia police. For a third Angels and Demons and The DaVinci munder misadventures. The time, renowned “symbologist” Robert Code, is it possible the series combines a practical Langdon must unravel ancient secret enlightened Masons are a knowledge of the business messages hidden in arcane artifacts in bunch of wimps? of earning a dishonest a desperate race against time. His jour- living, a wry view of life’s ney begins with a severed hand in the Donald Westlake. Get absurdities, and a collection rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, a secret Real (2009). What is real- of unforgettable characters. Masonic chamber in the building’s ity anyway? Since true life Normally, when all was said basement, a blind Episcopal priest at is often boring, network and done, Dortmunder’s the National Cathedral, his own death television must employ victims deserved their fates by drowning in a sensory deprivation production assistants (not and he was as likely as tank, resurrection, and a sacrificial screenwriters, who are anyone to be the ultimate altar at a Masonic temple. For once, paid more) to “shape” the loser. his female companion in the quest is mundane existence of the

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wearing a flat shovel hat on occasion, The Father Brown employing a large and cheap umbrella, having an affection for sapphires, and Casebook by Steve Miller carrying brown paper parcels. Like Brown he possessed knowledge of the The Blue Cross darker side of human nature, which would have amazed worldly wise crit- ather Brown in his debut ics. (3) A joy of reading Chesterton is appearance must protect a blue the vivid description and the striking sapphire cross from the redoubt- phrase. Can one do better than “The able French criminal, Flambeau. glory of heaven deepened and dark- Meanwhile French Inspector Aris- ened around the sublime vulgarity of Ftide Valentin tries to capture Flambeau. man,” or “The most incredible thing The Mystery. Can Valentin intercept about miracles is that they happen.” Father Brown and Flambeau before the (4) Charms of the story include the French crook steals the cross? underestimations of Father Brown by Valentin and Flambeau, the trail The Subplot. How can Father Brown of salt and sugar reversed, thrown discern that Flambeau is not the priest soup, spilled apples, switched signs, an he pretends to be? altered restaurant bill, and a broken Other Characters. A short rail- window left by Father Brown for the way official; three fairly short market police, and Flambeau’s discovery that gardeners; a very short widowed lady; the priest knows more of crime than a fuzzy-haired and bleary-eyed waiter; he does. stories in The Innocence of Father an Italian restaurant proprietor; a red Brown. It is one of the most popular The Opening. “Between the silver faced fruiterer; a ponderous police- of the Father Brown stories and has ribbon of morning and the green man; a police inspector; a plainclothes appeared in numerous anthologies. glittering ribbon of sea, the boat police officer; an omnibus driver; a The Alec Guinness film Father Brown touched Harwich and let loose a waiter in a restaurant with a broken or The Detective, released in 1954, is swarm of folk like flies, among whom window; an angular, elderly young based in part on the story. It also was the man we must follow was by no woman; and holiday makers in the used in the 1934 film, Father Brown, means conspicuous—nor wished to be. Vale of Heath. Detective with character actor Walter There was nothing notable about him, Location. A boat and railway station Connolly playing the priest. except a slight contrast between the in Harwich, restaurants, an omnibus, a holiday gaiety of his clothes and the Notable Allusions. (1) The begin- fruit shop and greengrocers, a sweet- official gravity of his face. His clothes ning of one of the great detective shop, and Hampstead Heath. included a slight, pale grey jacket, a series in mystery writing history is white waistcoat, and a silver straw hat Publishing History. “The Blue a special moment. We get the first with a grey-blue ribbon. His lean face Cross” first appeared in the Septem- glimpse of Father Brown with a face was dark by contrast, and ended in ber, 1910 issue of Storyteller. In 1911, as round and dull as a Norfolk dump- a curt black beard that looked Span- it was collected with eleven other ling and eyes as empty as the North ish and suggested an Elizabethan ruff. Sea—a figure so blind, helpless, He was smoking a cigarette with the and bumbling that even the seriousness of an idler. There was anti-clerical Inspector Aristide nothing about him to indicate the fact Valentin is moved to pity. We that the grey jacket covered a loaded meet the dashing Flambeau, revolver, that the white waistcoat Father Brown’s opponent in covered a police card, or that the straw three stories and comrade hat covered one of the most power- and Dr. Watson figure in many ful intellects in Europe. For this was others. As a Humphrey Bogart Valentin himself, the head of the Paris character might say, “This is police and the most famous investiga- the beginning of a beautiful tor of the world; and he was coming friendship.” (2) Father Brown from Brussels to London to make the is based on Chesterton’s greatest arrest of the century.” friend, the Irish priest Father John O’Connor, who helped Illustrations by T. Schluenderfritz from lead the author to the Catho- the Father Brown Reader, edited by lic faith. In Father Brown on Nancy Brown and published by Hillside Chesterton, O’Connor admitted to Education. www.hillsideeducation.com.

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show is rather sterile since it is hard to Rashomon in Los Angeles care about any of the characters. It is not until the fifth episode, “All Hal- by Chris Chan low’s Eve,” that the series begins to develop its characters, making them n a time when many new crime but are instead the daydreams, incom- both compelling and mysterious. Begin- shows are unimaginative, cookie- plete memories, and deep-seated fears ning with “All Hallow’s Eve,” most of cutter copies of existing successful of the characters brought to life on the the episodes center on one character, dramas, Boomtown broke the mold. screen. and we learn about that person’s past, Not surprisingly, it was punished Most of the episodes were told personality, and flaws. Often, we learn Ifor its innovation in the ratings, and from the combined perspectives of about that character’s potential for as a result only twenty-four episodes lawyers, policemen, reporters, para- heroism as well. Two-thirds of the way were produced before an unsurprising medics, witnesses, victims, and the through the first season, we know these cancellation. The show came out to a criminals themselves. The regular characters and their personal tragedies round of thunderous critical applause, cast was composed of David McNorris and secrets; we are not certain whether but the series has been largely forgotten (Neal McDonough), an up-and-coming some of them are truly good people, or today, thanks in part to the indiffer- hotshot prosecutor with a destructive no better than the criminals they hunt. ent treatment it received from the set of vices and assorted scars from The first season improves as it network. The first season was cut short his contentious relationship with his progresses, and viewers need several after eighteen episodes, and NBC only corruption-enabling father; Detec- episodes to adjust to the show’s narra- agreed to bring the show back after tive Bobby “Fearless” Smith (Mykelti tive. The last six episodes of the season Boomtown dropped its signature sto- Williamson), a star investigator with are all knockouts. “Home Invasion” rytelling style and became blander and a new lease on life after a near-death sees the team trying to hunt down a more formulaic. Not surprisingly, particularly creepy pair of killers the dumbed-down version tanked who prey on entire families. In “Exe- with both critics and audiences, cution,” A.D.A. McNorris has to find and as a result the series was a way to get a murderer off death canceled after only six additional row before an innocent policeman is episodes. slain. “Storm Watch” follows “Execu- The first season is a creative tion’s” cliffhanger ending, as police triumph, and should be on every corruption and betrayal are uncov- mystery television fan’s must-see ered, devastating all concerned. list. My advice is, see it while you “Fearless” explores the traumatic can. Season one has been released childhood of the title character, as on DVD, but it is now out of print. he pursues vengeance at the cost of Many extremely inexpensive his career and his freedom. “Black- copies can still be found through out” is a turning point for A.D.A. online sellers, and the first season set is experience during a wartime tour of McNorris, as an alcohol-fueled haze occasionally found in supermarket DVD duty; Detective Joel Stevens (Donnie leads him to believe that he may have bargain bins. The six-episode second Wahlberg), a no-nonsense cop whose committed a horrid crime that he season has never been released and is personal life may be unraveling due to cannot remember. Finally, “Lost Child” unlikely to be anytime soon, if ever. his wife’s declining mental state; Officer wraps up a season-long storyline as we The central premise of the show Ray Hechler, an amiable cop who may learn the truth about an incident that is “One crime, seen from every point or may nor be dirty; Officer Tom Tur- one character has tried to cover up, of view.” Each episode is divided into cotte (Jason Gedrick), Ray’s partner; and the extent of the corruption in the numerous segments, sometimes as Teresa Ortiz (Lana Parrilla), a devoted police force is revealed. many as twenty. Every segment is paramedic fighting her attraction to a Very few people succeed in Hol- shown from the perspective of one char- friend; and Andrea Little (Nina Garbi- lywood by catering to the highest acter, but no character ever sees the ras), an enthusiastic reporter having an common denominator. Boomtown entire picture. One segment will end illicit relationship with another member was perhaps doomed from the start with the strong implication that a cer- of the cast. because it required its viewers to pay tain event has occurred, a later segment During the first few episodes, we close attention to every episode in will call all of the viewer’s previous know very little about these characters, order, and perhaps watch the episodes assumptions into question, and the final and Boomtown’s introductory episodes multiple times so as to find the subtle scenes will reveal that the truth of what serve mainly to acquaint the viewer foreshadowing and better understand happened, which is often something with the show’s unconventional story- the carefully placed red herrings completely different from anything the telling style. The first few episodes are sprinkled throughout each mystery. viewer might have suspected. Some entertaining and challenging myster- Boomtown is a challenge to watch, but segments are not even real occurrences, ies, but the ultimate atmosphere of the well worth the effort.

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 37 : B o o K r e v i e w s : right,” a principle by which the spread of both National Socialism and Commu- nism have been justified. Though it may seem an extreme comparison at first, it is these very ideologies of both Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union that Hitchens sees Hell on Earth as intrinsically related to the contemporary movement towards secularism. The Rage Against God return to God is a sobering one, deal- United in their belief that religion is the By Peter Hitchens ing as much with the reality of sin and enemy of progress, the militant atheists Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2010 human weakness as it does with divine of both the twentieth and the twenty- 224 pages, $22.99 (hardcover) mercy and redemption. first centuries understand well the fact Reviewed by Andrew Ratelle He notes that, having become that an active faith in God “is the most disenchanted with the revolutionary coherent and potent obstacle to secular eter Hitchens’ new book, The spirit through a time spent living in utopianism.” Rage Against God: How Athe- Soviet-controlled Moscow, he was “sud- This is a strong claim to make, and ism Led Me to Faith, is far more denly ambushed” by a semiepiphanic one that seems more at home in the than a mere polemic against big viewing of Rogier van der Weyden’s pages of a George Orwell novel than brother Christopher’s constant The Last Judgment. Beholding both in those of a serious book on religion P‘anti-theistic’ rants against religion and the blessed and the damned, Hitchens and society. In asserting, however, that how it purportedly “destroys every- recounts how deeds suddenly seemed morality does not come from God, the thing.” Christopher’s recent diagnosis to him to acquire either eternal merit secular atheist must also assert one of with esophageal cancer or punishment, being based two things: either that morality must be leaves the reader wonder- in a foundational belief that explained and defined solely by man, or ing for how long a direct firmly distinguishes “right” simply that there is no morality at all. polemic would remain rele- from “wrong.” The latter leads to anarchy, the former vant, but there is little worry For Hitchens, this real- perhaps, to something worse. that The Rage Against God ization of the link between Though it has grown increas- will fall out of the public morality and God forms ingly popular, the movement towards discourse of believer-against- not only a crucial step in a secularism, whose advocates Hitchens atheist any time soon. Quite personal return to religion, identifies as the true heirs of the Soviet the opposite, in fact. but in many ways becomes League of the Militant Godless, seems A quote by a familiar the central point of his to have much more in common with author puts things in their book. The world might be, the vehemently antireligious agenda of proper perspective. “The as contemporary atheists Stalin and Trotsky than its supporters secularists have not wrecked divine claim, an imperfect place with God, are aware of (or care to let on about). things; but the secularists have but a world without God becomes all In a final section of his book, Hitchens wrecked secular things, if that is any but unbearable. In a society without takes a page from renowned atheist comfort to them. The Titans did not religion, he says, “human beings can Richard Dawkins who, in comparing scale heaven; but they laid waste the in a matter of minutes justify the religious education to child abuse, world.” Peter Hitchens’ book is not a incineration of populated cities, the endorses the argument of a certain typical catalog of defenses the believer mass deportation—accompanied by psychologist named Nicholas Humphrey. might use against the non-believer, but slaughter, disease, and starvation—of What follows is a chilling and lengthy rather presents a Godless society as inconvenient people, and the mass citation from Humphrey himself, who the “howling wilderness” it really is. murder of the unborn.” dogmatically states how parents should The first half of the book reads Hitchens argues that the code not be allowed to bring up their chil- much like a memoir, laying out an of “mutual decency,” championed by dren as they see fit, but rather that it almost Augustinian journey of Peter many antireligious secularists in place is society’s duty to do all they can to Hitchens’ wanderings as a journal- of morality, is an ideal that can exist preserve young minds from the cor- ist through his own postwar Britain, only in the abstract. He notes with rupting effects of religion. As Hitchens Soviet Russia, and conflict-ridden sufficient irony how the loudest advo- points out, the echoes of Stalin are no Somalia. These reflections parallel not cates of atheism rarely reside or have accident. In the war against religion, just a descent from a secular society been raised in countries run by other it’s no surprise that two generations of into an anarchic one, but also the per- atheists, but often enjoy the benefit atheists would end up singing the same sonal journey of a nonbeliever back to of living in societies founded on a tune. In wanting to play God, man roots a life of faith. A former Trotskyite and distinctly theistic sense of morality. It God out of his life, and will inevitably rebel against the Anglicanism in which is (by contrast) an inherently “Godless bring about a hell on earth when he had he was raised, Hitchens’ story of his principle that the strongest is always meant to create a heaven.

38 Volume 14 Number 4, January/February 2011 Here are my two favorite things about Mr. Belmonte’s book. First, he Two New Packages Stuffed makes a lovely comparison between Chesterton and William Wilberforce. Full of Chesterton (He has previously written a biography on William Wilberforce, the bold Defiant Joy: The Remarkable Life one’s own inadequate words. But that parliamentarian who managed to end and Impact of G.K. Chesterton is the challenge facing the biographer the slave trade in England.) One of By Kevin Belmonte and the literary critic, which is even Wilberforce’s contemporaries described Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson, 2011 more maddening in the case of a sub- him as “one of the most ‘amusable’ I 318 pages, $16.99 ject so quotable. Mr. Belmonte rightly ever met…I never saw anyone who acknowledges the awesome task he has touched life at so many points.” Very The Quotable Chesterton: The Wit given himself in writing a book about Chestertonian, that. and Wisdom of G.K. Chesterton Chesterton, and he compares what Second, he refers to and dispenses By Kevin Belmonte he is trying to do with what Chester- with the accusation of anti-Semitism Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson, 2011 ton tries to do when writing about St. in a footnote. Even better, in the same $15.99, 321 pages Thomas Aquinas, to provide nothing footnote, he deals with the allegation of Reviewed by Dale Ahlquist more than “a popular sketch.” But the racism due to that rare use of a certain reason for Chesterton’s great success supercharged word. He has thus taught f there is one standard problem in his book about the Dumb Ox is that all other critics and commentators how with almost every book written in he manages to condense Thomism not to be distracted by a distraction. the last half century into one chapter. Is it Still, Defiant Joy will frustrate or so, it is that it possible to condense some readers because it has too many doesn’t quote G.K. Chesterton’s philoso- long Chesterton passages accompanied IChesterton enough. So phy into one chapter? by too little useful analysis. But for pre- many books would be I don’t know. I still cisely the same reason, The Quotable instantly and dramati- haven’t seen it done. Chesterton succeeds admirably. Here is cally improved with just What Mr. Belmonte a welcome new collection of Chester- one Chesterton line does instead is take us ton snippets that are truly enhanced by summing up or clarify- through Chesterton’s the short and incisive “introductions” ing an argument. Some principal books, one- that are interspersed throughout the books, better yet, could by-one, excerpting large book, introductions to nothing in the have avoided being sections from them, book, but further introductions to the published altogether. and then reprinting master wordsmith who has crafted the But in most cases it and repeating what quotations therein. Though drawing is simply the lack of contemporary reviewers very little on the wealth of uncol- common sense, the lack thought of them, espe- lected Chesterton material that is now of reason, the lack of goodness, beauty, cially the reviewers from the New York available, Mr. Belmonte has still put and truth, and certainly the lack of Times. The purpose together a delicious and joy that would be answered in most of a new biography delightful assortment books by a few wonderful words from of any major figure of Chesterton epigrams Chesterton. is to add something and proverbs. How could Kevin Belmonte has attempted to our knowledge, a he not? Chesterton is a to correct this problem with two new new portrait from a bottomless well, beside books. In one case, he appears to have new angle, as it were. which we should never go overcompensated. I could not help Unfortunately, Mr. thirsty. And since I do not but wonder if one of these books was Belmonte’s biography intend to get through this simply made up of left over material does not deliver “the review without quoting from the other book, and if so, which remarkable life” of Chesterton, I’ll share one was which. But only one of them really Chesterton, even if it right here: “From time hits the mark. Ironically, it is the book makes a compelling to time, as we all know, a about Chesterton that has too many argument for Chester- sect appears in our midst Chesterton quotations in it. ton’s “impact.” What announcing that the As someone who regularly fights is not explained is why Chesterton world will very soon come to an end. the perilous fight of writing about faded from view so quickly. What Generally, by some slight confusion or Chesterton, I can sympathize with Mr. comes through clearly, however, is the miscalculation, it is the sect that comes Belmonte’s weakness for simply letting author’s enthusiasm for his subject, to an end.” Chesterton speak for himself rather which of course, is something else with There are, thank God, plenty more than trying to deal with his ideas using which I deeply sympathize. where that came from.

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people are, they seriously think that In the Eternal City with assassinating the Pope would actually bring down the Catholic Church. (Been Holmes and Watson there, done that, doesn’t work.) It is interesting to note that The Murder in the Vatican: The Church half dozen best attempts, it succeeds Church Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes all Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes enough to make it an interesting read. involve the Catholic Church; there are By Ann Margaret Lewis With a profusion of priests, broth- no records or even hints that Holmes was Illustrations by Rikki Niehaus ers, and nuns serving either as amateur ever employed by the Anglican Church. Indianapolis, Ind.: Gasogene Books, 2010 detectives or as victims of serial killers (Holmes’ disguise as an English parson 152 pages, $18.95 (softcover) in assorted murder mysteries, it is was easily seen through, whereas he once astonishing how often the writers passed himself off as an Italian priest Reviewed by Pasquale Accardo mess up on the most basic Catholic well enough to fool Moriarty.) The three details. If they do succeed with the unrecorded tales that Mrs. Lewis has ithin the sixty Sherlock details, they often fail at the ambiance chosen to finally reveal to the world are Holmes stories written by these details are intended to create. “The Death of Cardinal Tosca,” “The Vati- Arthur Conan Doyle, there Their “Catholicism” simply doesn’t can Cameos,” and “The Second Coptic are direct or indirect refer- ring true (what Chesterton referred to Patriarch.” Two of the tales are narrated ences to almost twice as as the ‘Stage Parson’ in “The Vampire by Watson while one is recorded by Pope Wmany “unrecorded” cases. In attempt- of the Village”). Mrs. Lewis, on the Leo XIII. In one of the tales Deacon ing to fill in this void, the writing of other hand, has gotten Brown appears about a year before his Holmesian pastiches has her background—and her ordination; in another Father Brown is spawned a publishing ambiance—spot on. This arrested for murder and refuses to talk sub-industry of gigantic achievement is more even to the police. A Catholic would proportions. Sherlockians remarkable since she immediately recognize Father Brown’s are constantly rediscover- is describing not early absolute silence as reflecting the seal of ing Watson’s case notes twenty-first century, but the confessional; were he to respond to from his lost “battered tin late nineteenth-century, any of the police’s questions, he would dispatch box” and smooth- Catholicism. And she is indirectly point to the very fact that he ing out the good doctor’s describing it in its most was bound to conceal. crabbed shorthand into reclusive lair—the Papacy The mysteries are passable; the new additions to the of the “Prisoner of the writing does not attempt to imitate adventures of Sherlock Vatican.” Standard history Doyle. There is actually a strong note of Holmes. Out of the thou- textbooks often describe adventure in one tale. But what makes sands of such narratives, this self-imposed isolation the book worth reading is the quite barely half a dozen are as a childish and meaning- believable evolution of the relationship readable. (List provided upon request.) less refusal to face the political reality between Sherlock Holmes and Pope Leo They fail both as well-constructed of the modern unified Italian state. XIII. Their conversations ring true: this mysteries or as—what Doyle was best Within a half century it would is actually what these men would have at—rousing adventures. They attempt become clear that Garibaldi’s Italy said to each other and what they would an air of genuineness by lamely quoting was neither the Italy of the Roman have thought of one another. Their or even more lamely adapting well- Empire nor the Italy of Dante and the conversations are theological without known Holmesian quotations. In this Renaissance, but the Italy of the thugs being preachy. In the end they both learn legion of fabrications, Holmes has been of Italian Fascism. The Vatican would to respect each other, and the reader made to encounter just about every then seem more like the last light of accepts the basis of that respect. Pio person of note (real or fictitious) who Italian civilization in an otherwise dark- Nono, St. Therese of Liseux, and Cardi- lived in the late nineteenth century on ened state that was “modern” in all nals Manning, Wiseman, and Newman are both sides of the English Channel, and the worst ways, and darkened because all mentioned for effect, and several small on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, it had imprisoned itself off from that bodies and and several small miracles with Asia and Africa thrown in. These same Vatican. The secret Masonic occur along the way. Queen Victoria poorly written pieces eventually grow brotherhood is not depicted as a lodge comes off as a bit petty. Thomas Aquinas tiresome—except to the perpetrators. of innocent believers in occult religious is thankfully cited more than Holmes’ With Murder in the Vatican, we have myths about the grail or the biologi- tired obiter dicta, and Holmes even yet another entry into this already cal children of Jesus Christ à la Dan reveals that he read Aquinas in school. overcrowded subgenre. The “important Brown, but as an anarchistic political (What great logical mind has not?) people” whom Holmes encounters in sect derived from the Illuminati of the Finally Pope Leo XIII confers on William these adventures are Pope Leo XIII seventeenth century, now boiling over Sherlock Scott Holmes a secret papal (real) and Father Brown (fictitious). with grandiose schemes of revenge. As knighthood, cavaliere in pectore. It really While it doesn’t make my list of the ignorant of history as most delusional does come together quite nicely.

40 Volume 14 Number 4, January/February 2011 : B o o K r e v i e w s :

printed as “truth” throughout—thus the differences between Muslims, Christians, How to Read a Bad Book and atheists don’t matter. They offer that prayer and meditation might help us more has “fearfully and wonderfully” made How God Changes Your Brain: accurately perceive the world, but even if us. But reading the introduction tells us Breakthrough Findings from that’s not true, “the health benefits associ- that God’s larger font size on the cover a Leading Neuroscientist ated with meditation and religious ritual is a bit of a ruse. “Our research team By Andrew Newberg and cannot be denied.” But what if the point at the University of Pennsylvania has Mark Robert Waldman of religion is not actually this-worldly consistently demonstrated that God is part New York: Ballantine, 2009 health benefits but something else? of our consciousness and that the more 348 pages, hardback; $27 The book never asks this ques- you think about God, the more you will tion. It is filled with tips about how to alter the neural circuitry in specific parts Reviewed by David Paul Deavel exercise your mind, how to communi- of your brain... And it doesn’t matter if cate and all sorts of other this-worldly r. James Schall has often you’re a Christian or a Jew, a Muslim or a goals. These are all fine—who doesn’t asserted that an education com- Hindu, or an agnostic or an atheist.” need reminders not to send angry e-mail posed solely of “great books” is a I would happily join Richard responses without thinking it over for mistake. In an interview several Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and the night? But when it comes to any- years ago, he told me: “You can the rest of the New Atheists in smirking thing beyond the “thin thighs in thirty Ffind the truth. But you can’t do it in that the University of Pennsylvania has days” depth-threshold, the authors great books alone. You need guides.” a research team that detects God in the become very morally judgmental about He referred to “great guides” he uses consciousness in the same way that the the moral and theological judgments to help students at Georgetown make Ghostbusters could detect malignant spir- of actual religious people. Since the sense of the great books: G.K. Chester- its. Perhaps their research picked up when authors don’t acknowledge the possi- ton, C.S. Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, Yves they plucked Dan Ackroyd from Harvard? bility of God revealing anything about Simon, E.F. Schumacher, Ralph McIn- Perhaps the computer data worked better his nature or purposes for us beyond erny. Fr. Schall is right, of course. This when “God” was in 86-point type? what makes us happy in this world, any magazine is dedicated to a very great The second sentence quoted gets at judgments not related to this goal must guide without whom, for the average the problem better. Thinking about God be irrational. “Fundamentalism,” they reader, the great books would not be apparently includes thinking about him explain, is simply the action of a less half so great. from any perspective, including the one “evolved” part of our brain. Chesterton’s own guidelines for that says he doesn’t exist. God might be Chesterton’s Jones worshiped the “finding the truth,” however, include not a loving father (Jews and Christians), an “god within,” who turned out to be Jones. merely great books and great guides but omnipotent master (Muslims), a large This book encourages us to ponder a god mediocre books and very errant minds. body of lower beings who either add limited to our consciousness who cares He made much of his progress to the up to or represent some larger divine only for this-worldly success. If our fate Catholic faith through considerations of entity (Hindus), a being for whom there goes beyond this world, however, even popular and ill-considered attacks on it, is not enough evidence to make a choice that sacrifice is ultimately in vain. and he defended reading “trash” in all (agnostics), or the product of a primitive genres because of its educational pos- attempt at understanding reality (athe- sibilities. We might say that just as God ists); yet thinking about this amorphous miraculously writes straight with crooked God does the same thing for all of them. lines, so can he educate us even from the On the positive side we might note the best-seller list. sincerity of the authors in rejecting crude The cover of Andrew Newberg and materialism and affirming that if God is Mark Robert Waldman’s bad book, How real (though Waldman thinks of God as God Changes Your Brain, provides a first a “metaphor” for an impersonal reality), lesson. The word “God” is in a type about even those who claim not to believe in five times as large as the other words. him will be affected by thoughts of him. Yet the subtitle, “Breakthrough Findings We might also affirm their understand- from a Leading Neuroscientist” tells us ing that God works his wonders through that the author’s specialty lies not in God secondary causes—God can change us so much but in the brain. (Newberg is a through our thoughts of him changing us. physician, and Waldman is apparently the Yet in saying that it doesn’t matter co-author in the sense that God is our co- which religion you practice, the authors pilot—the architect and efficient cause of tip us off to the fact that they have smug- the writing.) Of course no one denies that gled in their own theology as normative. learning about neuroscience can teach us Their own theology punts on questions something about the ways of God who of truth about God’s nature—truth being

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 41 : F e a r o f f i l m : in a quiet setting, free from outside dis- tractions, etc. Now the hamburger frier and his Jill discover themselves to be nuns. He ventures a seventh wish, only to discover that the devil had deceived him (surprise!) early on into squander- ing one of his (her? its?) wishes. He/ A Pilgrim’s Progress she/it is now permanently a nun, or is (choose your pronoun)? Bedazzled (1967) Here I will leave Stanley, but add amount of evil is, for many, the com- Directed by Stanley Donen that the screenwriter takes pity on pelling reason for disbelief. Anyone Written by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore him and finds him a way out. The devil who can script such lines is playing in thinks he has found one, too, and makes the theological big leagues. Reviewed by Art Livingston an appointment with Omnipotence Him- Bedazzled is the mock-epic version self. He is undone in a way that makes et us be clear that we shall be of the Faust legend for modern audi- direct allusions, and I am not making discussing the 1967 version of ences. A short order cook at Wimpy’s this up, to T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Bedazzled, an ever-bedazzling (Dudley Moore) is enamored of a Cathedral. affair, and not the 2000 exercise young waitress (Eleanor Bron), but During our pilgrim’s progress, or in ineptitude and fatuity. The she will have nothing to do with him whatever it is, we meet each of the cardi- Llatter film failed because its creators beyond reciting the hamburger orders. nal sins, including Raquel Welch (guess lacked the wit, talent, and theological In despair Stanley Moon (he does tend which sin she portrays?) and Vanity, understanding that Peter Cook and to moon) tries hanging himself in his who has a bad tendency to crash into Dudley Moore brought to the original. basement flat, but merely succeeds in objects because of his attentive focus on On the surface, Cook’s and breaking the water pipe. Old Horny his mirror. (One could write a series of Moore’s uproariously funny movie may then appears offering his standard homilies on that one.) Anger is a night in its last few lines sound blasphemous. contract—seven wishes in exchange for club bouncer. Addressed to God: Moon’s soul. For a contemporary man, Throughout the movie the Prince a little matter like one’s soul should All right you great git, I’ll cover the of Darkness performs small, nasty, petty never stand in the way of a hot date. world in Tastee-Freez and Wimpy Burg- acts, such as tearing the last page out of And so our man accepts. ers. I’ll fill it full of concrete runways, Agatha Christie novels. He also demon- First, Moon wishes to overcome motorways, aircraft, television, and strates how he fell from heaven—from his his limited education: automobiles, plastic flowers and frozen point of view. food, supersonic bangs. I’ll make it so I want to be…ah…well…ah… I am uncertain how this movie noisy and disgusting that even you will Articulate? be ashamed of yourself. No wonder you would play for a viewer without religious Yah. have so few friends—you’re unbelievable. education. My guess is that much is His ensuing Oxbridge education funny for everyone, but much will simple Ah, but the speaker is Old Scratch does him no good, for the Evil One fly over the head of anyone lacking a himself, in the guise of a twentieth-cen- finds some loophole in each wish. basic Christian education. I also guess tury Englishman. I would wager that When Stanley becomes a multi-mil- that even in 1967, the same year when few of us have not spent some time lionaire, his wife attends to every man the collapse of Western civilization pondering the problem of evil. Why on earth except him. As a pop star, he became obvious to most of its defenders, does God allow evil to exist, even at sings “Love me, love me, love me…” the financial backers of Bedazzled chose times to prevail? Were he being strictly to great adulation, only to be pushed Stanley Donen, of all people, to direct logical, Job should have responded to aside by the next craze. the film. He is the man most responsible God’s rambling on about where Job He blows his next wish when he for the picture postcard gloss of Gene was while the Deity was laying the inadvertently asks to be a fly on the Kelly’s best movies. Thus we have a foundations of the world by pointing wall. Following that, he specifies that comic theological gem that looks for all out that the Almighty had changed he and the waitress be in love with the world like an MGM musical. the subject, not answered the ques- each other, only to find she is mar- tion. The Catholic catechism does ried (to the devil, of course) and they provide an answer after a fashion, but both feel the guilt of what Southern telling us that good can come out of folk euphemistically call “slipping’ evil hardly satisfies the human heart, around.” The result is pure satire no matter how true. And the devil worthy of Noel Coward in his best in this story is spot on; although we Brief Encounter mode. mock him throughout, we do hope For his sixth wish, Moon forgets he receives a few thunderbolts along only two conditions, sex and vocation. the way. The existence of even a small They are to be in love, with each other,

42 Volume 14 Number 4, January/February 2011 : M a g i c : In the WSG production, Mr. Hast- ings, the Duke’s secretary, becomes Mrs. Hastings, a gender change that did not hinder this performance, but might have bemused early twentieth- A Magic Moment century English audiences, and indeed by James G. Bruen, Jr. Chesterton himself as he chuckled over women “who would not be dictated n a bitterly cold January day, course, is devastated. He in turn is to.” A few minor references that WSG twenty or so members of the smitten. considered outdated and obscure were Washington D.C. Area Ches- Morris, freshly back from the removed from dialogue, including one terton Society met at a brew United States and interested only to the Marconi scandal. And Chester- pub in downtown D.C. for in business, insists on obnoxiously ton’s stage direction that the Conjurer Olunch and beer before hoofing several debunking each of the Conjurer’s should be “doing whatever passionate blocks to a matinee performance of illusions. This “rude, crude American” things people do on the stage” resulted the Washington Stage Guild’s revival is “jarring to many of our audiences,” in a number of kisses between the of G.K. Chesterton’s Magic at the said Ann Norton, WSG’s Executive Conjurer and Patricia (yes, she too was Undercroft Theatre, located in Mount Director, during a discussion panel of smitten) that I suspect did not appear Vernon Place Methodist Church. cast members after the play, but “we in earlier productions. I call it a “revival” only because, left it as Chesterton wrote it.” Ches- In a post-play comment Ches- the playbill notes, Magic was per- terton, in reviewing the play himself terton would have appreciated, actor formed in D.C. in 1941, shortly soon after it was first performed, Nick Depinto, who portrayed the after Fr. Gilbert Hartke founded the commented “that no Irishman could Conjurer, asserted that critics today Department of Speech and Drama at become so completely a cad by going merely offer a “brief synopsis and Catholic University. Magic was the to America.” ill-conceived opinion,” and are not so department’s first big success. It was When Morris’s explanations important to a production’s success as later staged on Broadway in a produc- become more and more strained and in former times. A Washington Post tion that owed much to CUA’s efforts. frenetic, the Conjurer then performs a review nevertheless correctly called (Chesterton wrote Magic in 1913 at trick no one can explain. Morris goes Magic “charming”—“an example” of the persistent urging of George Ber- mad trying to understand how the why “above all other D.C. Theaters, nard Shaw, and it had a successful run illusion was done. The other charac- the WSG is the place where social dis- at London’s Little Theatre beginning ters beg the Conjurer to divulge his putations are resolved via wit and wry late in that year.) trick to restore Morris’s health, but he debate, not vitriol.” WSG stages the play’s Prelude, in refuses. Chesterton’s witty meditation How well was Chesterton’s play which Patricia, a young Irish lady, is on doubt, faith, reason, and the super- received? Originally scheduled to run enchanted in the misty rainy twilight natural become even deeper when from January 6 through January 30, by a hooded fairy in a garden, as a the Conjurer eventually relents and Magic was extended for an additional projection on a scrim that hides the discloses his methods. As might be week to February 6, showing once set. The projected figures of Patricia expected in Chesterton, the illusion is again that Chesterton is indeed a and the fairy are about two-thirds reality, and the fairy tale is proved true. writer for our times. life size and slightly distorted; the scrim itself suggests rain in a styl- ized enchanted forest; and the music is ethereal. The audience is drawn The Red Lamp quickly into a fairy tale. But is it a fairy tale? Patricia’s A red lamp plays a prominent role in G.K. Chesterton’s Magic. Because its brother Morris, the Rev. Cyril Smith, significance might be obscure to contemporary Americans, The Washington and Dr. Grimthorpe don’t believe in Stage Guild’s playbill contains this helpful note: fairies, and the Duke, at whose coun- “THE RED LAMP—Magic refers often to the red lamp over Dr Grimthorpe’s try estate the play unfolds, believes in door, visible from the Duke’s garden. In England, a red lantern has been used everything and anything. Rev. Smith since the Middle Ages as the sign for a physician’s office or residence, much as lacks the conviction of his faith; the the striped pole has been the mark of a barber’s establishment. In less literate doctor accepts only science; and times it was a way of advertising care and treatment’s availability, and the red Morris is a free-thinker. light acted as a beacon at night for those in need of a doctor. Red lamps figure The Conjurer appears, hired by the Duke to perform for his guests, in the fiction of Arthur Conan Doyle and other writers, and are still sometimes and Patricia’s belief is shattered when seen in parts of Great Britain, especially in small villages and rural areas.” the Conjurer reveals that he was the ersatz fairy in the garden. She, of

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 43 : t h e d i s t r i b u t i s t : the streets is passing in cities all over Economics as if People Mattered the United States. Miami, Atlanta, Cleveland, Orlando, Las Vegas, and Nashville—all have jumped on the bandwagon. In Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, public park feedings require permits that are only issued four times a year. In the city of Gainesville, Florida, meal service is limited to 130 meals per day. Volunteer groups in Hous- ton, Texas like Feed a Friend, which has been operating for many years, The Banishment of Agapé are shut down by state Health and by Richard Aleman Human Services. The Skid Row soup line, run by World Agape Church out of Los Angeles, operated for five “It was a rude and simple society, material things they leave behind years until they were cited for lack of and there were no laws to punish a them in this world, but they carry with permit, inadequate provisions, as well starving man for expressing his need them the reward of their charity and for food, such as has been established as safety violations. Commenting on the alms they give. For these they will in our more humanitarian age…” —G.K. the citations, Los Angeles City Coun- receive from the Lord the reward and Chesterton, St. Francis of Assisi cilwoman Jan Perry said, “Feeding recompense they deserve.” people on the street is not hygienic, ristotle defined charity as the Justice and charity are often it’s not sanitary, it’s not good for perfection of natural friendship. confused. Justice is one of the cardinal their health.” Neither is starving, but But it was St. Thomas Aqui- virtues, while charity, according to St. never mind. nas who polished the classical Paul, is the greatest of three theologi- In fairness, some regulations understanding of charity as cal virtues. Justice is directed at the should exist out of interest for the Aloving one’s neighbor with God as its structural causes of social problems. general welfare, and these protocols object. Aquinas’ contribution illustrates Charity responds to injustice, particu- shouldn’t discriminate against the the universality of charity: loving God, larly through social services. Justice is poor or homeless. But hypersensi- loving our neighbors as well as our public. Charity is private. tivity to food-borne illness and the enemies. Charity is love. Indeed, this In his book Heretics, Chesterton poor’s limited access to health care archetype, according to the late pontiff wrote: are excuses meant to protect job Benedict XV, is best expressed in It is true that there is a thing crudely security and hinder charity. One giving, an imitable act unmatched and called charity, which means charity to has the same potential for acquir- stapled forever by the incarnation and the deserving poor; but charity to the ing “food-borne illness” in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The Gospel deserving is not charity at all, but jus- soup kitchen as in any restaurant. of St. Luke gave us the parable of the tice. It is the undeserving who require According to the Centers for Disease Good Samaritan. But in the Gospel of it, and the ideal either does not exist at Control and Prevention, half of all St. Matthew is the uncomfortable pas- all, or exists wholly for them. food-borne outbreaks have no identi- sage that generates relative uneasiness Across our nation a war is brew- fiable cause. With scientists exposing in people. ing against charity. New state and the health risks in high fructose corn Here we encounter Christ’s local regulations discourage volunteer syrup, mass outbreaks of E. coli and warning of the severe repercussions groups from street feeding the home- salmonella originating in the facto- awaiting us if we do not feed, clothe, or less and destitute, making food sharing ries of leading food manufacturers, show clemency to our disadvantaged prohibitive and outreach difficult for and the revolving doors in the USDA neighbors. At the Final Judgment, the unincorporated associations, churches, and FDA representing the interests of sheep and the goats will be separated. and charitable organizations. Local genetically modified foods, perhaps Those who did not display the compas- ordinances mandate daily permits the aisles in our supermarkets pose sion of Christ to their fellow man will ranging from $125 to $175, food greater health risks to us than mobile reap what they sow. This precise text, certification and dry goods licensing, food sharing does to the poor. along with the Beatitudes and the two the training and hiring of food manag- However, while some states greatest commandments, profoundly ers, storage and serving requirements, impede food sharing, other com- influenced the Middle Ages and laid and portable bathrooms and sinks. munities are taking the opportunity the cornerstone for the corporal and Fines for violations can run as high to nurture their relationship with spiritual works of mercy. St. Francis as $2,000. Legislation dampening the the homeless. Through cooperation of Assisi, one of the greatest medi- efforts of citizens who selflessly pro- with local service providers, govern- eval saints, wrote, “Men lose all the vide aid for the homeless and poor on ments are transformed from enemy

44 Volume 14 Number 4, January/February 2011 : t h e d i s t r i b u t i s t :

to ally of the poor. For example, the The erosion of charity is a sign prison, knocks on our door seek- city of Fort Myers, Florida, abandoned of our “humanitarian age”. With the ing hospitality, and hungers. If its efforts to limit street feeding and growth of tent cities, high unemploy- charity is love of the undeserving instead formed a Hunger Task Force, ment figures teetering between 9 and we may fare well to remember collaborating with charitable orga- 10 percent, and the attack on char- the ultimate charity bestowed nizations to supply the needs of the ity, now is the time to remember the upon the many unworthy. Deus destitute through mobile food pantries. Christ in our neighbor who sits in caritas est. Local governments can also support charity by partnering with networks geared to locate funding, volunteers, The Kitchen Distributist and resources for missions seeking to provide shelter and food aid. Tired of the limited choice of beers at your supermarket or liquor store? Religious and secular charitable Tired of paying $9 or more per six-pack for good beer? There’s an easy solu- organizations are tackling poverty tion: make your own. with fresh ideas. Local churches are If you can boil water, you can brew beer. Most start-up kits are rela- donating parking lot space for urban tively inexpensive and include ingredients and bottle caps for your first gardens, which supply food kitchens batch. You provide a large kettle and empty bottles. You’ll be amazed at how and “free farmstands” with enough good fresh, homemade beer tastes and, best of all, you made it yourself. produce to run their operations. The Feeding America’s Backpack Program is designed to offer non-perishable, nutritional meals to hungry children during weekends and school breaks. “Pay What You Want” non-profit coffee shops and restaurants like St. Louis Bread Company’s Cares Café offer innovative pricing models to combat local poverty.

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Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 45 : C h e s t e r t o n ’ s m a i l b a g :

Gilbert Keith Chesterton Answers His Mail chosen the sect of the Mennonites or the theology of the Mormons. Your friend, Ordinary Thinking and G.K. Chesterton Muddle-headedness (Illustrated London News, Feb. 18, 1928) ; ; ; Dear Mr. Chesterton, highly cultivated persons seem to be Dear Mr. Chesterton, What exactly do you mean by illiterates. The Dean of St. Paul’s has “ordinary thinking”? Your friend, stated, very eloquently I think, that Signed, G.K. Chesterton we should be humane to animals Extraordinary (Illustrated London News, May 1, 1926) since, after all, we are all related Dear Extraordinary, ; ; ; from a common ancestor. Therefore, I mean putting two and two killing animals is a sin, is it not? together and not thinking they make Dear Mr. Chesterton, Signed, three. I mean not contradicting flatly You are always talking about Humanitarian at the end of a sentence what you have the importance of mothers, but why Dear Humanitarian, stated positively at the start. I mean don’t you stand up and defend the As to all creatures being cous- having some notion of the obvious courageous young mother who stood ins, more or less removed—may answer that an ordinary opponent up and said, “I don’t want to teach I point out that, by his favourite would make to any remark. I mean my child any religion. I don’t want to theory, they are always removing beginning at the beginning and influence him; I want him to choose each other? It is simply nonsense knowing you cannot begin before the for himself when he grows up”? to suggest that the deduction from beginning. I mean having some test of Signed, Darwinian evolution is, or has ever the truth or falsehood of anything, and Natural been thought to be, a moral in knowing what it is. I mean something, favour of mercy to all creatures. The which, one would fancy, could be Dear Natural, whole point of the Darwinian vision taught to a child as easily as the alpha- That is a very ordinary example of life, both pedantic and popular, bet; only that in this respect the most of a current argument, which is was that no mercy really existed frequently repeated and yet never in the relations of any creatures. really applied. Of course the mother Some used this as a moral argu- was always influencing the child. Of ment against nature; and some used course the mother might just as well it as a natural argument against have said: “I hope he will choose his morals. Some, like the great Huxley, own friends when he grows up, so I said that we must prefer ethics to won’t introduce him to any aunts or evolution. Some, like the insane uncles.” The grown-up person cannot Nietzsche, said we must prefer evolu- in any case escape from the respon- tion to ethics. But neither of them sibility of influencing the child, not had the impudence to pretend, as even if she accepts the enormous the Dean of St. Paul’s pretends, that responsibility of not influencing the the mere revelation of “nature red child. The mother can bring up the in tooth and claw” has made it more child without choosing a religion for natural to be meek and mild. This him, but not without choosing an is something like an appeal to a environment for him. If she chooses mere muddle-headed mob, in the to leave out the religion, she is hope that it will confuse something choosing the environment—and an modern called materialism with infernally dismal, unnatural environ- something modern called humani- ment too. The mother can bring up tarianism. But the Dean of St. Paul’s the child alone on a solitary island is a lucid and acute person; and he in the middle of a large lake, lest the has not even the excuse of muddle- child should be influenced by super- headedness for appealing to the stitions and social traditions. But the muddle-headed. mother is choosing the island and the Your friend, lake and the loneliness, and is just as G.K. Chesterton responsible for doing so as if she had (Illustrated London News, May 26, 1928)

46 Volume 14 Number 4, January/February 2011 Two new Chesterton Audio books! The Everlasting Man Manalive Read by Dale Ahlquist Read by Kevin O’Brien Chesterton’s masterpiece on Soon to be a motion picture! 10 compact discs 8 compact discs

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❏ Visa ❏ Mc ❏ Amex ❏ Disc # (Or include your check/MO) Exp. Date Signature : N e w s w i t h v i e w s : O’Connor has helpfully informed members of the media that the definition of Compiled by the Gilbert Magazine News-Gathering Staff what is illegal includes child pornography, depictions of bestiality, sexual violence, and non-consensual sex. We would add, “for now.” Madness of Manhattan NEW YORK, N.Y—Manhattan resident Victoria Chege has petitioned “When the real revolution happens, it the court to allow her to harvest sperm won’t be mentioned in the newspapers.” from the body of her deceased husband. She stated that she doesn’t want Vanity, thy name is Bonnie So she becomes “a male member of her husband’s death to stand in the MANCHESTER, N.H.—We have a George Washington’s women’s basket- way of their desire to start a family. weakness for commenting on crime ball team.” The court agreed that such a develop- stories, mainly because they so clearly We’re not sure what it means for ment should not stand in the way of illustrate Chesterton’s dictum about the future of intercollegiate athletics, that desire to start a family. The cause the provability of original sin. Evidence but we’re pretty sure this isn’t a posi- of death—suicide—apparently was not a this time comes from the aspiring tive development. factor in the court’s ruling. armed robber who held up a phar- “A suicide is a man who cares so macy and was spotted getting into a “What has Philanthropy little for anything outside him, that vehicle that bore a vanity license plate to do with Charity?” he wants to see the last of everything.” reading “B-USHER.” When police BLOOMINGTON, Ind.—The But why should that stand in the way ran the license plate, imagine their support of charitable organizations of starting a family? surprise when it came back registered by wealthy Americans fell nearly 35 Christian Holidays Omitted to 43-year-old Bonnie Usher. Offi- percent between 2007 and 2009. from New European Union cers arrested Usher at her home and This drop was reported by a study School Calendar recovered the proceeds of the rob- conducted by Merrill Lynch and the STRASBOURG, France—The bery, depriving her of a portion of the Center of Philanthropy at Indiana Uni- European Union has printed three $60,000 she needed for bail. Looking versity. The average donation in dollars million copies of a 2011–2012 school on the bright side, if she’s convicted fell from approximately $83,000 to calendar intended to be distributed and sent to prison maybe Usher can $54,000, from people with incomes of free-of-charge to students who request make herself a different license plate. $200,000 or more, during that period. one. The problem is, they omitted all Charities focused on health care expe- Eat Your Cake and Have It Too Christian holidays, including Christmas rienced a much larger drop during this WASHINGTON, D.C.—George and Easter, while continuing to note just period—almost 67 percent. Washington University may have a about everyone else’s celebrations. For “Are there no prisons? Are there no claim to a breakthrough in progres- example, Sikh Baisakhi-Day, the Jewish workhouses?” sive athletics. The school Web site Yom Kippur holiday, and the Muslim describes Kye Allums as “a male Indecency holiday Aid-el-Kebir all remain in place, member of George Washington’s SYDNEY, Australia—Australian all no doubt hugely popular celebrations women’s basketball team.” We’ve had Customs and Border Protection has, (unlike Christmas and Easter) in today’s instances in the past of women break- for some time, required incoming secularist Europe. Christine Boutin, a ing through to participate in athletic travelers to declare pornography in former French politician and government areas that have historically been men’s their possession. Considering the minister who now serves as a consultant sports, but the reverse has generally language of the declaration cards to for the Pontifical Council for the Family, been prohibited because of the physi- be too vague, Home Affairs Minister laments that Christianity has “fallen into cal advantage that men have enjoyed. Brendan O’Connor asked the com- the limbo of collective ignorance.” The The situation is complicated by the mand to change the wording from Christian Democratic Party in France, fact that Kye Allums grew up female. “pornography” to “illegal pornography.” of which Boutin is president, has filed a Kye has concluded that she really is a The change was made to protect the petition asking that the calendars not be man and is going through the proce- privacy of perfectly normal folks, who distributed as printed, and further stating dures required to be so designated happened to have nude photographs that the Christian religion is “the first in the future. However, despite her that were well within the law, from of all religions in Europe. It is therefore track record as an excellent women’s being forced to show them to customs unthinkable that it be denied, as it has basketball player, she hasn’t felt quite officials. Now, all they need do is deter- great importance for the lives of all.” manly enough to compete as a man. mine whether their particular interest Chesterton wrote, “There are those So, the university is accommodating in nudes happens to be legal or not. who hate Christianity and call their hatred her desire to remain a quasi-woman. This is easily done, no doubt. Minister an all-embracing love for all religions.” We

48 Volume 14 Number 4, January/February 2011 : N e w s w i t h v i e w s :

congratulate the Christian Democratic Party managers stealing from orphans suggests times, and probably a little inaccurate. in France for not falling victim to the spirit that it might be later than we thought. As others may have noticed, there is at of this age “when the Christian is expected least one other biblical landmark that was to praise every creed except his own.” Bathsheba Was Just for Show “obviously homosexual,” that of the city LONDON—In a program marking of Sodom. We might even suggest that Did God Say We Must the 400th anniversary of the King James relationships in Sodom were even more Reject the Devil? Bible, BBC Radio 4 has featured the obviously homosexual that that of David LONDON—The February Synod of opinion of a modern playwright that King and Jonathan. But even if you don’t the Church of England is considering a David was gay. Playwright Howard Bren- care for that story, we all know from the revision of the rite of baptism to incorpo- ton opined that the relationship between brilliant insight of another playwright, rate “culturally appropriate and accessible David and Jonathan was “obviously Terrence McNally, that Jesus himself was language.” The suggestion has been put homosexual, the only gay relationship in gay. Compared to that, Brenton bringing forward by the Diocese of Liverpool, the bible.” King David out of the closet could only where there appears to be concern about We must note that BBC Radio 4 be considered groundbreaking on BBC the current rite and “the language not and Howard Brenton are well behind the Radio 4. making strong enough connections to life choices in such a way that it can be heard.” Liverpool’s Rev. Dr. Tim Strat- Clerihew Corner ford stated in a paper that “there remains The Imitators some unhappiness about the language Henry VIII not being earthy enough.” If the decision Celebrating Famous & Lost the Faith is made to create new language for the Infamous Names with And to six wives was wedded. baptismal rite, it will be the third rewrite E.C. Bentley’s Elusive One died. One survived. Two divorced. in the last three decades. Light Verse Form Two beheaded. We are in no position to suggest —Ancil Payne, St. Paul, Minnesota sacramental language for the Church of England, but based on what we’ve heard, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel there might be a question as to whether Had a philosophy quite like a bagel: the Rev. Dr. Stratford is the leading Solid, chewy, perfectly round, candidate to improve the language. In And at the center an empty hole is found. any case those who want to get off the —Steve Stenger, Minneapolis, Minnesota merry-go-round are invited to inquire at the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of T. S. Eliot Walsingham. Was not an idiot. But his father had no regrets, An Orphan and His Anagramming his son’s name as “Toilets.” Money are Parted WASHINGTON, D.C.—Hillcrest —Antonio Planells, Cedar Falls, Iowa Children’s Center in Washington, D.C., Arthur Conan Doyle has filed a complaint in the U.S. District The Originator Didn’t write detective stories, according Court against Gibraltar Asset Manage- President Hoover to Hoyle. ment, accusing the investment firm of Felt in need of a soother His sleuth was a bit insane stealing $8 million from the orphanage. After his little tiff And addicted to cocaine. The Children’s Center was established With Governor Al Smith. —Lofton Strand, Marcell, Minnesota in 1815 as the Washington City Orphan —Edmund Clerihew Bentley Asylum to care for those orphaned by the Dante Alighieri war of 1812. Now the orphanage has an Was feeling old and weary. endowment, from which it entrusted $8 CLERIHEW: A humorous, So he wrote a poem whose plot device is million to Gibraltar to invest two years unmetrical, biographical verse One Hell of a midlife crisis. ago. The complaint states that of the of four short lines—two closed —Archie Skemp, Minneapolis, Minnesota $8 million, $200 was left at the time of couplets—with the first rhyme a filing. The genii at Gibraltar advertised play on the name of the subject. One day I met Robert Frost their option strategy as one that could Readers are invited to submit As he was wandering lost. make money whether the market went up, clerihews for “The Clerihew I asked where he might going on this day down or neither direction and suggested Corner,” with the understand- that was good. that risk was always limited. Reporters ing that submissions cannot be He answered, “Why, I’m standing in a seeking comment from Gibraltar received acknowledged or returned, nor yellow wood.” no response. will all be published. In a culture replete with discourag- —John Tuturice, Central Falls, Rhode Island ing signs of decline, wealthy money

Gilbert Magazine Outlining Sanity 49 : L e tt e r T o a m e r i c a : they were all Science. But even as a boy, though a very lazy boy, neglect- G.K. Chesterton in the New York American ing Latin in what may well have been a noble Nordic manner, I was puzzled by this account of the Latins. Italians Materialism always lay in the sun; and that was why Romans were always waging wars by G.K. Chesterton and making roads and founding cities; why Greek democracy was so turbu- lent and civil wars so furious; and he English weather, at the time why every sort of energy, in building, of writing, is decidedly cold; painting and public speaking arose I have indeed known somber first in the South. characters who say that the Alexander rose languidly and English weather is always cold, conquered the whole interior of Asia, Texcept about once in three years, out of sheer boredom; and Julius when there is a heat-wave, and even Caesar just managed to dawdle from then (as they bitterly remark) we the Tigris to the Thames, before lying have to get it from America. Anyhow, down again in the sun, and letting nobody can pretend the heat-wave is grapes fall into his mouth. The Portu- what you could call a permanent wave; guese sailed round the world before nor, evidently, is it one of the waves the English, and Christopher Colum- which Britannia is appointed to rule. bus indolently discovered America, for Most of my American friends find want of anything better to do. England cold, even in a moderate All these clear theories did the Winter. Most of my English friends sight of old Buckle and the great Anyhow, many of his school popu- find America hot, especially in a cold Climate Theory bring back to my larized the general view that certain Winter. But these feelings are due mind; along with other thought, the people, like the English, the Scotch to difference in domestic habit and application of which may or may not and the Dutch, were bright and busy arrangement; for the English are not be apparent. and made piles of money because really used to central heating, and feel, One moral is: Watch for the next their country was cold and hard and in a vague way, that they know noth- materialist theory of history, and only gave food to hard workers. While ing about it, except that it is much too wait till that is Science, though it will other people, like Italians, Spaniards heating and has no centre. For there be awkward now that the professors and Portuguese, only lay in the sun seems to be much more of a visible who really are Science have mostly and let grapes drop into their mouths, centre where there is a focus, which is renounced Materialism. Do not bother because it was so easy. actually the Latin for hearth. about the present one; it is already In short, the Nordic people made My American friends would prob- beginning to look like Buckle. good, because their weather was bad. ably reply that if they have heat and Another thought is that I really do But the Latin people were very, very no hearth, we have a hearth and no prefer cold; and I cannot at all explain bad, because their weather was good. heat, unless it may be found by actu- why men in such warm places wanted Whether or not it was in Buckle, ally sitting in the fire. But this is not to build the Pyramids or the Parthe- this was in a hundred books when the controversy that concerns me; nor non. But still less, I fear, can I explain I was a boy; because it was Science. am I talking about the weather merely the Pyramids away. There have been about five materialis- out of natural inanity. There is a more tic theories of history since then; but From New York American, May 6, 1933 serious controversy about the weather, and it is connected, like the Bolshevist controversy, with what is called the Materialist theory of history. I saw the other day an old and Alexander rose languidly and conquered the whole battered copy of Buckle’s History interior of Asia, out of sheer boredom; and Julius Caesar of Civilization, which was enough to remind me that I have never read just managed to dawdle from the Tigris to the Thames, Buckle properly; I am not quite so old before lying down again in the sun, and letting grapes or battered as all that; but in boy- hood’s hour his admirers told me he fall into his mouth. Christopher Columbus indolently was the first to work out the old mate- discovered America, for want of anything better to do. rialistic theory of Character coming from Climate.

50 Volume 14 Number 4, January/February 2011 THE CHESTERTON REVIEW The Journal of the G. K. Chesterton Institute for Faith & Culture Seton Hall University

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