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At an ecumenical conference, a Greek Orthodox bishop went around the breakfast table asking half a dozen people their favorite work of C. S. Lewis. There was animated discussion until my turn came, when I awkwardly confessed not to have read very much of that famous writer. My companions were certainly cordial, but more than once, on this and other occasions, it occurred to me that the single strongest thread that binds orthodox Christians of all denominations is their love of Lewis.
I must go further still and confess to a heresy that among some orthodox Catholics might be regarded as worse even than Unitarianism -- I have never felt any strong attraction to the school of English Catholic thought whose leaders were G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc.
As a critic of their work my qualifications are certainly inadequate -- I have not read more than a small fraction of their writings. But in a way that does have relevance -- the fact that an author's work does not produce a taste for still more is itself a critical judgment. I certainly do not deny that what these authors have to say is often true and good. But art is long, life short, and I long ago decided that I should study other things. (In writing this article I practiced sortes Virgilianae, opening at random books by and about these authors and taking samples. At no point did I feel compelled to revise my earlier impressions.)
Whether Lewis should be mentioned in the same breath with Chesterton and Belloc is itself a question I am not finally qualified to answer. But there are certain at least superficial resemblances, and many of the same people seem to be enthusiastic about all three.
A window into my misgivings about Belloc is the wonderful drinking song about the Pelagian heresy that my college friends and I sang lustily. A few years ago I sang it to myself in the magnificent church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, in the shadow of the Louvre. The Pelagian heresy was resolved, the song tells us, when St. Germanus "thwacked and banged" the heretics with his crosier, until they finally saw the orthodox light.
Belloc was in part a historian, but in that role he seems to me like a man with a machine gun -- by spraying shots everywhere he inevitably hit some of his targets, but many of his bullets went astray. He does not seem to have understood how historical judgments are formed, through patient sifting of evidence, and seemed rather to deduce them from his principles. For example, his summary of Pelagianism -- "whether you rose to eternal joy or sank forever to burn had nothing to do with the faith, my boy, but was your own concern" -- was wholly inaccurate.
The Pelagian controversy was perhaps the earliest instance of one of the most profound and vexing problems in all of theology -- the relationship between grace and nature -- and it called forth the most strenuous responses from no less than the great Augustine himself. Belloc managed to reduce it to the level of a cartoon. Obviously, serious writers should not be judged by their entertainments, but the song seems to me a distillation of Belloc's characteristic attitudes.
Belloc's aphorism "the faith is Europe, and Europe is the faith" is especially rejected in our time, and rightly so. As a judgment about the period 500-1500, it is defensible with numerous qualifications. For the period before and since it is willful blindness. But I have a sense that Belloc did not even care if it was an accurate summation of reality, so long as it served as a comforting conceit.
Since heretics are usually full of pride, it is generally necessary for church authorities to take disciplinary measures against them. But Belloc's characteristic pugnaciousness confused practical steps to guard the Church's integrity with what is ultimately the necessary responses to heresy. (Augustine makes no appearance in the song.)
Chesterton's image of orthodoxy in its chariot, tenaciously holding tight the reins to forestall catastrophes right and left, has caught the imagination of many people, and it obviously identifies a truth. But there and elsewhere it seems to me Chesterton comes close to identifying truth with the banal, essentially pagan principle in medio stat virtus. Truth and virtue do always reside in the middle, in that purveyors of error can always conceive of yet more extreme positions on either side. But moderation in itself is a virtue only in relation to physical things. Spiritual goods, such as the virtue of charity, should be pursued immoderately.
It is the Catholic view that heretics seize a truth and enlarge and distort it to the point where it becomes an error, rather as a cancer cell expands and devours healthy cells. Faced with heresy the Church at its best does not merely say, "Pull the horses a little more to the right" but "Turn up the lamp, so the circle of light can be expanded and the faithful can see where the heretics have been blind."
Chesterton and Belloc's approach to heresy was characteristically a dismissive wave of the hand, the implication that heretics are usually stupid or, more precisely, lacking a sense of balance. But in God's providence even heretics serve his will, mainly by causing the Church to reflect all the more deeply on its own teachings. (Feminists have unintentionally inspired rich orthodox speculations about the meaning of sexuality.)
Their approach to apologetics seems to me primarily suited to the kinds of enemies they faced -- shallow rationalists like G. B. Shaw and H. G. Wells.
Chesterton and Belloc presciently reacted to certain modern threats to faith whose full menace has only become apparent in our own day. Yet just as they tended to dispose of heresy with a wave of a hand or a thwack from an episcopal staff, they did not trouble really to understand the secular movements they so valiantly opposed.
Modern psychology is one example. Chesterton and Belloc often ridiculed it, and with good reason -- in some ways it has done immense harm both to individuals and to the culture as a whole. But the most penetrating critiques have come from men like Karl Stern, Paul Vitz, and William Coulson, who understand it from the inside, can discriminate between its truths and its lies, and above all comprehend the reasons it came into being and the sources of its appeal. Chesterton and Belloc seem habitually to invite their readers to adopt an attitude of complacent insulation from modern realities, which are treated as so stupid that a few common-sense dicta could dispose of them.
Belloc's song about Pelagius ends in the rousing, reassuring boast that "We who live in a sturdy youth and can still drink strong ale shall put it away to eternal truth, which always shall prevail." Oddly, or perhaps not so oddly, alcohol is another window into the reservations I am trying to explain.
I love white wine in an undiscriminating way -- red gives me a headache. I like beer, but because of its heaviness I find a little goes a long way. I have no taste for whiskey or brandy, but I like to say I have given up martinis, meaning that I have given up vermouth -- Beefeater's over ice with a twist of lemon is still the perfect cold-weather drink, as gin and tonic is in the summer.
My mother drank very rarely, and my father not at all. He used to pretend that it was only because "I don't like the taste," and I was in middle age before I realized that he was after all opposed on moral grounds, probably because his own father and grandfather had had serious drinking problems. While my father and mother were devout Catholics, my paternal grandfather and great-grandfather were both lapsed Protestants, a fact which has relevance to my thesis.
Belloc in particular, but the attitude seems to have extended to Lewis, celebrated drink, especially wine, as itself part of an authentically Christian attitude toward life. The reasons for doing so are obvious enough -- at the Last Supper Jesus made wine sacred, just as at Cana he blessed its ordinary human consumption. But to see the wedding feast as Jesus somehow encouraging hearty good cheer seems to me grotesque; he does not do so anywhere else in the gospels.
As to the wine of the Eucharist, its very elevation to sacral status seems to draw an uncrossable line between sacrament and normal drinking. Surely Catholics ought to view alcohol as they do sex -- something good and in context even sacred but a volatile, dangerous substance nonetheless, which easily plunges people into depravity.
It was typical of Belloc's historical blindness that he seemed to equate teetotalism with Protestantism, as though Martin Luther's problem, for example, had not been the opposite. Even the English Puritans used alcohol, merely condemning drunkenness. The "gloomy" England of Oliver Cromwell suppressed some blatantly immoral and inhumane customs of "merry England," and the anti-Puritan reaction in 1660 made it fashionable openly to flaunt Christian sexual morality.
Belloc also seems not to have understood that the "Puritan" teetotalers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries themselves had the best possible reasons for condemning drink. Few things in the history of the world have wreaked such havoc on individuals, on families, and on society as the unbridled use of alcohol, as every disinterested observer of British society in the nineteenth century saw very clearly. Although Belloc sneered at teetotalism as a Protestant or even secular obsession, the anti-alcohol movement was strong in Ireland, where "temperance" was in fact defined as abstinence by priests whose pastoral experience taught them that many people would not drink in moderation.
But if these blind spots in Chesterton and Belloc merely resulted from intellectual laziness, or were mere public rationalizations of private vices, they would be of little interest. From my own limited knowledge, I suspect that much more was involved.
At the same conference where I confessed my ignorance of Lewis, I observed to a Catholic philosopher that I find what I call "astringent Gallic" Catholicism -- Francois Mauriac, Georges Bernanos, and others -- more compelling. He showed his distaste: "I find the Diary of a Country Priest so depressing that I cannot finish reading it," whereupon a priest replied, "If you think that's depressing, try reading Bernanos's novel called Joy." Just so.
We are the resurrection people, as modern spiritual teachers never tire of reminding us, to the point where it is no longer appropriate to mourn at funerals and, some would have it, to display crucifixes in our churches. But both dogma and human experience tell us that there can be no resurrection unless there is death first, and in a way that is what I think is lacking in the kind of faith I am here criticizing.
It was of course not lacking on the doctrinal level. Chesterton, Belloc, Lewis, and others of their school had much to say about sin and death, reminding modern skeptics precisely of the unavoidable reality of those things. But it seems to me that in practice the faith they displayed to the world was by design relentlessly cheery, just as they fashioned relentlessly cheery public personae for themselves.
When Chesterton portrayed evil men, as the master criminal Flambeau, who was converted, or his adversary the detective, who became a criminal, they were never more than pasteboard cutouts. Father Brown's victories over evil are usually facile, as in the famous scene where he unmasks Flambeau as an impostor priest by observing that "You disparaged reason; it's bad theology." Has there never been a Catholic theologian who disparaged reason? Or, whatever theologians might say, have there never been priests who did so? The technique is not merely a way of resolving the plot of the story but a way of once again assuring the reader that through the eyes of faith the world is a tidy and controllable place, its mysteries readily penetrable by healthy common sense.
Lewis was a powerful theorist of evil, but he chose to portray it primarily in fantasies that, while they teach valuable theological lessons, do not touch directly the concrete, detailed evil in human souls.
In my limited experience, manic-depressives are often very devout, for obvious reasons -- they undergo in their daily lives the dialectic of death and resurrection, of despair and salvation. Chesterton appears to have been prone to depression, and Lewis also had his private demons. I do not at all imply that they were deficient as human beings, somehow missing the tragic dimension of life. On the contrary, perhaps the harpies of personal anxiety pursued these men only too relentlessly. If so, they understandably found in their faith an antidote to such things, and they were eager to proclaim to the world the news that indeed there was such an antidote. In the process, however, I think they skewed the faith in certain ways.
During my intellectually formative years in the 1960s, many Christians were fascinated by existentialism, a movement whose very name seems to have all but disappeared. There was indeed much in existentialism that a Christian must reject, especially as it was expounded by its most famous spokesman, Jean-Paul Sartre. But I think Christians also had good reason for being fascinated with it and are intellectually poorer for having turned away from it. (Why is Gabriel Marcel now almost forgotten?)
Albert Camus's The Plague remains one of the most illuminating encounters ever described between belief and unbelief in their starkest forms, just as the The Myth of Sisyphus accurately describes a spiritual universe without God. (Which of we laborers in today's social and cultural vineyards does not often feel like Sisyphus, even to the point of affirming Camus's surprising climactic line, "One must imagine Sisyphus happy"?)
Blaise Pascal, it seems to me, foresaw the existentialist dilemma three centuries before its time -- the unquenchable human thirst for the infinite, yet our congenital inability to be satisfied, the tragic reality that makes the universe itself appear to conspire to deny us the fulfillment of our aspirations. Existentialism is important because, better than any other philosophy, it describes precisely the situation of mankind in need of a savior, and describes it in vivid and profound ways. Except for the professedly Christian existentialists, everyone in the movement agreed that there is no savior, nor can there be. But for that very reason it is a philosophy with which Christianity can and should make profound connections; it is a half-universe crying out for completion.
Again I am ignorant. Did Lewis comment on existentialism? It is easy to imagine what Chesterton would have said had he lived to see it. Both certainly made the same points intellectually, but in my experience they seldom let their reader see its living reality. Enter Bernanos. Enter Mauriac. Enter Sigrid Undset.
If Chesterton, Belloc, and Lewis did not really mean to suggest that the true Christian is the man who sits in his pub, a bowl of beer in one hand, a pipe in the other, laughing uproariously at the follies of those who lack faith, they certainly were guilty of marketing that image, and their admirers have done much to keep it polished.
The image is not mere superficial heartiness. Perhaps precisely because they sensed how easily psychic balance can be upset, these apologists fashioned a reassuringly comfortable kind of faith. Thus the believer must have a robust sense of humor and, fortified by unshakable divine truth, see the universe in an optimistic way. He is the man of common sense, of basic human decency, who has no need to study fancy theories, since he has never departed from rock-like mental healthiness. Whatever their historical reality, the Puritans were set up as a foil for this kind of faith, and alcohol came to be celebrated almost as a sacrament in itself because it sustained good cheer. But its price was to require the believer to avert his gaze from the most sordid and shocking human realities. Whatever faith is, it is surely not common sense, which some great saints (Teresa of Avila) have possessed abundantly and others (Francis of Assisi) seem to have totally lacked. Genuine faith will always be folly to the merely sensible.
Pelagius was a Briton, which is not the same as an Englishman. But, as someone observed in the heyday of existentialism, French philosophers were always discussing a man contemplating suicide, while English philosophers were more likely to be talking about someone baking a cake. When Lewis uses phrases like "tidying up" with respect to the moral life, he strikes exactly the wrong note.
But it would be facile in the extreme to suggest that this attitude is merely ethnic, as summed up in Napoleon's sneer that the English are "a nation of shopkeepers." The heritage of Descartes might seem to reverse the roles, making the French into advocates of "common sense" and averse to strong emotion, but at least within French Catholicism such was not the case.
Perhaps it was the heritage of Jansenism, near whose borders the great Pascal habitually dwelt and which more than once he seems to have crossed, which accounts for this. But once again heresies are the occasion for the Church's deepening its own self-understanding. Jansenism has been an unfashionable heresy in our time, when Pelagianism rules the day. But it reminds us how very far indeed we are from God, as our own experience also reminds us if we attend to it, and how badly we need help.
But English Catholicism has not been insensitive to this reality. Evelyn Waugh too suffered from personal demons that drove him to the point of despair and, as has been true of so many great comedians, it was precisely that blackness of soul which gave him his comic power. Ironically, it is somewhat muted in his "Catholic" novels beginning with Brideshead Revisited, but the prewar novels, the earliest of which were written while he was still a nonbeliever, are as ruthless a dissection of human folly as exists. Whatever Waugh may have intended, one can draw a line from A Handful of Dust to Brideshead to demonstrate why faith is necessary.
It has now become common to deny that Graham Greene was a Catholic novelist, especially given his own famous remark that "I am not a Catholic novelist but a novelist who happens to be a Catholic." But as Eliot advised, trust the tale, not the teller. Greene's "Catholic" novels -- The Heart of the Matter, The Power and The Glory, The End of the Affair, Brighton Rock look as Catholic now as they did in 1960.
Greene was a sinner indeed, or so his biographers now tell us, his obsessive sexual transgressions leading to the even greater sins that such transgressions inevitably spawn -- lying, cruelty, betrayal. I think he lost his faith during the 1960s because he could no longer sustain the terrible contradiction between its teachings and his own behavior. But I think he did have faith, or at least understood what faith was, when he wrote the Catholic novels, and that understanding rose from his own deeply sinful nature. He too knew how far he was from the throne of grace, and in Brighton Rock presented one of the most horrifying pictures of evil ever painted. In The Power and the Glory the priest has a desperate need to obtain alcohol for its sacramental purpose, but it is also the cause of his own devastation. We are far from Chesterton's jolly pub-goers.
Whatever affects Germanus's crosier may have had on Pelagianism, that heresy is refuted in our time, very graphically, by Bernanos and Mauriac, Greene and Waugh, Undset and Flannery O'Connor. If God uses heretics for his purposes, he also uses nonbelievers, and Sigmund Freud, whatever else he may have done, surely put the Pelagian heresy to rest for all time.
I have a further confession -- I am a pessimist by conviction, not by temperament. My natural inclination is to expect good, and I must remind myself that the lessons of history often teach otherwise.
For motives that remain finally their own, I think the apologists I am here criticizing recognized the dark realities of existence but wished to keep them discreetly veiled. But, as Christians hardly need reminding, optimism is not the same as hope and may even be its enemy. I reject the existentialist contention that everyone must personally experience angst in order to achieve authenticity; there are mysterious reasons any individual undergoes the dark night of the soul. But it is important that all Christians understand the terrors that give rise to despair, and harrowing indeed is the vocation of those who go down into the deep pit (as the Dies Irae calls it), if only in their imaginations, to retrieve its terrors for the rest of us.
James Hitchcock is professor of history at St. Louis University. This article originally appeared in the March 1996 issue of Crisis Magazine.
Readers have left 49 comments. Quote(1) UnsettlingMarch 11th, 2009 | 3:52pm I have enjoyed Lewis and Chesterton. Lewis was especially important in my early adult Catholic thinking formation. Your evaluation was somewhat disturbing but does ring true. I now find myself needing more intellectually taxing explanations for this vale of tears; Pope Benedict XVI for example. Quote(2) Right onMarch 11th, 2009 | 3:53pm Good piece - gutsy for this site.
Chesterton, with his endless obnoxious conceits, is painful to read. He appeals to people who, for whatever psychological reason, need arrogance and certainty in their religion.
He is the convert's writer - they usually are seeking absolutism in dogma, superiority over others and no nuance (which is why when I'm pope there will be only converts by marriage) .
Greene and Waugh are sophisticated and nuanced - they, like JF Powers and Flannery O'Connor, are the thinking Catholic's writers.
Quote(3) Just Askin'...March 11th, 2009 | 4:38pm "As a critic of their work my qualifications are certainly inadequate -- I have not read more than a small fraction of their writings."
Then why did you write the article? How can you attack what you admittedly do not have knowledge of?
Just askin'... Quote(4) AhMarch 11th, 2009 | 4:38pm "I love white wine in an undiscriminating way."
And, finally, this sentence explained everything. I stopped reading here.
My loss, you might say. And, without a doubt, the author's loss, as well. I almost feel sorry for him. Almost. Quote(5) Re: Right onMarch 11th, 2009 | 5:13pm
He is the convert's writer - they usually are seeking absolutism in dogma, superiority over others and no nuance (which is why when I'm pope there will be only converts by marriage) .
— GuyWell, dogma IS absolutist, isn't it? Can there be relatavism in dogma? Also, do we really need to take even MORE cheap shots at converts? Disgusting.
Greene and Waugh are sophisticated and nuanced - they, like JF Powers and Flannery O'Connor, are the thinking Catholic's writers.
— GuyAh, yes, which makes Chesterton and Belloc the non-thinking Catholic's writers. And you say Chesterton needs arrogance and superiority over others in his religion? Quote(6) Interesting....March 11th, 2009 | 5:36pm Well, I learned a lot reading this article. While I don't entirely agree with the thesis that there is something incomplete about Lewis and Chesterton because they are "optimistic" about faith, I will grant that there is much to be learned from those willing to dive into the abyss.
I am especially gratified by the reference to Graham Greene. I agree that Greene gets a bad rap for not being orthodox enough. While this may be true, Greene does a good job of coming to grips with the gritty reality of making it in this world with faith. The orthodoxy in Catholicism has a tendency to embrace the likable Chesterton and turn away from authors who see faith as a harrowing struggle. It can be harrowing at times.
Still, I admire Lewis and Chesterton for their optimism and don't like to see it held against them. At the end of the day faith has to offer comfort, or else, what's the use of it? Mother Teresa's letters tell the story of an individual who had faith without comfort. Mother T may have lived with it, but there aren't many of us who are that heroic. We mere mortals need optimism.
Thank you Professor Hitchcock, though, for a thoughtful discussion about a rare topic -- a topic which, nonetheless, troubles me often. Quote(7) A Bit of a Cheap ShotMarch 11th, 2009 | 8:16pm I am not surprised that people like Chesterton, Belloc, and Lewis are not of the caliber of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. Very few people are, which is why we enjoy the former, and admire the later pair reverently.
But C.S. Lewis has brought a substantial number of non-believers into the Christian camp, where they can expand their faith by reading the Doctors of the Church, the Bible, and the Early Church Fathers among many other good sources. Without the interest in pursuing Christian Faith frequently sparked by reading Chesterton, Belloc, and Lewis, many souls would otherwise have been lost. I have not read the Narnia series, but have been challenged by C.S. Lewis' more overt books on Christianity.
Belloc and Chesterton also worked hard on a sustainable practice of economics that I suspect is going to be much more important now that formal Communism has fallen, and formal Capitalism is tottering on the brink of the abyss due to their inhuman theories and ideologies.
As for their cheerfulness, and excess consumption of alcohol, I am not surprised in the least. All three of these gentlemen were no doubt greatly affected by the Great War, especially Lewis who saw combat. Recalling my own alcoholic excess after returning from Vietnam, I can readily understand these gentlemen's reaction to a much worse war where at least a generation perished to poison gas, artillery barrages, and senselessly charging emplaced machine guns. I know that when I was out in the jungle with my machine gun or grenade launcher, the thought of sitting in a nice pub, drinking beer and smoking my pipe was cheerful, indeed. I find it incredible that a professor of history completely ignores the major historical event in these men's lives. Yes, these three men are flawed. Not all of their work is top notch quality, and sometimes their zeal and egos led them to do and say erroneous and hurtful things. We are all fallen creatures. But, I know that these men helped lead me to Christ and his Church, and for that I am forever grateful. I am not interested in Fr. Brown mysteries, but I am working my way through the City of God, which I would not have done without having my interest piqued by the likes of Chesterton, Lewis, and Belloc. Quote(8) Would that we couldMarch 11th, 2009 | 8:31pm G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc!!!!!!
If ony we had a few Bishops, university presidents, and theologins who loved the Catholic faith as they did we might not have every Catholic politician in the country in love with the culture of death.
Yes, we have Bishops and Church leaders who aren't so sure of the truth of Catholic dogma let alone even considering expecting Catholics to follow and live it.
So what do we have? Mr. Hitchcocks undiscriminating white wine Catholic faith. Quote(9) The Faith is Europe . . .March 11th, 2009 | 9:19pm I can understand your views on the "pantheon" of modern Catholic thought. I have realized after reading this article that, as an habitue of Belloc, Chesterton, and Lewis, perhaps I have never had the maturity to analyze their writing more critically. I still think they have a great intellectual value however.
I would like to address the author's view on Belloc's famous saying "The faith is Europe, and Europe is the faith." In my experience of reading Belloc's 'Crisis of Civilization' (which is very relevant today and an excellent read), it is not a literal interpretation of this statement that he espouses. Rather, he is saying that Catholicism is essentially a European thing, in that it was based on a Greco-Roman intellectual tradition and branched out across Europe in that way. However, I think he would say that it is also supra-European, in that the Faith transcends times, places, and cultures. But it is essential to recognize the European character of the origins of Catholicism. I wonder if any other readers of Belloc have the same impression. Quote(10) A pessimist by conviction andMarch 11th, 2009 | 10:03pm Prof. of history! Talking about what he has not read! A self described pessimistic and ignorant!
If not to laugh about, it's to cry about. Quote(11) UntitledMarch 12th, 2009 | 12:26am Quote: "Christians hardly need reminding, optimism is not the same as hope"
If you had put that in the first paragraph rather than the last, I could have stopped reading earlier... for clearly you have no understanding of Chesterton's work.
I was actually looking forward to the article as a personal reflection on taste... a note about how you cannot plow through Chesterton's prolix prose, or wondering where all the semi-colons have gone since he and HB used them all up...
But this is just a rant about a caricature of GKC and HB that you entertain in you own mind.
You write: "But English Catholicism has not been insensitive to this reality. Evelyn Waugh too suffered from personal demons that drove him to the point of despair and, as has been true of so many great comedians, it was precisely that blackness of soul which gave him his comic power."
Are you suggesting that buggery and alcoholism make for better christian suffering than, say, the untimely loss of a wife (Belloc) or a barren marriage (Chesterton)?
I see nothing here but a personal preference for certain writers... which is fine... but to set Waugh against GKC and Belloc is not in fact Wavian - and belies your own peculiarities more than it illuminates anything about the authors you mention.
What a curiously poor choice of topic for you.
Though you are right about one thing, Marcel ought to be read more.
Quote(12) Anglophone Catholic heroesMarch 12th, 2009 | 12:50am I has a friend in Argentina who really liked Chesterton. I don't think they read Belloc or Lewis. A number of them liked Tolkien because of the Lord of the Rings.
That being said, I think one of the reasons why these figures loom so large in the American Catholic consciousness is because Americans have the bad habit of only reading one language, and so the list of suspects in Catholic discourse usually consists of the same men: Lewis, Chesterton, Hopkins, Newman, etc., all of whom are converts. In Spanish, many great figures of literature, San Juan de la Cruz, Santa Teresa de Jesus, Fray Luis de Leon, Lope de Vega, Calderon de la Barca, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, all of these for starters were priests or nuns, and they wrote literature that all students of the language have to read. The Anglophone Catholic has to find a specialized niche of literature. Maybe learning Spanish is not just good for your career. Maybe it can help your knowledge of the Faith as well. Or any other language for that matter.
Quote(13) Re: UntitledMarch 12th, 2009 | 1:26am Are you suggesting that buggery and alcoholism make for better christian suffering than, say, the untimely loss of a wife (Belloc) or a barren marriage (Chesterton)? — MarchmaineWell put. It might also be remembered that the Great War took both Belloc's son and Chesterton's brother, among many others the loss of whom they would surely have felt. And this question of sorrows points to a larger and more vexatious thing about this article: it is certainly true that your Waughs and your Greenes and whatnot exhibit problems that are more "realistic" and tragic and easily identified with, but this in no sense makes them superior. It is not better to be mired in doubt and despair and sadness; to flirt with blasphemy and to lose one's faith. It's real, certainly, but it's terrible. Inasmuch as Greene and Waugh and O'Connor excel at depicting such interior states, it would be a stretch to suggest that they do much towards alleviating them. They point to the hunger, but they do not nourish. The men assailed in this article may be too happy for Prof. Hitchcock's taste (which is in itself sort of astonishing), but it could never be said that they offer no tonic. I much prefer Chesterton et al.'s contention that evil is stupid and can be fought to the later authors' wallowing in it as though it were a thing invincible. Quote(14) Thank you Prof. HitchcockMarch 12th, 2009 | 3:38am Something always seemed "off" to me when I have read Belloc and Chesterton, and Prof. Hitchcock puts it perfectly -- a tendency to substitute ridicule, hand-waving and caricature for argument, a disinterest in actually understanding what others are actually saying, an ignorance of history, a preference for simplicity. Don't get me wrong -- it's thrillingly enjoyable when you agree. But when you don't, it's severely off-putting. And even when you do agree, eventually your mind will try to go back to think it through, and it becomes vaguely disappointing, like Chinese food that leaves you hungry 10 minutes later. Quote(15) This is for MatthewMarch 12th, 2009 | 5:58am I think Belloc means that Christianity created Europe, not that it's a "European" faith. Pope Benedict XVI has said as much in books such as "Without Roots." Quote(16) UntitledMarch 12th, 2009 | 10:49am "But C.S. Lewis has brought a substantial number of non-believers into the Christian camp..."
As a small, but important addendum to this, according to Lewis himself, he was brought into the faith by reading GKC and others.
His comment that, "A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading" is a classic remark. Quote(17) UntitledMarch 12th, 2009 | 11:11am Dr. Hitchcock
Very interesting, thought provoking article!
First, I identify with your assessment of yourself: I, too, am philosphically a pessimist yet rather naive and hopeful by temperament. Like the adage, "I'm a pessimist so I'll be pleasantly surprised," I always argue that you cannot have the virtue of hope unless you are a pessimist. It was precisely because of their optimism that Russell Kirk would not admit Lewis and Chesterton into his canon of conservatives.
Also, like your father, I can't stand the taste or smell of alcohol, come from an alcoholic family, and, until relatively recently, was a complete teetotaler (every now and then, I drink a few ounces of wine for its cardiac benefits).
On the other hand, I have a great love of C. S. Lewis (for a Catholic to deny his deficiencies, from a Catholic perspective, is intellectual dishonesty).
I haven't read much Chesterton beyond the "biggies," and that was a long time ago. But reaction to heresy is just the point. Nothing wrong with completely giving up a valid pleasure for the sake of Christ, but teetotalism is a heretical extreme, to which Chesterton, et al., were reacting by relishing in drink.
About 10 years ago, a certain Catholic writer was very popular for his apocalyptic novels. I'd heard about them, but didn't read them till after I met my wife. She had read the first, and found it mildly interesting, but she said she was turned off by the rampant drinking in the book. It seemed to equate being a good Catholic with tossing down the bourbon every night. Plus, it read like product placement for a particular brand. His other books dealt with alcohol and alcoholism, and he would frequently write in his e-mail newsletter about drunkenness and "how much is too much." Then he went through a scandalous divorce and disappeared.
William F. Buckley breeds Rush Limbaugh, who, in turn, breeds Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck.
In apologetics, we've seen something of a similar trend. I have great respect for Chesterton and Lewis (Lewis being my primary research specialty). But I would agree that their *style* has in turn led to a certain kind of apologetics which imitates their style rather than their substance (indeed, much as many self-proclaimed "Thomists" use Thomistic epistemology or form yet essentially reject the actual teachings of St. Thomas and the Church).
Quote(18) Common Sense Was PrescientMarch 12th, 2009 | 1:16pm The prescience of these writers is more relevant now than ever. They dismiss the "shallow rationalism" of our day with a confidence in Western Culture and Catholic heritage that is almost forgotten. Like the writer of this article I'm not a scholar on their work, but I do at least know that "The Everlasting Man" is an absolute masterpiece, and reading it is like a breath of fresh air after being immersed for any period of time in the staleness of modernism. The antidote to that staleness is not scholarly immersion in it, as valuable as that scholarship may be. The antidote is a writer like Chesterton who raised his head above it all and with good cheer showed us what we were missing out on if we remain mired in that muck. I look forward to reading his other major works, I'm sure they will not disappoint. If there's ever a time when Chesterton and his peers cease to grow in their relevance, I would suspect our culture is finally heading in the right direction and we can all take up reading nothing but Saints and scholars. Until then, it's only common sense that will keep our feet on the ground. Quote(19) ConvertMarch 12th, 2009 | 2:09pm I am a convert brought into the church, largely, by the writings of Chesterton and Lewis. I think that it would be fair to say that while they are optimists, they are optimists about the faith.
There seem to be two threads in the Church today. One is a presumptuous You're-Okay-I'm-Okay that ignored sin and hell. My local ordinary once gave a sermon to my campus ministry that we (occasionally) sin, but God loves us, so relax about it.
On the other hand, there is a defensive Church that is always apologizing about this and that without demanding a proper understanding of the problem. The world was shocked when Benedict claimed that the Catholic Church was a good thing for South and Central America.
Greene and Waugh, from what the article says, may be invoked against the previous, Chesterton against the second. As with anything, if taken without proper understanding, they can lead to a haughty and prideful triumphalism. Which, to be honest, feels good, but isn't good.
This may be why so many converts enjoy Chesterton and Belloc, and why many of them have "snarky" blogs. They realize that Catholicism is the only hope for the world, and Chesterton does as well. When they encounter the often tepid attitudes of modern Catholics and insanity of the modern world, to Chesterton and Belloc they run for a strong, popular (for regardless of their learning, they were popular writers, not academics) Catholicism. Quote(20) Bernanos and O'Connor: optimistsMarch 12th, 2009 | 5:29pm First of all, to Guy, RE the "converts" being stupid comment: tell that to Augustine.
Next, I really thought it is strange to oppose Bernanos and Belloc. Diary of a Country Priest ISN'T sad. That's the point, right? Its only sad if you are, say, Camus. Everything is grace in the end, right? Or do we not believe that a Priest who offers up his suffering cannot save a bitter mother's soul? If you read Diary of a Country Priest it didn't see it as hopelessly optimistic, I don't know what to do with you. Is it not optimistic to say that even a Priest who, right before he dies of cancer in the midst of a dark night of the soul, can come to realize the stark power of grace? What is more optimistic than to say the brutality of human sorrow has been overcome?
The same goes with O'Connor. To say she is a pessimist is a junvenile read of her works. Anyone who has read the "Habit of Being" should know that is not the case. A woman who lives with a disease she knows will take her down before she is middle aged lives a life as vibrant as hers, and you say she is a pessimist? Even "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is optimistic! Even the Misfit flirts on the borderland of grace.
At most, I think what you are showing is a matter of taste. Chesterton and Belloc come from the "Dickens" school of prose, if you will. That is surely an over-simplification, but I think you get my drift. Sure, everyone admits that Dickens writes characters that upon a certain (near positivist) inspection are mere card board cut outs. But the sum of the parts reveal much more than that. I think this pretty much goes with Chesterton and Belloc. It is true that optimism isn't hope, but Joy is not simply giddiness. I would hate to see what you have to say about St. Therese, because on the surface, her writing style is cloying, childlike, etc. But of course, part of that is done on purpose as a lesson to the reader. I think much of the same thing can be said about Belloc and Chesterton. Perhaps their triumphant tone is a lesson to a world who stopped not only believing in God, but in its "true" self. Quote(21) Agree with Just Askin'March 12th, 2009 | 5:58pm Given the stature of James Hitchcock as an historian, and who admits he has read little of his subjects' works, I find it a bit off putting that he gives his essay a decidedly snarky dismissive title. From the get go one begins bracing for boom, as they say, to be lowered; in this case, a deconstruction of three major figures in the defense of the Christian faith during an increasingly shrill attack by a host of enemies. Two of whom took 1sts at Oxford (Lewis three). For what reason? Toward what end?
So from the outset, author and historian Hitchcock, while not ostensibly dissembling Chesterbelloc and Lewis (why not include J. R. R. Tolkien who kept a keg in his basement, too?), surreptitiously undercuts them for avoiding 20th century soft drinks in favor of heartier and more robust drafts of fermentation.
Please believe I normally have the highest estimation of author James Hitchcock, but one who undercuts the dead - especially these three who cannot defend the label "Boozy Apologists" - will most assuredly lives to see his name among or above them in import to defense of the faith.
Oh. And I'll take red, thank you. Quote(22) Deeper than you thinkMarch 12th, 2009 | 6:47pm It’s unfortunate that Hitchcock uses few specific examples. The ones he does use are generally poor.
Hitchcock complains that Belloc's *drinking songs* are too boastful and don't capture the nuances of Pelagianism. He raises strange concerns about Chesterton's mystery stories ending with the mystery being solved in a cathartic quip.
How could one ever write a drinking song or a mystery story with Hitchcock’s scruples?
Regarding Hitchcock’s comments about heresy being an exaggerated truth, it’s curious that Chesterton said much the same thing far more poetically.
From GKC’s Orthodoxy Chapter titled “The Suicide of Thought”:
“The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.”
This is not the jolly GKC of cigars, ale and song. This is a deeply tragic view. For him, truth does not reside in the mean; rather, it resides in the synthesis.
Hitchcock shows little recognition of the depths concealed in Chesterton’s seeming shallowness. The vertiginous horror found in The Man Who Was Thursday or even The Ball and the Cross is not that of a propagandist.
Indeed, I recall that the latter book portrays an atheist quite sympathetically (though it also contains an ugly caricature of a Jew).
Hitchcock’s sound point about Chesterbelloc’s dismissive attitudes nonetheless takes advantage of the tension between Fleet Street and Oxford. The popular writer’s need to produce a set number of words quickly and entertainingly means he must be read and judged as a journalist and not as an academic. Demanding that Chesterton’s approach to pop-Freudianism match present-day scholars’ approach to academic psychology is simply unfair.
He is right that GKC's often breezy style matched that of Wells and Shaw, two of his most prominent contemporaries (who, let’s remember, were his friends). The same style is quite fit for the age of blogging, and in this case is shown in Hitchcock himself.
I’d be more inclined to sympathize with his argument If he could mine a few more quotations for criticism.
Quote(23) Re: ChestertonMarch 12th, 2009 | 6:56pm "Chesterton's image of orthodoxy in its chariot, tenaciously holding tight the reins to forestall catastrophes right and left, has caught the imagination of many people, and it obviously identifies a truth. But there and elsewhere it seems to me Chesterton comes close to identifying truth with the banal, essentially pagan principle in medio stat virtus." — SomeoneAs you admit to not reading much of Chesterton, it's understandable that you take Chesterton to mean exactly the opposite of what he actually meant. In this same passage (I believe) Chesterton makes the telling assertion that Catholic thought says "here you may swagger, and there you may grovel." He frequently makes the same point by discussing how it is the stark contrast of colors that make a beautiful picture. His assertion is that these bold things must be balanced by each other, not that they must be diluted in each other into a bland middle. As for cheerfulness, Chesterton's gaiety is the "light that shines in the darkness", not superficiality or, worse yet, Eliot's cruel April. I have this notion that the "existentialist" style of near-despair of which you seek is sandwiched between two "joys", one being banal and trivial, and the other being the light that triumphs over darkness. Growth in Christian life, I think, means willing to turn from the banal anaesthetic "happyness" to see the often ugly reality of things. But it also means being willing to turn from the apparent despair and darkness to find the deep joy that is God. Chesterton and Co. do not represent blindness or denial of darkness; they have passed through it and found the deeper joy on the other side. Quote(24) Overlooked QuestionMarch 12th, 2009 | 8:41pm "Why is Gabriel Marcel now almost forgotten?"
This is a far more interesting question than 'why is Prof. Hitchcock picking on our post-conciliar sacred cows?'
It is curious how many toss-away monographs are written by Catholic apologists about GKC or CS Lewis (a good Catholic, of course), or even Tolkien (who had the good sense NOT to write apologetics and get on with his craft) while truly superb Catholic authors like Flannery O'Connor and Sigrid Undset fetch little interest from faithful Catholics.
I think the kind of philosophical thinking embodied in Marcel's work would go a long way to engaging skeptical, 21st Century man, who rightly has no interest in tired 'paradoxes' or allegories but existentially understands despair in a very human, all too real, manner.
Quote(25) UntitledMarch 12th, 2009 | 8:45pm Yeah, what a great world it wuld be if we had only French pessimists to read all the time. Good idea! Quote(26) Untenured Were GCK & HBMarch 12th, 2009 | 9:36pm These men lived lives of faith rather than the kind of yammering and one-upmanship commonly engaged in even around bright light-ism of with-it Catholic writers today (read: who makes it or does not @ New Advent or Dappled Thingy-bobs).
The jockeying for position was unheard of with Belloc of Balliol, GK of Fleet St., CSL of Magdelene, and Tolkien the mumbling lecturer.
I wonder truly if Hitchcock, ever read Waugh's Sword Trilogy: one could not fight in said fiction w/out being what would today be called a problem drinker.
In short: Hitchcock's piece seems a lengthy bulls-geschichte: a diatribe made when one's college peers are gathered round and one waxes eloquent about a subject one knows a trifling about.
Best read up one one's Chesterbelloc and Lewistolkien a great deal more instead of looking foolish to all the world. Quote(27) What Has He Read?March 12th, 2009 | 11:21pm I have to wonder exactly which books Mr. Hitchcock has read by these authors, since I can't make heads or tails of what he says about either Belloc or Lewis. While they do cast things in light of a sure faith, why shouldn't they? Since the faith of many wavers, do we have to believe that faith is no longer sure and demand that these men portray "reality" instead of truth?
<i>[Belloc] does not seem to have understood how historical judgments are formed, through patient sifting of evidence, and seemed rather to deduce them from his principles.</i>
Should Belloc not cast history in light of the truth, when we know it to be the truth, to understand history better? <i>The Crisis of Civilization</i> and <i>The Great Heresies</i> are wonderful historical analysies. I wish that Mr. Hitchcock would substantiate such claims with something more than a drinking song written by Belloc, unless this is the sole basis for Mr. Hitchcock's claims. In which case, he should learn not to judge hundreds of works of a man by a simple song not meant as a scholarly work.
<i>Chesterton and Belloc... tended to dispose of heresy with a wave of a hand... they did not trouble really to understand the secular movements they so valiantly opposed.</i>
I can actually understand how with a severely limited reading of Belloc, Mr. Hitchcock would seem to think he is dismissive of heresies. Belloc rightly dismisses them as <i>false</i>, not implying that heretics are stupid but unapologetically declaring them <i>wrong</i>. However, Belloc takes the effects of such serious errors incredibly seriously, repeatedly detailing what went wrong and how to fix it if we intend to restore the Catholic Faith, and with it civilization.
Mr. Hitchcock can only possibly assert that Belloc did not try to understand secular movements by not reading Belloc's books. His social commentaries are incredibly enlightening and prophetic. How can a man have predicted the way soceity would turn without understanding it? <i>The Crisis of Civilization</i>, <i>Survivals and New Arivals</i>, and <i>The Great Heresies</i> correct this assertion.
<i>Belloc also seems not to have understood that the "Puritan" teetotalers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries themselves had the best possible reasons for condemning drink.</i>
Rubbish. Puritanism is a common Protestant trait, ironic in light of their denial of works. But it's worth noting here that all prohibition movements caused worse alcohol abuse, and it is not alcohol, but the abuse of alcohol that is evil, clearly seen in the Bible.
<i>For motives that remain finally their own, I think the apologists I am here criticizing recognized the dark realities of existence but wished to keep them discreetly veiled.</i>
Belloc constantly portrayed the dire straights that our faithless society is in. Lewis wrote <i>The Problem of Pain</i> and <i>The Abolition of Man</i>, two books off the top of my head, that heavily deal with the desparaging side of the nature of man. Just because they proclaim the gospel of hope and truth with boldness does not mean they ignore dark realities.
I suggest that Mr. Hitchcock do more reading and obtain the proper background before criticizing works. I would recommend he start with Belloc's essay, The Modern Mind found here= www.inbredscience.co.cc/readings/belloc1.html, which may instruct him as to properly forming an opinion on reason and evidence instead of "pride, ignorance, and intellectual sloth". Quote(28) RefreshingMarch 13th, 2009 | 11:06am Superb piece altogether. I'm grateful that Professor Hitchcock took the time to write this. Quote(29) Off the MarkMarch 13th, 2009 | 11:50am I suggest Professor Hitchcock reads the Collected Letters of Belloc, edited by his biographer, Robert Speaight. Apart from some magnificent lines, one is greatly moved by his tender advice and counsel to those who lost loved ones. Belloc was not a "jolly boozer" - he most certainly enjoyed his wine - but he was, in fact, more inclined to melancholy - after the loss of a wife and two sons. He also didn't "feel" the Faith, as many seem to believe is needed to day, "the Faith," he said, "is not taught, it is inhabited and breathed in."
I think if Professor Hitchcock spends more time with Belloc's essays, he may change his opinion - Ronnie Knox considered him a prophet. Quote(30) Hither and YonMarch 13th, 2009 | 12:44pm In the first four paragraphs, Prof. Hitchcock admits that he hasn't read much Lewis...or Chesterton...or Belloc, that he isn't sure if Lewis should be considered together with Chesterton and Belloc (but does so anyway), twice admits to being unqualified regarding his subject and yet proceeds to write a scathing essay concering their qualifications as apologists? Doesn't Inside Catholic have an editor
to keep the manifestly unqualified from writing such foolishness?
Belloc may or may not write a rousing drinking song, but is the the place to criticize him as an historian? From there the article meanders from criticism to criticism, never really making a strong argument for any of them. I guess that comes from being an unqualified non-reader of the subjects of the criticism.
I certainly prefer these "boozy apologists" who enjoy their craft to many of today's apologists who don't seem to enjoy anything other that crushing their opponents. Their spirit of meanness makes me want to buy them a pint, or two. Quote(31) Hugh Kenner, Etienne Gilson, and David Fagerberg would not agreeMarch 13th, 2009 | 1:53pm Gilson, the influential and prolific French Thomist, wrote that Chesterton's book on Saint Thomas Aquinas (published in 1933), was "the best book ever written on St. Thomas" (Josef Piper, another great Thomist, thought Gilson overstated the matter, but acknowledged Chesterton's brilliance). He also stated, "Nothing short of genius can account for such an achievement. Everybody will no doubt admit that it is a 'clever' book, but the few readers who have spent twenty or thirty years in studying St. Thomas Aquinas, and who, perhaps, have themselves published two or three volumes on the subject, cannot fail to perceive that the so-called 'wit' of Chesterton has put their scholarship to shame. He has guessed all that which they had tried to demonstrate, and he has said all that which they were more or less clumsily attempting to express in academic formulas. Chesterton was one of the deepest thinkers who ever existed; he was deep because he was right; and he could not help right; but he could not either help being modest and charitable, so he left it to those who understand him to know that he was right, and deep; to the others, he apologized for being right, and he made up for being deep by being witty. That is all they can see of him" (from The Collected Works of Chesterton, volume 2). Obviously (I hope), that is not something to dismiss easily or take lightly.
I would also point readers to Fagerberg's The Size of Chesterton's Catholicism (University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), which is, I think, the best book on Chesterton as an apologist. Fagerberg, when he wrote the book, was a professor of religion at Concordia College, specializing in liturgy and sacraments; he is now a professor of liturgical theology at University of Notre Dame. Fagerberg is a convert; he told me a few years ago that he became Catholic primarily by reading two things: the writings of Chesterton and the Code of Canon Law. What Fagerberg does so well is to show that Chesterton was a great apologist because he was not only a great thinker and debater, he understood the theological and philosophical underpinnings of the crucial issues involved in such debates.
A common theme is, I think, apparent in these short quotes: those who give Chesterton a cursory reading usually also give him a cursory critique. Those who have read him at length and have lived with his thinking have recognized that such a cursory dismissal is a disservice to Chesterton. This is not to say he is everyone's cup of tea, or that he is infallible, or any such silly thing. It simply to note that if you are going to dismiss Chesterton, it is only fair to dismiss him for who and what he really was, not for what you incorrectly think he was. Quote(32) Hither and YonMarch 13th, 2009 | 2:11pm In the first four paragraphs, Prof. Hitchcock admits that he hasn't read much Lewis...or Chesterton...or Belloc, that he isn't sure if Lewis should be considered together with Chesterton and Belloc (but does so anyway), twice admits to being unqualified regarding his subject and yet proceeds to write a scathing essay concering their qualifications as apologists? Doesn't Inside Catholic have an editor
to keep the manifestly unqualified from writing such foolishness?
Belloc may or may not write a rousing drinking song, but is the the place to criticize him as an historian? From there the article meanders from criticism to criticism, never really making a strong argument for any of them. I guess that comes from being an unqualified non-reader of the subjects of the criticism.
I certainly prefer these "boozy apologists" who enjoy their craft to many of today's apologists who don't seem to enjoy anything other that crushing their opponents. Their spirit of meanness makes me want to buy them a pint, or two. Quote(33) Very PuzzlingMarch 14th, 2009 | 1:15pm I have to say, by the time I was several paragraphs into this piece, I was thoroughly puzzled, much as if I had been reading a travelogue wherein the writer lamented the dull flatness of the landscape around Denver, or complained of the horrific traffic one always encounters when driving through Nebraska.
The title of the article is puzzling in exactly the same sense. There are many ways one could describe Chesterton or Belloc, but the choice of "boozy" reveals an acquaintance with either man's work that could at best be described as shallow, and at worst, non-existent.
Both men praised good drink now and again, but seen against their complete bodies of work, such comments constitute only the thinnest sliver. Focusing, in the title, on that one aspect of their output is like, after meeting the Queen, writing "Queen Elizabeth of England; Shorter Then You Would Think". It simply leaves out everything.
The whole article leaves me with a sense of unreality that makes me begin to wonder about the real possibility of something like a parallel universe. Quote(34) Knowledge Without StudyMarch 14th, 2009 | 5:32pm I too was perplexed about criticizing writers that one has not read. However, this is not surprising especially amongst our fellow Catholics. How many Catholics KNOW the Faith and reject parts of it vociferously and strongly despite a complete lack of knowledge of the theological underpinnings of those things? I run into this constantly. They KNOW just because they breathed in the air and scoff at the idea of actually studying the Catechism, reading and studying Scripture, and praying. Yet, they believe themselves eminently qualified to argue why they don't have to believe this or that dogma, can reject this or that sacrament, and attack the Pope.
A few years ago when Mel Gibson released The Passion of the Christ some radio reporter held forth her diatribe on how awful he was for showing these historical facts and which was going to stir up problems for the jews and how disgusting the movie was. The other reporter at the conclusion asked whether she had seen the movie. Her answer: I haven't decided if I will or not. Yet, that didn't stop her from spouting off about how awful the movie was, nor did it stop the radio station from allowing her to speak about this on the radio. I stopped listening to that station.
I expect this from many people around me, but not from a "reporter" and certainly not from an "historian" who doesn't bother to read the sources yet believes himself eminently qualified to criticize the authors and expound on what those authors had to say. Like the radio station, I can no longer read anything else that Mr. Hitchcock chooses to spout off about. Too bad, because I used to think he actually knew what he was talking about.
I'm looking forward to deepening my exposure to Chesterton and Belloc and Lewis. At some point, after I have read them extensively, I might offer my own criticisms. But until I do that, I won't know what I'm talking about. Sadly, this is a minority position these days.
Quote(35) MisguidedMarch 15th, 2009 | 8:13pm This man doesn't even read the entire books from which the quotes he criticizes are taken. Perfect example:
"But there and elsewhere it seems to me Chesterton comes close to identifying truth with the banal, essentially pagan principle in medio stat virtus. Truth and virtue do always reside in the middle, in that purveyors of error can always conceive of yet more extreme positions on either side. But moderation in itself is a virtue only in relation to physical things. Spiritual goods, such as the virtue of charity, should be pursued immoderately."
Had he read all of Orthodoxy and consequently come across Chesterton's doctrine of impetuosity, he'd have found GK said almost precisely the same thing, far more memorably. The difference here is that one man is a genius and one is not. Quote(36) UntitledMarch 15th, 2009 | 9:07pm He writes:
"Chesterton and Belloc's approach to heresy was characteristically a dismissive wave of the hand, the implication that heretics are usually stupid or, more precisely, lacking a sense of balance. But in God's providence even heretics serve his will, mainly by causing the Church to reflect all the more deeply on its own teachings. (Feminists have unintentionally inspired rich orthodox speculations about the meaning of sexuality.)"
That heresies inspire deeper thought about the mysteries of the Faith is in some degree irrelevant, and that irrelevance is itself a mystery. Take the crucifixion as an illustration. Was it a bad thing or a good thing? Well, it was a good thing in the sense that, without it there would be no Church. It was a bad thing in an obvious sense. But its very essence as a good thing depends on our taking it very seriously as a bad thing. You see? But that's not the best example because the paradoxes of the cross or so profound. There are simpler examples throughout the Gospels -- for instance, the followers who hurt Christ's ministry with their trumpeting and desire for His fame. Taken retrospectively we are grateful for the record of that phenomenon, from which a good many at the forefront of American evangelicalism should learn. But learning from it depends entirely on, again, taking it as a very bad thing, and even mourning in our hearts the fact that it happened. There are deep mysteries of fate and free will in this. Quote(37) Why James Hitchcock is Wrong: A Defense of G. K. ChestertonMarch 16th, 2009 | 11:04am With the kind permission of the moderator, I would like to provide the link to my response to Hitchcock on my blog vere loqui: http://vereloqui.blogspot.com. I thought some of the readers here might find it interesting. Quote(38) UntitledMarch 16th, 2009 | 1:43pm It's very hard to say something wrong about Chesterton without being ironic; his intellect was so massive and he corrected so many wrongs. The only way to be right about the man is to obey his own maxim of enthusiasm--of being enthusiastic as far as possible about whomever you read. To find nothing in Chesterton is to be pitied.
The author should read Lewis's essay called "Talking About Bicycles" where he sets out his theory of the four ages: Un-enchanted, Enchanted, Disenchanted, Re-enchanted. This is one man's correction of another in a tone of honest scholarship. The author can learn from the men he tries to correct how to correct them.
Quote(39) A quick commentMarch 16th, 2009 | 4:43pm I think to say that alcohol was the cause of devastation in the priest's life in The Power and the Glory is very bad reading. What devastated the unnamed protagonist was his own pride, as is ultimately the root of any man's unmanning; what gained him sanctification was his unrelenting pursuit of wine for the sacramental use, for seeking to put something into its proper context. Quote(40) GK Doctor of the ChurchMarch 16th, 2009 | 9:19pm (There is an obscure masterpiece, long out of print, called Paradox in Chesterton, by a critic named Hugh Kenner, which lays all this out with great elegance. It ends with the astonishing claim for GKC that he be called a Doctor of the Church; and more astonishing still, the reader finds himself convinced.)
Paul Cella
http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/
GK CHESTERTON DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH : That has a wonderful ring to it. Lets push for it. Quote(41) UntitledMarch 18th, 2009 | 10:52pm I wish I had not read this article. It is deeply disheartening.
In no particular order:
I have often, and rather recently too, returned to the writings of Lewis and Chesterton as sources of wisdom and deep spiritual insight. I find Lewis especially prescient. He might as well have written The Abolition of Man yesterday. But I suppose I am spiritually immature or naive or something.
Sure, Sigrid Undset is a writer of the first magnitude, as I've written often enough. No one, however, will be brought to the faith by Sigrid Undset; she's a writer you read to probe the awakening of a human soul. Flannery O'Connor, whom I adore, is a writer of narrow range, and any criticism that the likes of Lewis (who knew ten times as much philosophy and literature as did O'Connor) did not engage the rationalists at their strongest can be leveled likewise at O'Connor, not to mention Waugh, whose range is even narrower (and whose works I also love). I could say a few similar things about Greene and Bernanos, and throw Mauriac into that mix. Gabriel Marcel ought to be read by everyone -- if you can penetrate his almost unreadable back-and-forth, hedging and qualifying prose. It is not for everybody. He does indeed have the number of the modernists and the existentialist atheists.
So what? Do we have to belittle Lewis and Chesterton because they happen not to be Bernanos and Marcel? So Pieper is not Marcel either; but I have derived great insights from him, too, as from Marcel.
For the record: Lewis's Screwtape Letters, Till We Have Faces, and The Great Divorce are, in my mind anyhow, among the greatest works of theological fiction or allegory ever written. Chesterton's Everlasting Man is a masterpiece; the first chapter, on the cave paintings, is about the most sensible and sensitive thing on the miracle of art that you'll ever read.
Let me use an analogy here. Lewis once wrote that he never met a man who used to like The Faerie Queene. Well, Lewis was steeped in medieval and Renaissance literature, not to mention Scripture and the classics and the whole tradition of English poetry until his own day, and he thought that Spenser was one of the greatest of the greats. Lewis was right about that. But Spenser is, shall we say, an acquired taste; reading him demands patience and a good lot of preparation in typology and Renaissance habits of what I'd call kaleidoscopic poetry. Is Spenser to be sniffed at because he was not Shakespeare, or because he was not Donne or someone else with an entirely different sensibility (who happened also, to boot, to be inferior to him as a poet and probably also as a thinker)? I've seen people's lives changed by reading Spenser -- and not just a few, either. I am one of those people. I would not be here now if I had not read Spenser -- or Boethius, another one of those writers whom some people will sniff at as not being rigorous enough, for whatever purpose they have in mind, when actually the man's profundity is there to be found for the patient (as a thousand years of readers through to Milton believed). Maybe I would not be the Christian I am without Lewis, too.
I'll paraphrase Milton as a last comment:
As if we had not foes enough besides,
That day and night for our destruction wait. Quote(42) UntitledMarch 19th, 2009 | 8:00pm This is one of the better appreciations I've read about Chesterton:
Chesterton said that there are two kinds of great men--one who makes everyone feel small and the greater man who makes everyone feel great. If I may, there is a yet greater man who makes everyone feel other people are great. That was Chesterton. One comes away from his work on Dickens loving Dickens. Likewise Shaw, Chaucer, St. Francis,or a forgotten man like Cobbett. No people could be more varied than these, yet he painted them all in their own colors, because he was a man open to things outside himself, and especially to people outside himself, so that, while he shared a certain genius for words with many of most of those he wrote about, it was really the humility he shared with St. Francis that set him apart in his craft.
The 20th century's foremost Aquinas scholar said about Chesterton's own outline of that life, "I consider it as being without possible comparison the best book ever written on St. Thomas. Nothing short of genius can account for such an achievement." It is fitting that this praise came for this book because, again, it is the way of the saint, not of the artist or scholar, which is the best keyhole into that genius. We can imagine any number of people saying something like, "Education is the diminution of self by way of the enlargement of mind." But if we consider Chesterton's own dictum, that pride is falsehood through the introduction of self, we get something much more like the inverse of that common adage; that is, we get something much more like the way of the saint: Education is the enlargement of mind by way of the eradication of self. It is a difference of emphasis and will, motive and inspiration. It is ALL the difference. Negligible authors may preach charity; Chesterton gave us people to love and made us love them. He is great because he enlarged other greats, and his name is the Prince of Paradox. Quote(43) UntitledMarch 20th, 2009 | 9:43pm If a casual reader follows your example, Mr. Hitchcock, and attempts to pass judgement on your literary efforts by reviewing a "small fraction" of your writing, I sincerely hope that this is not the fraction they choose. It's a sloppy piece of work.
That said, I do wish to defend this statement:
"Few things in the history of the world have wreaked such havoc on individuals, on families, and on society as the unbridled use of alcohol, as every disinterested observer of British society in the nineteenth century saw very clearly."
A few commenters have dismissed this as rubbish. I recommend they read a bit about 19th century London and see if their opinions are unchanged. Gin ripped through the slums in a manner that makes crack cocaine seem like afternoon tea. I am happily ombibulous myself, and a great supporter of "hearty good cheer," but I don't dismiss teetotalism as puritanical nonsense. It was an understandable response to a great deal of human suffering.
As for the "hearty good cheer" bit, the gospels seem fairly clear on this. Christ fasted, but he also feasted. He allowed expensive oils to be poured over him. He and his disciples drank wine. And yes, the miracle at Cana does seem to support Christ's blessing on having a good time. After all, it seems very likely that a good deal of wine had already been drunk before he performed the miracle to provide more.
The great thing about being Catholic is that we don't have to trade off Chesterton for Waugh. We can have them both, thank you very much, and we're much the better for it.
To my mind, Lewis is the great synthesis. Read Screwtape. Not just bits and pieces. The whole damned thing. Allegory? Fantasy? Call it what you will, but read the bit about seeing guts splattered on the wall and then tell me that man didn't express the "nitty gritty." Quote(44) ProfesssorsMarch 22nd, 2009 | 4:28pm Why is one not surprised that a professor would attack GKC and Belloc? Why is one not surprised that that professor is a star at St. Louis University, a school "in the Jesuit tradition"?
There is little enough to be said about the professors' article that he himself has not said in admitting that he has not read much of the works of either. And white wine is always a give-away: sipping white wine [never specified] at professorial tea parties.
If Prof. Hitchcock has a criticism to make of the Chesterbelloc, let him be specific. It is what one used to expect of professors.
Belloc's "Europe is the Faith, and the Faith is Europe" was acknowledged by the late Cardinal Dulles to be one of the conundrums of our history. As Belloc noted, Our Lord could have come into China or Peru. He chose to come to Palestine, at a specific time, speaking a specific language.
Europe grew from that decision. Today it seems to be splitting off from the Revelation, much as Israel did, spurning the prophets. The Holy Father now wonders whether the future of the Church may not lie in Africa. It certainly does not lie in the inadequate schools in the Jesuit tradition.
Lest one feel that one can dismiss Prof. Hitchcock, read rather his excellent article on what happened to U.S. bishops: http://www.wf-f.org/JFH-ConservativeBishops.html
Quote(45) Belloc & DonsMarch 22nd, 2009 | 4:45pm Perhaps it would be best to allow Belloc to speak:
Lines to a Don
Hilaire Belloc
Remote and ineffectual Don
That dared attack my Chesterton,
With that poor weapon, half-impelled,
Unlearnt, unsteady, hardly held,
Unworthy for a tilt with men--
Your quavering and corroded pen;
Don poor at Bed and worse at Table,
Don pinched, Don starved, Don miserable;
Don stuttering, Don with roving eyes,
Don nervous, Don of crudities;
Don clerical, Don ordinary,
Don self-absorbed and solitary;
Don here-and-there, Don epileptic;
Don puffed and empty, Don dyspeptic;
Don middle-class, Don sycophantic,
Don dull, Don brutish, Don pedantic;
Don hypocritical, Don bad,
Don furtive, Don three-quarters mad;
Don (since a man must make and end),
Don that shall never be my friend.
Don different from those regal Dons!
With hearts of gold and lungs of bronze,
Who shout and bang and roar and bawl
The Absolute across the hall,
Or sail in amply bellying gown
Enormous through the Sacred Town,
Bearing from College to their homes
Deep cargoes of gigantic tomes;
Dons admirable! Dons of Might!
Uprising on my inward sight
Compact of ancient tales, and port
And sleep--and learning of a sort.
Dons English, worthy of the land;
Dons rooted; Dons that understand.
Good Dons perpetual that remain
A landmark, walling in the plain--
The horizon of my memories--
Like large and comfortable trees.
Don very much apart from these,
Thou scapegoat Don, thou Don devoted,
Don to thine own damnation quoted,
Perplexed to find thy trivial name
Reared in my verse to lasting shame.
Don dreadful, rasping Don and wearing,
Repulsive Don--Don past all bearing.
Don of the cold and doubtful breath,
Don despicable, Don of death;
Don nasty, skimpy, silent, level;
Don evil, Don that serves the devil.
Don ugly--that makes fifty lines.
There is a Canon which confines
A Rhymed Octosyllabic Curse
If written in Iambic Verse
To fifty lines. I never cut;
I far prefer to end it--but
Believe me I shall soon return.
My fires are banked, but still they burn
To write some more about the Don
That dared attack my Chesterton. Quote(46) Text for Prof. HitchcockMarch 28th, 2009 | 12:28pm As it happened I was making a selection of a GKC article from the Illustrated London News [U.S. edition] 24 March 1923. In it GKC discusses Lady Astor's suggestion that youths of 17 should be prohibited from entering taverns.
To this Chesterton retorts with history; youths were served beer by their parents and their teachers [Winchester College, for example]. Ale was treated as a drink, and preferable to water. Chesterton sneers at brandy and gin [and probably the professor's white wine, a most acidulous beverage]. The drunkenness that upsets the professor's soul was chiefly caused by gin, Quote(47) PfffJuly 17th, 2009 | 12:28am This is definitely the worst article I have ever seen on these people as a group. I have read a worse one on Chesterton. I really feel like I am reading an article written from the mind of a non-gifted 8 year old writing about the mind and work of some very wise adults. The author's failure to see his own complete superficiality in understanding what is behind these thinkers work is ridiculous. Quote(48) Better Pray for FlanneryDecember 28th, 2009 | 2:32pm Flannery O'Connor is not a 'thinking Catholic's writer,' she was afflicted with modernism in spite of herself. Her book reviews reveal much, as she supports theologians which were sooner or later revealed as the sources of the worst of Vatican II, in the name of 'freedom' from undue censorship by the Church in the protection of the 'sentimental' and 'stupid' Catholic reader, whom O'Connor despised almost as much as she despised fiction writers with less talent than she declared she had. One must even wonder how much she really knew of Thomistic thought, although she called herself a 'hillbilly Thomist,' since she denied Thomas' teaching on purgatory, substituting a much more modern and less-brimstoned version (even as her fundamentalist characters made her famous!). It makes one remember that Flannery O'Connor was the product of secular education, not Catholic. I think Flannery is most probably still in Purgatory and would welcome your prayers.
But read Sigrid Undset! For a portrait of masculine Catholicity with an unforgettable fight scene (you'll think Braveheart, but it's better, richer in detail! Only Trollope's hunting scenes give us such a picture of men on horseback, but Undset's gives us their souls!), pick up The Axe at your local library. You'll go back and read the whole trilogy, and it's thoroughly Catholic in plot and character. Quote(49) Just flat out falseJanuary 01st, 2010 | 4:52pm What is the purpose of posting an essay on Chesterton and Belloc by a person who has not read Chesterton and Belloc? I am at a loss.
Nothing in this essay rings true. Not one thing. Criticizing Belloc's approach to the faith based on his (intentionally hilarious) song about Pelagius is "facile to the extreme". The author's description of Belloc as an optimist betrays an ignorance of his writing so deep and fundamental as to be complete. Some of Belloc's work can be difficult to read exactly because it is so imbued with melancholy and tragedy. More, Belloc fully grasped the difference between optimism and Christian hope -- as many of his essays make starkly clear.
I find no contradiction between the existentialist Catholic writers and Chesterbelloc, only a difference in empahsis. One should read and profit from both. If a man profits from one set of authors and not the other then he has discovered a deficiency in his soul that he should take to prayer, not a deficiency with the authors. I have no more patience for the man who cannot get through Bernanos because he is "depressing" than the man, like the author above, who absurdly dismisses Chesterton and Belloc because they are "boozy" or "cheery".
One final trivial point, raised in part by others above: Belloc hated gin (which was the very Protestant (William of Orange) source of the mass drunkeness in England that inspired the also (mostly) very Protestant "temperance" movements). Belloc also had little love for whiskey or brandy. In this, however, Belloc was wrong. One must go to a Catholic with an existentialist sensibility for a proper appreciation of spirits. To that end, read Walker Percy's "On Bourbon." I may be wrong, but I suspect that Percy, along with Bernanos and his vinous French brethren, would join Belloc and Chesterton in an incomprehending sadness at the author's comments about drink, which are typically American in their insensibility, and not a sign of spiritual or intllectual maturity or rigor.
Despite this brief lapse, I am certain that the author is a great scholar and a great man. Belloc's history is intentionally controversialist and apologetic, not academic. I don't really like it for that reason, and I doubt the author would either. However, I suspect that if he were to read more of Belloc's other work, even if only as an act of mortification or reparation, he would find it both spiritually and intellectually profitable. At least I have always found it so, Benedicamus Domino. |
