#G.K. Chesterton

[fictionadventurer]

It's so funny how Heretics is G.K. Chesterton publicly dragging his friends and they still stay his friends! Imagine if you did an in-depth analysis of every mutual's worldview and why they are wrong. It would be chaos. And yet this guy manages to publish this book, get paid money for it, and still maintains these friendships for several more decades. Only G.K., I tell you.

[apesoformythoughts]

via chestertonsociety

[thebeautifulbook]

THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL by G.K. Chesterton, 1874-1936. (New York/London: Lane/Bodley Head, 1904)

source

[hexagr]

G.K. Chesterton on democracy and tradition, from Orthodoxy.

[palatinewolfsblog]

" A society is in decay, final or transitional,

when common sense really becomes uncommon."

G.K. Chesterton.

The Socialite (for my old friend and follower @cchris47 ) ...

[momentsbeforemass]

The best argument against Christianity

One of the saddest things in ministry is finding out why someone left.

Why someone turned away from your church. Or worse, turned away from God.

It’s humbling and heartbreaking. All in the same moment.

Because it usually comes down to one of two things.

One, as they see it, God didn’t do something. Or God allowed something terrible to happen.

Which means that we (official church people, parents, other teachers of the faith, etc.) have failed them. By leaving them with a defective understanding of God and God’s love for them. Setting them up to have exactly this happen, when they hit the hard things in life.

Or two, someone they understood to be a Christian said or did something that so completely repulsed them that they (understandably) want nothing to do with the Faith.

This is the more subtle one. And it’s because of something that Jesus points out in today’s Gospel, “You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden.”

Translation – as followers of Christ, you and I are always visible. There is no time when what we say or do does not reflect back on God. There is no time when what we say or do does not impact someone’s understanding of God.

You and I may not intend to teach the Faith. But rest assured that every waking moment, you and I are teaching the Faith to someone.

Whether we know it or not, someone is looking at what we say, what we do, what we post online, and saying to themselves, “that’s what Christians do.”

That time that you treated the clerk like a thing, and not like a person? Someone saw that and said, “that’s what Christians do.”

That “just for fun” repost of nasty stuff about the people whose politics you disagree with? Someone saw that and said, “that’s what Christians do.”

When you and I let that be our witness? It should be no surprise that they want nothing to do with us or our Faith.

“The best argument against Christianity is Christians.” – G.K. Chesterton

Today’s Readings

[themaninthegreenshirt]

"A people that forgets its ancestors will care little for its descendants."

G.K. Chesterton

[nonknowledge3]

Curing a madman is not arguing with a philosopher; it is casting out a devil. And however quietly doctors and psychologists may go to work in the matter, their attitude is profoundly intolerant [...] Their attitude is really this: that the man must stop thinking, if he is to go on living. Their counsel is one of intellectual amputation.

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

[francesderwent]

But is the comfortable doctrine...that we are all inevitably mild. We cannot be monsters of vice. We need not be monsters of virtue. And everyone loses sight of the true and terrible and inspiriting doctrine—the old doctrine that unless we strive every instant to be monsters of virtue, we ourselves may easily be monsters of vice. There is nothing nearer to us than madness; as every man knows who recalls some one moment of his life. “Inhuman monsters do not really exist, except in fairy-tales”! There are plenty of inhuman monsters in the modern world; inhuman monsters control commerce and rule continents. The only real difference between fairy-tale and modern fact is this: that in fairy-tales the monsters are fought. That is one of the very many superiorities of fairy-tales.

--G.K. Chesterton, Illustrated London News, February 3, 1906

[fictionadventurer]

In doing some research for the Inklings stickers I came across this and had a good laugh🤣thought of you bc you’re reading Chesterton right now

First off: Research for the Inklings stickers? Hooray! Can't wait to see what you come up with!

I love that story! It's got everything--the Chesterton-Shaw frenemy-ship, jokes about Chesterton's weight. (It's even better now that Heretics gave me more details about Chesterton and Shaw's debates.)

Don't forget the story of the woman who came up to Chesterton while WWI was raging and asked, "Why aren't you out at the front?" to which Chesterton replied, " If you will go around to the side, you will see that I am."

Also, this reminded me of maybe my favorite moment in the Chesterton-Shaw friendship: this hilarious letter that Shaw sent to Frances Chesterton. I'm not sure what's better: his elaborate plan to needle Chesterton, the fact that he roped his wife into it, his suggestion to stand there reading at them for 90 minutes, or the fact that Shaw loved Chesterton's work so much he wanted to prompt him to write things Shaw disagreed with.

Actually, my favorite thing about their friendship might be the time Shaw said that if he ever got to heaven, it would be because of the friendship of G.K. Chesterton. (I hope he was right).

[apesoformythoughts]

“I know that [eugenics] numbers many disciples whose intentions are entirely innocent and humane; and who would be sincerely astonished at my describing it as I do. But that is only because evil always wins through the strength of its splendid dupes; and there has in all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and abnormal sin.”

— G.K. Chesterton: Eugenics and Other Evils

[idratherdreamofjune]

"By Jove!" said Flambeau; "it's like being in fairyland." Father Brown sat bolt upright in the boat and crossed himself. His movement was so abrupt that his friend asked him, with a mild stare, what was the matter. "The people who wrote the medieval ballads," answered the priest, "knew more about fairies than you do. It isn't only nice things that happen in fairyland." "Oh, bosh!" said Flambeau. "Only nice things could happen under such an innocent moon. I am for pushing on now and seeing what does really come. We may die and rot before we ever see again such a moon or such a mood." "All right," said Father Brown. "I never said it was always wrong to enter fairyland. I only said it was always dangerous."

G.K. Chesterton, The Innocence of Father Brown

[hexagr]

G.K. Chesterton waxes poetic about defending seemingly pointless things and lost causes:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.” This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.

[eternal-echoes]

“But it is obvious, anyhow, that when we call a man a coward, we are in so doing asking him how he can be a coward when he could be a hero. When we rebuke a man for being a sinner, we imply that he has the powers of a saint.” 

- G.K. Chesterton

[momentsbeforemass]

Lived

“The only unanswerable argument against Christianity is Christians.”

G.K. Chesterton said it. It’s something that runs through my mind. When I’m cringing at the latest moment of stupid by an ostensibly Christian public figure. And when I’m cringing over something someone’s ostensibly Christian aunt said to them.

It’s a problem that’s been with us from the beginning. So much so that even the people who were taught by the Apostles were warning about it.

Here’s why it matters. Whether we like it or not, when people know you’re a Christian, they’re going to pay attention to what you say. And even more so to what you do.

Most of us are good at tuning out the missteps and misstatements of public figures. We shake our heads. Maybe make a meme out them. But rarely do we take them to heart.

What’s harder to tune out are the words and actions of the people we know. Family, friends, our priest, our deacon. That’s the stuff that hurts. Because it’s up close and personal.

It’s why Chesterton is right. But it’s why the opposite is also true.

The only unanswerable argument for Christianity is Christians.

A lived faith is the most powerful testimony. St. Ignatius of Antioch (speaking of people taught by the Apostles) puts it this way,

“We recognize a tree by its fruit, and we ought to be able to recognize a Christian by his action.

The fruit of faith should be evident in our lives, for being a Christian is more than making sound professions of faith. It should reveal itself in practical and visible ways.

Indeed, it is better to keep quiet about our beliefs, and live them out, than to talk eloquently about what we believe, but fail to live by it.”

Today’s Readings

[ivan-fyodorovich-k]

God I am so tired of hearing about G.K. Chesterton fucking read another book