Despite being gone for Lent, I did wish to make a blog post simply to include a GKC essay. I am unaware of it elsewhere on the Internet, but I wished to share it with a friend, so I typed it up for my friend and, in the process, I decided to include it here as well.

"A Charge of Irreverence", written in 1906
(from Lunacy and Letters, collection of GKC essays published in 1958)

One last post before I'm gone for Lent, giving a link to an interesting article.

GK Chesterton 'breaks mould of conventional holiness,' says Cause investigator

An excerpt

The priest investigating whether G K Chesterton’s Cause should be opened has hailed the writer as “potentially a huge model” for the Church who “breaks the mould of conventional holiness”.

Canon John Udris said Chesterton, a married layman who “liked his beer and Burgundy”, was not conventionally devout and could show Catholics “you don’t have to say your rosary every five minutes to be holy”.

Instead, Fr Udris suggested, Chesterton’s holiness could be found in his humour, his charity and his humility. His defence of the faith in particular, Fr Udris said, was a model for Catholics.

“People he would have fierce public debates with felt respected by him, loved by him, even if they didn’t agree with him,” he said, citing his exchanges with atheist opponents H G Wells and George Bernard Shaw.

Fr Udris was appointed by Bishop Peter Doyle of Northampton last September to investigate the possibility of opening Chesterton’s Cause.

The appointment came after it emerged that Pope Francis had been a member of the Chesterton Society in Argentina and had approved a prayer for his beatification.

Fr Udris, now spiritual director at St Mary’s seminary in Oscott, Birmingham, used to be parish priest at Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, where Chesterton died in 1936.

He said he expected to submit a dossier to Bishop Peter Doyle after a year or more of investigation. He said it would not be up to him to recommend whether to open the Cause, but added that “it will probably be obvious where I stand”.

I know I haven't been posting much of late, and I also will not be posting during Lent. Once Easter comes, I plan on resuming regular posting, however.

Sincerity

What convinces mankind of a man's sincerity is this: that every now and then he should go with his principle and against his feelings. Sincerity can be shown in surrender, if it is self-surrender. For instance, a despotist is not necessarily honest because he praises the King; but he probably is honest if he blames the King--and obeys him. He shows that it is for his theory he cares, and not for himself. Or, again, a man is not necessarily democratic because he can call up the people to support him. But he is democratic if he calls up the people to oppose him. A man who gives votes to a class that will probably vote against him certainly believes in popular government. A vegetarian who hates meat is not so serious as a vegetarian who loves meat.

-October 12, 1907, Illustrated London News

H/T to this blog

On most political platforms, in most newspapers and magazines, I observe that there are at present only two ideas, either to avoid controversy or to conduct it by mere bluff and noise.

-December 12, 1908, Daily News

"Fairy tales are more than true, not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."

Neil Gaiman famously attributed this quote to G.K. Chesterton in the beginning of his novel Coraline

Fairy tales are more than true, not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten

I had been unable to locate that quote in those exact words in Chesterton's works; however, it had been suggested by others that he was paraphrasing this passage from Tremendous Trifles found here

That seemed to me the most likely possibility (though I could never discount the possibility that perhaps it had been an exact quote. Chesterton had in other cases expressed ideas that were similar in content, yet still in slightly different words, on different occasions, after all. So it was always possible that was the case here, and that I had simply not found the version Gaiman was referring to- Chesterton has plenty of work that still hasn't made it online, of course, in which it might conceivably have been found.)

As it turns out, though, the speculations were correct, and Gaiman was paraphrasing Chesterton. He explains in this post here what occurred:

http://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/42909304300/my-moms-a-librarian-and-planning-to-put-literary

"...this clumsy collision of two very impatient forms of ignorance was known as the quarrel of Science and Religion."

For instance, in the matter of the inspiration of Scripture, [St. Thomas Aquinas] fixed first on the obvious fact, which was forgotten by four furious centuries of sectarian battle, that the meaning of Scripture is very far from self-evident and that we must often interpret it in the light of other truths. If a literal interpretation is really and flatly contradicted by an obvious fact, why then we can only say that the literal interpretation must be a false interpretation. But the fact must really be an obvious fact. And unfortunately, nineteenth century scientists were just as ready to jump to the conclusion that any guess about nature was an obvious fact, as were seventeenth-century sectarians to jump to the conclusion that any guess about Scripture was the obvious explanation. Thus, private theories about what the Bible ought to mean, and premature theories about what the world ought to mean, have met in loud and widely advertised controversy, especially in the Victorian time; and this clumsy collision of two very impatient forms of ignorance was known as the quarrel of Science and Religion.

St. Thomas Aquinas (1933)

In practical politics the survival of the fittest frequently means only the survival of the fussiest.

-August 8, 1925, Illustrated London News

It is by this time a convention of journalism that the most trivial things should be printed in the largest letters, while anything at all significant or suggestive should be printed in very small letters, or, by a more frequent accident, not printed at all.

-November 6, 1920, Illustrated London News

The highest outcome of an interest in literature is a finer interest in life...

-October 9, 1920, Illustrated London News

"All this being stated....to the credit of Mr. Brooks, I hope there will be no ill-feeling if I state...that he ought to be shot as a traitor.

I know nothing of Mr. Sydney Brooks, except that he has written one article which was good, and two novels that are possibly better. He is certainly a sincere observer and sometimes a true one—though it is not at all the same thing.- I am practically certain (reading between the lines) that he had no motive lower than the just love and laudation of the country to which he and I belong. His patriotism is sound and even his jingoism is sincere. All this being stated, and stated seriously, to the credit of Mr. Brooks, I hope there will be no ill-feeling if I state, equally seriously, that he ought to be shot as a traitor.

Let me explain. The great and real fun of growing old is that the world grows young. Especially in this: that the truisms all begin to come true. And this again is especially true of a thing we have all known ad nauseam: that excess in any indulgence is suicidal and destroys itself. Thus we have all heard that the drunkard is a nuisance to the moderate drinker: that the fanatic troubles true religion: and, in the same way, that the Jingo or Chauvinist or Spread-Eagle Patriot is really the worst enemy of patriotism. But in our youth we always fancied it was merely a matter of degree. We were under the delusion that a drunkard was a man who drank too much. We fancied a fanatic was one who believed in heaven too much. And in the same way we thought a swaggering patriot was one who cared rather too much for his country.

It is not so. There is much more than this in the conception of mortal sin; of the excess that turns and strikes and kills the very soul that is driving it on. Drunkenness is not only the enemy of‘sobriety. Drunkenness is quite literally the enemy of drink. The sole meaning, the sole justification, of festive fermented liquor is that it is meant for feasts; for certain hours of the day or occasions of the national custom. To extend it over all hours of the day is to abolish it. You veto a luxury by making it a necessity as much as by making it a crime. It was the pleasure of the Deity, at a high feast, to turn water into wine. It is the daily business of the dipsomaniac to turn wine into water...

I have taken these cases, the drunkard who destroys drink, the fanatic who destroys faith, merely to show that I do solidly and universally mean what I say, when I say that such English Jingoes as Mr. Sydney Brooks may very soon destroy England. He is not belauding or belittling his country; he is simply betraying her. By writing an article like “The Conquering English,” he is, quite literally, preparing the earliest possible opportunity for writing a second article called “The Conquered English.” Patriotism cannot afford jingoism just now: it is a luxury for times of peace; and this is a time of peril...

-extracted from an article by Chesterton that appeared in The World To-Day, volume 23 (January 1913-June 1913)

"...the pure Conservative and the pure Progressive; two figures which would have been overwhelmed with laughter by any other intellectual commonwealth of history."

Towards the end of the nineteenth century there appeared...the pure Conservative and the pure Progressive; two figures which would have been overwhelmed with laughter by any other intellectual commonwealth of history.  There was hardly a human generation which could not have seen the folly of merely going forward or merely standing still; of mere progressing or mere conserving. In the coarsest Greek Comedy we might have a joke about a man who wanted to keep what he had, whether it was yellow gold or yellow fever. In the dullest mediaeval morality we might have a joke about a progressive gentleman who, having passed heaven and come to purgatory, decided to go further and fare worse...The old reformers and the old despots alike desired definite things, powers, licenses, payments, vetoes, and permissions. Only the modern progressive and the modern conservative have been content with two words.

-George Bernard Shaw (1909)