GK Chesterton on Nietzsche on Nietzsche's Birthday

"Other vague modern people take refuge in material metaphors; in fact, this is the chief mark of vague modern people. Not daring to define their doctrine of what is good, they use physical figures of speech without stint or shame, and , what is worst of all, seem to think these cheap analogies are exquisitely spiritual and superior to the old morality. Thus they think it intellectual to talk about things being 'high.' It is at least the reverse of intellectual; it is a mere phrase from a steeple or a weathercock. 'Tommy was a good boy' is a pure philosophical statement, worthy of Plato or Aquinas. 'Tommy lived the higher life' is a gross metaphor from a ten-foot rule.

This, incidentally, is almost the whole weakness of Nietzsche, whom some are representing as a bold and strong thinker. No one will deny that he was a poetical and suggestive thinker; but he was quite the reverse of strong. He was not at all bold. He never put his own meaning before himself in bald abstract words: as did Aristotle and Calvin, and even Karl Marx, the hard, fearless men of thought. Nietzsche always escaped a question by a physical metaphor, like a cheery minor port. He said, 'beyond good and evil,' because he had not the courage to say, 'more good than good and evil,' or, 'more evil than good and evil.' Had he faced his thought without metaphors, he would have seen that it was nonsense. So, when he describes his hero, he does not dare to say, 'the purer man,' or 'the happier man,' or 'the sadder man,' for all these are ideas; and ideas are alarming. He says 'the upper man.' or 'over man,' a physical metaphor from acrobats or alpine climbers. Nietzsche is truly a very timid thinker. He does not really know in the least what sort of man he wants evolution to produce" -- G.K. Chesterton, "Orthodoxy", Chapter 7

Both of the 1 inch [2.5cm] button badges above, are available here; https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?sid=stuartmcc1927 

Happy Birthday Mahatma Gandhi, Pro-Lifer inspired by GK Chesterton!

"Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on this day in 1869 and was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethicist, who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India's independence from British rule, and in turn inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world." Or so the internet says.

I only know that he was inspired by an article written by GK Chesterton, see Father Ian Ker's biography for details [see last post]. So wear Chesterton and Gandhi badges to inspire others. 

Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson on GK Chesterton

And Benson read much of Mr Chesterton, and liked him in a qualified way. 'Have you read,' he asks in this year [1905], 'a book by GK Chesterton called Heretics? If not, do see what you think of it. It seems to me that the spirit underneath it is splendid. He is not a Catholic, but he has the spirit. He is so joyful and confident and sensible! One gets rather annoyed by his extreme love of paradox; but there is a sort of alertness in his religion and in his whole point of view that is simply exhilarating. I have not been so much moved for a long time. He is a real mystic of an odd kind.'  

The Life of Robert Hugh Benson, quoted in The Tumbler of God; Chesterton As Mystic by Father Robert Wild.

GK Chesterton Prayercards; http://www.catholicgkchestertonsociety.co.uk/Printable-Prayercards.html

GK Chesterton, Our Lady of Walsingham and the Bishops on Northampton

My Wife spotted this in the information centre at the Angilican Shrine to Our Lady in Walsingham. Henry VIII suppressed the original Shrine, the Bishop of Northampton declined the chance to open part of it up again in the late 1800s, early 1900s. It is now the National Shrine to Our Lady in England. So Bishop Doyle declining to open the Cause for the Beatification of GKC, would seem to mean that St George will need to step aside, in due course, to let GK Chesterton become the Patron Saint of England. 😁

Happy Feast of Our Lady of Walsingham.

The American Chesterton Society where kind enough to find this quote of GKC which mentions Our Lady of Walsingham;

"The Dean of St. Paul's ... unveiled to his readers all the horrors of a quotation from Newman; a very shocking and shameful passage, in which that degraded apostate says that he is happy in his religion, and in being surrounded by the things of his religion; that he likes to have objects that have been blessed by the holy and beloved, that there is a sense of being protected by prayers, sacramentals and so on; and that happiness of this sort satisfies the soul. The Dean, having given us this one ghastly glimpse of the Cardinal's spiritual condition, drops the curtain with a groan and says it is Paganism. How different from the Christian orthodoxy of Plotinus!

Now it was exactly that little glimpse that interested me …  not so much a glimpse into the soul of the Cardinal as into the mind of the Dean. I suddenly seemed to see, in much simpler form than I had yet realized, the real issue between him and us. And the curious thing about the issue is this: that what he thinks about us is exactly what we think about him. What I for one feel most strongly, in considering a case like that of the Dean and his quotation from the Cardinal, is that the Dean is a man of distinguished intelligence and culture, that he is always interesting, that he is sometimes even just, or at least justified or justifiable; but that he is first and last the champion of a Superstition; the man who is really and truly defending a Superstition, as it would be understood by people who could define a Superstition...

Dean Inge is a superstitious person because he is worshipping a relic; a relic in the sense of a remnant. He is idolatrously adoring the broken fragment of something; simply because that something happens to have lingered out of the past in the place called England; in the rather battered form called Protestant Christianity. It is as if a local patriot were to venerate the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham only because she was in Walsingham, and without even remembering that she was in Heaven. It is still more as if he venerated a fragment clipped from the toe of the statue and forgot where it came from and ignored Our Lady altogether. I do not think it superstitious to respect the chip in relation to the statue, or the statue in relation to the saint, or the saint in relation to the scheme of theology and philosophy. But I do think it superstitious to venerate, or even to accept, the fragment because it happens to be there. And Dean Inge does accept the fragment called Protestantism because it happens to be there."

From the book The Thing in chapter “The Protestant Superstitions.”

GK Chesterton Prayer

Please say the #Chesterton Prayer in English, #Igbo, Latin, #French, Hungarian, #Croatian, Portuguese, #Urdu, Lithuanian, #Irish, Welsh, #Maltese, Spanish, #Polish, Romanian, #German, Latvian, #Russian, Slovakian, #Catalan or Italian https://t.co/RVAPTsmjQ3 #GKCWalk

Self Publicists Really Can Annoy Me

Many years ago, I was very happy to see a tweet which said, "Self Publicists Really Can Annoy Me, I'm one of the speakers at the Latin Mass Society Conference, but come anyway" or something like that. I forget exactly how I phrased it. Then a couple of years ago I saw a chap interview a publisher of a very good children's book series, on television. No problem with that, except that the interviewer was the author of the books.

So here is me interviewing myself about a book which I wrote part of.

So Stuart could you tell the reader of your blog how this book came about?

Well Dale Ahlquist, President of The American Chesterton Society contacted me and said 'Stuart you're really famous and important, why don't you write your autobiography?' Or something like that. Being really humble I thought it best to agree with him.

But Stuart, it seems that some others have also written some of the book.

Well yes, when I'd finished, bearing in mind that I still cannot type, Dale said it's a little short for an autobiography. So I suggested he ask some totally unknown writer to do an introduction, which would no doubt help their career. Dale very kindly agreed to write it himself, I'm sure he will have a lot of success as a writer after this.

Sorry, I wasn't just thinking about the excellent introduction by Dale, I was also thinking of the other 33 Converts who contributed chapters about their Conversion stories.

Well it seems that Dale struggled to write a long enough introduction, so I helped out again with another idea. Which is very good of me as I'm sure most authors don't have to help out their publishers quite this much. I suggested that Dale find some other Converts, whose stories would never get published in their own right as they are not as famous and important as myself and use them to pad out my book.

But the book is called My Name is Lazarus, not 'Stuart's Autobiography'.

I remember that Chesterton had a simular problem with a publisher at least once, he had come up with a very good name for one of his books, only to have it turned down by the publisher. Something about 'too long', 'won't help sales'. I thought this book should be called "A bit of the life of the very important and famous Stuart, written by himself". No one has actually explained why we didn't end up using that, but there you go. Ruins the sequel and the prequel though, 'A Bit More...' and 'A Bit Earlier...."

So, any last points?

Buy yourself two or three copies of the book, one to keep nice, one for making notes and at least one to give as a gift. Order your copies here. And remember to stay away from self publicists, I'm just giving this interview to support Dale and the 33 unknowns who have written in this great book. As I saw on twitter earlier this year; 

"It's only January and we already have a winner of the Best, Most Important Book Published in the Whole of 2019 Award! Order your copy here."

Jesus and Mary, Just Jesus or Mary Alone?

"When I was a boy a more Puritan generation objected to a statue upon my parish church representing the Virgin and Child. After much controversy, they compromised by taking away the Child. One would think that this was even more corrupted with Mariolatry, unless the mother was counted less dangerous when deprived of a sort of weapon. But the practical difficulty is also a parable. You cannot chip away the statue of a mother from all round that of a new-born child. You can not suspend the new-born child in mid-air; indeed you cannot really have a statue of a new-born child at all. Similarly, you cannot suspend the idea of a new-born child in the void or think of him without thinking of his mother. You cannot visit the child without visiting the mother; you cannot in common human life approach the child except through the mother. If we are to think of Christ in this aspect at all, the other idea follows as it is followed in history. We must either leave Christ out of Christmas, or Christmas out of Christ, or we must admit, if only as we admit it in an old picture, that those holy heads are too near together for the haloes not to mingle and cross."
The Everlasting Man by GK Chesterton

95th Anniversary of England’s Largest Earthquake

Ninety-five years ago today, the World was rocked to it’s very foundations by a huge earthquake. The epicentre was The Railway Hotel Beaconsfield, which is no longer standing. The hotel has been replaced by a supermarket, carpark and a Catholic Church.

The aftershocks of the earthquake were felt all over the World. Some people in Argentina even wrote a prayer as a result and the Archbishop of Buenos Aires was even moved to edit the pray. That Archbishop has since gone on and changed his name to Pope Francis.

So 95 years ago Gilbert Keith Chesterton became a Catholic in The Railway Hotel Beaconsfield and shook the World to it’s roots. He has led hundreds or maybe thousands of others into the Catholic Church. He holiness has led hundreds to his graveside to pray. For seven years now there has even been an Annual Pilgrimage in his honour.

Say the GK Chesterton Prayer in the language of your choice; http://www.catholicgkchestertonsociety.co.uk/Printable-Prayercards.html Follow @CatholicGKCSoc on Twitter.

Like The Catholic GK Chesterton Society Facebook page. Read Chesterton, and not just his very good Father Brown mysteries. Many of his books and essays can be read for free online, including his biographies of St Francis, St Thomas Aquinas and Charles Dickens.

And do watch, ‘G K Chesterton; Apostle of Common Sense’ on EWTN (Sky 589 or online www.ewtn.co.uk) Mondays 2pm or Wednesdays 7am or Thursdays 10pm each week. (30 minutes long)

Belloc, Chesterton, 'Right-wingers' And Former 'Right-wingers' Birthday Books

I had read an excellent review (http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2016/09/merrie-england-joseph-pearce-spiritual-journey-shire-kv-turley.html) of this short book by Joseph Pearce about a trip around Merrie England, and Wales and was very happy to recieve a copy after a gentle hint. I have read the book with great interest and with many questions, did Joe know that Hilaire Belloc's Mum and Dad Married at St James's Spanish Place? Did he know that Cecil Chesterton was Married at Corpus Christi Maiden Lane? And when I read the bit about wanting to follow in Belloc's footsteps on his epic Pilgrimage, I stood up on the train shouting, "I'll lend you my maps!". Joe is former 'Right-winger' and you can read his conversion story called Race with the Devil.

Peter of the GK Chesterton tie fame (http://ecumenicaldiablog.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/annual-gk-chesterton-pilgrimage.html?m=1) dropped a couple of GKC books off for me on my Birthday. As with all of Chesterton's stuff, priceless.

I even got some Birthday cash, which is good as you can exchange it for books. I have been told that you can spend Birthday money on things other than books, but not wishing to insult those who have given me money I have never tried this. I don't like to pay much for a book, which is why I've never had a copy of Belloc's 'A General Sketch of The European War, The Second Phase'. But one can be more generous with Birthday money and so £10 offered and accepted I now have a copy. I remember reading the First Phase a couple of years ago, and being quite moved. Then I heard a chap called Michael give a great talk about Belloc and mention both of these book so I'm sure this is £10 well spent.

Not long before my Birthday I got an email for Carmel Books (http://www.carmel-books.org/) about a book called The Attack on the Family, I had not the time to read it, but thought it sounded interesting. I dropped no hints, but a copy arrived in the post. I had to smile as Wikipedia describe the pubishers as 'Right-wingers'. Why smile? Because a lot of anti-Brexit types go on about the rise of the Right and the need to remain in the EU to combat this. Then inside the book it says, the publishers "are financially supported by the European Parliament."

It's a funny old game.

6th Annual GK Chesterton Pilgrimage Report And Photos

On Saturday 30^th July 2016 my brother-in-law Stephen agreed to give me a lift to the starting point of the Annual GK Chesterton Walking Pilgrimage. This allowed me to stay in bed slightly longer than normal, for which I am grateful. Hooray! While waiting outside St George’s C of E Church in Aubrey

Walk, to see if anybody else would arrive for the 8am start, Malcolm wandered around the corner, went into the Church grounds and promptly announced on social media that I wasn’t there! At 8am we read the paragraph from Chesterton’s autobiography, said the prayer and started marching off in the direction of Ealing. Hooray! We bemoaned the fact that many people had said they would come if the pilgrimage was ever on a Saturday as two is the smallest number that we have had start the Pilgrimage since the first year we walked. Upon arriving outside the abortion “clinic” at 87 Mattock Lane in Ealing 5 minutes ahead of schedule, we prayed for the closure of the “clinic” with the hardy souls who go there each Saturday to pray and offer support to the women tempted to abort. We were joined by three more pilgrims at this point, the five of us headed off, joining the canal just before Hanwell Hospital by The Fox public house. We now had to pick up speed as we needed to arrive in Uxbridge for the 1.30 Mass.

The Sung Old Rite Mass started shortly after our arrival and thanks to Fr Schofield for allowing us to use his parish.  To Fr Michael Cullinan for being the Celebrant, Gordon for being MC and Peter, Steven, Nathanael and Jerome for serving and a special thanks to Matthew Schellhorn who provided the excellent musical accompaniment to the Mass. And thanks to the Latin Mass Society for helping to cover the expenses of the Mass. Hooray! There were more than 50 people at Mass, which was offered in thanksgiving for the Conversion of GK Chesterton, whose reception into the Catholic Church had taken place 94 years ago to the day. After a brief lunch we were off again to walk the last 12 miles through the countryside to the grave of GK Chesterton in Beaconsfield. There were now more than 30 of us for the last leg of our journey. Hooray! A couple of American film-makers joined us for the afternoon, filming proceedings to be part of a documentary that they are making about GKC. We said the Rosary on the way, sang a few bits, said the Angelus twice and even stopped in one pub.  Upon arriving at Chesterton’s grave we said the Prayer for the Beatification of GK Chesterton in English, Welsh, Gaelic, French, Maltese, Spanish, Russian, Italian, Latvian, Hungarian, Portuguese and Latin, Hooray! 

Half the Pilgrims were dropped back to Uxbridge station in a minibus while the rest of us patiently waited in Chesterton’s local pub, The White Hart, for the minibus to return and take us back to London. Thanks to Ken who patiently followed us in the minibus during the day, to provide lifts to anyone who needed a break or was having trouble keeping up. Our youngest walking Pilgrim was 5 years old and we have no idea how old our oldest Pilgrims were as we were too polite to ask them but we are fairly sure they were septuagenarians.

Please say the Chesterton Prayer and print copies off. Please email Canon Udris (Chesterton (at) oscott.org) and tell him that you say the prayer even if you haven’t received any favours yet as at this time, Bishop Peter Doyle just requires evidence that there is a cult of prayer and devotion to GK Chesterton so that his cause for Beatification can be opened. Please like and follow the Catholic GK Chesterton Society on Facebook and Twitter (@CatholicGKCSoc), Read GK Chesterton’s books and essays, many of which can be read here for free  and watch ‘The Apostle of Common Sense’ on EWTN (Sky 589 or online) Tuesdays 5pm or Wednesdays 7am or Thursdays 10pm each week. (30 minutes long) and do give Chesterton books to friends and family for birthdays, Christmas and etc, ensuring that you put a GK Chesterton prayercard in the book, which they can use as a bookmark.

Chesterton once said, “You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.” If each time we open a book we find a Chesterton prayercard marking our page, we could say the prayer before we read.
And £4,735.68 was raised for the wonderful Catholic Pro-Life work of The Good Counsel Network and you can still donate here.

Don't Read Dale Ahlquist, Says Dale Ahlquist!

"I am sometimes asked if I ever read anything besides GK Chesterton. The answer, unfortunately, is yes. I wish I had a better answer--- something more along the lines of no." Dale Ahlquist, in the Introduction to The Complete Thinker, The Marvellous Mind of GK Chesterton.

So if we should only read GKC, then we should not read Dale Ahlquist‎. But as my long suffering Wife got me the book for my Birthday, it would have seemed ungrateful not to read it. Also I don't just read GKC, there's Belloc, Tolkien, Pearce, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Belloc, Cecil (GKC's brother) etc.

So, unless you're only going to read GK Chesterton, ignore Mr Ahlquist's advice and read his book.

Sermon For The 3rd Annual GK Chesterton Pilgrimage

The 3rd Annual GK Chesterton Pilgrimage has taken place! I hope to write a report shortly, until then here is Fr Schofield's Sermon from the Mass. (Photo shows, Father giving Pilgrims a Catholic history lesson on the way)

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you once again to Uxbridge as you make this third Annual Chesterton Pilgrimage.

Your final destination is Beaconsfield , G. K. Chesterton’s home from 1909 until his death in 1936. A year or so after his wedding he and Frances went on an excursion which he described as ‘a sort of second honeymoon’. He later recalled in his Autobiography:

I saw a passing omnibus labelled “Hanwell” and, feeling this to be an appropriate omen [for Hanwell was the location of a notorious lunatic asylum], we boarded it and left it somewhere at a stray station, which I entered and asked the man in the ticket-office where the next train went to. He uttered a pedantic reply, “Where do you want it to go?” And I uttered the profound and philosophical rejoinder, “Wherever the next train goes to.” It seemed that it went to Slough; which may seem to be singular taste, even in a train. However, we went to Slough, and from there set out walking with even less notion of where we were going.

Without intending to, he reached Beaconsfield and realised that ‘this is the sort of place where someday we will make our home’.

That passage is very telling. Chesterton spent his life searching for the Truth. It involved, if you like, catching trains without knowing exactly where they were going, trying different routes, until he was led through agnosticism, sceptisicism, spiritualism and Anglicanism to the bosom of the Catholic Church – in a humble room at the Railway Hotel in Beaconsfield, then serving as the town's mission.

It was in Beaconsfield that Chesterton lived, far away from Fleet Street; there that he wrote some of his most famous works, and eventually there he died and was laid to rest. Beaconsfield and Catholicism perhaps came to be closely-intertwined – they were simply ‘home’.

Chesterton is still admired today not only for his writings but his holiness of life. Many hope that one day he will be raised to the altars of the Church. Perhaps the most appealing aspects of Chesterton’s holiness were his wit and his humility. He was not just a ‘funny man’ but even developed a sort of theology of Christian humour. He thought it very telling that ‘alone among the animals, he [man] is shaken with the beautiful madness called laughter.’ Humour was linked to an appreciation of reality, of truth. ‘Honesty always laughs,’ he wrote, ‘because things are so laughable. Of course life is a serious business and we cannot shrug off important matters with a smirk or a laugh, but, on the other hand, to take everything seriously is to make everything into an idol.’ Chesterton thought that a common theme in comedy is ‘the primary paradox that man is superior to all the things around him and yet is at their mercy.’ Stand-up comedians are always observing the ridiculous side of human existence. And if we have the sense of the ridiculous in the things around us and, crucially, in ourselves then we are acknowledging that these things are not the centre of the universe, that (in most cases) these matters that consume so much of our time are passing away. Why can the angels fly?, Chesterton famously asked. Because they take themselves so lightly.  

Closely linked to this gift of joy, this lightness of being is the virtue of humility. One of my favourite stories with regard to this is told by Maisie Ward:

During the [1932 Dublin Eucharistic] Congress an Eastern priest accosted G. K. with praise of his writings. His own mind full of the great ideas of Christendom and the Faith, he felt a huge disproportion in the allusion to himself. And when later the priest asked to be photographed at his side it flashed through G.K.’s mind that he had heard in the East that an idiot was supposed to bring luck.

Chesterton was a gentle giant, a man with a sharp intellect but completely without guile, who gave his gifts freely for the service of the Lord and knew exactly his place in the order of things. Let us pray that we defend the Faith with the same wisdom and live our life with the same innocence:

God Our Father, Thou didst fill the life of Thy servant Gilbert Keith Chesterton with a sense of wonder and joy, and gave him a faith which was the foundation of his ceaseless work, a charity towards all men, particularly his opponents, and a hope which sprang from his lifelong gratitude for the gift of human life. May his innocence and his laughter, his constancy in fighting for the Christian faith in a world losing belief, his lifelong devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and his love for all men, especially for the poor, bring cheerfulness to those in despair, conviction and warmth to lukewarm believers and the knowledge of God to those without faith. We beg Thee to grant the favours we ask through his intercession, the end of abortion in this Country so that his holiness may be recognised by all and the Church may proclaim him Blessed. We ask this through Christ Our Lord. Amen.

Fr Schofield 30^th July 2013

3rd Annual GK Chesterton Pilgrimage Tuesday 30th July!

Today is GKC's Birthday! So the 3rd Annual GK Chesterton Pilgrimage will be held on Tuesday 30th July. After the first Annual GK Chesterton Pilgrimage, someone pointed out that we couldn't call it 'annual' as we'd only had one! Well we can now, as we are into our 3rd year! (Report, with photos, of the 2nd GKC Pilgrimage can be read here)

"Why on a Tuesday?" Well. William & Lucy, of last year's Annual GK Chesterton Pilgrimage, are getting Married on the nearest Saturday. And Fr Schofield couldn't do that Saturday. And Bishops are not often available on Saturdays. And the Metropolitan Police force said "it is to be hoped that less people will attend on a weekday, and thus we will be able to control the crowds........"

As Tuesday 30th July is the 91st anniversary of Gilbert Keith Chesterton becoming a Catholic, the theme and prayer intention of this year's Annual GK Chesterton Pilgrimage, will be the Conversion of my Mum. Oh, and the Conversion of anybody you would like us to pray for along the way! You can leave names of people to be prayed for in the comments below (they will not be published) or you can send me a DM on twitter (@Stuart1927).

Dale Ahlquist of The American Chesterton Society has a list of over two hundred people Converted by GKC. You can read Dale's Conversion story here. The result of GKC Converting Dale to the Catholic Church is amazing, hundreds of thousand of people, or maybe millions, have seen him promote Chesterton on EWTN. You can learn a lot about GKC by watching Mr Ahlquist each week on www.ewtn.co.uk or sky 589, on Tuesdays at 5pm, Wednesdays at 6.30am or Thursdays at 10pm.

BRING A PACKED LUNCH! After Mass last year we had to go back to the shops to buy lunch for 75% of those attending the Pilgrimage! We will not be doing this again. BRING A PACKED LUNCH! Some unkind sorts last year blamed this on the organiser (who had bought a PACKED LUNCH) as they claimed that LUNCH had not been mentioned in the posters, blogs, etc! BRING A PACKED LUNCH!

Plan for the day; Meet outside St George's C of E Church, Aubrey Walk, London, W8 7JG, where GKC was Baptised as a baby. Then at 8am start walking to Uxbridge (15 miles approx).

1.30pm Old Rite Mass (which will be a Sung Mass due to the support of The Latin Mass Society), in thanksgiving for Chesterton's Conversion, which took place 91 years ago on this day. Our Lady of Lourdes and St Michael, Osborn Road, Uxbridge, UB8 1UE. You are welcome to attend the Mass even if you are not doing the walk. Walk on to Beaconsfield (10 miles approx) where Chesterton lived, converted, died and is buried. Then we will say the prayer for the Beatification of GK Chesterton at his graveside. You can find the prayer here; http://www.catholicgkchestertonsociety.co.uk/

For more details or to join the pilgrimage email catholicgkcsociety@yahoo.co.uk or DM on Twitter and/or follow on the day, @Stuart1927 or sign up on Facebook.

"Have we now, [seventy-eight] years after Chesterton's death, reached a kind of tipping point in his reputation, of the same kind that Newman's reputation reached, leading to the opening of his cause in 1959, seventy-eight years after his death?" Dr Oddie

Highly Successful First London GK Chesterton Meeting

The first 'meet up and discus' your favourite Chesterton piece of work, took place in Wandsworth on Sunday 3rd February. As 50% of the members attended, more than expected, we had to move to a different Public House, so that we could all be seated!

It was brave of Rick to risk this venture, as he had no idea if anyone was interested. William arrived with a bag full of books, which he was told, by me, was against the rules (bring your favourite piece of work). He told us that he is to Marry later this year, and is getting rid of one copy of any books that he and Lucy both own, for a small donation to the Chesterton Society, much cheering! And so I went home with a Chesterton and Belloc book!

Rick went for GKC's, The Ball and The Cross, as his favourite, William opted for the poem, A Hymn of The Church Militant and I after much agonising went for The Nepoleon of Notting, and even read a small bit about the meeting with the President of Nicaragua.(http://ecumenicaldiablog.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/nicaragua-will-be-pro-life.html) And one Priest sent in via email; "My top three (I think) - 1. Anything in 'Orthodoxy', 2. Lepanto, 3. Thomas Aquinas"

When will the next meeting be? I don't know, but a Saturday would be good for me. Where will it be? I don't know, but Wembley would be very good for me, but Central London would be fine. Just sign-up here and you will be informed.

And let's have no talking while I read the menu! I saw 'Pasta' looked up chatting away, glanced at the menu and spotted duck and Stilton in the same meal, put my finger on that and continued to talk/listen. The waiter arrived, I ordered the duck & Stilton thing and was horrified when a salad come back!

The bbc's "Father Brown" Etc.

Father Brown À La BBC

I dusted off my copy of “The Complete Father Brown”, which of course is incomplete, to re-read “The Hammer of God” before it appeared on the BBC on Monday. It is a fascinating story of a murder in a small English Village. There is a Catholic Priest - Fr Brown, an Anglican Curate, a Presbyterian blacksmith with Catholic wife, an atheist cobbler, a number of policemen and poor Joe the village idiot. It is a story rich with Catholic theology, common sense, adultery, plenty of mystery, and lots of fun. Then we have the BBC version, which claims to be based on a “character” (Father Brown) by GK Chesterton, which has some of the above minus most of the religious element, half a dozen extra characters, allowing the programme to be longer than the 25 minutes it really needed, but this will no doubt increase the BBC’s revenue when selling the series abroad. They have added homosexuality/bisexuality to the programme, along with some blackmail, all of which detracted from the original story as opposed to enhancing it.

Chesterton’s Fr Brown is the sort of person who may awkwardly carry and drop a number of brown paper parcels as in “The Blue Cross”, I can even imagine him having trouble tying his laces, but I cannot imagine him having any difficulty dealing with an atheist or a C of E Curate. I felt that the BBC’s depiction of Fr Brown himself was a tad confused, for he bumbled in areas where he wouldn’t and made comments which I think it would have been unlikely for him to have made. For example at one point he enters a police officer’s office to take a sneaky look at the suspect’s file regarding evidence which was totally unnecessary for the BBC’s Fr Brown as he already knew whether the said evidence existed or not. Had this bit even been in the book, Chesterton’s Fr Brown would not have needed to ask, for he would have known. And later, in conversation with the homosexual character Fr Brown kindly says “If you ever need to talk...” but then added that he would not try to convert him. Chesterton’s Fr Brown always showed massive compassion for those that the Church would say are sinners, but the idea that he would not try to call him to repentance and conversion is preposterous.

On a positive note, the inclusion of one superfluous character in the programme allowed us to have a scene with an old steam locomotive in it and that probably makes their invention tolerable.

Had the programme not been called “Father Brown” and had I not read the original story and if I was interested in detective stories, then I would have found this programme rather pleasant (minus the BBC’s obsession with homosexuality). There was a mystery, a number of suspects, some heroism, a glimpse of Merry England and the steam train!

One good results of this series is that a larger number of people in England and Wales will hear the name of Chesterton again and as the BBC have republished “The Complete Father Brown”, we can hope that a large number of people who enjoy the series will now read the original stories and be suitably impressed.

You can watch the programme here on BBC’s iplayer http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01q0q1p/Father_Brown_The_Hammer_of_God/

You can read many of Chesterton's books for free here; http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/index.html inclueding Fr Brown.

And don't forget to see; http://www.catholicgkchestertonsociety.co.uk/ to see if he is a Saint.

The American Chesterton Society sell Father Brown Readers for children. http://www.chesterton.org/