Finally A Book On The Catholic Theology of Harry Potter

Over the years I’ve read many books about the Catholic Theology of books by JRR Tolkien like, Tolkien: Man and Myth and Bilbo's Journey: Discovering the Hidden Meaning in The Hobbit  by Joseph Pearce, or The Power of the Ring: The Spiritual Vision of the Lord of the Rings by Stratford Caldecott for example. But none about JK Rowling.....so far. On the following pages you will find all of the truly amazing Catholic theology I’ve discovered in the Harry Potter books.

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.

Where were you when......?

From time to time people will remember exactly where they were when something 'big' happened, first moon landing, shooting of JKF, death of Blessed JPII, etc. But other days may not be so easy to recall, for mere mortals. For example, Where were you 13 years ago today? Oh yes, now you mention it, I do remember. I was in Preston for a couple of days that weekend. Fr McMahon SSPX, had arranged for Joseph Pearce to come and give a talk, in a pub over dinner that Sunday, to a group of us who had read his book on Tolkien.

Mr Pearce was a bit surprised to find that Father was from the SSPX, as no one had told him that when inviting him. Anyway I'm sure we all had a great time. Joe, no doubt gave a very good talk, I don't remember what I had for dinner, but I'm sure it and the beer was good. At some point I produced my hardback copy of Joseph's first mainstream book, Wisdom and Innocence, A Life of GK Chesterton, and asked if he would mind signing it. He asked where I'd bought it? From Aidan Mackey said I, a GK Chesterton bookseller, at the time. "I've already signed it" he replied! Amongst a few laughs he took the book and a pen, and added 'The Assumption 1999' above his signature which was, as he said already there. I clearly had not read the book, and have still not! But I have quoted from it a number of times and now today, the Feast of The Assumption 2012 I have finally started to read it! Don't worry Sir Pratchett you can borrow it as soon as I'm finished.

Pray The GK Chesterton Novena For Someone's Conversion

Monday 30th July is the 90th Anniversary of the Conversion of GK Chesterton. The location was, "the Railway Hotel in Beaconsfield, the dance-room of which had been converted into a makeshift chapel in the absence of any Catholic church in the town. In truth it was little more than a shed with a corrugated-iron roof and wooden walls, fitted with chapel fixtures by Sir Philip Rose and made available by the hotel's Irish landlady, Mrs Borlase. However, if Father Rice had failed to persuade Chesterton to be received in more luxurious surroundings [Douai Abbey School where Father was headmaster], he was compensated amply when Gilbert requested that he be present with Father O'Connor at his reception on Sunday, 30th July. The two Priests breakfasted together at the inn at which Father O'Connor was staying before walking together to Top Meadow [GKC's house]. According to Father Rice, they found Gilbert in an armchair reading the catechism, 'pulling faces and making noises as he used to do when reading'. Greeting his two friends, he got up and stuffed the catechism in his pocket. At lunch he drank water and poured wine for everyone else, and at about three o'clock they set out for the church. While Gilbert was making his Confession to Father O'Connor, Frances [GK's Wife], who was weeping continually, was comforted by Father Rice."

From Wisdom and Innocence, A Life of GK Chesterton by Joseph Pearce, which I am able to quote from as Terry Pratchett has not been round to borrow it yet!

As there are hundreds of Converts to the Catholic Church who 'blame' Chesterton for their Conversion, it would seem like a good idea to say the Prayer for the Beatification of GK Chesterton for the next nine days, and to offer it for the Conversion of someone you love. See the end of this post for the Prayer.

And remember that we will pray for your intentions on;

The Delayed 2nd Annual GK Chesterton Walking Pilgrimage, Saturday 28th July.

9am Meet outside St George's C of E Church, Aubrey Walk, London, W8 7JG where GKC was Baptised as a baby. Walk to Uxbridge (14 miles approx), stopping for breakfast.

1.30pm Old Rite Mass in thanks giving for Chesterton's Conversion, which took place 90 years ago this month. 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 onto Beaconsfield (10 miles approx) where Chesterton lived, converted, died and is buried. Say the prayer for the Beatification of GK Chesterton at his graveside. www.catholicgkchestertonsociety.co.uk

For more details or to join the pilgrimage see www.justgiving.com/Stuart-McCullough or follow on Twitter on the day, @Stuart1927

Prayer for the Beatification of GK Chesterton

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 [and especially for……] so that his holiness may be recognised by all and the Church may proclaim him Blessed. We ask this through Christ Our Lord. Amen.

See here for copies of this prayer in Spanish, French and Italian and for printable prayercards.

Tolkien's The Lord of The Rings; A Catholic Worldview?

Tolkien's The Lord of The Rings; A Catholic Worldview. In this 1 hour long programme, Joseph Pearce uncovers the Catholicism found in JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. On sky 589 or www.ewtn.co.uk Wednesday 18th April 8am or Thursday 19th April 9.30pm.

'Hilaire Belloc' Is A Bold Catholic Statement

As I 'blame' Belloc for converting me to the Catholic Faith, I was very pleased to find that this long dead Catholic writer has his own blog. And then I was even happier to find the following review there last week, as only a couple of weeks ago I had to take down my copy of this book to look something up. I have always (sorry Treebeard) thought that if HB or GKC were to sign a blank sheet of paper that would be a striking Defence of The Faith! If you only ever read one Biography of HB, let it be this;

Joe Pearce published his biography of Belloc some years ago now. I have just come across, again, Stuart Milson's nice little review:

Old Thunder A Life of Hilaire Belloc: Joseph Pearce
(Harper Collins, London 2002, hb, 318 pages, £20) Reviewed by: Stuart Milson

Joseph Pearce has emerged as one of Britain's most prolific biographers of leading twentieth century writers. A self-confessed 'angry young man' in his early days, Pearce has made a journey from idealistic political involvement to the world of serious literature, and has worked hard to establish (what is now) a considerable reputation as a writer. He first gained attention back in 1996 for his substantial biography of G K Chesterton, and has produced books on Tolkien and the Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Yet Pearce, a Roman Catholic convert, does not merely seek to provide a conventional biographical study of his subjects. Instead, a special thread and emphasis emerges in his work - that of an individual writer's adherence to faith and spirituality in an era where materialism and the self have all but replaced organised religion.

Pearce's latest foray is a life of the Catholic writer, poet, one-time Liberal MP, traveller, romantic, debator, World War 1 British propagandist, epicurean and beer-drinking Sussex loyalist, Hilaire Belloc. Yet Belloc was born in the village of La Celle Saint Cloud, near Paris, on 27 July 1870. And although his name is synonymous with the county of Sussex, with that of his friend G K Chesterton and with a mystical English ruralism, Belloc emerges as a truly international figure - a sort of cross-Channel, Anglo-Gallic prophet of a noble Europe of faith, based on the principles of Catholicism and a near-medieval obedience to God. Indeed, one clergyman was startled to hear Belloc (the apparent embodiment of Cobbett or John Bull) delivering an oration to a London Eucharistic Congress in fluent French!

If Belloc was difficult to pin down, he was also one of those people who seemed to fill every moment of his life with activity. If he was not travelling by foot across the American or European continents, he was always speaking in debates, or writing for newspapers and journals, or throwing himself into this or that cause as if the whole world depended upon it. After the death of G K Chesterton, Belloc (his own powers at their lowest ebb) took on the task of running his old friend's magazine, G K's Weekly. He did this, not for money or glory, but to honour the man who had always been at his side. Belloc, anxious for copy, wrote to his son, Peter: 'Send us short stuff ... under whatever pen name you use. We pay nothing: I get nothing: we are all in the soup: but it's great fun'.

Names such as George Bernard Shaw and H G Wells also figure prominently in Pearce's story, and Belloc is often to be found locked in debate with those two exponents of socialism and scientific rationalism. In the following passage, the biographer's interest in the importance of faith (and Belloc's importance as a writer who expounded it) is clear: 'The whole of Wells's vision of history was anathema to Belloc. He objected to his tacitly anti-Christian stance ... Wells believed that human "progress" was blind and beneficial; unshakable, unstoppable and utterly inexorable. History was the product of invisible and immutable evolutionary forces that were coming to fruition in the twentieth century." Yet Wells ended his life in deep disillusionment, with Belloc - the opponent of all that the twentieth century came to stand for - pursuing him to the last. Science had not ended war, poverty or 'irrationalism', and the cold light of a laboratory could not satisfy the needs of the human soul. At the end, notes Pearce, Wells was defeated, not by Belloc, but by the intervention of reality. Unlike the socialist writer, Hilaire rejected the fanaticism of grand, man-made schemes, denouncing both rapacious capitalism and the mechanical, anonymous, ants' nest of communism.

For Belloc, the key to life was to be found in a small French church, or with his beloved wife Elodie and their children, or in a pint of ale brewed by county men and drunk with reverence in a hallowed inn deep in the Sussex countryside. As Belloc himself put it in the following 'touching couplet': 'French is my heart and loyal and sincere / Is, and shall be, my love of British beer'.

A heady brew, Joseph Pearce's detailed and engrossing biography brings Belloc very much to life again - a worthwhile thing in an age where not thinking too much (except about money) is increasingly the rule.

GK Chesterton Joined Catholic Church 89 Years Ago Today

The location was, "the Railway Hotel in Beaconsfield, the dance-room of which had been converted into a makeshift chapel in the absence of any Catholic church in the town. In truth it was little more than a shed with a corrugated-iron roof and wooden walls, fitted with chapel fixtures by Sir Philip Rose and made available by the hotel's Irish landlady, Mrs Borlase. However, if Father Rice had failed to persuade Chesterton to be received in more luxurious surroundings [Douai Abbey School where Father was headmaster], he was compensated amply when Gilbert requested that he be present with Father O'Connor at his reception on Sunday, 30th July. The two Priests breakfasted together at the inn at which Father O'Connor was staying before walking together to Top Meadow [GKC's house]. According to Father Rice, they found Gilbert in an armchair reading the catechism, 'pulling faces and making noises as he used to do when reading'. Greeting his two friends, he got up and stuffed the catechism in his pocket. At lunch he drank water and poured wine for everyone else, and at about three o'clock they set out for the church. While Gilbert was making his Confession to Father O'Connor, Frances [GK's Wife], who was weeping continually, was comforted by Father Rice."

From Wisdom and Innocence, A Life of GK Chesterton by Joseph Pearce, which I am able to quote from as Terry Pratchett has not been round to borrow it yet! So today is no doubt a good day to say the Chesterton prayer for someones Conversion.

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 [and especially for……] so that his holiness may be recognized by all and the Church may proclaim him Blessed. We ask this through Christ Our Lord.

Amen.
www.catholicgkchestertonsociety.co.uk
www.goodcounselnetwork.com

Shock, Shakespeare Wrote Lots Of Things, Not Just Henry V, No Really!

Please note this is not a joke, William Shakespeare, famous Catholic author of the play Henry V* did write lots of other stuff. My Family and I went to an open air performance of The Tempest in the park. I looked up The Tempest in the index of The Quest for Shakespeare by Joseph Pearce and was very happy to read,

"he would have been echoing in his actions [making sure Catholics had somewhere to go to Mass once he left London] the words of Prospero in the final words of the final act of the last play he wrote:

And my ending is despair,
Unless I be reliev'd by prayer,
Which pierces so, that it assaults
Mercy itself, and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardon'd be,
Let your indulgence set me free.**

Desiring the prayers of the Catholic faithful in the hidden recesses of the Gatehouse, as he had desired the prayers of the audiences who watched his final play, Shakespeare disappeared into the sunset of his own life"

If you are not very bookish, Mr Pearce has a series of the same name on EWTN (Sky 589 or online) 4.30am Sundays or 9.30am Tuesdays for those of you who get up late!

*Sometimes one finds quotes in Latin or French in books with no translation, this can be quite annoying. Therefore let me say that, the 'V' in 'Henry V' is a Roman numeral meaning 5th. So it is a play about Henry The Fifth, a Welsh King of England.

**Although there are later plays attributed to collaboration between Shakespeare and John Fletcher, The Tempest is the last play that is solely Shakespeare.

GK Chesterton, Terry Pratchett & Suicide

I have been told that Terry is a fan of GKC, nothing wrong with that, we all should be. But it is an amazing coincidence (sorry God, just using this term so as not to offend the fools out there) that today ends the 9 days of the Pro-Life prayers to GKC and today State Sponsored TV (BBC) will show Terry watching someone else kill themselves. Tomorrow is the 75 anniversary of the death of GKC, were he still alive I think he would suggest that Terry needs to read a few more of his books!

Just being totally ridiculous for a minute and putting God out of the argument, let us consider a couple of points. Many people who attempt suicide fail and go on and live happy lives, assisted suicide does not fail. Secondly, you and I do not know what the future holds, we do not even KNOW for sure how we will feel tomorrow. Alison Davis, of No Less Human wanted to die for years, but is now very happy that no one helped her!

Just looked on the internet and found this lot here;

Author Terry Pratchett writes that Chesterton "in small doses taken regularly is good for the soul" [Source- Wisdom and Innocence, p. 90].

Pratchet and co-author Neil Gaiman dedicated their novel Good Omens:
"to the memory of GK Chesterton, a man who knew what was going on".

Also a character in the book (Good Omens) states that Chesterton is:
"the only poet in the twentieth century to even come close to the Truth."
[Source- Wisdom and Innocence, p. 90.]

Terry Pratchett also writes:
"It's worth pointing out that in The Man Who was Thursday and The Napoleon of Notting Hill he gave us two of the most emotionally charged plots in the twentieth century..."
[Source- Wisdom and Innocence, p. 90]

As I have a signed copy (that is a funny story, for another post) of Wisdom and Innocence, maybe I should get around to reading it now. You can borrow it when I'm done Terry.

Do also see John Smeaton's blog for how to complain to the BBC and ideas of what to say.