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ZENIT News Agency, The World Seen from
Rome
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The GK Chesterton Institute for Faith &
Culture Carries on G.K. Chesterton's
Work
Father Ian Boyd on Continuing the
Writer's Legacy
SOUTH ORANGE, New Jersey, MAY 3, 2005 (Zenit.org).-
An institute dedicated to continuing the
work of Gilbert Keith Chesterton is
celebrating the 30th anniversary of its
journal and its mission of cultural
evangelization.
Basilian Father Boyd is president of the
G.K. Chesterton Institute for Faith and
Culture at Seton Hall University. He
shared with ZENIT how at the heart of
Chesterton -- and at the heart of the
institute's work -- is a sense that the
imagination must be cleansed and
evangelized.
Q: What is the nature of the work
done at the G.K. Chesterton Institute?
Father Boyd: The Chesterton
Institute was founded in order to
continue in our day that work that
Chesterton began in his. This work
consists chiefly in what might be called
cultural evangelization.
Chesterton believed that the toxic
consumerist culture of the Western world
has a power to undermine faith and a
decent way of life that is even greater
than that of the totalitarian systems
which have attacked Christianity in the
past.
Our work is largely the educational work
of a think tank, consisting of
publications, conferences and the
preparation of position papers on urgent
contemporary problems, as well as such
events as the restaging of Chesterton's
debates with friend George Bernard Shaw.
Q: Additionally, you are the editor
of a well-respected journal, The
Chesterton Review. However, the journal
covers lots of topics besides
Chesterton. Why is this so? Is this in
keeping with the spirit of the man
himself?
Father Boyd: Yes; it is
appropriate that a journal bearing
Chesterton's name should be concerned
with the luminous sacramental tradition
to which Chesterton belonged rather than
with a cult of Chesterton himself.
That is why The Chesterton Review has
devoted special issues to Christopher
Dawson, Cardinal Manning, Georges
Bernanos, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis,
George Macdonald and others -- they all
possessed a sacramental imagination, a
sense of the incarnate God present to us
in history, culture and human community.
For the same reason, we have published
on Ireland and the future of its
Christian culture; fantasy and
children's literature, Christian
mysticism and the so-called New Age
movement; ethics and economics in
post-Communist Europe; and even Japanese
Christian writers.
At the heart of Chesterton -- certainly
at the heart of our work -- is a sense
that the imagination must be cleansed
and evangelized.
Q: Why are G.K. Chesterton's words
important for our time?
Father Boyd: Chesterton wrote
beautifully about beautiful things:
faith, family, the extraordinary gift of
creation itself. In everything he wrote
he expressed a kind of joyful gratitude
for God's abundant generosity to us.
He was also a prophet whose prophesies
have been fulfilled -- another good
reason for taking him seriously. His
predictions must have seemed improbable
to the readers of his own day but we who
have lived in an age which has seen them
come true now find that his words speak
directly to us.
Think of one or two of such prophesies.
At the beginning of the 20th century, a
time of almost universal peace, he
predicted that "before the liberal idea
is dead or triumphant we shall see wars
and persecutions the like of which the
world had never seen."
On another occasion, he wrote that "the
next great heresy is going to be simply
an attack on morality, and especially on
sexual morality," a threat to
Christianity which he believed was even
more serious than that of Communism.
"The madness of tomorrow," he wrote, "is
not in Moscow, but much more in
Manhattan." In view of the very welcome
collapse of the Soviet Union and the
very unwelcome triumph of the sexual
revolution, one can only nod one's head
in agreement.
Q: Why is it that so many different
writers and public figures -- from
Gandhi to Jorge Luis Borges -- have been
influenced by this man? What gives
Chesterton's writings an almost
universal appeal?
Father Boyd: There are two
reasons for this.
In the first place, he was a remarkable
thinker. Étienne Gilson, the
distinguished medieval historian, called
him "one of the deepest thinkers who
ever lived" and his book on St. Thomas
Aquinas "without possible comparison"
the best book about the saint ever
written.
Because Chesterton was a philosopher,
there is a Chestertonian view that
illumines every subject, whether
political, or economic or social. As he
once explained, a true philosophy has
something to say about everything "from
an angel to an octopus."
Secondly, Chesterton was a poet whose
writings form a kind of wisdom
literature. His deepest insights are
expressed in such memorable sayings that
he is one of the most frequently quoted
authors in English literature.
Moreover, all his writings are suffused
with a spirit of joy. Franz Kafka knew
very little about Chesterton, but, after
reading one of his novels, Kafka said,
"He is so happy! I can almost believe he
has found God." With Chesterton,
laughter keeps breaking through. It's a
sure sign of his sanity.
Q: Why is Chesterton's popularity
exploding in the United States while
almost underground in his native
England?
Father Boyd: This is strange but
understandable.
Part of it may be that, as Scripture
teaches, a prophet is without honor in
his own country -- although, to be fair,
in Britain many people still recognize
Chesterton a great national writer.
His fame in America can be explained, I
think, by the religious character of the
American people. A year or so ago,
during President Bush's visit to China,
he quoted Chesterton's saying that
"America is a nation with the soul of a
church." This is certainly true.
America is a country where moral issues
still have political resonance --
abortion, same-sex marriage and the
like. I'm not so sure that this is the
case in many parts of Western Europe.
Q: Why was it that Chesterton could
have an opinion about everything, as
well as be a fearsome debater, but was
also universally loved by his opponents?
Father Boyd: As a philosopher,
Chesterton possessed a quality which he
attributed to St. Thomas, something he
called "a fury for life." He was keenly
interested in every aspect of ordinary
life.
He said that the one thing the modern
world needs above all is to be startled
-- we have to be taught the nature of
wonder. As he explained, the modern
world needs a new kind of priest. In an
earlier and happier age people needed to
be reminded that they would one day die.
In our age people needed to be reminded
that they were not dead yet.
As you say, his friendships with his
intellectual enemies were an
extraordinary thing. He said that he
never met a person whom he disliked,
perhaps because he believed that people
become lovable by being loved.
Q: Is there a cause under way to
canonize Chesterton?
Father Boyd: A group in Argentina
-- where the Chesterton Institute will
be holding a major conference this
September -- are interested in
forwarding his cause. They have been in
touch with the archbishop of Buenos
Aires and with the archbishop of
Westminster; before his recent death,
they received encouragement from
Cardinal Carter, the former archbishop
of Toronto and the honorary president of
the Chesterton Institute.
My own view is that Chesterton is a
great spokesman for Catholic truth, who
deserves the title Pius XI gave him:
"gifted defender of the faith." But he
is also a writer much loved by
Protestant Christians, who revere him as
the mentor of C.S. Lewis. Naming him
"Saint Gilbert" might disturb this
important ecumenical role.
In Russia, where he was read in
"samizdat" editions, they had a
wonderful name for him; they called him
"the teacher of hope."
Another title he deserves is one he gave
to George Macdonald, a Congregationalist
minister and the author of children's
stories, and a thinker who had a
decisive influence on Chesterton's own
religious thinking.
Because Macdonald was a writer who
appealed to readers of every Christian
faith, Chesterton called him "a morning
star of the reunion." That is also a
rather good description of Chesterton
himself. As an elderly priest once said
to me, those who read Chesterton are not
far from the Kingdom of God.
Q: What works of Chesterton, or his
commentators, would you suggest our
readers start with if they want an
introduction to the writings of this
great man?
Father Boyd: "Orthodoxy" and "The
Everlasting Man" are his most important
books of apologetics, but his well-known
Father Brown detective stories are also
a good introduction to his writing.
For a flavor of his journalism, it might
be worthwhile to read our journal, The
Chesterton Review; every issue includes
examples of his uncollected writing.
At the moment, our 30th-anniversary
issue is at the press. Its theme is
“Chesterton at Thirty,” a look at the
world in which Chesterton wrote a
hundred years ago, when he, like our
journal, was also 30 years old.
Everything that Chesterton wrote then
might have been written today as a
comment on the contemporary world.
* * *
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http://academic.shu.edu/chesterton/subscription.htm
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