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Chesterton offers compelling
answers to the cultural crisis of our time.
That crisis takes different forms, all related:
the separation of culture from faith, the
privatization of religious belief, the impoverishment
of the moral imagination, the assault on
the dignity of the human person, the promotion
of consumerist individualism and with it
the destruction of authentic communities,
most especially the family, the loss of
a sense of the sacred and the sacramental.
The civilization of love urged by the Gospel
and eloquently articulated by Pope John
Paul II has been challenged, it seems with
success, by a pervasive culture of death.
The work of the Institute
is thus one of recovery. With Chesterton
and the tradition he represented, it proposes
a re-awakening of the moral and sacramental
imagination; a renewed sense of human dignity;
a re-evangelization of culture, a return
to social sanity. T.S. Eliot suggested that
Chesterton leaves behind a permanent claim
upon our loyalty, "to see that the work
that he did in his time is continued in
ours." Without making a cult of Chesterton,
and in co-operation with other faith-traditions,
this is the mission of the Institute. Chesterton's
vision was compelling because of its coherence.
He recognized that hearth and heart, work
and worth, were of a piece. Human flourishing
was found in families, human wholeness in
holiness.
The Institute, through
its publications, conferences, seminars,
promotion of sound public policy and in
co-operation with affiliated groups, offers
a rediscovery of that distinct moral tradition.
It proposes, with Wendell Berry, that our
place of safety can only be the community,
"and not just one community, but many
of them everywhere, upon [which] depends
all that we still claim to value: freedom,
dignity, health, mutual help and affection."
The Institute's purpose is one of evangelizing,
of communicating, even of converting culture.
In that sense its work must always be broader
than Chesterton himself. To be properly
Chestertonian is to be interested less in
the man than in the truths he expounded.
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