Distracted by other things, I've had less time for this blog recently, and my idea for a website, though not exactly shelved, is at least on hold.
But I've found myself thinking of this blog a good bit in the last few days, and of particular things I wrote in it. I've been writing it for a good few years now, and I'm very grateful for the reaction it's got. I'm especially grateful that, no matter how adventurous or reflective or digressive I grew, people kept reading. And-- risking a thunderbolt striking me down for my pride-- I'm quite proud that I didn't confine myself to polemics or reactions to the news, or to popular culture, but actually branched out and tried to be thoughtful.
As I've said many times before, what pleases me the most is that my poetry got a good reception. (After a little while-- the first few poems I posted didn't go down well at all, and I was rather crestfallen, but I'm glad I persevered.) Probably everybody who writes at all considers himself or herself a poet, above all else. (Indeed, perhaps we are all poets before anything else, whether we write or not.)
But, in terms of prose, I like to think of myself as an essayist, and my favourite posts to write-- and the ones where I felt I articulated something worth articulating-- were in the form of essays.
So, not knowing how active I am going to be in the immediate future, I am putting up my favourite of the essay-style posts I wrote over the years, with an emphasis upon the older ones. Maybe newer readers might like to come on them, and maybe older readers might like to revisit them.
And thanks for visiting!
Star Trek, Faith and Conservatism. Why a conservative Catholic like me would not only enjoy Star Trek: The Next Generation, but find much of it in harmony with his view of the world.
Does Technology Destroy Wonder?
Why Groundhog Day is the Best Movie of All Time.
A three part post explaining why I am a traditionalist conservative, which had at least one fan:
Why I am a Traditionalist Conservative (1).
Why I am a Traditionalist Conservative (2).
Why I am a Traditionalist Conservative (3).
An essay on television, the good and the bad.
Why Didn't C.S. Lewis Become a Catholic? Published in Annales Australasia magazine.
The Contradictions of Modern Life. How it seems to me that so many of the ideologies and practices of modern life are self-defeating.
Our Avenue. Why I think we should be patriotic about even the smallest places.
My Little Purple Notebook. About the little moments of wonder in everyday life that surprise us and stick in our memory forever.
What's New about the New Testament? On the atmosphere of freshness and vigour that seems to hang around Christianity, even after all these centuries.
Campaigns I Wish Existed, including the campaign to protect lunch-time.
The Humility of Organized Religion.
Two Tugs on the Heart. Or why I love and hate modern, suburban life.
Why Mammon Needs God.
Remembering the Allen Library. A phase in my life recalled.
Thoughts on the subject of debates. Better than it sounds, I think.
About my name.
Thoughts on All Saints Day.
My ideal of what a man should be.
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Monday, September 22, 2014
Religion for Agnostics
I started going to Mass a few years ago. I'm not good with dates, but I think it must have been some time in 2009. (I still have an email exchange from June of that year with David Quinn, of the Iona Institute, in which I was asking why Scandinavia-- a bastion of secularism-- seemed to have suffered no ill effects from its irreligion. I presume I wasn't attending Mass at that time, since I declare myself unconvinced by Catholicism in the email. It's a strange sensation, reconstructing your own recent history as though it's the records of some ancient civilization.)
At first, I attended Mass on Sundays only, and I think it took me a few years before I started attending more often. I've never quite become a daily Mass-goer, but I'm not too far off. (Having a daily Mass in UCD, during term, makes this pretty easy.) This despite the fact that I very often get bored at Mass and that I find prayer and adoration difficult. I genuinely wonder whether my Mass-going is simply some kind of compulsion, like an obsessive-compulsive's handwashing, a ritual that I have to fulfil at the risk of feeling guilty. I've even wondered if I derive any actual spiritual benefit from it. I hope I do.
But one interesting aspect of being a frequent Mass-goer-- or even a weekly Mass-goer-- is that you find yourself recognizing the Scripture readings from previous years, or from even more recently. I don't have much of a head for Scripture myself, and I often feel ashamed that unbelievers and nominal Catholics can quote chapter and verse of the Bible better than I can. (And as for Protestants-- let's not even go there, as they say.) All the same, it does begin to sink in, month after month. I find the next line of the responsorial Psalm coming into my head, without having to look at a misallette.
This kind of familiarity, when you think about it, is something very intriguing. When you hear a story for the hundredth time, you hear it in a very different way to when you hear it for the first time. Or the twentieth time, for that matter. You can't help going deeper into it-- not necessarily in the sense of finding new meanings or new dimensions to it, but simply in the sense of penetrating more deeply into its atmosphere, its essence. A story (or a saying, or a poem, or any other text) may seem duller to us after we've encountered it for the first few times, but if we keep on encountering it-- well, then, the process seems to reverse itself and all of a sudden it seems more vivid rather than duller. It's a phenomenon a little like that of getting a second wind.
In the case of the Bible, this phenomenon is intensified, because most of us grew up so familiar with sayings and parables of Jesus that we can't remember ever hearing them for the first time. They were always there-- in both a personal sense and a historical sense. Phrases like Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof are so ancient that they are older than the language in which we speak them and read them.
And the ancientness of Bible texts become even more striking when we compare them to other revered cultural icons. Take, for instance, the Beatles. The songs and story and images of the Beatles seem so foundational to popular culture, and to culture in general, that it's difficult for me to imagine a time without them. But my own father, who is by no means superannuated, can easily remember hearing the Beatles for the first time. (It was 'She Loves You' and he heard it outside a music shop. He thought it was a joke, he said, since the refrain was so simplistic.) I think about this with a kind of wonder. The cover of Abbey Road, the chorus of 'Yesterday', the acrimonious break-up-- these were not things that happened when the sun and the moon were forged, but belong to living memory.
But the Bible, and the words of Jesus-- these are what the story of the Beatles feels like, in terms of primordialness. Except more so than we can imagine. In a sense, the words of the Bible are older than anything else in the world. They are older than the pyramids of Egypt, because they have remained alive through all these centuries, while the pyramids belong to a dead religion and a dead culture. They are older than the mountains and the stars, because the age of the mountains and the stars are measured in inhuman tracts of time, while the life of Bible is measured in human experience-- the only duration that really means anything to us. (What is time, after all, if there is nobody to experience it as such?)
I think I'll break there for tonight. I started this as a post about the reasons that Christianity, and our Christian heritage, should matter even to an agnostic or an atheist. I bit off more than I could chew. I'll come back to it soon.
At first, I attended Mass on Sundays only, and I think it took me a few years before I started attending more often. I've never quite become a daily Mass-goer, but I'm not too far off. (Having a daily Mass in UCD, during term, makes this pretty easy.) This despite the fact that I very often get bored at Mass and that I find prayer and adoration difficult. I genuinely wonder whether my Mass-going is simply some kind of compulsion, like an obsessive-compulsive's handwashing, a ritual that I have to fulfil at the risk of feeling guilty. I've even wondered if I derive any actual spiritual benefit from it. I hope I do.
But one interesting aspect of being a frequent Mass-goer-- or even a weekly Mass-goer-- is that you find yourself recognizing the Scripture readings from previous years, or from even more recently. I don't have much of a head for Scripture myself, and I often feel ashamed that unbelievers and nominal Catholics can quote chapter and verse of the Bible better than I can. (And as for Protestants-- let's not even go there, as they say.) All the same, it does begin to sink in, month after month. I find the next line of the responsorial Psalm coming into my head, without having to look at a misallette.
This kind of familiarity, when you think about it, is something very intriguing. When you hear a story for the hundredth time, you hear it in a very different way to when you hear it for the first time. Or the twentieth time, for that matter. You can't help going deeper into it-- not necessarily in the sense of finding new meanings or new dimensions to it, but simply in the sense of penetrating more deeply into its atmosphere, its essence. A story (or a saying, or a poem, or any other text) may seem duller to us after we've encountered it for the first few times, but if we keep on encountering it-- well, then, the process seems to reverse itself and all of a sudden it seems more vivid rather than duller. It's a phenomenon a little like that of getting a second wind.
In the case of the Bible, this phenomenon is intensified, because most of us grew up so familiar with sayings and parables of Jesus that we can't remember ever hearing them for the first time. They were always there-- in both a personal sense and a historical sense. Phrases like Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof are so ancient that they are older than the language in which we speak them and read them.
And the ancientness of Bible texts become even more striking when we compare them to other revered cultural icons. Take, for instance, the Beatles. The songs and story and images of the Beatles seem so foundational to popular culture, and to culture in general, that it's difficult for me to imagine a time without them. But my own father, who is by no means superannuated, can easily remember hearing the Beatles for the first time. (It was 'She Loves You' and he heard it outside a music shop. He thought it was a joke, he said, since the refrain was so simplistic.) I think about this with a kind of wonder. The cover of Abbey Road, the chorus of 'Yesterday', the acrimonious break-up-- these were not things that happened when the sun and the moon were forged, but belong to living memory.
But the Bible, and the words of Jesus-- these are what the story of the Beatles feels like, in terms of primordialness. Except more so than we can imagine. In a sense, the words of the Bible are older than anything else in the world. They are older than the pyramids of Egypt, because they have remained alive through all these centuries, while the pyramids belong to a dead religion and a dead culture. They are older than the mountains and the stars, because the age of the mountains and the stars are measured in inhuman tracts of time, while the life of Bible is measured in human experience-- the only duration that really means anything to us. (What is time, after all, if there is nobody to experience it as such?)
I think I'll break there for tonight. I started this as a post about the reasons that Christianity, and our Christian heritage, should matter even to an agnostic or an atheist. I bit off more than I could chew. I'll come back to it soon.
Friday, September 19, 2014
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The ellipsis above represents the silence on reponse to my request below.
So, I'm not sure an interactive portal is going to work. I'm now thinking more of a website where I give a daily digest of the blogs and news on the Irish Catholic web.
Maybe.
So, I'm not sure an interactive portal is going to work. I'm now thinking more of a website where I give a daily digest of the blogs and news on the Irish Catholic web.
Maybe.
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Help Me Out, Buddies
So you remember that I recently posted about a new website I'm thinking of putting together, a kind of portal for the Catholic laity? (For non-Catholic Christians as well, and for priests and those in consecrated life as well, but primarily for the Catholic laity.) And remember my appeal for help with the technical side? Well, a reader has very kindly contacted me and is giving me invaluable advice on how to navigate this aspect of it.
So I am appealing now for content. I really hope that this portal will take off and that readers will contribute to it. But I can't start off with blank pages, and I don't want to start off with everything being written by me. (Nobody wants that!)
Therefore, dear reader, I am asking you to think about contributing some writings of your own.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I am hoping to have a section where Irish Catholics recount their own experience of being Catholic in Ireland, whether that comprises seventy years since they came into the world as cradle Catholics, or seven months since they came to embrace the Faith. I'm hoping that these accounts will be personal, reflective, digressive, and idiosyncratic-- although they can be just the opposite, too. They can be a grand overview of a life's experience as a Catholic in Ireland. They can be nostalgic pen-pictures of long-ago First Communions or religion classes in school. They can be gritty accounts of crises of faith or of bereavement. They can be essays about the author's difficulties with Church teaching. (Although I intend this portal to be faithful to Catholic orthodoxy, I have no problem carrying material from a different perspective.) In other words, they can be as broad or as specific as you like.
Related to this, I hope to have a 'conversion stories' section, containing testimony of those (like myself) who have not practiced (or held) the Catholic faith all their lives but who have come to believe in it. Everything I said above applies here.
I also hope to have a Sacred Art section-- a section for original poems, hyms, drawings, paintings, photographs and any other works of art which explore our Catholic (and Christian) faith in some way. Again, there are no rules oor requirements. (Apart from obvious ones, like nothing downright obscene or blasphemous.)
Finally, you can put your name to anything you contribute, or you can go with an alias, if you prefer.
So how about it?
So I am appealing now for content. I really hope that this portal will take off and that readers will contribute to it. But I can't start off with blank pages, and I don't want to start off with everything being written by me. (Nobody wants that!)
Therefore, dear reader, I am asking you to think about contributing some writings of your own.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I am hoping to have a section where Irish Catholics recount their own experience of being Catholic in Ireland, whether that comprises seventy years since they came into the world as cradle Catholics, or seven months since they came to embrace the Faith. I'm hoping that these accounts will be personal, reflective, digressive, and idiosyncratic-- although they can be just the opposite, too. They can be a grand overview of a life's experience as a Catholic in Ireland. They can be nostalgic pen-pictures of long-ago First Communions or religion classes in school. They can be gritty accounts of crises of faith or of bereavement. They can be essays about the author's difficulties with Church teaching. (Although I intend this portal to be faithful to Catholic orthodoxy, I have no problem carrying material from a different perspective.) In other words, they can be as broad or as specific as you like.
Related to this, I hope to have a 'conversion stories' section, containing testimony of those (like myself) who have not practiced (or held) the Catholic faith all their lives but who have come to believe in it. Everything I said above applies here.
I also hope to have a Sacred Art section-- a section for original poems, hyms, drawings, paintings, photographs and any other works of art which explore our Catholic (and Christian) faith in some way. Again, there are no rules oor requirements. (Apart from obvious ones, like nothing downright obscene or blasphemous.)
Finally, you can put your name to anything you contribute, or you can go with an alias, if you prefer.
So how about it?
Monday, September 15, 2014
My Wife Wants to Buy an Irish Island
And I think it's a brilliant idea. Please have a look (and pass it on if it captures your imagination.)
I could really do with an island. Help us get an island!
I could really do with an island. Help us get an island!
More Chestertonian Wit and Wisdom
I continue to publish my bite-size weekly articles on Chesterton in The Open Door magazine every week. Here are the latest few instalments.
The Wit and Wisdom of G.K. Chesterton
In this series, we have been looking at the ideas of G.K. Chesterton, the great Catholic writer and thinker. Some people were so important to Chesterton’s life and work that we have to take a look at them, too. So far we have discussed his wife Frances and his friend Hilaire Belloc. This week we examine his relationship with George Bernard Shaw.
Shaw and Chesterton were friends, but it was a strange kind of friendship. They disagreed about almost everything. Shaw, though not an atheist as is commonly believed (he described himself as a mystic) had little time for traditional religion. (When Chesterton converted to Catholicism, Shaw said: “Gilbert, this is going too far”!) Chesterton saw himself as a defender of the common man, while Shaw said: “I have never had any feelings about the English working classes except a desire to abolish them and replace them with sensible people.” Shaw believed in eugenics—the selective breeding of humans in order to create a superior race. Chesterton hated this theory so much that he wrote a book called Eugenics and Other Evils.
But in spite of all this, they remained on very good terms. Chesterton wrote an entire book about Shaw—- reasonably enough entitled George Bernard Shaw.
Chesterton thought that the key to understanding Shaw, and his distance from the traditions and instincts of ordinary humanity, was that he was a son of the Protestant (or post-Protestant) elite in Ireland. In a memorable passage, Chesterton contrasts this with the ordinary Irish people:
The average autochthonous Irishman is close to patriotism because he is close to the earth; he is close to domesticity because he is close to the earth; he is close to doctrinal theology and elaborate ritual because he is close to the earth. In short, he is close to the heavens because he is close to the earth. …Mr. Shaw has no living traditions, no schoolboy tricks, no college customs, to link him with other men. Nothing about him can be supposed to refer to a family feud or to a family joke. He does not drink toasts; he does not keep anniversaries; musical as he is I doubt if he would consent to sing. All this has something in it of a tree with its roots in the air.
“Close to the heavens because he is close to the earth”. The sentence almost encapsulates Chesterton’s vision of the good life. We will say more on this subject next week.
Last week we completed our brief foray into Chesterton’s biography. We will return to his life later on, but for now let us journey once again into his writings.
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There are many people who have never read a single book, essay, story or poem written by Chesterton, but have encountered his writing all the same. This is because G.K. Chesterton was a master of epigram. His epigrams, witticisms and paradoxes are endlessly quoted in books of quotations, newspaper articles, speeches, on coffee mugs—- pretty much everywhere, actually.
I once encountered the claim that GKC was the most quotable author ever. This is exaggerated praise. Oscar Wilde, Samuel Johnson and Mark Twain eclipse him. Nevertheless he certainly deserves to be listed with them.
His most famous quotation is, paradoxically enough, something he never said at all. It is this: “When a man stops believing in God, he doesn’t believe in nothing. He believes in anything.” Chesterton expressed this idea many times, but nobody has been able to find these words (or anything closely resembling them) amidst the vast archive of his published work.
Chesterton didn’t just come up with witticisms for their own sake. In fact, in his book Heretics, he wrote: “Mere light sophistry is the thing that I happen to despise most of all things, and it is perhaps a wholesome fact that this is the thing of which I am generally accused. I know nothing so contemptible as a mere paradox; a mere ingenious defence of the indefensible. If it were true (as has been said) that Mr. Bernard Shaw lived upon paradox, then he ought to be a mere common millionaire; for a man of his mental activity could invent a sophistry every six minutes. It is as easy as lying; because it is lying. “ Chesterton used epigrams to tell the truth as he saw it, not for a cheap laugh.
Some of my favourite Chesterton epigrams: “An inconvenience is only an adventure, wrongly considered.” “Charity is the imagination of the heart.” “Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.” “Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should refuse.” “We do not want a church that will move with the world. We want a church that will move the world.” And perhaps my favourite: “There is nothing wrong with the whole modern world except that it does not fit in with Christmas. The modern world will have to fit in with Christmas or die”.
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Last week I wrote about G.K. Chesterton’s almost endless fund of epigrams, which are constantly being quoted by writers and speakers of every kind. This leads us on to a related topic, which is Chesterton’s use of humour.
G.K. Chesterton was certainly a comic writer, but he seldom confined himself to purely comical subjects. He wrote about the whole human drama, from the most trivial subjects to the most serious. Nevertheless, he always wrote with a light touch. Readers of Chesterton will often find themselves laughing out loud while reading an essay on Thomas Aquinas, political economy or the philosophy of history.
C.S. Lewis, who was deeply influenced by Chesterton’s writings, described Chesterton’s use of humour thus: “His humour was of the kind I like best – not “jokes” imbedded in the page like currants in a cake, still less (what I cannot endure), a general tone of flippancy and jocularity, but the humour which is not in any way separable from the argument but is rather (as Aristotle would say) the “bloom” on dialectic itself. The sword glitters not because the swordsman set out to make it glitter but because he is fighting for his life and therefore moving it very quickly.”
Chesterton was sometimes criticised for writing about solemn subjects in a jocular tone. He defended himself with another of his famous epigrams. He explained that ‘funny’ was not the opposite of ‘serious’—the opposite of ‘funny’ was ‘not funny’.
Indeed, Chesterton’s philosophy of humour was central to his whole philosophy of life. He used to image of a man running after his hat to explain how laughter contains a deep insight into reality. The man, he explained, has an immortal soul and is made in the image of God. The hat is simply a dumb object. For man, with an immortal soul, to be at the mercy of matter in this way was inherently ridiculous. (And, of course, this applies to more important things as well—as Chesterton put it, a man running after a wife is much more ridiculous than a man running after a hat. The bigger point is that man is only ever ridiculous because he has a soul.)
Not that Chesterton lamented this ridiculousness. “Being undignified”, he wrote, “is the essence of all real happiness whether before God or man. Hilarity involves humility; nay, it involves humiliation.” We are happy when we are undignified because, for a moment, we let go of our pride; and pride is what makes us miserable.
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As we saw last week, Chesterton used humour even when discussing serious matters. He was a defender of humour. He was also a defender of ugliness.
Chesterton’s defence of ugliness began early in his career, in his first proper book, The Defendant: “The highest and most valuable quality in Nature is not her beauty, but her generous and defiant ugliness. A hundred instances might be taken. The croaking noise of the rooks is, in itself, as hideous as the whole hell of sounds in a London railway tunnel. Yet it uplifts us like a trumpet with its coarse kindliness and honesty…Has the poet, for whom Nature means only roses and lilies, ever heard a pig grunting? It is a noise that does a man good—- a strong, snorting, imprisoned noise, breaking its way out of unfathomable dungeons through every possible outlet and organ.”
Chesterton’s defence of the ugly is really just another example of his tendency to defend the ordinary and mundane against the refined and rare. Perhaps the funniest instance of this is his response to the following rather uncharitable poem, written by Frances Cornford:
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?
O fat white woman whom nobody loves,
Why do you walk through the field in gloves…?
Chesterton wrote a verse entitled “The Fat Lady Replies” (‘old Dutch’ is slang for ‘wife):
Why do you rush through the field in trains,
Guessing so much and so much?
Why do you flash through the flowery meads,
Fat-head poet that nobody reads;
And why do you know such a frightful lot
About people in gloves as such?
And how the devil can you be sure,
Guessing so much and so much,
How do you know but what someone who loves
Always to see me in nice white gloves
At the end of the field you are rushing by,
Is waiting for his Old Dutch?
A few other things Chesterton defended: Cockney wit, sight-seeing, detective stories, celebrating birthdays, and the right of the poor to spend lots of money on a funeral. He stood for the mob against the snob.
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I finished my last article by saying that G.K. Chesterton was always on the side of the mobs rather than the snobs. In his day—- as in our own—intellectuals and artists tended to despise the recreations and ways of life of ordinary people. ‘Suburban’ had become a term of derision. Chesterton himself moved to the suburbs—the town of Beaconsfield, just outside London at that time—- and celebrated suburban life, just as he celebrated newspapers and detective stories.
One of the collections of Chesterton’s essays that were published in his lifetime bore the title The Common Man. He never tired of defending the common man, but he was also quick to point out that ‘common’ did not mean ‘average’ or ‘ordinary’ or ‘mediocre’. As he put it in a study of Charles Dickens:
The common mind means the mind of all the artists and heroes; or else it would not be common. Plato had the common mind; Dante had the common mind. Commonness means the quality common to the saint and the sinner, to the philosopher and the fool; and it was this that Dickens grasped and developed. In everybody there is a certain thing that loves babies, that fears death, that likes sunlight: that thing enjoys Dickens. And everybody does not mean uneducated crowds; everybody means everybody.
However, many people in Chesterton’s day had set themselves against this ‘common mind’—- mostly bohemians, revolutionaries, intellectuals, and philosophers. The idea had become popular, in such circles, that a poet or a novelist or a thinker was great because he saw things in a different way to the rest of mankind, because he was unconventional. Chesterton thought differently:
If a man is genuinely superior to his fellows the first thing that he believes in is the equality of man. We can see this, for instance, in that strange and innocent rationality with which Christ addressed any motley crowd that happened to stand about Him. "What man of you having a hundred sheep, and losing one, would not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which was lost?" Or, again, "What man of you if his son ask for bread will he give him a stone, or if he ask for a fish will he give him a serpent?" This plainness, this almost prosaic camaraderie, is the note of all very great minds.
How ironic that Chesterton, so utterly eccentric, should have been the great champion of the common man!
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In the last week or so, I’ve been reading through a couple of G.K. Chesterton biographies, and it occurs to me that this might be a good topic for this week’s article. My hope is that, if this column has been your introduction to G.K. Chesterton, I might have motivated you to go to the library or bookshop and to read Chesterton for yourself. Of course, when we really like a writer, we are just as eager to read about him (or her) than to read his original works. So, as well as giving you a heightened interest in this column (!), I expect that reading and loving Chesterton will almost inevitably make you seek out his biographers.
The first thing to be said is that the best biographer of G.K. Chesterton is G.K. Chesterton himself. The Autobiography is one of Chesterton’s best books, perhaps his very best. If I may be autobiographical myself for a moment, I can remember reading it (not for the first time) when I was recovering from a mild illness, and going through a pretty powerful fit of ‘the blues’. It cheered me up immensely—the reader can’t help ‘catching’ Chesterton’s immense gusto for life, his fathomless sense of wonder. It was the last book he wrote, appearing after his death. Reading it is like sitting beside some wise, jolly, peaceful old man and soaking up all his stories, observations and lessons.
After the Autobiography, the best biography is undoubtedly Gilbert Keith Chesterton by Maisie Ward, published in 1953. Maisie Ward had the incomparable (and now impossible) benefit of actually having known Chesterton. She writes about him with affection and loyalty, but with no excess of reverence. The chapter on the Chestertons’ marriage is especially insightful.
The next best biography is probably Ian Ker’s massive G.K. Chesterton: A Life (2012). This is certainly more comprehensive than Maisie Ward’s slim volume, but written with much less flair. Be prepared to skip—- Ker seems to want to chronicle Chesterton’s every train journey and dinner party for posterity. But when he writes about the deeps rather than the shallows of Chesterton’s life, Ker shines.
Finally, William Oddie’s Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy, which appeared in 2008, charts the development of Chesterton’s ideas until the year 1908. (A second volume is planned.) Oddie trawled Chesterton’s mountains of surviving papers to research this one, and it shows. Not good as an introduction, though—save this for when you are heavily into Chesterton!
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This week I am off to a wedding in Switzerland.
So, not having enough time to write more than few lines, and having the subject of matrimony on my mind, I thought I would step back this time and let Chesterton speak for himself. The following passage, from his book What’s Wrong with the World, surely contains some of the wisest words ever spoken on the subject of marriage. And the principle applies not only to marriage but to many other social institutions, too.
The principle is this: that in everything worth having, even in every pleasure, there is a point of pain or tedium that must be survived, so that the pleasure may revive and endure. The joy of battle comes after the first fear of death; the joy of reading Virgil comes after the bore of learning him; the glow of the sea-bather comes after the icy shock of the sea bath; and the success of the marriage comes after the failure of the honeymoon. All human vows, laws, and contracts are so many ways of surviving with success this breaking point, this instant of potential surrender.
In everything on this earth that is worth doing, there is a stage when no one would do it, except for necessity or honor. It is then that the Institution upholds a man and helps him on to the firmer ground ahead. Whether this solid fact of human nature is sufficient to justify the sublime dedication of Christian marriage is quite an other matter, it is amply sufficient to justify the general human feeling of marriage as a fixed thing, dissolution of which is a fault or, at least, an ignominy. The essential element is not so much duration as security. Two people must be tied together in order to do themselves justice; for twenty minutes at a dance, or for twenty years in a marriage In both cases the point is, that if a man is bored in the first five minutes he must go on and force himself to be happy. Coercion is a kind of encouragement; and anarchy (or what some call liberty) is essentially oppressive, because it is essentially discouraging.
If Americans can be divorced for "incompatibility of temper" I cannot conceive why they are not all divorced. I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible.
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As I mentioned last week, I’ve been travelling (with my wife) on the European continent. We attended my niece’s wedding in Switzerland, after which we went on to Evians-les-Bains in France, where the mineral water comes from. My wife had been there eleven years before. As an American, it was her first foray outside her home continent.
So this week I’ve been thinking about travel, and—- being a Chesterton fanatic—- I never think about anything without having Chesterton’s words on the subject echoing in my mind. In his essay ‘The Riddle of the Ivy’, he describes a conversation (presumably fictional) in which he tells a friend that he is travelling around the world to get to Battersea—which is where he happens to be at the moment:
"I am going to Battersea," I repeated, "to Battersea via Paris, Belfort, Heidelberg, and Frankfort. I am going to wander over the whole world until once more I find Battersea. I cannot see any Battersea here; I cannot see any London or any England. I cannot see that door. I cannot see that chair: because a cloud of sleep and custom has come across my eyes. The only way to get back to them is to go somewhere else; and that is the real object of travel and the real pleasure of holidays. Do you suppose that I go to France in order to see France? Do you suppose that I go to Germany in order to see Germany? I shall enjoy them both; but it is not them that I am seeking. I am seeking Battersea. The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.”
This motif—the idea of somebody setting out on a long journey, whose ultimate destination is the very point from which he started—occurs quite often in Chesterton’s work.
For a man who did not value travel for itself, Chesterton was quite well-travelled. His travel books include The Resurrection of Rome (in which he recounts meetings with Benito Mussolini and Pope Pius XI), Irish Impressions, The New Jerusalem, and-- most famously-- What I Saw in America. I will write about Chesterton’s American impressions in next week’s column, but I can’t help closing with his brilliant comment on the lights of Broadway: “"What a glorious garden of wonders this would be, to any who was lucky enough to be unable to read”.
The Wit and Wisdom of G.K. Chesterton
In this series, we have been looking at the ideas of G.K. Chesterton, the great Catholic writer and thinker. Some people were so important to Chesterton’s life and work that we have to take a look at them, too. So far we have discussed his wife Frances and his friend Hilaire Belloc. This week we examine his relationship with George Bernard Shaw.
Shaw and Chesterton were friends, but it was a strange kind of friendship. They disagreed about almost everything. Shaw, though not an atheist as is commonly believed (he described himself as a mystic) had little time for traditional religion. (When Chesterton converted to Catholicism, Shaw said: “Gilbert, this is going too far”!) Chesterton saw himself as a defender of the common man, while Shaw said: “I have never had any feelings about the English working classes except a desire to abolish them and replace them with sensible people.” Shaw believed in eugenics—the selective breeding of humans in order to create a superior race. Chesterton hated this theory so much that he wrote a book called Eugenics and Other Evils.
But in spite of all this, they remained on very good terms. Chesterton wrote an entire book about Shaw—- reasonably enough entitled George Bernard Shaw.
Chesterton thought that the key to understanding Shaw, and his distance from the traditions and instincts of ordinary humanity, was that he was a son of the Protestant (or post-Protestant) elite in Ireland. In a memorable passage, Chesterton contrasts this with the ordinary Irish people:
The average autochthonous Irishman is close to patriotism because he is close to the earth; he is close to domesticity because he is close to the earth; he is close to doctrinal theology and elaborate ritual because he is close to the earth. In short, he is close to the heavens because he is close to the earth. …Mr. Shaw has no living traditions, no schoolboy tricks, no college customs, to link him with other men. Nothing about him can be supposed to refer to a family feud or to a family joke. He does not drink toasts; he does not keep anniversaries; musical as he is I doubt if he would consent to sing. All this has something in it of a tree with its roots in the air.
“Close to the heavens because he is close to the earth”. The sentence almost encapsulates Chesterton’s vision of the good life. We will say more on this subject next week.
Last week we completed our brief foray into Chesterton’s biography. We will return to his life later on, but for now let us journey once again into his writings.
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There are many people who have never read a single book, essay, story or poem written by Chesterton, but have encountered his writing all the same. This is because G.K. Chesterton was a master of epigram. His epigrams, witticisms and paradoxes are endlessly quoted in books of quotations, newspaper articles, speeches, on coffee mugs—- pretty much everywhere, actually.
I once encountered the claim that GKC was the most quotable author ever. This is exaggerated praise. Oscar Wilde, Samuel Johnson and Mark Twain eclipse him. Nevertheless he certainly deserves to be listed with them.
His most famous quotation is, paradoxically enough, something he never said at all. It is this: “When a man stops believing in God, he doesn’t believe in nothing. He believes in anything.” Chesterton expressed this idea many times, but nobody has been able to find these words (or anything closely resembling them) amidst the vast archive of his published work.
Chesterton didn’t just come up with witticisms for their own sake. In fact, in his book Heretics, he wrote: “Mere light sophistry is the thing that I happen to despise most of all things, and it is perhaps a wholesome fact that this is the thing of which I am generally accused. I know nothing so contemptible as a mere paradox; a mere ingenious defence of the indefensible. If it were true (as has been said) that Mr. Bernard Shaw lived upon paradox, then he ought to be a mere common millionaire; for a man of his mental activity could invent a sophistry every six minutes. It is as easy as lying; because it is lying. “ Chesterton used epigrams to tell the truth as he saw it, not for a cheap laugh.
Some of my favourite Chesterton epigrams: “An inconvenience is only an adventure, wrongly considered.” “Charity is the imagination of the heart.” “Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.” “Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should refuse.” “We do not want a church that will move with the world. We want a church that will move the world.” And perhaps my favourite: “There is nothing wrong with the whole modern world except that it does not fit in with Christmas. The modern world will have to fit in with Christmas or die”.
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Last week I wrote about G.K. Chesterton’s almost endless fund of epigrams, which are constantly being quoted by writers and speakers of every kind. This leads us on to a related topic, which is Chesterton’s use of humour.
G.K. Chesterton was certainly a comic writer, but he seldom confined himself to purely comical subjects. He wrote about the whole human drama, from the most trivial subjects to the most serious. Nevertheless, he always wrote with a light touch. Readers of Chesterton will often find themselves laughing out loud while reading an essay on Thomas Aquinas, political economy or the philosophy of history.
C.S. Lewis, who was deeply influenced by Chesterton’s writings, described Chesterton’s use of humour thus: “His humour was of the kind I like best – not “jokes” imbedded in the page like currants in a cake, still less (what I cannot endure), a general tone of flippancy and jocularity, but the humour which is not in any way separable from the argument but is rather (as Aristotle would say) the “bloom” on dialectic itself. The sword glitters not because the swordsman set out to make it glitter but because he is fighting for his life and therefore moving it very quickly.”
Chesterton was sometimes criticised for writing about solemn subjects in a jocular tone. He defended himself with another of his famous epigrams. He explained that ‘funny’ was not the opposite of ‘serious’—the opposite of ‘funny’ was ‘not funny’.
Indeed, Chesterton’s philosophy of humour was central to his whole philosophy of life. He used to image of a man running after his hat to explain how laughter contains a deep insight into reality. The man, he explained, has an immortal soul and is made in the image of God. The hat is simply a dumb object. For man, with an immortal soul, to be at the mercy of matter in this way was inherently ridiculous. (And, of course, this applies to more important things as well—as Chesterton put it, a man running after a wife is much more ridiculous than a man running after a hat. The bigger point is that man is only ever ridiculous because he has a soul.)
Not that Chesterton lamented this ridiculousness. “Being undignified”, he wrote, “is the essence of all real happiness whether before God or man. Hilarity involves humility; nay, it involves humiliation.” We are happy when we are undignified because, for a moment, we let go of our pride; and pride is what makes us miserable.
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As we saw last week, Chesterton used humour even when discussing serious matters. He was a defender of humour. He was also a defender of ugliness.
Chesterton’s defence of ugliness began early in his career, in his first proper book, The Defendant: “The highest and most valuable quality in Nature is not her beauty, but her generous and defiant ugliness. A hundred instances might be taken. The croaking noise of the rooks is, in itself, as hideous as the whole hell of sounds in a London railway tunnel. Yet it uplifts us like a trumpet with its coarse kindliness and honesty…Has the poet, for whom Nature means only roses and lilies, ever heard a pig grunting? It is a noise that does a man good—- a strong, snorting, imprisoned noise, breaking its way out of unfathomable dungeons through every possible outlet and organ.”
Chesterton’s defence of the ugly is really just another example of his tendency to defend the ordinary and mundane against the refined and rare. Perhaps the funniest instance of this is his response to the following rather uncharitable poem, written by Frances Cornford:
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?
O fat white woman whom nobody loves,
Why do you walk through the field in gloves…?
Chesterton wrote a verse entitled “The Fat Lady Replies” (‘old Dutch’ is slang for ‘wife):
Why do you rush through the field in trains,
Guessing so much and so much?
Why do you flash through the flowery meads,
Fat-head poet that nobody reads;
And why do you know such a frightful lot
About people in gloves as such?
And how the devil can you be sure,
Guessing so much and so much,
How do you know but what someone who loves
Always to see me in nice white gloves
At the end of the field you are rushing by,
Is waiting for his Old Dutch?
A few other things Chesterton defended: Cockney wit, sight-seeing, detective stories, celebrating birthdays, and the right of the poor to spend lots of money on a funeral. He stood for the mob against the snob.
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I finished my last article by saying that G.K. Chesterton was always on the side of the mobs rather than the snobs. In his day—- as in our own—intellectuals and artists tended to despise the recreations and ways of life of ordinary people. ‘Suburban’ had become a term of derision. Chesterton himself moved to the suburbs—the town of Beaconsfield, just outside London at that time—- and celebrated suburban life, just as he celebrated newspapers and detective stories.
One of the collections of Chesterton’s essays that were published in his lifetime bore the title The Common Man. He never tired of defending the common man, but he was also quick to point out that ‘common’ did not mean ‘average’ or ‘ordinary’ or ‘mediocre’. As he put it in a study of Charles Dickens:
The common mind means the mind of all the artists and heroes; or else it would not be common. Plato had the common mind; Dante had the common mind. Commonness means the quality common to the saint and the sinner, to the philosopher and the fool; and it was this that Dickens grasped and developed. In everybody there is a certain thing that loves babies, that fears death, that likes sunlight: that thing enjoys Dickens. And everybody does not mean uneducated crowds; everybody means everybody.
However, many people in Chesterton’s day had set themselves against this ‘common mind’—- mostly bohemians, revolutionaries, intellectuals, and philosophers. The idea had become popular, in such circles, that a poet or a novelist or a thinker was great because he saw things in a different way to the rest of mankind, because he was unconventional. Chesterton thought differently:
If a man is genuinely superior to his fellows the first thing that he believes in is the equality of man. We can see this, for instance, in that strange and innocent rationality with which Christ addressed any motley crowd that happened to stand about Him. "What man of you having a hundred sheep, and losing one, would not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which was lost?" Or, again, "What man of you if his son ask for bread will he give him a stone, or if he ask for a fish will he give him a serpent?" This plainness, this almost prosaic camaraderie, is the note of all very great minds.
How ironic that Chesterton, so utterly eccentric, should have been the great champion of the common man!
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In the last week or so, I’ve been reading through a couple of G.K. Chesterton biographies, and it occurs to me that this might be a good topic for this week’s article. My hope is that, if this column has been your introduction to G.K. Chesterton, I might have motivated you to go to the library or bookshop and to read Chesterton for yourself. Of course, when we really like a writer, we are just as eager to read about him (or her) than to read his original works. So, as well as giving you a heightened interest in this column (!), I expect that reading and loving Chesterton will almost inevitably make you seek out his biographers.
The first thing to be said is that the best biographer of G.K. Chesterton is G.K. Chesterton himself. The Autobiography is one of Chesterton’s best books, perhaps his very best. If I may be autobiographical myself for a moment, I can remember reading it (not for the first time) when I was recovering from a mild illness, and going through a pretty powerful fit of ‘the blues’. It cheered me up immensely—the reader can’t help ‘catching’ Chesterton’s immense gusto for life, his fathomless sense of wonder. It was the last book he wrote, appearing after his death. Reading it is like sitting beside some wise, jolly, peaceful old man and soaking up all his stories, observations and lessons.
After the Autobiography, the best biography is undoubtedly Gilbert Keith Chesterton by Maisie Ward, published in 1953. Maisie Ward had the incomparable (and now impossible) benefit of actually having known Chesterton. She writes about him with affection and loyalty, but with no excess of reverence. The chapter on the Chestertons’ marriage is especially insightful.
The next best biography is probably Ian Ker’s massive G.K. Chesterton: A Life (2012). This is certainly more comprehensive than Maisie Ward’s slim volume, but written with much less flair. Be prepared to skip—- Ker seems to want to chronicle Chesterton’s every train journey and dinner party for posterity. But when he writes about the deeps rather than the shallows of Chesterton’s life, Ker shines.
Finally, William Oddie’s Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy, which appeared in 2008, charts the development of Chesterton’s ideas until the year 1908. (A second volume is planned.) Oddie trawled Chesterton’s mountains of surviving papers to research this one, and it shows. Not good as an introduction, though—save this for when you are heavily into Chesterton!
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This week I am off to a wedding in Switzerland.
So, not having enough time to write more than few lines, and having the subject of matrimony on my mind, I thought I would step back this time and let Chesterton speak for himself. The following passage, from his book What’s Wrong with the World, surely contains some of the wisest words ever spoken on the subject of marriage. And the principle applies not only to marriage but to many other social institutions, too.
The principle is this: that in everything worth having, even in every pleasure, there is a point of pain or tedium that must be survived, so that the pleasure may revive and endure. The joy of battle comes after the first fear of death; the joy of reading Virgil comes after the bore of learning him; the glow of the sea-bather comes after the icy shock of the sea bath; and the success of the marriage comes after the failure of the honeymoon. All human vows, laws, and contracts are so many ways of surviving with success this breaking point, this instant of potential surrender.
In everything on this earth that is worth doing, there is a stage when no one would do it, except for necessity or honor. It is then that the Institution upholds a man and helps him on to the firmer ground ahead. Whether this solid fact of human nature is sufficient to justify the sublime dedication of Christian marriage is quite an other matter, it is amply sufficient to justify the general human feeling of marriage as a fixed thing, dissolution of which is a fault or, at least, an ignominy. The essential element is not so much duration as security. Two people must be tied together in order to do themselves justice; for twenty minutes at a dance, or for twenty years in a marriage In both cases the point is, that if a man is bored in the first five minutes he must go on and force himself to be happy. Coercion is a kind of encouragement; and anarchy (or what some call liberty) is essentially oppressive, because it is essentially discouraging.
If Americans can be divorced for "incompatibility of temper" I cannot conceive why they are not all divorced. I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible.
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As I mentioned last week, I’ve been travelling (with my wife) on the European continent. We attended my niece’s wedding in Switzerland, after which we went on to Evians-les-Bains in France, where the mineral water comes from. My wife had been there eleven years before. As an American, it was her first foray outside her home continent.
So this week I’ve been thinking about travel, and—- being a Chesterton fanatic—- I never think about anything without having Chesterton’s words on the subject echoing in my mind. In his essay ‘The Riddle of the Ivy’, he describes a conversation (presumably fictional) in which he tells a friend that he is travelling around the world to get to Battersea—which is where he happens to be at the moment:
"I am going to Battersea," I repeated, "to Battersea via Paris, Belfort, Heidelberg, and Frankfort. I am going to wander over the whole world until once more I find Battersea. I cannot see any Battersea here; I cannot see any London or any England. I cannot see that door. I cannot see that chair: because a cloud of sleep and custom has come across my eyes. The only way to get back to them is to go somewhere else; and that is the real object of travel and the real pleasure of holidays. Do you suppose that I go to France in order to see France? Do you suppose that I go to Germany in order to see Germany? I shall enjoy them both; but it is not them that I am seeking. I am seeking Battersea. The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.”
This motif—the idea of somebody setting out on a long journey, whose ultimate destination is the very point from which he started—occurs quite often in Chesterton’s work.
For a man who did not value travel for itself, Chesterton was quite well-travelled. His travel books include The Resurrection of Rome (in which he recounts meetings with Benito Mussolini and Pope Pius XI), Irish Impressions, The New Jerusalem, and-- most famously-- What I Saw in America. I will write about Chesterton’s American impressions in next week’s column, but I can’t help closing with his brilliant comment on the lights of Broadway: “"What a glorious garden of wonders this would be, to any who was lucky enough to be unable to read”.
An Apology to Any Frustrated Commenters
I love getting comments on this blog. I try to reply to them all, and this is hardly onerous as I don't get all that many.
However, I do get a huge amount of spam comments every single day, which I imagine is the common plight of every blogger. In the past, I filtered through these to make sure I wasn't deleting (or ignoring) any real comments. Comments which are posted anonymously are particularly at risk of this.
Recently, however, I've become so fatigued by the constant deluge of spam, and the blog itself has been so dormant (you probably can't qualify the word 'dormant', but I don't care), that I may have missed some. I found myself almost ignoring one today because I assumed it was a spam comment.
So heartfelt apologies if this happened to you. I really didn't mean it.
However, I do get a huge amount of spam comments every single day, which I imagine is the common plight of every blogger. In the past, I filtered through these to make sure I wasn't deleting (or ignoring) any real comments. Comments which are posted anonymously are particularly at risk of this.
Recently, however, I've become so fatigued by the constant deluge of spam, and the blog itself has been so dormant (you probably can't qualify the word 'dormant', but I don't care), that I may have missed some. I found myself almost ignoring one today because I assumed it was a spam comment.
So heartfelt apologies if this happened to you. I really didn't mean it.
Saturday, September 6, 2014
My Idea for a New Website
I'm increasingly dissatisfied with this blog. Don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful for all the readers it's gleaned and all the opportunities it's given me to write about the things I care about, and to have people read my writing. I'm especially grateful that my poetry and stories have found an audience through it. But I really feel I'm treading water after a few years. The readership doesn't grow and I feel I'm becoming repetitive with my posting.
I was in Switzerland and France last week, for my niece's wedding, and while I was there I had an idea for a new website. I want to run it by my readers here to see what they think and to see whether anyone could help at all. I should say right out that I don't expect this website to make money unless it's in the long-term.
The idea came to me when I was sitting with my wife in a restaurant in Evians-les-Bains, after attending a Marc Chagall exhibition. We had just been in Switzerland to attend my niece's wedding. Myself and my wife met on Catholic Match, a Catholic dating website. (One of the benefits of Catholic Match is that it makes everyone answer seven questions of fidelity to Church teaching, so you can know how serious someone is about his or her Catholic faith.) It occurred to me that it would be good to have a similar website, but of a purely social nature. (I suppose romance could blossom from the social aspect, but that would not be the intention, nor would it be aimed at man-woman friendships in particular.) My initial idea was that it would be good to have a website where Catholics could private message each other, and maybe-- if they lived near each other-- meet for either social purposes or for prayer groups, discussion and so forth.
More and more ideas started coming to me as I munched on a cheese and meat fondue and sipped white wine. The site could be a portal to the whole Irish internet. It could have, not only links to as many Irish Catholic blogs as I could find-- and there aren't really all that many-- but introductions to each one, and a round-up of recent blog activity.
I like the idea of it being collaborative, of using contributions from readers. For instance, there would be an oral history section where people, old and young, could post their memories of Catholic education, first Communions, going to Mass, pilgrimages, and so forth. It could be an archive of the Irish Catholic experience over the generations.
I am very keen on having a sacred art section where readers could contribute poems, paintings, photographs, and other devotional works of art.
There could be a directory of places to pray-- the Mass times listings on the Irish Bishops' website is great, but it doesn't tell you when the various churches are open outside Mass times. I think building this up would be very useful.
There could be movie, TV, radio and book reviews.
There would be an online book of intentions, with (perhaps) particular intentions highlighted.
There could possibly be a forum, though I understand it's difficult to get a forum to take off and a dormant forum looks terrible.
And, of course, there would be ordinary articles and blog posts to provide a focus and a day-by-day life to it.
The thing is, I would definitely need a webmaster for this. I have no particular talent with computers. And this is the kind of site that could definitely not be done through Blogger or any similar platform.
So, if anyone out there knows anything about web design and feels like volunteering their talents, drop me a line. And I'm interested to know if anyone thinks this is a good idea in general.
My provisional title for the site is Build Each Other Up("Therefore encourage one another and build each other up", 1 Thessalonians 5:11).
Anyway, if this doesn't materialize, I will keep up with the blog, which I will probably keep up anyway. But I do feel a restlessness to do something else.
I was in Switzerland and France last week, for my niece's wedding, and while I was there I had an idea for a new website. I want to run it by my readers here to see what they think and to see whether anyone could help at all. I should say right out that I don't expect this website to make money unless it's in the long-term.
The idea came to me when I was sitting with my wife in a restaurant in Evians-les-Bains, after attending a Marc Chagall exhibition. We had just been in Switzerland to attend my niece's wedding. Myself and my wife met on Catholic Match, a Catholic dating website. (One of the benefits of Catholic Match is that it makes everyone answer seven questions of fidelity to Church teaching, so you can know how serious someone is about his or her Catholic faith.) It occurred to me that it would be good to have a similar website, but of a purely social nature. (I suppose romance could blossom from the social aspect, but that would not be the intention, nor would it be aimed at man-woman friendships in particular.) My initial idea was that it would be good to have a website where Catholics could private message each other, and maybe-- if they lived near each other-- meet for either social purposes or for prayer groups, discussion and so forth.
More and more ideas started coming to me as I munched on a cheese and meat fondue and sipped white wine. The site could be a portal to the whole Irish internet. It could have, not only links to as many Irish Catholic blogs as I could find-- and there aren't really all that many-- but introductions to each one, and a round-up of recent blog activity.
I like the idea of it being collaborative, of using contributions from readers. For instance, there would be an oral history section where people, old and young, could post their memories of Catholic education, first Communions, going to Mass, pilgrimages, and so forth. It could be an archive of the Irish Catholic experience over the generations.
I am very keen on having a sacred art section where readers could contribute poems, paintings, photographs, and other devotional works of art.
There could be a directory of places to pray-- the Mass times listings on the Irish Bishops' website is great, but it doesn't tell you when the various churches are open outside Mass times. I think building this up would be very useful.
There could be movie, TV, radio and book reviews.
There would be an online book of intentions, with (perhaps) particular intentions highlighted.
There could possibly be a forum, though I understand it's difficult to get a forum to take off and a dormant forum looks terrible.
And, of course, there would be ordinary articles and blog posts to provide a focus and a day-by-day life to it.
The thing is, I would definitely need a webmaster for this. I have no particular talent with computers. And this is the kind of site that could definitely not be done through Blogger or any similar platform.
So, if anyone out there knows anything about web design and feels like volunteering their talents, drop me a line. And I'm interested to know if anyone thinks this is a good idea in general.
My provisional title for the site is Build Each Other Up("Therefore encourage one another and build each other up", 1 Thessalonians 5:11).
Anyway, if this doesn't materialize, I will keep up with the blog, which I will probably keep up anyway. But I do feel a restlessness to do something else.
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
Jesus Was Not a Hippie (Part One)
Two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ came to Earth to spread a simple message of love, forgiveness and inclusiveness. Unfortunately, that message has been hijacked by organised religion, and by the Catholic Church in particular, who took his simple message and twisted it into a system of dogma, exclusion and prohibitions.
That's complete balderdash, of course. But it's balderdash I hear (and read) all the time. So often, in fact, that I've decided to go through the Gospels and pick out all the (many, many) sayings of Jesus which are glaringly at odds with the 'I'm OK-- You're OK', live-and-let-live philosophy which is so often attributed to him. So far I've only got half-way through the Gospel of Matthew.
It's true, of course, that all of Our Lord's words have to be understood in context. His teachings are a seamless garment. Nevertheless, I think this exercise in selective quotation is legitimate as a corrective.
Of course, it's still open to the advocates of a hippie Jesus to argue that all the following quotations are simply interpellations of the Catholic Church, or the Emperor Constantine, or some other sinister corrupter of Jesus's Simple Message of Love. But, of course, once we start disqualifying Scripture passages we don't like-- what we might call the Martin Luther gambit-- or discounting Scripture altogether, it's hard to see what we're left with besides the 'Jesus' we see when we look in the mirror.
The Bible translation used here is the New American Bible.
Matthew 5:13: “You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.*
Matthew 5:20: "I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven."
Matthew 5:22: "Whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment, and whoever says to his brother, ‘Raqa,’ will be answerable to the Sanhedrin, and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna."
Mattrew 5:25-26: "Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court with him. Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge, and the judge will hand you over to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Amen, I say to you, you will not be released until you have paid the last penny."
Matthew 5:28: "Everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart."
Matthew 5:29-30: "If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body thrown into Gehenna. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body go into Gehenna."
Matthew 5:31-32: “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife must give her a bill of divorce. But I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery."
Matthew 5:48: "Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect."
Matthew 5:14-15: "If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions."
Matthew 7:11: "If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him."
Matthew 7:13-14: “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many. How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And those who find it are few."
Matthew 7:19: "Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire."
Matthew 7:21: "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven,* but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven."
Matthew 8:11-12: "I say to you,* many will come from the east and the west, and will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the banquet in the kingdom of heaven, but the children of the kingdom will be driven out into the outer darkness, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”
Matthew 10:14-15: "Whoever will not receive you or listen to your words—go outside that house or town and shake the dust from your feet. Amen, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town."
Matthew 10:28: "And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna."
Matthew 10:32:33: "Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father. But whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father."
Matthew 10:34: "Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword."
Matthew 10:35-36: "For I have come to set a man ‘against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s enemies will be those of his household.’"
Matthew 10:38: "Whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me."
Matthew 11:21-24: "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would long ago have repented in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you. And as for you, Capernaum: ‘Will you be exalted to heaven? You will go down to the netherworld.’ For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.”
Matthew 12:31-32: "Therefore, I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven; but whoever speaks against the holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come."
Matthew 12:34: "You brood of vipers, how can you say good things when you are evil? For from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks."
Matthew 12:36: "I tell you, on the day of judgment people will render an account for every careless word they speak."
Matthew 13:12: "To anyone who has, more will be given* and he will grow rich; from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away."
Matthew 13:19-22: "The seed sown on the path is the one who hears the word of the kingdom without understanding it, and the evil one comes and steals away what was sown in his heart. The seed sown on rocky ground is the one who hears the word and receives it at once with joy. But he has no root and lasts only for a time. When some tribulation or persecution comes because of the word, he immediately falls away. The seed sown among thorns is the one who hears the word, but then worldly anxiety and the lure of riches choke the word and it bears no fruit."
Matthew 13:40-42: "Just as weeds are collected and burned [up] with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all who cause others to sin and all evildoers. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth."
Matthew 13:47-50: "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea, which collects fish of every kind. When it is full they haul it ashore and sit down to put what is good into buckets. What is bad they throw away. Thus it will be at the end of the age. The angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth."
That's complete balderdash, of course. But it's balderdash I hear (and read) all the time. So often, in fact, that I've decided to go through the Gospels and pick out all the (many, many) sayings of Jesus which are glaringly at odds with the 'I'm OK-- You're OK', live-and-let-live philosophy which is so often attributed to him. So far I've only got half-way through the Gospel of Matthew.
It's true, of course, that all of Our Lord's words have to be understood in context. His teachings are a seamless garment. Nevertheless, I think this exercise in selective quotation is legitimate as a corrective.
Of course, it's still open to the advocates of a hippie Jesus to argue that all the following quotations are simply interpellations of the Catholic Church, or the Emperor Constantine, or some other sinister corrupter of Jesus's Simple Message of Love. But, of course, once we start disqualifying Scripture passages we don't like-- what we might call the Martin Luther gambit-- or discounting Scripture altogether, it's hard to see what we're left with besides the 'Jesus' we see when we look in the mirror.
The Bible translation used here is the New American Bible.
Matthew 5:13: “You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.*
Matthew 5:20: "I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven."
Matthew 5:22: "Whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment, and whoever says to his brother, ‘Raqa,’ will be answerable to the Sanhedrin, and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna."
Mattrew 5:25-26: "Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court with him. Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge, and the judge will hand you over to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Amen, I say to you, you will not be released until you have paid the last penny."
Matthew 5:28: "Everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart."
Matthew 5:29-30: "If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body thrown into Gehenna. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body go into Gehenna."
Matthew 5:31-32: “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife must give her a bill of divorce. But I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery."
Matthew 5:48: "Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect."
Matthew 5:14-15: "If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions."
Matthew 7:11: "If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him."
Matthew 7:13-14: “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many. How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And those who find it are few."
Matthew 7:19: "Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire."
Matthew 7:21: "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven,* but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven."
Matthew 8:11-12: "I say to you,* many will come from the east and the west, and will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the banquet in the kingdom of heaven, but the children of the kingdom will be driven out into the outer darkness, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”
Matthew 10:14-15: "Whoever will not receive you or listen to your words—go outside that house or town and shake the dust from your feet. Amen, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town."
Matthew 10:28: "And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna."
Matthew 10:32:33: "Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father. But whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father."
Matthew 10:34: "Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword."
Matthew 10:35-36: "For I have come to set a man ‘against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s enemies will be those of his household.’"
Matthew 10:38: "Whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me."
Matthew 11:21-24: "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would long ago have repented in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you. And as for you, Capernaum: ‘Will you be exalted to heaven? You will go down to the netherworld.’ For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.”
Matthew 12:31-32: "Therefore, I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven; but whoever speaks against the holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come."
Matthew 12:34: "You brood of vipers, how can you say good things when you are evil? For from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks."
Matthew 12:36: "I tell you, on the day of judgment people will render an account for every careless word they speak."
Matthew 13:12: "To anyone who has, more will be given* and he will grow rich; from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away."
Matthew 13:19-22: "The seed sown on the path is the one who hears the word of the kingdom without understanding it, and the evil one comes and steals away what was sown in his heart. The seed sown on rocky ground is the one who hears the word and receives it at once with joy. But he has no root and lasts only for a time. When some tribulation or persecution comes because of the word, he immediately falls away. The seed sown among thorns is the one who hears the word, but then worldly anxiety and the lure of riches choke the word and it bears no fruit."
Matthew 13:40-42: "Just as weeds are collected and burned [up] with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all who cause others to sin and all evildoers. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth."
Matthew 13:47-50: "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea, which collects fish of every kind. When it is full they haul it ashore and sit down to put what is good into buckets. What is bad they throw away. Thus it will be at the end of the age. The angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth."
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