Even before he converted to Catholicism in 1922, G.K.
Chesterton exhibited great concern for the modern abandonment of reason, and
the consequent shift from God to man as the center of things. This shift is best seen in the aberration
called socialism and, to a lesser degree, in the distortion known as
capitalism.
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| So many books, so little time. . . . |
Chesterton’s conversion to Catholicism, however, seemed to
trigger a much more profound analysis of the problem. The books written by Chesterton that most people
rank as “great” were written following his conversion.
Viewing this as objectively and as non-emotionally as
possible, a number of non-Catholics have commented that the Aristotelian-Thomist-based
social teachings of the Catholic Church are the most comprehensive and
best-reasoned of any organized religion or philosophical school. It would therefore make perfect sense that
the focus of “the Apostle of Commonsense” would sharpen once he became a
Catholic.
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| Did St. Francis of Assisi reinvent religion? |
Thus (as we saw in yesterday’s posting), in Saint Francis of Assisi (1923), written
soon after his conversion, Chesterton zeroed in on the tendency of some people,
especially a particular kind of Christian, to exaggerate certain aspects of
Christian teaching beyond all bounds of reason. By basing everything on a personal
interpretation of something accepted on faith as God’s Will, such Christians
not only tried to change Christianity, but religion itself. This, as we will see, is what Chesterton’s
friend, Ronald Knox, examined in Enthusiasm,
his study of Christian faith-based movements disconnected from the bounds of reason
and claiming the direct, faith-based inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
In The Everlasting Man
(1925) and the “Introduction” (technically a foreword) he wrote to Fulton
Sheen’s first book, God and Intelligence
in Modern Philosophy (1925), Chesterton did not deviate from his goal: the
restoration of reason and common sense. He
did, however, slightly shift his emphasis. He characterized the Catholic Church to
non-Catholics as the defender of reason in a world gone mad.
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| Hilaire Belloc being reasonable? |
In The Catholic Church
and Conversion (1926), Chesterton again shifted his emphasis, this time
from explaining the institutional Catholic Church to non-Catholics, to
explaining the individual Catholic, specifically the convert, to non-Catholics.
The point, however, remained the same:
the importance of reason and common sense.
In the foreword he wrote for the book, Hilaire Belloc noted “the
innumerable proofs upon which the rational basis of our religion reposes.” (Hilaire Belloc, “Foreword” to G.K.
Chesterton, The Catholic Church and
Conversion. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1950, 9.)
In Chesterton’s opinion, only in Catholicism is the fullness
of truth and reason to be found, and only in Catholicism are the intellect and
the will, reason and faith, or knowledge and opinion, given their proper
places. As he said,
To become a Catholic is not to
leave off thinking, but to learn how to think. It is so in exactly the same
sense in which to recover from palsy is not to leave off moving but to learn
how to move. The Catholic convert has for the first time a starting point for
straight and strenuous thinking. He has for the first time a way of testing the
truth in any question that he raises. (G.K. Chesterton, The Catholic Church and Conversion. New York: The Macmillan
Company, 1950, 85-86.)
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| Fabianism v. Distributism |
For some reason, however, people — especially neo-distributists
and Fabian socialists — didn’t seem to catch on to the correction of
distributism and the refutation of Fabian socialism. In our opinion, of course, the slavery of
past savings constitutes a grave defectus
intellectus, a failure of the power to reason. This mental blindness prevents those so enslaved
from being able to understand that their attempts to circumvent the presumed
necessity of past savings to finance new capital formation are contradictory
and thus nonsensical and self-defeating.
More intensive efforts seemed advisable. To his credit, Chesterton did not surrender
to the great pressure put on him to conform to the demands of those attacking
from outside the Church (the Fabian socialists), or those attacking from within
(the followers of Msgr. John A. Ryan).
He did, however, take time to regroup and reconsider the problem. After publishing three of his most important
works in rapid succession from 1923 to 1926, he seemingly took a seven-year
break from his crusade to restore reason, at least, a break from using the
heavy literary artillery, possibly to let the guns cool a bit.
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| Bedlam: When reason and common sense are abandoned. |
Looking more closely at St.
Francis of Assisi, The Everlasting
Man, and The Catholic Church and
Conversion, we realize that Chesterton had, in every case, focused on what was happening. A reasonable man, he clearly assumed that
once people had it pointed out to them what was happening and why it was
contrary to reason, they would — as rational beings — come around to the right
way of thinking.
By 1926, however, it was evident that being reasonable in an
unreasonable world was not going to get the job done. This was underscored shortly afterwards in
his debate with G.B. Shaw that, as we noted, came to nothing. In reaching this conclusion — assuming that
he, in fact, did so — he may have been strongly influenced by Fulton Sheen’s
first and possibly greatest (but least skillfully written!) book, God and Intelligence, which focused on the modern abandonment of reason by ignoring the first principle of reason, negatively expressed as the principle (or law) of contradiction, and positively expressed as the principle (or law) of identity.
Sheen’s book may have brought Chesterton to the point where
he realized that sound reasoning wouldn’t get him anywhere as long as reason
itself was being rejected. Nor was it
enough simply to point out the irrationality of unreason. Like Sheen, Chesterton seems to have realized
that he had to counter the problem with the reasons
that reason was being rejected — a paradox that, perhaps, only Chesterton could
have appreciated in all its incredible irony.
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| Primus, Intellect, not Will |
This may have been the genesis of what some regard as Chesterton’s
single greatest (and evidently most misunderstood) accomplishment: a sketch of
St. Thomas Aquinas, “the Dumb Ox of Sicily.”
Thus, in Saint Thomas Aquinas: The
“Dumb Ox” (1933), Chesterton defended the primacy of the intellect and reason
as the rule in purely human, that is, natural affairs, and as the foundation of
faith in supernatural affairs, against the mounting unreason and reliance on
the Triumph of the Will that has characterized the modern world.
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| Triumph of the Will |
Ironically (that word again), Chesterton published The Dumb Ox the same year Adolf Hitler
came to power in Germany and established the Third Reich, what the Nazis — the
word is a German acronym for National Socialism, a system with occult roots in
the New Age — intended as the ultimate Triumph of the Will.
Framed as a sort of sequel to St. Francis of Assisi, The Dumb
Ox is much more than that.
Paradoxically, if we want to understand the first book, we should first read
the second book. At the same time, while
we should read the books in reverse order to get the most out of them, in our
opinion Chesterton could not have written either had he not written St. Francis first. In a sense, he wrote the wrong book first, but
he couldn’t have done it any other way.
What resulted, however, was a ringing defense of reason and
common sense that comes across as a stern warning to Chesterton’s own fans and
followers. His other books were, in
large measure, efforts to explain the reasonableness of Catholicism to
non-Catholics. His task in The Dumb Ox (if our analysis is
correct) was the far more difficult task of explaining the reasonableness of
Catholicism to Catholics, and of common sense to the followers of the Apostle
of Common Sense.
#30#
