Hilaire Belloc and the Catholic Cultural Revival
Hilaire Belloc helped lead a Catholic revival in England that was hugely influential in the growth of the Catholic presence in the wider culture.
Hilaire Belloc Revisited
Trying to encapsulate the scope of Hilaire Belloc’s achievement in a brief essay is akin to trying to capture the immensity of the seas that he sailed in the finiteness of the flagons from which he imbibed.
GKC Was No Anti-Semite
Last summer, the Bishop of Northampton rebuffed the cause for canonization of G.K. Chesterton, offering as one of three impediments that “the issue of anti-Semitism is a real obstacle particularly at this time in the United Kingdom.” W.H. Auden fifty years ago and Adam Gopnik in the last decade both brutally tarred Chesterton with anti-Semitism—a … Read more
A Thousand Miles for Love
Katharine, my preteen, sent me a link to a song she’d happened across. “It’s my new jam,” she wrote, and I eagerly clicked on it to listen. What dad of a preteen wouldn’t? Imagine my surprise when Kath’s new jam turned out to be an ad for a cleaning product. The accompanying video was fun … Read more
When the “Reformers” Abandoned the Eucharist
The first lines of Belloc’s 1936 book, The Characters of the Reformation, are these: “The break-up of united western Christendom with the coming of the Reformation was by far the most important thing in history since the formation of the Catholic Church fifteen hundred years before.” We live in a time when the Reformation is … Read more
Belloc’s Hills and the Sea
Hilaire Belloc’s Hills and the Sea was published in 1906. It is a collection of his journalism from that era in periodicals long since gone. Luckily for us, his writing remains. These 38 essays are a mix of reflection and philosophy, personal memoir, and travel writing—some with English settings, some foreign. In fact, the geography … Read more
Three Paths to Rome
Once asked what book he’d like to be stuck with on a desert island, G.K. Chesterton reportedly responded in the way one would expect of him: Thomas’ Guide to Practical Shipbuilding. He was being facetious, and his real answer was The Pickwick Papers. The question is a fun one to consider, but frankly, I’d beg … Read more
“Worshipping the Devil by Default”
In his very first homily at the Missa Pro Ecclesia in the Sistine Chapel, Pope Francis quoted the famous words of Leon Bloy, stating “Whoever does not pray to God, prays to the devil.” Nature abhors a vacuum. Our experience of the material world tells us that things tend to occupy vacancies; substances naturally move … Read more
What is Distributism? A Controversial Alternative to Socialism and Plutocracy
Distributism is the name given to a socio-economic and political creed originally associated with G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. Chesterton bowed to Belloc’s preeminence as a disseminator of the ideas of distributism, declaring Belloc the master in relation to whom he was merely a disciple. “You were the founder and father of this mission,”Chesterton … Read more
Meeting Chesterton After His Death
Tomorrow, it will be 78 years since G.K. Chesterton took his last breath on this earth. His death was front page news around the world and was met with an outpouring of spontaneous groans and genuine grief. Thousands of people who had never met Chesterton but who had welcomed him into their homes through his … Read more
Distinguishing Between Authentic and Heretical Ecumenism
Pope Francis’s visit with the Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew in Jerusalem on May 25 elicited the familiar curiosity and hope that accompanies such gestures shared between persons of different faith traditions, in this case persons of the highest leadership and authority in their respective Churches, coming together in at least some degree of commonality and fellowship. … Read more
What Have We Learned from Universities?
The recent news that Pope Francis has appointed a commission of prelates to reevaluate a former Pontifical university in Peru has elicited a few sardonic remarks, and perhaps even some earnest hopes, that the Vatican might take a similarly incisive interest in the condition of certain Catholic institutions in the United States. As unlikely as … Read more
Robert Hugh Benson’s Come Rack! Come Rope!
Robert Hugh Benson was born in 1871, the youngest son of E.W. Benson, a distinguished Anglican clergyman who counted the Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone, amongst his friends. In 1882, when Benson was eleven-years-old, his father became Archbishop of Canterbury. Having taken Anglican orders himself, it was Benson who read the litany at his father’s … Read more
Hilaire Belloc, Cautionary Tales and Bad Child’s Book of Beasts
I remember the first time I read John Senior’s Death of Christian Culture. That it ended with a reading list was, well, something of a surprise. There was everyone you would expect—Dickens and Scott, Austen and Wister—and some I had never met. But what struck me the most were the unknown titles from authors I … Read more
Falling Through The Catholic Literary Cracks
Over at The Catholic Herald (UK), Roy Peachey has an intriguing piece on a number of Catholic writers he fears are being left by the wayside — not for any fault in their craftsmanship or in their ability to be relevant, but simply for geographic reasons: Most English language studies of the Catholic novel – and, I would guess, … Read more
Chesterton Was Fat
There is much talk of the possible canonization of one of Catholicism’s favorite “secular saints,” G. K. Chesterton. Inevitably, people point to one thing that doesn’t sit well in the American consciousness: Chesterton was fat. I hear little buzzings about it all over, and the subject of gluttony vs. abstemiousness comes up repeatedly as … Read more