The Cause for a Modern Prophet

The
Cause for a Modern Prophet | Michael
Coren | CWR

Prolific and paradoxical, Gilbert
Keith Chesterton was as witty as Wilde, as original as Joyce, and as
clever as Kafka

When
even mass-circulation British newspapers cover a story about the
Church and beatification, you know it matters. The Daily Mail
recently
reported that, “Author G. K. Chesterton, best known for his
Father Brown stories, has been put on the path to sainthood – with
the blessing of the Pope. Just days before he was elected Pope in
March, the then Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio,
wrote to a Chesterton society in Argentina approving the wording of a
private prayer calling for his canonization.”

I wrote
a biography of Gilbert Keith Chesterton in 1988, and it was at a
conference about the man’s life and work in 1986 at the University
of Toronto that I met the woman whom I would marry, obliging me to
leave Britain and come to Canada. We also named our first child
Gilbert in honor of the man. (Our son’s middle name, though, as
romance must not lead to cruelty!)

Should
the great GKC be acknowledged as a saint? I'm not sure, really, but I
do know that we are generally not well served by journalism today.
Catholic journalists in particular sometimes seem more intent on
pleasing their secular friends than in defending the Church. Oh, for
another Chesterton, who wrote the truth of permanent things, of first
things, of Catholic things. His cause has been discussed and promoted
for some time, and in many ways it’s never been so fitting.

Born
in 1874 in London, England, he enjoyed the best in British private
education but chose not to go to university, which partly explains
his visceral refusal to adopt convention and think and write within
partisan definitions. He drifted into journalism but once afloat he
sailed perfectly, and often against the wind.

On
the fashionable nationalism of the Edwardian age, for example: “My
country, right or wrong, is a thing that no patriot would think of
saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, my mother,
drunk or sober.” On literature: “A good novel tells us the truth
about it hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.”
On being controversial: “I believe in getting into hot water, it
keeps you clean.”

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