*Sightings* 6/3/10

Saint Gilbert of Battersea

— Ian Gerdon

You’ve never seen a blockbuster movie based on a book by G.K.
Chesterton. Perhaps you’ve stumbled across one of the many television adaptations of his Father
Brown mysteries; and if you’re fortunate enough to live in Chicago, maybe
you saw last fall’s staging of *The Man Who Was Thursday*, Chesterton’s
secret-agent-novel turned heartbreaking-Christian-allegory. Unlike C.S.
Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien (both of whom adored him), Chesterton didn’t write
larger-than-life fantasy tales easily transferred to the screen. But in his
own day, he was more a man of the people than either of those Oxford dons –
a journalist, novelist, and poet of tremendous wit and notable width, whom
Lewis later called the best Christian apologist in the English language.

Like Lewis and Tolkien, Chesterton is venerated by many, a practice that may
someday be legitimated by ecclesial approval. At a conference last July on
“The Holiness of G.K. Chesterton,” the Chesterton Society decided to get the
ball rolling on what is hoped will be his eventual canonization in the Roman
Catholic Church. Make no mistake: Though he made his living as a
journalist, Chesterton was no theological lightweight. Open the standard
edition of the collected works of St. Francis of Assisi and you’ll find
Chesterton’s biography cited on the first page of the introduction; read any
review of twentieth-century Thomism and you’ll find that one of the most
highly recommended studies of Aquinas is, again, the biography Chesterton
wrote. And rumor has it he was halfway through before he thought it wise to
send his assistant to London to bring him some books on St. Thomas.

But it wasn’t biographies that made Chesterton’s name. The apologetic works
*Orthodoxy* and *The Everlasting Man* are perennial favorites. Novels like
*Manalive* and *The Ball and the Cross* continue to delight. And then there
are the innumerable newspaper essays, perhaps Chesterton’s best medium,
concentrated doses of his brilliance that exemplify the qualities that make
him venerated. Those qualities are, first, love and enjoyment of humanity
and the world in all their finitude and concrete particularity; second, a
belief in the fundamental health and sanity of ordinary human beings and
ordinary human life; and third, a passionate devotion to reason and its
roots in religion. He found the contemporary world basically set against
these themes, and so became a tireless controversialist who nevertheless won
the affection of his opponents through humor, self-deprecation, earnestness,
and generosity. In short, there is much in Chesterton’s views and attitudes
to commend him: He shows us how to be deeply engaged in the social world
without becoming crippled by strife and bitterness.

Granted, there are snares that may catch up Chesterton’s canonization. Some
have suggested that funding will be an issue (going through all the
preliminary steps required for canonization isn’t cheap, and the Church
isn’t going to pay for it), as will the sheer volume of his works to be
sifted through. More likely, questions will arise from two sources: his
late remarks regarding Jews, and the way in which holiness is defined.

Chesterton supported wide-spread private ownership for the sake of personal
freedom and dignity, and felt that the accumulation of wealth in the hands
of a few was detrimental to this. For that reason, late in life he had
barbed remarks for the very wealthy – among them, Jewish financiers. It
will be noted in his defense that he criticized Hitler’s racial policies
before his death in 1936, but it’s to be hoped that the Catholic Church
(which has dropped the ball on Jewish-Christian relations in the near past)
will give Chesterton’s comments serious consideration and qualification.

Furthermore, at the heart of Catholic canonization lies not the
oft-mentioned miracles, but the more subtle idea of heroic sanctity. Before
the question of miracles and persons’ eschatological status even arises, it
must be established that they possessed essential Christian qualities in a
degree definitively surpassing the ways those qualities are lived out by the
less spectacular of us – as was declared in December regarding Pope John
Paul II (of course) and Pope Pius XII (to some surprise and controversy).
How to do so in the case of Chesterton, a man notoriously impulsive and
astoundingly corpulent, who sang the merits not only of Francis and Thomas,
but also of beer and cigars?

But that, it will be argued, is exactly the point. That he relished the
world should not disqualify Chesterton from consideration for the highest
pedigree of sanctity: If his holiness can be ascertained from his devotion
to truth, his humility, most of all from his faith, hope, and charity, then
he recasts for us what it means to enjoy the world. He gives us a
larger-than-life example of how to live on this earth, involved in its
struggles yet not controlled and limited by it. Chesterton, it could be
said, consumed the world; but the world did not consume Chesterton. For
that gustatory miracle, canonization may be the best digestif.

Ian Gerdon received a Master of Divinity from the University of Chicago in
2009 and a M.A. in Monastic Studies from St. John’s University, a
Benedictine abbey, in 2008. He is currently a doctoral student in
patristics at the University of Notre Dame.

*Sightings* comes from the Martin Marty
Centerat the University of
Chicago Divinity School.

Attribution

Columns may be quoted or republished in full, with attribution to the author
of the column, *Sightings*, and the Martin Marty Center at the University of
Chicago Divinity School.