Pints With Aquinas - G.K. Chesterton: His Life, Writings, and Lasting Impact w/ Dale Ahlquist

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

Called the Prince of Paradox G.K. Chesterton was one of the greatest thinkers and writers of the 20th Century. JRR Tolkien memorized all 143 lines of Chesterton's "Lepanto". C.S. Lewis once said, “the best popular defense of the full Christian position I know is G. K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man.” Ronald Knox, the Scholar and Biblical Translator, homilizing at his funeral said, "All of this generation has grown up under Chesterton’s influence so completely that we do not even know when we are thinking Chesterton". Dale Ahlquist the founder of the Chesterton Society and Chesterton Academies joins the show to talk about the life and writings of the Man that was Chesterton. Show Sponsors: https://strive21.com/matt https://ascensionpress.com/fradd Dale's Links:  @AmCHESTERTONsoc  Website: https://www.chesterton.org/ Chesterton Academy Website: https://chestertonschoolsnetwork.org/ Dale's Books: https://www.chesterton.org/store/product-category/by-dale-ahlquist/

Dale Orquist was very intense, very directional, very intended. How are you? The better for your asking. God bless you, man. So knee braces. When did you get knee braces? When my knee started hurting. How long ago was that?

Let's just say it was more than a year ago. It's relative, isn't it? How our bodies begin to decay, you know, like I'm 40 and I get a sore back and I'm sure you'd look at me and go, you got no idea. But that's what I say to him and that's what he says to someone younger than him. I'm falling apart slowly, Matt. Even as you, even as you watch me, I'm falling apart. Yeah, very gradually. Yeah. Well, it's good to have you on the show. I mean, I, um, I'm someone who would like to love Chesterton. And I hear that you're the fellow who could just push me over the edge.

Well, I have made it a passion of mine to, to spread the good news of Chesterton. When I first read him, it was, I need other people to hear about this. I feel like I, I've been cheated, but I'm not going to let anybody else be cheated. When did you first encounter him? In 1981. Okay. I feel like I've been cheated, but I'm not going to let anybody else be cheated. When did you first encounter him? In 1981. Okay. I was negative two. Nobody asked me. Sorry. And in what context? Were you a convert? Well, the context was my honeymoon. Just like anybody else when they start reading Chester and they're usually on their honeymoon. And I was a Baptist at the time.

And like any good Baptist, I honeymooned in Rome. This is great. And I brought my wife with me, which was just great to have her with me on the honeymoon. And we were there on the day that Pope John Paul II was shot. I did not see this coming. Okay. All right. There's so much to unpack here. All right. Just I want to get to the Pope last. So you were a Baptist. Why did you choose Rome? Just cause it's beautiful.

Yeah. My wife was actually born in Italy and that was another good reason to bring her with me on the honeymoon, because she could speak the language. It was much easier to get from one side of the street to the other by having her with me. And we eventually made our way up to Northern Italy, where her relatives lived. I got to visit her relatives. But we started in Rome, and we happened to be there the day that the great John Paul was shot. All right, you've got to tell me about it.

Where were you? How did you hear about it? What was Rome like? Being on our honeymoon, we were tourists. We weren't pilgrims. She was not a practicing Catholic. She got married in the Baptist Church with moi. And we were visiting the Church of St. Peter in Chains and looking at Michelangelo's statue of the Moses, which is one of the great sculptures of all time, and taking this in,

and then they tell us the pope has just been shot, and everyone's in shock, of course. And our hotel was only three blocks from the Vatican, from St. Peter's Square. If we had known he was going to make a public appearance, I'm sure we would have gone because that would have been an interesting highlight of the honeymoon to see the Pope, even though it was just another tourist curiosity, another Marvel statue for us, right? And we were told by the group giving us the tour, saying, we can't drive you back to your hotel, you're too close to St. Peter's,

you're gonna have to walk back. And you know, Matt, I don't think I ever got my money back now that you bring that up, yeah. But we walked back and saw the total chaos all around us, it was unbelievable, and yet, as we walked, it all dissipated. It was like a storm calming. And everybody went inside to watch TV to find out what the news was.

And the streets of Rome were empty. And we had the whole city to ourselves. It was a once in a lifetime, once in a millennium opportunity to walk through Rome when it was empty. Wow. And we were on our honeymoon, so we were having a great time. Did you have a kind of peripheral interest in John Paul II, just as a sort of celebrity

before that point? Did you know of any of his accomplishments as a poet or a philosopher or playwright? No. None of that. What about just like an important figure on the world stage? Yeah, I knew he was the pope. I knew that. So were you like, were you interested over the coming days as to what had happened or

was it just a bit of news? I mean, everyone's mystified. You know, why would anyone shoot the pope? We were really flummoxed by why would anyone would shoot. What are you trying to accomplish by shooting the pope? Because, you know, for us good Baptists, you know, the pope's a good guy, you know, more or less. And shooting him, that's just a bad move.

That's just bad form. And we couldn't get our heads around why he would want to do it. But then, you know, as things unfold, this was one of the most interesting things. Two days later, walking through Rome, you could buy postcards at kiosks with the Pope waving from his hospital bent. Two days later. Wow. Capitalism is alive and well.

Well that's, you know, being, being good non-Catholics, we were saying, yeah, that's the Catholic church right there. They're going in on this. I was just in Italy last year. I was interviewing a fellow called Cameron Batuzzi who had announced his conversion to the Catholic faith and we were on top of EWTN Studios building overlooking the Vatican. But that night my maid and I said, well, let's print some of those scooters. You know, you use the app and unlocks the scooter. Yeah.

Turns out it's a terrible idea on cobblestone Oh, see your fillings came rattled. Yeah Yeah, but it was still amazing I mean it was kind of like what you said that felt like we had all of st Peter's and all of Rome to ourselves were just going on your scooters. Yeah. All right, so you're in Rome You're on your honeymoon with your wife, which is good and You came across Chesterton how yeah, so you said you were going to bring up the pope last. You went right to that, by the way.

Well, I felt like, how can you delay that? I know, I know. That's what most people do. It is the most interesting part of the story. But for me, that's... But here we go, now it's downhill. Then someone handed me a book. I brought Chesterton's book, The Everlasting Man, with me.

Because what are you going to do on your honeymoon if you don't read right well yeah so we were we my wife you seriously practicing NFP perhaps abstaining thank you yeah you know mother Angelica she interviewed me and she she made suspicious comments about the everlasting man as well but it's not what makes the story really good is that my wife was reading Les Miserables. Wow. And she was reading, of course, a Spanish translation of the French novel.

Just to impress you. Well, it didn't take much for her to impress me, but she always did impress me. And so she's sitting there crying her eyes out because when Fantine dies. I hope I'm not blowing, I'm not giving away the whole story. Even if you did, I think, by now. So, and she's laughing at the same time that she's crying

because she shouldn't be crying on her honeymoon, you know? She's, it's just how ridiculous that is. And we're having a very good laugh about that. And I'm reading GK Chestered is the Everlasting Man. Why? Why did I pick that book up? Because that was the book that so influenced C.S. Lewis. That was the book that really brought him to the Christian faith. C.S. Lewis was an atheist until he picked up that book and he said it was the first intelligent explanation of Christianity that he'd ever read.

And he said later in his memoir, surprised by joy, a young man who's serious about his atheism cannot be too careful about what he reads. And I said I've heard that quote, but that was in reference to his reading of the everlasting man. Yes. Okay. So that's why that's where I started because of the everlasting. Yes. I didn't know that. Okay. So that's why, that's where I started because of the CS Lewis connection. Now I should have pointed this out before the interview. I know very little about GK Chesterton. I've read I think half of orthodoxy and a couple of his articles. That's it. So this

is going to be good for you. So if you, if you can help me love Chesterton, then you could help a whole wide swath of people who are watching right now. This is going to be good for you. So if you, if you could help me love Chesterton, then you could help a whole wide swath of people who are watching right now. This is going to be good for you, Matt. That's right. But you said you made it your mission to spread the good news. So here you go. Well, so Chesterton, when I first read him, I would say I grasped maybe 10% of that book, but I knew I had encountered a writer unlike anyone I'd ever read

before. Here's someone who really, not only headed together, but he wrote about everything. He brings up absolutely everything in that book. He's talking about, forgive me. What's the book about? Oh, it's, it's basically the history of the world, um, split up into two parts, the same two parts that the history of the world is split up into, BC and AD. So he writes about everything leading up to Christ, and then how when Jesus enters the

stage, history changes utterly, and his argument is that there's no possible explanation for what happened other than the Christian explanation. If you try to dismiss Jesus as just another historical figure or something that is a strange new teaching or a strange twist in philosophy or any other explanation for Jesus, none of them are as convincing as the Christian explanation. And history does change utterly when Christ steps onto the stage. Mason- So it's a work of apologetics. Kuhn- Yeah, that's what C.S. Lewis called it. He said it was the best work, he said it was the best book on apologetics of the 20th century.

Mason- So was it as, you know, when I read him, he comes across as kind of whimsical and insightful. Is the same kind of way of writing or is it more...? Kuhn- Yeah, all of his writing tends to be whimsical and insightful, but this is a very, very well laid out argument in this book, which is, I think, a departure for him. He usually does that well laid out argument in just 1500 words and takes you through an entirely profound thought, but he does it in just one essay. We're here, and I think in orthodoxy as well, it's just this steady train of an unrelenting argument

that you are backed into the corner by the end of the book. I can't wait to read it now, see? Thank you. I'll tell you that in March of 2024, Word on Fire will come out with an annotated version of The Everlasting Man that I've done that. So my great pleasure. Word on Fire really, I'm just reading right now, a commentary,

Aquinas' commentary on sections of the gospels and Word on Fire are doing such an excellent job with their books. They're beautiful They're well put together. So kudos to them. Now you've brought up Thomas Aquinas. That is true Chester wrote a book on Thomas Aquinas. I did read that actually. Ah, good. Good come to think of it So I've read more than I thought. All right. Well good. Maybe we'll bring some pull some more things out of here out of your subconscious I read everything so the book he wrote on Thomas Aquinas was towards the end of his life,

and I think there were people who even thought that G.K. Chesterton had bitten off more than he could chew by taking on the great angelic doctor. And it's very unclear how much Thomas Aquinas he'd read himself. In fact, he had dictated half the book to his secretary when he told her, you need to go to London and get me some books.

And she said, well, what books? He said, I don't know. So she made some inquiries and did some research and returned from London with a stack of books. And he took the top one off the stack and page through it and from the back and replaced it on the stack and took a walk in his garden came back and dictated the rest of the book to his secretary who typed as he dictated.

Was it Gilson or some other? It was, it was Gilson. Who said it was perhaps the best introduction. Yeah, he said it was the best book ever written on Thomas Aquinas. He said, those of us who spent our lives as scholars trying to laboriously prove these theoretical arguments, Chesterton has just surpassed us with his intuition. Wow, Yeah. And, and he said, he said, he just called Chesterton one of the deepest thinkers who ever existed.

And he said he was deep because he was right and he couldn't help being right and deep. So he made up for it by being funny. And those who see that he was right and deep, uh, they, they understood those who didn't see that he was right and deep, they understood, and those who didn't see that he was right and deep, he apologised by being funny, and that's all they can see of him. Very good. Wow, that's very insightful.

Well, it kind of reminds me of the fact that, I think this is true of a lot of people, if you take a liking to, say, Plato or Aquinas or Augustine, it's always easier, it seems to me, to read those authors as opposed to what others have written about them. I wonder if it was his straightforwardness or childlikeness that enabled him to write an excellent book that maybe didn't get into the weeds. Yeah, I think with Thomas Aquinas, I feel like they were just drawing from the same well of truth together, and he was thinking Thomas's thoughts with him.

There's just such a connection that he makes with him. It's really a little uncanny how well he thinks like him. But he does the same thing in his book on St. Francis of Assisi, which is the other great saint he writes about. And try to think of two more different saints than those two. And Chesterton wrote a book on each of them, and he goes right into the cave with Francis and has the mystical experience with Francis where he sees God. And Chesterton describes that experience. And how could he even begin to unless he somehow was in the cave with him?

Interesting. So what people may not know, if they'd known very little about Chastidon, is that he was a convert to the Catholic faith. Now, when Everlasting Man, when did he write that in his faith journey? That was written about three years after his conversion. Okay, am I right in thinking that orthodoxy was written

while he was Protestant, or most of the orthodoxy? Orthodoxy was written 14 years before he became Catholic. Okay. Yes. Okay. And the real most of the orthodoxy? Orthodoxy was written 14 years before he became Catholic. Okay. Yes. Okay. And the real challenge of reading orthodoxy is to find one line that indicates he's not Catholic because it's almost impossible. Okay.

Yeah. So you picked up The Everlasting Man just as a good Baptist, and you knew of him just as a Christian who influenced Lewis. Fair enough. And I heard a couple of Chesterton quotations, but someone told me that, someone told me, Matt, that if you read Chesterton, you don't even need to read C.S. Lewis, because all of C.S. Lewis is in Chesterton. And I thought that was a blasphemous remark, but it helped plant the seed. And you know, it was after I went, after that remark was made to me, then all of a sudden I see Chesterton's name everywhere and see CS Lewis saying,

read everlasting man. And so I just kind of followed CS Lewis's advice at that point. Did you know he was a Catholic when you read that book? No, I didn't. It took me a while to find out that Chesterton was a Catholic and I I was puzzled by that. I said, well, he seems to be so right about everything else he writes about, we'll just have to work around that. Yeah. That'll be just a workaround. Right. And, you know, I tried to avoid it as long as I could. And it took, it was a 16-year process

of GK Chesterton escorting me to the doors of the Catholic Church. How long, sorry? How many years? 16. 16. So it was 1981, you said, you read Everlasting Man. In 1996. And you were hooked. Yeah, I was hooked from the beginning. And at that point in 81, there were only six of Chesterton's books in print, which is hard to believe because he wrote 100 books. And

so now there's probably seventy of his books are back in print and plus things that were not books during his lifetime collections of essays because his books are really only a fraction of what he wrote. Do you know someone who you respect for their intelligence who just doesn't like Chesedin? They think he's too playful, kind of annoying, they can appreciate him, but they don't enjoy reading him. And what do you think of such people? Yeah, I have met a few of those and usually they haven't read enough Chesterton to have properly made that conclusion. That's how I feel that they really, they've encountered bits and pieces. They may have read Orthodoxy or Everlasting Man, maybe. But you know, books like that you can't read just once.

You have to read them again, and that's when they start bearing fruit is about on the third reading. Because the second time you read him is the most uncanny experience in the world, Matt, because G.K. Chesterton is one of the only writers who can rewrite a book after he, after you've read it the first time. And then when you read it the second time,

he somehow come, come out of the grave and rewritten the book. What does that mean? Cause you're reading this book that you've even underlined yourself and you say, I've never, I've never read this before. That was not there before. Someone has rewritten the lines on top of what I underlined, and I don't know how they did that, but it's a completely new book the second time you read it. So he kind of writes with an accessibility that might be deceptive at first,

kind of like Plato, honestly. You know when you read Aristotle, you're kind of smacked in the face with all this jargon that you need to sort through. Plato, I feel like you pick Plato up, read the Apology or something like that, and you kind of get it, but there's a depth there that you I guess might spend a long time then

Escavating because when you read the Apology the second time there's stuff. I didn't see that the first time I read this so yeah Chesterton is Ever new he's really an evergreen writer where you're always gonna get something out of the same text That you've already read before and so So reading just that first time, yeah, I was hooked. I just kept reading more and more, had to comb through used bookstores at that point and find as many books as I could. And then slowly discovered that there were one or two people out there in the

world who also were reading Chesterton. And before the internet existed, you couldn't find them in little online rooms. There were very few people who were reading them, and those who were reading would kind of keep it a secret. They didn't want anyone to know, especially if they were teachers or professors. Why? Because Chesterton was not someone that was taken seriously at all in the early 80s. This is the end of the dark ages. No one was reading Chester in the 70s and almost no one in the 80s. And then slowly

people started coming out of the closet because we we started finding each other. Why didn't they take him seriously? Well as we were talking about he was considered too flippant, too paradoxical, just dismissed because of his paradoxes. He thought those were just rhetorical tricks. He's being cute. Yeah. Yeah. And it's not seeing how profound he was.

And also, you know, Justin was writing against every philosopher that they were reading and taking seriously. I mean, he had taken apart Nietzsche during the, when people were still discovering Nietzsche in the early 20th century, and just showing what an abysmal and vapid philosophy it was, and pointing out the madness of it. And he's pointing out all the madness

of all modern philosophy, how that if you take it to its logical conclusion, it will lead to the madman cell. You know, that's the chapter in orthodoxy, the clean, well-lit prison of one idea. Oh, that's good. And, but not only madness, but self-destructive madness, that every one of these modern philosophies

holds the seeds to its own He might have been onto something. So maybe it was a combination of his apparent flippancy coupled with the fact that he's taking down philosophers who it was in vogue to be following at the time. Absolutely. Yeah, that was certainly there. And I think one of the great tributes recently paid to Chesterton was Peter Crave's four-volume collection

of the 100 Greatest Philosophers, Plato's Children. And number 100 is GK Chesterton. Yeah. You know Peter? built in a four volume collection of the hundred greatest philosophers, Plato's children, and number 100 is G.K. Chesterton. Yeah. Yeah. You know Peter? I do, yes. I had the great blessing of knowing him.

Oh, I bet you guys would have some good conversations. Well, I try to listen to him. We have good conversations in that I listen to him talk, yes, because why would I say anything? He's one of the most lighthearted, genuinely humble, joyful men I've ever met. Truly. And at that age. What, 85 now? Yeah, yeah. He's truly good. I'm grumpy at 40. And we picked him up from the airport,

brought him to the studio in Atlanta where I used to live. We got stuck in traffic on the way back and it looked like he was going to miss his flight. And the whole time he was just telling jokes and you gotta watch this movie. Yeah. So Chesterton played a role in his conversion too. Chesterton played a role in Peter to watch this movie. Yeah. So Chesterton played a role in his conversion too. Chesterton played a role in Peter Crave's conversion. Yeah. And I've heard the story about the Church Fathers.

Yeah, the Church Fathers, of course, the big one. But he liked those 19th century philosophers too, when he was studying philosophy. And he particularly liked Kierkegaard. And interestingly enough, I did my master's thesis on Kierkegaard. And interestingly enough, I did my master's thesis on Kierkegaard and Chesterton and the concept of paradox in both writers. So when he talked to me about his affinity for Kierkegaard,

I lit up because I had the same affinity for both writers. But he said that Kierkegaard, he said, might have been enough to keep him a Protestant. But Chesterton answered all of Kierkegaard, he said, might have been enough to keep him a Protestant. But Chesterton answered all of Kierkegaard's questions. So that was a nice tribute from Peter Crave to GK Chesterton. What's a good gateway drug book or article into Chesterton for those watching who would like to dip their toe in? Well, I've written not one and not two, but three introductory books to Chesterton.

So if the first two don't make it to your doorstep, the third one will. But the first one I wrote was called The Apostle of Common Sense, and that's just an overview of Chesterton's most important books and trying to make him as accessible as possible. And then the Common Sense 101 Lessons from G.K. Chesterton are all the themes that Chesterton writes about. And, you know, we get into paradox there and his sense of wonder and all the main themes of his writing, including his defense of the faith. And then the third book I wrote was called The Complete Thinker. And that's looking really at the world today through Chesterton's eyes. See, I think for me to be interested in those books,

and I hope people are and will buy them, I would have to be really hooked on the man to then go and see what someone can then explicate for me. Right? Well, I think the purpose of those books is to get people interested in Chesterton, because sometimes just reading the raw Chesterton can be a little too unnerving and like orthodoxy is a book

that a lot of people start and can't finish. I think I know a guy like that. And so this helps you learn what to expect when you're reading Chesterton and then you're armed and ready to go in there and then just delight in him because he's so much fun. Well, see this Word on Fire book you've got coming out that excites me because there I get to if I'm understanding read Chasted and then you help me on it's like you're sitting next to me to be like it means that you idiot. Yeah.

And in the annotations. Yeah. Except I use much stronger language than you idiot. That's really exciting. Oh God. But still give us a, give us a, maybe would you say an article would be best? Oh, yeah, I mean, he's a great essayist. So if you pick up one of his essays such as The Twelve Men, which is about serving on a jury or A Piece of Chalk,

which is about a hike he takes out of the country and what I found in my pocket and then one of his great essays on Lying in bed. Yes. Can you, lying in bed would be an altogether, you probably know it. It would be a perfect experience if one only had a crayon long enough to draw on the ceiling. That is so beautiful. That's cool, man.

And that's almost Chestered in one sentence there because he's painting a picture and suddenly it's completely different from what you... That's the last way that you expect that sentence to end. Yeah. And that's what he does. He just takes you on a quick twist and you go, oh, I never thought of that. Yeah, unless you were a child, in which case you're like, that's what I was just thinking.

Yeah, that's Chesterton, unless you become like a child, you know, unless you become like Chesterton, you may not get into the kingdom of heaven because he is the child. I'd love you to tell me about the man. So he was doing all of his writing in the early part of the 20th century. He was born in 1874 and basically blew onto the scene around 1900 with book reviews and art reviews in some of the London newspapers and then in short order he was in demand as a regular columnist or regular essayist in the Daily News and then the Illustrated London News, two major papers and everybody knew who he

was because of his great paradoxical style and his wit and his Character he was this Large guy he he was bigger than life six foot four pushing 300 pounds and and Completely humble a tower of humility and knew how to make fun of himself completely humble, a tower of humility, and knew how to make fun of himself. I was about to ask, how do you know he was humble? Well, he said, I'm the politest man in all of England because I can stand up on a bus and offer my seat to three women at one time.

And he said, you know, I'm sure that the thin monks were holy, but the fat monks were humble. I see. Yeah. And the story of the woman accosting him on London streets during World War I and saying, young man, why aren't you out at the front? And he says, madam, if you stand on this side, you'll see that I am out at the front. Yeah. And getting out of the cab. Mr. Chester perhaps you're trying to get out sideways.

And he said, I have no sideways. So here's that going for him. But just amazingly prolific too, so he's just churning out. What was his education prior to writing these? He went to a fairly good preparatory school called St. Paul's where Milton went and Field Marshal Montgomery went and he became part of a group of lifelong friends there that published a little newspaper on their own as students. But his headmaster told Chesteredon's parents, don't bother sending him to college or to

the university because it's impossible to teach him anything and he barely graduated because he was just dreaming and just clearly intelligent enough but didn't care at all about school but must have learned a few things along the way because he learned Latin and Greek and he could translate French and he won a prize-winning poem and but he went to art school instead of to Oxford or Cambridge where all his friends went and dropped out of art school. What kind of art was he engaged in? Well he was he wanted to be a book illustrator he thought but that that just didn't last at all. Was he any good at illustrating? Well, we have lots of his sketches, and we have his sketches before he went to art school,

and his sketches after he went to art school, and there's absolutely no difference. So art school had no effect on him whatsoever, but they're absolutely creative and funny, and just a sure line with the sketches, but draws all these comical characters that look like they just stepped off out of the pages of a Dickens novel.

And lots of sword fights, lots of duels. And so he had that romantic streak going through him. But he said by wanting to be an you know, wanting to be an artist, but then dropping out of art school and contributing a few articles to a newspaper, he said he found the easiest living there was. You know, easy for him to say, because he could just write so easily.

And truly one of the most prolific writers who ever lived, he- Yeah, give us a sense of that. So he wrote a hundred books, and he wrote introductions to 200 more books. And he wrote probably about 3,000 poems. And his books are just on all different subjects. And there's several novels in there. There's plays, there's the famous mystery stories,

the Father Brown mysteries. And yet the books only represent a fraction of what he wrote because these essays for the newspapers, that was his bread and butter, that's how he made his living, and he wrote well over 5,000 literary essays. How many of those do we have?

We have all of them, yeah. Everything that was published we've pretty much tracked down and it's been a decades of collecting and finding all those. It must be fun for you finding something that's... It's gold. It's like gold mining. Yeah.

I never forget the thrill of finding some of these old articles from some obscure publication that has a Chesterton essay in it. But 5,000 essays is just hard to imagine. And he could, this has been confirmed by more than one of his secretaries, he could actually write out an essay in longhand and dictate an entirely different essay to his secretary at the same time. So he could write two essays at one time. Just like I'm sure you can.

Well, just like I can. Yeah. Well, this is, yeah, again, back to your point about like Aquinas, who could apparently dictate to a few secretaries at once. Yes. That's insane. It is insane. I wonder what that looks like. So he's probably, I mean, you can't be talking and writing at the same time. Maybe you're writing a sentence and then you say something.

And that's, that's what a normal person would make that say. But the secretaries, and this is more than one secretary, confirmed no, it was continuous writing and continuous talking. He was doing both things at once. I wonder if he was insufferable to live with. Well, according to the people who knew him, everybody loved him.

Okay, good. We'll put that aside then. And he wrote the way he talks too. So he doesn't have some stilted style of, of writing. That's why he could dictate at the same time he's writing because he would speak in complete sentences and with the same wit and, uh, you know, he, he was, he was, his wife, uh, said he was the same way in person as he was on paper. Yeah. Um, I want to get into his marriage, but not right now, but how old was he when he got married? He was roughly. Yeah. At night he was, it was 26 years old. Oh, he's 26. Okay. So he was rather young. Yeah. And his wife was older. She was five years

older than he was. Okay. My wife's two and a half years old. Um, snagged her or she snagged me, maybe. I don't know. Uh, no, I said it. snagged her. So do you have any sense of what his daily routine looked like? If you're that prolific, you must have a very structured day. Yeah, so he was a late riser. And his wife, he depended on her for everything. So she made sure he got dressed properly and got something to eat and shuffled him off to work on the morning project and made sure he kept all of his appointments.

He was absolutely helpless in that regard and just hopelessly absent-minded because he was focused on what he was going to be writing about for the next deadline. He was always, everything he did was under a deadline. And so that was the amazing thing. He didn't give a long time to think something out. No, it was due then and he had to get it done right then. And most of his evenings, he was invited to speak and he was always in demand as a public speaker. And then he would then write late into the night as well,

kind of start organizing his thoughts for the next day. I just watched a movie, excellent movie, Darkest Hour, about Churchill. Oh yeah. And I don't know if it's just the depiction of him in that movie, but like there's some similarities there, the quick wit, the larger-than-life personality. You know, they were exact contemporaries. They were born the same year.

I didn't know that. Chesterton and Churchill. And think about it. When Chesterton died in 1936, Churchill's real career began and he lived an entire lifetime after his exact contemporary died. Wow. Yeah. What were some things? What was some, like, was he into tobacco beer? What were some of his habits? Chesterton said some men write with a pencil and some write with a typewriter. I write with a cigar. Okay. Yeah. He called the tobacco the I-cor of the mental life. What does that word

mean? The I-cor is the blood that ran through the veins of the Greek gods. Oh, okay. Yeah. So it was, he, so was he a big cigar smoker? Yeah, he was big and he was a cigar smoker. Was he a big, big cigar smoker? Yeah, he, he, he did smoke quite a bit of his cigars. Yeah.

And he was, he said he smoked like a chimney. And usually usually you know let the next one after the first one went out because he really he really did draw on that inspiration while he wrote and Then he he drank beer if he was very thirsty But his preferred drink was what the English call Claret, which is a Bordeaux Okay, so a red wine, but he would drink it out of the pint glass that he'd bring beer out of it. And he could write anywhere.

He didn't have to just be in a quiet study. In fact, he enjoyed being in the midst of a crowded room while he was writing. So he'd write in pubs and in railway stations, often in railway stations, because he had just missed the train that he was supposed to catch. So he spent a lot of his time in railway stations.

But there's great stories of him sitting in the pub and laughing at what he's writing. He's enjoying it as much. He's his own audience as he's writing. He's writing, damn, that's good. And the waiter telling someone coming to get him says, your friend, he write, he laugh, he laugh, so, and the waiter telling someone to come in to get him says, your friend, he write, he laugh, he laugh, he write. And so that was, you know, there's just this constant flow of thought coming out of him. And you can see on the one hand, he died too young at the age of 62.

But if he'd lived longer, my job would have been even more difficult trying to find all the stuff that he wrote. Now I've been told that on the day of his wedding, he bought a pint of milk and a gun. Yeah. Is that true? You've got good information, Matt. Yeah. Well, tell me more about that.

Or is that it? Is that some of that? It was a glass of milk. And he said he bought the glass of milk because he had a great childhood memory of when his mother took him on a special event, she'd buy him a glass of milk. So the day of his wedding, he thought was a special event. So he wanted to drink a glass of milk to, you know, evoke his youth and evoke celebrating something special with his mother.

So that was the purpose for the glass of milk. The gun, he said he bought to defend his wife because they were going to be going to Scotland. And who knows what you'd find out there. Well, you just don't know. So that was to defend his wife. And he, so he's obviously a defender of gun ownership, but he also carried a sword stick. A sword stick. A sword stick, which is a walking stick that has a sword inside of it.

And he said he did that purely for romantic reasons because he was always imagining someday he'd be able to rescue a damsel in distress. And that's why he carried that. And he also carried a big knife called the Texas knife. It was seven inches long, but it was 14 inches when he pulled the blade out and he used it to sharpen his pencil.

That's quite intimidating to anybody around him. And that's the best thing because he once did that during a debate. While the other guys speak, he just pulls out his knife and all the audience of course is looking at him with a big knife. Yeah, well I guess that's one of the advantages of being a large man. A large man makes for a large coat and a large coat can fit more in it. That's right, because you also have to fit a bunch of folded newspapers in there as well. Wow. So what did he debate on? And are there any famous debates that he engaged in? Oh yeah, there were a couple of very famous debates. He debated his great friend and philosophical opponent, George Bernard Shaw, on a couple

of big occasions, and they were both debates about socialism. Chesterton argued against socialism, and Shaw, in one of the debates, saying that we really think the same way. Socialism is something that we agree on, whereas Chesterton is clearly arguing against it because Chesterton was arguing for ownership, small ownership, and socialism is against ownership and against property. But even because of Shaw's argument that Chesterton, he agreed, there are still people who think that Chesterton's ideas are socialist, which they're not. Well, this is interesting.

I mean, we encountered this here in Steubenville where we have people pushing localism and it's like we're stuck in this, it's either socialist or capitalist binary and we refuse to let you break free of it. Yeah, that's exactly the problem right there. Whereas Chesterton argues the binary really is that socialism and capitalism he argues are the same thing because it's it's just a few people working Everybody working for just a few people whether it's the state or Amazon just a few. Yeah a few owners everybody else is a wage slave and

Distributism which we now call localism is the idea of you own your own shop, you own your own property, you are your own boss, and you are the employee. And that's a different concept from the other two. We'll come back to that. But tell us how he took you or led you to Catholicism then. Yes, so Chester describes the three stages of conversion. He says the first stage is you decide Yes, so Chester describes the three stages of conversion.

He says the first stage is you decide that you're gonna be fair to the Catholic Church. It doesn't mean you're gonna buy its arguments, but you're not going to immediately buy the arguments against it. So you're gonna listen to the fair case being made. You're gonna listen to the Catholic explanation of things rather than just the accusation or the dismissal of Catholicism from the non-Catholic point of view.

And he says the problem is there is no being fair to the Catholic Church. No one is neutral about the Catholic Church. You're either for it or you're against it. And as soon as you stop being against it, you start being for it, you start kind of rooting for it. So the first step of trying to be fair to the Catholic faith is usually fatal.

That's interesting. Yeah. And then the second stage, he said, is... Just to pause on that for a moment, I mean, I engage with a lot of people who watch this show who comment because of the wonderful guests that I have on who say that they're coming into the Catholic Church. And I see that in them as well, right? Where they're like, there's something kind of attractive about this weird wrong religion that surely has a lot of things right, and we shouldn't be so prejudiced and, ooh, careful. They're in that first dangerous fatal stage.

Yeah, interesting. Yeah, so you've seen it yourself. Great. Yeah, very much. And then the second stage, which follows right on it, is discovering the Catholic Church, just learning all the things you never knew about it. And he says that's like being in this foreign country with these exotic flowers and butterflies that you never knew existed, and you're just taking it all in, and this is really interesting. And the great part is that there's no commitment, you can turn around and leave anytime you want and that's the best the fun stage

Of conversion. Yeah But then comes the third stage. Oh running away from the Catholic You fooled me and I let myself Exactly because your your your intellectual arguments have been answered but it's still going to be a question of the will, and your heart's trying to help you find a way out, because your head has been convinced.

And you have that voice telling you, do not do this, do not do this, because everything changes. You can't go back if you do this. And something is trying to prevent you from making that final step. I was chatting with someone across the table here recently who had fallen for those first And something is trying to prevent you from making that final step. I was chatting with someone across the table here recently who had fallen for those first two stages and then was worried that he was going to become Catholic and he met Steve Ray and said to him, you know, I'm feeling a little anxious here. I think I might become Catholic.

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Strive 21 that's strivetwo1.com Slash-mat or as I say text text strive to six six eight six six to get started today You won't regret it I was chatting with someone across the table here recently Who had fallen for those first two stages and then was worried that he was going to become Catholic and he met Steve Ray and Said to him, you know, I'm feeling a little anxious here. I think I might become Catholic and he said all right you have two options You turn around and you run and you never look back. That's your only that's the only option or might become Catholic." And he said, all right, you have two options. You turn around and you run and you never look back. That's your only, that's the only option

or you become Catholic. Well, that's, that mirrors something that Chesterton himself said, which really opens up a large parentheses, which I'm happy to do, because people always ask, well, why didn't CS Lewis become Catholic? Why didn't CS Lewis become Catholic? You've just asked the question again,

what I was saying, people always are asking that question. Well, Chesterton answered the question, even though he never knew C.S. Lewis, but he answered the question. He wrote a book on William Blake, the English mystic and poet and painter. And in that book, he says that if every man lived a thousand years, every man would either be

a nihilistic atheist or a member of the Catholic Church. He said those are the only two options. Chesterton said this. Chesterton said this. And so he said, people were wondering, was William Blake a Christian? Was he orthodox?

And well, Chesterton says, there's some weird things about William Blake, but he's clearly, he's on the right road. And if he had lived longer, he would have become Catholic because he certainly was not moving away from the Catholic Church. He wasn't moving towards this nihilistic atheist. He was moving towards a fullness of faith and he just didn't live long enough. The answer to the C.S. Lewis question is he didn't live long enough.

He was on his way to becoming Catholic. So what evidences in his life and writings do you see of that? With C.S. Lewis? Yeah. Well, he- The acceptance of purgatory would be one. Well, yeah, the acceptance of purgatory is a big one. And basically, he had, in essence, accepted all seven sacraments before his death, which, you know, he had the sense of the real presence. He had a sense of confession. He was embracing all those things.

And the fact is, his arguments are becoming more and more Chestertonian in all of his writings. When I read Chesterton, when I read Lewis, I always say, oh, well, here is where Lewis got this argument, because here's Chesterton making the same argument. And Lewis would have read it. here's your new book idea. Side by side, Chesterton and then what Lewis picked up. Good, I'll put that on the list because I've got to get three more books done, but that will be the fourth one, Matt.

And I'll give you a- You're welcome. I'll dedicate it to you. No, just a dedication would be sufficient. Thank you. Yeah. But here's the other great thing though about that William Blake book. Yeah.

Chesterton wrote that line 10 years before he became Catholic himself. Oh, fascinating. Yeah. So he's clearly saying there's really only two options. Just like Steve Ray was telling that guy, either you run away from the church or you join it. And that's the third stage of conversion.

You're trying to get away from it, but ultimately you're going to turn around, you're going to enter it, or you're going to leave. But it ends, as Chesterton says, with your head bowed. It's an act of humility to enter the church. And when you enter, you see that the church is larger on the inside than it is on the outside. And all the time you are out in the narrow, dark place place and inside is this place bigger than the universe. What did he say in that regard about stained glass windows and the

comprehensibility of Catholicism from within? Is that his idea? He talks about stained glass windows in another essay called The Fading Fireworks, where he talks about the difference between fireworks as an art form, which is Eastern, the idea of this explosion with a dark background. And so it's light against the dark background and stained glass is the light comes from behind the art and illuminates the art. And so it's the difference between the Asian or the Eastern philosophy and the Western philosophy.

One is flashes of light in the darkness. The other one is the illumination of everything from behind because the eternal light is behind everything that we see. That's beautiful. I heard someone say, it may not have been him then, that just when you look at a beautiful cathedral from outside, the stained glass windows are incomprehensible. It's only once you enter that it makes sense. And the idea being that sometimes Catholicism can be confusing until you allow it to pull you in with its tractor beam. I want to say it wasn't Chesterton that said that.

How frustrated do you get when people attribute false quotes to Chesterton? There's no such thing as bad publicity In fact, I think Justin is probably his most famous quote is not his is one He didn't say he he almost said it but he didn't say it but everyone quotes it wrong and we'll just let it go Do we not want to point out what it is? Well, should we just let it let it we could do it could it's it's When a man stops believing in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything. Okay. Not what Chesterton said, but we're not gonna we're not gonna

quibble. It's a good quote. It's a Chesterton idea. What did he say similar to that or was it? He did say once that a pagan is not a man who believes in nothing, it's a man who believes in anything. He did say that, which is pretty close to it. But he also says in a Father Brown story that he says the first effect of not believing in God is you lose your common sense. But then in another Father Brown story, he says you see you weren't You were willing to believe in anything as soon as you stopped your superstition

You were willing to believe in anything So if you take those two quotes and put them together you get the quote from two father Brown stories So the concept is there. Yeah, but so to answer your question people if it, if it's a good paradoxical quote, it's often attributed to Chesterton. And that just shows that he has that effect on our thinking that if it's a paradoxical line, if it's something catchy and witty and quotable, it was Chesterton who said it. Yeah, it's funny, you know, whenever you find a quote that apparently came from Thomas Aquinas, if it's too sugary or sexy, like, no, he never wrote that.

It's difficult to mine Aquinas for really cutesy little quotes, but Chesterton, if he does one day become a saint, will be the saint of excellent quick short. Yeah, the saint of the aphorism. Yeah, golly, that'd be an amazing book. All of his aphorisms together. There's your next book. I probably will move that up ahead of the'd be an amazing book. Yeah all of his aphorisms together. There's your next book That's I probably move that up behind ahead of the other. It's the CS Lewis book. Did his wife convert or was she already Catholic? No, she was not already Catholic and she She did I think the reason for the delay in his conversion. I think it's pretty well Accepted the reason for the delay in his conversion was that she did not want to become Catholic. She was not ready to and she was a profound and devout Anglican and and so

He was finally ready where he couldn't wait anymore and she knew and was expecting him to become Catholic He wanted to do it with her He wanted to do the most important decision of wanted to do the most important decision of his life with the most important person in his life, without whom he did nothing, because he depended on her for everything. They just did everything together. And so it was a remarkable and difficult step

to take that step by his own. And they were both happy. She was happy for him because she knew that's what he wanted. He was happy because this is what he wanted. But they were both sad at the same time. It was bittersweet. There were tears because suddenly

they didn't share something that was really an essential thing for them to share. And it did end four years later when she became Catholic, but it did take four years later when she became Catholic, but it did take four more years. And then they shared that as well as everything else. The other thing about his becoming Catholic, which is very amusing, is that it was a surprise to the rest of the world.

In fact, it wasn't even announced. The two priests who received him into the church, one of whom was the basis of the Father Brown character, Father John O'Connor, they decided, let's not tell anybody. See how long it takes for it to get into the newspapers. So they just didn't announce, no one saying. And it was about six weeks before the news came out. And then it was everywhere.

I mean, newspapers all around the world, Chesterton received it to the Catholic Church, and people were shocked because a lot of them thought he already was Catholic. He'd already been reading the Father Brown stories. And then there was someone who said, well, he's too intelligent. George Bernard Shaw fires off a letter to Chesterton saying, Gilbert, this is going too far. Because they didn't think anybody of that giant intellect would do something that stupid. And the Anglican vicar of Beaconsfield, the town where Chesterton lived, said, well, I'm glad that Chesterton's becoming Catholic. He was never a very good Anglican

Because he never attended the Anglican Church. He had a Christian theology But he just didn't even go to church as an Anglican and becoming Catholic He never missed his day of obligation and often was a daily communicant as well I was about to ask that what sort of devotions did he treasure? Do you know? Yeah, so he Every time he traveled to London because he lived outside of London for the last twenty-some years of his life, and he, every time he went into London, he would go to Mass at Westminster Cathedral, so he was often seen there, seen praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament. So, clearly clearly that becoming Catholic did manifest itself with physical devotion.

We know that he had a well-used rosary, but he never talks about the rosary. And it's one of the things about the, trying to get them canonized is that, when you're a member of a religious order, at some point, usually your religious superior says, I want you to write down all of your spiritual life right now. I want it on paper.

And otherwise no one would have done it. These saints could have done it unless they were following a command of their superior. Well, Chesterton didn't write about his personal life. He didn't write about his personal spirituality, about his prayer life, because it was a private matter. And yet you have to kind of infer it from the other stuff he writes about and from eyewitness accounts of those that are existing. This was a holy man.

This was a devout man. The evidence of what he did for the poor, what he did to help out other people without getting any credit for it. And one of his best friends saying he was always thinking about God. He was always thinking about God. What are the objections people raise then to say, look, we love that you love him, you're clearly into him, and sure, he was a great writer and had some awesome insights and was very brilliant, but he's not a saint. What are the objections they

put forth that are... I think there's probably three of them. The first one is people don't know what a lay saint looks like. They know what a Carmelite nun looks like. They look like a Carmelite nun once or a missionary of charity or a pope. Those guys are living the religious life, and their work is so obvious it's being worn on them. And there are very few lay saints because there aren't people organized to get behind them to get them canonized. A religious order gets someone canonized

because they know exactly how to do it. And so just getting a lay person... We are seeing this growing devotion to Chester and around the world, we have these prayer cards, we are seeing this growing devotion to Chester and around the world, we have these prayer cards, we've given out 30,000 of them. So there's a lot of people who are devoted to Chester and asking for his intercession and seeing results from those prayers, but it's just more difficult to get a lay person candid. The other thing is that Chester just doesn't fit the image of a Catholic saint, you know, the size and the cigar, the drinking.

And Shesha's arguing that these are historical customs that the common man enjoys, and he was defending them because they were actually under attack by Puritans. He was writing during Prohibition. Well, given that it came to us through the Native Americans I conclude that it must only be an act of racism that would get people to complain about cigar smoke. Yeah. Yeah It's it's it's amazing. So He wrote that very thing if there's people who are arguing about whether there are cigarettes in the Bible. He says that line I don't know. What's the line? Well, no Chester says that he wondered that line isn't just the people who are arguing about whether there are cigarettes in the Bible, as if that has something to do with salvation, you know?

And so he lived a joyful life and a convivial life, and he spread that joy to others, but it just looks different from what our image is of. You know what's going to be funny in this day and age of social media? I mean, if anybody has a social media presence, it's gonna look weird one day if you'll be out of sight say, you know? Well that'll look really weird. Wouldn't that be weird? Like here's his tweets, here's the ones he probably shouldn't have sent out, but you

know, impulse control is difficult on these platforms. That's gonna be weird too. I was once sitting having a coffee with a fella who said, he said he's a Catholic, he said I'm offended. I'm offended that there aren't more married saints. You might say, get over it, but if you kind of give him the benefit of the doubt, I can see where he's coming from. Yeah, and this is why some people who are devoted to Chesterton believe that Francis,

his wife, should be elevated with him because they were, two shall become one. And how could Chestester exist without her she was so instrumental for him being the person that he was so that there's a good case they should be. Will you give me a couple of examples as to why one might consider him a saint I mean I really have no doubt if I'm allowed to say that the man's in heaven but. But that he should be a canonized saint. I mean, you said he had a friend who said he always thought about God. He would go to mass frequently. He would pray the rosary, presumably, because of the worn out rosary that you mentioned. He spread joy. People said, I mean, what else?

I think one of the great arguments. Pretend I'm the devil's advocate and you've really got to convince me here. Yeah, you got to do a better job too. So because you have to convince me as devil's advocate, and you're not even coming close. No, I think that one of his, the great arguments in favor of his sanctity is the fact that people who encounter Chesterton want to become Catholic. And it's not just his great arguments for the faith, which are brilliant. I mean, you read his books, you want to become Catholic,

but you're drawn to his goodness. That's what you're drawn to with Chesterton. His goodness comes out of his words and out of his, out of the pages, that that's what you're struck to. You're drawn to someone who clearly is virtuous, and I want what he has. And I think that's one of the great arguments for his sanctity. I think one of the things that will continue to be used against him is an accusation that he was anti-Semitic. Okay. And give us the steelman argument as to why he may have been and then she was why he wasn't you know he made some critical comments about the Jews but he also made critical comments about Americans and about Germans and about Scots and about my people the Scandinavians when he said about them are but But they what did he say about the Jews? He's he's doing it bad. Yeah, you should go so well I think his his main argument about the Jews is that they were a

people in exile and they suffered from being a nation without a country. And so wherever they were, they were outsiders. And so he considered them foreigners in England because their interests were for the Jews and not for the English. That was his argument. And this is someone who grew up with Jewish friends and treated them as if...

This sounds like a similar critique to what Protestants had of Catholics in America. Yeah. Your allegiance is to Rome. They can't trust you. Yeah. But he said this made him a Zionist. This is why he defended the right of the Jews to have their own homeland. And the Jewish Zionists, you know, recruited Chester to help them. And so there were lots of Jews who really valued Chester to this friendship. What was his argument for a Jewish state then? That they should have one.

That they should have one, yeah. But why? Because they were a historic nation and they deserved their own country. And they had been exiled from their own country and they deserved to have their country back. So he was accused of being anti-Semitic on one side and then you've got these people wanting to say to him. Yeah. And he also warned that there would be an outbreak of violence against the Jews before

Hitler came along and and he said the stupidest thing that the German people could have ever done in 1933 was to elect Hitler and Then when Hitler started going off off against the Jews, he said that Hitler's made now he's made the worst mistake He's he's gone after the the most famous scapegoat in history Well, you've shown us why he's not asemitic, but I asked you to still man why he might be. So what are the lines, or what did he say that people look at out of context, perhaps? Yeah, well, sure, like, you know,

he'll make comments about hook noses, things like that, but he also makes comment about Roman noses, too. Right, right. So every argument I get to give you is- So we're probably a lot more sensitive to this after the Second World War, in a way that we may not have been prior to it. Absolutely, and I think it's unfair to view him sometimes through that lens.

I think the whole argument is unfair, and I think it's unfounded. And I think sometimes these arguments are simply repeated as a way of just dismissing Chesterton wholesale without having to encounter his great arguments for the Catholic Church and for the truth that the Church teaches. If you can get rid of him with just one quick argument, well he's anti-Semitic, so nothing he says is worth anything. And that's, I think sometimes it's used in that way. I think most of the time I believe the accusation is ignorant, but sometimes it's just simply

malicious. Gotcha, yeah, but it's rubbish nonetheless. I believe it's rubbish. The number three book that I'm on that list of books, I'm going to be trying to do a full exhaustive argument to defend Chesterton against all the different accusations. But we did in Gilbert Magazine, the magazine we published a few years ago, have one issue devoted to the, and I think it deals with all the arguments very well. Well, that's one kind of objection.

I guess another one would be that maybe he drank too much. That's what I hear. Yeah, that argument is made. Or that he was too... That he ate too much. He ate too much, drank too much, smoked too many cigars. Yeah, and so I've written about that too. Chesterton actually ate very little. He had

some sort of a glandular condition that was responsible for his great weight, and all of the eyewitness accounts were amazed at how little he ate. I don't believe there's any evidence of him ever being drunk in public, or, you know, so we don't, we don't see him as a, uh, as someone indulging in that, in that sense, but who defended, defended drinking as, uh, this other guy who was saying, uh, who's that guy they said came as a drinking and eating and behold a glutton in a, yeah, some guy who was accused of eating and drinking was called a glutton and demon and all that stuff But he defended he defended you said because it was the it was the every man's yeah especially the every man was who was being under attack by by the Puritans and you know and and and the really the killjoys this is a

customary Historical thing is is the fruit of the vine and the of the wheat, the grain. So, and then, yeah, so they think he would be ill temperant in his temperance, and Chester was actually a defender of what he called true temperance, which is not abstaining, but everything in its proper use. But he knew how to abstain. He did, he went through fasting just

like anybody else in the Catholic Church does. He knows the rhythm of the season, when is it the time you partake and the time you don't partake. So what do you think is likely to happen with Chesterton and sainthood? I mean, what's the trajectory? Yeah, we do believe that there will be a bishop who will be opening the cause within the next year or so. I really think we've got two bishops who are in dialogue with who are very interested in opening his cause.

And once the cause is opened, then we start getting serious of appointing a posh later and doing the hard work. And I don't know the answer to this. So what you just handed a prayer card to Chest card, you know, to Chesterton, what's the rules for praying to people who haven't been recognized as servants of God? The only way anyone ever becomes a saint. Done. Yeah.

It's excellent. Obviously, that's the case. The Catholic Church doesn't say, who are we going to make a saint this week? It's a group of people who are devoted to a particular figure. They go to the Catholic Church say, we think this guy that we're devoted to is a saint. He's been answering our prayers. So it starts with the prayer card. Tell us about your society and the schools, Chesterton schools. Yeah. So we started the Chesteron Society, which was just going to be there to promote a wider interest in GK Chesterton.

That was started about 27 years ago. And then in 2008, I helped start a new Catholic classical high school in Minnesota, where I'm from, Chesterton Academy. That school had a really good curriculum, really integrated curriculum, and we wanted something that would have that good strong intellectual rigor to it, but also very faithfully Catholic and affordable. Three things that you couldn't find together in most schools anywhere. And the first school started very modestly.

It continued to grow, and people started finding out about it, mostly because of the work of the Chesterton Society, reading our magazine. And when I'd go around the country giving a talk, people would ask, what about that school you started? So all of a sudden we started getting phone calls saying, hey, we wanna start one of those schools too.

What's it called? Yeah, one of those Chesterton Academies, and how do you do that? And so we said, well, this is how we did it. And by 2014, two or three other schools had started. And now in 2023, there are 70 schools, there are 69 schools. Now, in 2023, there are 70 schools, there are 69 schools. And so it's just been an explosion of interest in classical Catholic affordable education

with a really strong integrated curriculum. So that it's the opposite of way modern education works. Cause most of it is, as Shestrin says, the separation of everything from everything else. We just teach all these courses as if it's one wild divorce court. Nothing is connected and students learn in fragments, they think in fragments, and if you listen to them talk, they talk in fragments. And we try to give them a very articulate view of the world by teaching four years of philosophy,

where most high schools don't teach any philosophy, and four years of theology, so they can have an eternal grounding in what they're learning. And then a strong literature, a great books program, so they start with Homer, and by their 12th grade, they're reading Dostoevsky and, and then a historical backbone. So they can see where it all fits in history and then

a really well-developed arts program. So they all learn how to draw and paint. They all learn how to sing and study music for four years. And they all learn how to be on stage. They learn how to present themselves and learn how drama works, how it's this integrated art form where you really bring the word into flesh is what you do with them.

And so a truly complete education with the centerpiece of every day being the mass. We have daily mass and most of the schools have daily confession available as well. So I'll just say, you know, my son was homeschooled up until very recently and now he attends Chasted and Academy here in Steubenville. And this morning, him and I were up early and he said, dad, I'm going to go out after school and me and some fellows are going to adoration at the, because of Chasted and you said, Dad, I'm gonna go out after school and me and some fellas are going

to Adoration because of Chesterton's, you know. Yeah, that's what's great. So at the first school that we started back in Minneapolis, right now at the seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, seven of the seminarians are graduates of our Chesterton Academy. So we're making vocations as well. And that's just, we're seeing all these good things happen. And now this movement is growing like wildfire because it's truly a grassroots movement. And talk about something that's a real antidote to what's going on in the world today with

the culture of nonsense and the culture of death. Here is something that's truly nonsense and the culture of death. Here is something that's truly wise and truly full of life and well-formed young people coming out of this. It's very exciting. It's going to sound like a tangent, but I don't think it is. You said Chesson lived, obviously, through the First World War and not the Second World War. Right, he died in 36. Okay, so he's living in a turbulent time,

and yet he has this joy and levity about him. And that's always strange. I think that's kind of like, they'll know we're Christians by our joy as well. Because how is it possible that you're smiling? Don't you know about this and that thing and the world falling apart? How dare you?

Yeah, you said this wasn't a detangent, it was a detangent, because I think we see the same joy in the Chesterton Academies. And I think that's part of the secret sauce of GK Chesterton as the patron of these schools. These are joyfully Catholic young people. And you can't read Chesterton and not be joyful. He gives you just the right amount of intellectual detachment from the world so you don't have to be depressed by it.

And he also gives you this compassion for the world so that you can love it and also be amused by it at the same time. You know, just the way his attitude is always completely the opposite of what the modern and secular and godless view is, and that's what is so refreshing and uplifting, because everyone else will give you a reason for being depressed. But if God has made the universe and has redeemed us, why shouldn't we be very happy that we

have such a great creator and such a great redeemer? Why would that be a source of joy? And if we truly believe that we're on the winning side, then that's got to change your countenance. Like if you're under attack and you're not sure who's going to win this, then fair enough. There's cause for depression maybe, or anxiety. And certainly there's cause for both in certain instances, I suppose, at least anxiety. But if you know that you're on the winning side, Christ is victorious. Yeah, and being on the winning side leaves us no reason to be arrogant because the side

isn't winning because of us. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. If people want to learn more about the schools, is there a website that you go to? Yeah, go to ChestertonSchools.org. ChestertonSchools.org. Good for you for a simple URL. I appreciate that. And that tells people what the school is and how to go about starting a school as well. And you have a magazine with your institute.

Yeah. How do they get connected to that sort of thing? So, Gilbert Magazine is published by the Chesterton Society and this is a really difficult website. Chesterton.org. Okay. Well done on getting that. Yeah. So did you set up the society? Yeah, I'm the co-founder of the Chesterton Society, the co-founder of the schools,

and it was a different other co-founder in both cases, but I'm the last man standing in both cases. Okay. Now, I jumped over something which I'd like to come back to. You talked about the three stages of conversion. Maybe you could sum up for us how Chesterton led you to Catholicism. Yeah, so Chesterton himself had a very deliberate conversion. It was a very intellectual conversion and it was a very long conversion. For the time he really started thinking about the Catholic Church, it was probably about a 20-year process for him. And I have to characterize mine quite the same way. It was very deliberate, very long, and it was very intellectual. It was one of

those intellectual conversions. It wasn't some great mystical experience or some great emotional experience. As I say, you can't become Catholic at a Billy Graham crusade. You have to go through a process. And it's one of the interesting things about the Catholic Church is that when you decide you want to become Catholic, you're like, well, when not? Okay, well, yeah, this is what you have to do. I said, what? But I want to be Catholic now! I remember Peter, he had the great story story when he went to the priest and said, I want to become Catholic, and the priest said, who's the girl? That's very good. A little cynical maybe.

Yeah, a little bit. Because he was attending at Calvinist College when he made the decision. But I was raised with a very Baptist, evangelical, fundamentalist slash background, and I was the last person that I ever expected to become Catholic. And for me, really the most difficult part of it was explaining to my very devout Baptist parents that I'd made the decision to become Catholic. How did that go down? And it was difficult. It was the most difficult thing.

And I had to explain to them that this is not a rejection of you. You raised me to be a man of God. And I'm only taking what you've given me to its logical conclusion, which is the historical church. And had to kind of explain where we had gone our separate ways. And that first meeting was really difficult.

But the second time we talked, which was the next day, their questions were not combative, but they were more curious. Then they really had some questions. Well, okay, how did the Catholics explain this? And how do you justify doing it this way instead of that way? And this was the fun time for me, because I could just answer the questions straight out without them being challenging.

And they were genuinely wanting to know why I had made this decision, because they knew me to be a very devout Christian. They knew that I had been kicked in the head or anything like that, right? And my father's saying at the end of the conversation, well, you're telling us things we never knew. And so- That took humility. Yeah, it showed the humble man he was. And my mother was the same way, very humble about it. And my father

passed away in the early 2000s, but then my television show came out on EWTN about that time and my faithful Baptist mother never missed one of my shows. Oh, fantastic. She watched it every Sunday night. But to answer your question more specifically, what was it that did it? What was that? At some point, you know, I knew I was on the road there and I was in that trying to get out of a stage, that third stage of I still, I can't do this, I can't do this, but knowing I'm going to, I'm going to, but I'm going to wait as long as I'm just not going to do it.

And finally, I got into an argument with a very good friend of mine who was in the process of leaving the Catholic Church. And I was in the process of coming in, and we finally just hit right there. And we just had really what I would characterize as a very violent argument. And it ended with me driving away, saying, I have to become Catholic. This

is the only way forward now. I have to do what Chesterton himself did. And so that last step was following Chesterton all the way into the Catholic Church. That's wonderful. How was he received by Catholics? How was Chesterton received by Catholics? Yeah. They were hurting themselves by crowing so much. They were so happy to have landed Chesterton in the church. But I can tell you there was one fear on the part of Catholics too. That somehow Chesterton was going to change.

That he wouldn't be the same witty, joyful guy. That somehow the church would ruin him. And so that was actually expressed by several writers, Catholic writers, when Chesterton became Catholic. But for the most part, it was ecstatic. There was just such great joy, especially from leading Catholic figures and bishops and archbishops. Now, he was probably aware of sort of intellectual heavyweights within the church even as an

Anglican, but did he find kind of fellowship among other intellectual Catholics once he came in? Well the one he always was in fellowship with was Hilaire Belloc, who was an intellectual giant. First of all, tell us who Hilaire Belloc is for those who don't know. Yeah, so it's funny how history works. Sometimes, you know, there can be generations without intellectual giants. And here you had two who were best friends at the same time, both of them profound and

giant intellects who wrote prolifically about all the same things and, you know, public figures outspoken Belloc, uh, was, was more political than, than Chester. He actually was a member of parliament for a while. He was a very witty poet, uh, and, uh, and more of a gruff character. That's what I was going to say. A little more cutting. Yeah. Yeah. Chester is the, the good cop and Belloc's the bad cop. And more of a gruff character. That's what I was going to say, a little more cutting maybe. Yeah, yeah.

Chesterton is the good cop and Belloc's the bad cop all the way. Yeah I think Joseph Pierce does it, explains it best that he says Chesterton was polite to people who were rude to him and Belloc was rude to people who were polite to him. You know, the example I told you the earlier story about the woman accosting Chester, why aren't you out at the front, you know, and being witty in his response, and whereas Belloc was at a mass once and... Yes, I know that. The usher comes up to him and says, sir, at this point of the mass we stand, or we kneel,

whatever it was, Belloc wasn't doing it, and Belloc turned to him and said, go to hell. And the usher says, oh, I'm sorry, sir, I didn't know you were Catholic. And so the other thing about Belloc is he really, he was a man who dealt with much more tragedy personally than Chesterton had to deal with. Although Chesterton had his own share of tragedy, I think that sometimes downplayed because he was so joyful

and dealt with the tragic events in his life so well. But Belloc lost his wife at a young age, he lost a son in World War I and another son in World War II. I mean, just unimaginable, a heartache that he went through. And so there was always a weight of sorrow he was carrying. And yet their friendship, they always defended each other in public. The great line of Chesterton is that Belloc and I are completely different.

We just happen to agree on politics and religion. And I think, you know, Shaw characterized them as the Chester Belloc, that they were just one four-footed beast, but they were really two different men. And- It's like a horror story. Yeah, yeah.

The Chester Belloc. Yeah, the Chester Belloc. And I think they can be put together too easily sometimes because they were living at the same time, defending the same things, and were friends. Did they become friends after his conversion? Oh, no. That friendship started way before his conversion. They bet each other in about 1902, and Chesterton was so impressed with Belloc.

He thought he was one of the most intelligent men he'd ever met, and he came into the room with a smell of danger. So he was this forceful personality to go with it. And I think in many ways, Chesterton was in awe of Bellocke. But Bellocke in turn realized that there was nothing in the world like Chesterton either. And he wrote these great, wonderful poetic defenses of Chesterton, the remote and ineffectual Don

who dare attack my Chesterton. It was on a whim. Really funny. And then the really great irony, Matt, was that Bellocke never thought Chesterton would become Catholic, and never even believed that he should become Catholic. He almost felt he was more effective without being a member of the Church and defending it as an outsider.

It somehow gave him more credibility and really was going to counsel someone against trying to talk Chesterton into becoming a Catholic. And when Chesterton was received, Barloch was absolutely shocked and of course then was very thankful. And he wrote to Gilbert saying, I still can't believe this wonderful news. And so they shared that. And of course, at Chesterton's funeral,

Belloc was found at the nearby pub, literally weeping into his beer. Yeah, I think for men to be best friends or to be very close friends, the two of them have to almost wanna be like the other one in one respect. They have to really admire each other. Yeah, that's a very good point. They really do admire each other, and that's why they continue to support each other all the way.

Yeah. So did your wife ever become Catholic? Yes, she did. So what happened, you know, she'd been raised Catholic and had left the faith and kind of She had been raised Catholic and had left the faith for intellectual reasons because she had never been well catechized in the faith. She had a Catholic sense of things, which she would say things to me in our early marriage that would trouble me because I didn't have good answers

for him because she'd say this is what the Catholic Church believes. In fact, she was the first one who explained the Catholic view of the Eucharist to me, which was totally new for me as a Baptist. Yeah. Fundamental as a Baptist, too. Yeah.

And so, we had, as evangelicals, evangelicals are always looking for a better church. And that's why so many of them do become Catholic, because they're always looking for a better church, right? But we couldn't find that better church, so we started home-churching. Because since there's no sacrament, we didn't know this was the reason, but there's no sacrament at the Baptist church, so you don't need to go to a church. You can do all that stuff at home. You can sing. And if you're home church, you have better odds at keeping the pesky, annoying Christians out.

Yes, that's true. When you've got billions of people in your church. That's true, and you could limit the number of announcements at each service, too. So, we were home, churching, you know, singing and praying and reading the Bible, me giving lessons, and of course it was an utter failure. But then at the same time, you know, I'm getting closer and closer to the Catholic Church. During the week, I'd sneak into Catholic churches to pray because there was some kind of presence there that I was aware of.

Well then one day I said to my wife, I said, we need to start going to church again. And she said, yeah, yeah, we do. And then I said, it has to be the Catholic church, by the way. And she said, what the whole double detached elastic jaw. And then I said, yeah, here, you need to read these books. We're right by your side. And God bless her. She, she did. And she read and, um, you know, cause she had all kinds of arguments that she'd learned from me.

So she had to unlearn those arguments that I had given her. You know, I had to undo the own damage, but so she read several books and one of them was Scott Hod's Rome Suite Home. It's amazing how much of an impact that book has had. It's absolutely incredible. And, of course, at that point is when I had read the whole catechism too, which was such a positive experience for me because reading it, I realized there's nothing defensive about it, just a straightforward explanation and a beautiful explanation of the Catholic faith.

And I was just smitten by it. So Chesterton had done his work on me. The Church Fathers had done their work, but also some of these recent conversion stories were, oh yeah, that's what I went through. I went through that too. So she read a lot of these same books, and now she is a very devout Catholic.

And a weird thing happens after we were married, we had our requisite boy and girl and ten years go by and we become Catholic and then for some reason we had four more children. Remarkable. How that happens. It's so wild. And the amazing thing is if we hadn't had those other children, we would have never have started Chesterton Academy.

So that conversion led to a lot of good things. From what you know about Chesterton, what do you think his advice would be to Catholics today who are scared about confusions and ambiguities coming out of Rome or the liturgy wars for example, if he had a YouTube channel and he wanted to say something, what kind of advice do you think he would give or side he would take? Yeah, that's a great question. You know, Chesterton says that the devil's great tool is ambiguity. Satan always uses ambiguity.

And so he would always, I would think, on his YouTube channel, try to point to clarity and try to not give anybody the wiggle room that ambiguity allows. And I think he would, he would try to hone in on the truth in everything. He would always stress obedience to the, to the church because for him that was very important to him in defending the church. You can't defend the church by attacking the pope. You just can't defend the church by attacking the pope. What does this do to outsiders if we send that mixed message? He What does this do to outsiders if we send that mixed message? And he would point to the historical church that there's been turmoil throughout the history of the church, and he'd point out that that's one of the reasons why the evidence is for the fact that it is God's church on earth, that it is truly the presence of Christ on earth because

it has survived all of its own mismanagement. He uses almost that exact same phrase. And so I think he would always caution patience and hope and just being faithful to the Catholic Church. You know, what I try to do, you know, channeling as much of Chesterton as I can, is say, look, it's not about who the pope is. It's about who you are. The people that you know as your neighbors and that you meet at work, doesn't matter what their attitude is

towards the local bishop or the pope. It's what their attitude is towards you. You have to be the Catholic church that they see, because you're gonna be the closest thing they have to be the Catholic Church that they see, because you're going to be the closest thing they have to the Catholic Church. So that's how we evangelize. The failure on the part of the bishops and or pope to not alleviate us to be good and to be faithful and to teach what Christ taught and to, yeah.

We're not entitled to despair as Chesterton says. That's good. That's very good. Let's take a break so that we can, I don't know, have a whiskey or something. And then we'll come back and I'd love to ask you about some anecdotes, more anecdotes of Chesterton and we'll take some questions from our local supporters. Very good. I got to tell you guys about my new favorite app.

It's called Ascension and it's by Ascension Press. This is the number one Bible study app in my opinion and You can go to ascensionpress.com Slash-frad go there and so that way they know that we sent you it is absolutely fantastic It has the entire Bible there very well laid out The whole Bible is read to you by Father Mike Schmitz or just sections of the Bible It has the catechism there. It's cross-referenced absolutely beautifully. It's really actually quite difficult to explain to you how good this is. Just download it and check it out for yourself.

It even has over 1600 frequently asked questions about scripture. So if you go to Genesis 1, you might have a question about evolution. Well, there's a drop down right there. You can read an article that'll help you understand it. I went through it with the guys at Ascension the other day and my mouth, my jaw was just, it was dropped. It was absolutely amazing. It's had tens of thousands of five star reviews. Again, go to ascensionpress.com slash frad.

It also has all of their amazing Bible studies. So I remember back in the day I had a big DVD case of Jeff Kavan's Bible studies. Well, it's all there on the app. So go download it right now. Please go to Ascension Press dot com slash Fred. I would smoke, too, except my if I talk, my pipe just goes out. So, yeah, yeah. I'm giving up bread.

Go. Oh, so. Giving up bread. Go. Oh, so. Well, I always treat Advent the same way as Lent. Take make it a time of, you know, certain privations. So I, I give up bread and wine. You know, someone said, well, you what? You mean you give up the Eucharist?

I said, well, that's not bread and wine. Smarty. Yeah. So we don't have to go there, but yeah, I give up bread and wine for Advent and Lent. And I have to say that giving up bread is more difficult than giving up wine. Yeah, I don't- Staff of life. I make a choice not to eat bread.

It doesn't sit well with me, but it is hard. Yeah, it's very hard to give up bread. What do you prefer, wine to beer? What's your favorite drink? Well, I do, wine is my favorite alcoholic drink and I, I Cause it was Chesterton's? Well, no, I think it's cause it has to do with Dale. I don't like beer at all. I don't drink beer at all. I've never been able to develop a taste for it. And some people just

don't I'm like that. Okay. I actually like if I'm going to drink beer, it's like a Russian stout, like a dark, not terribly carbonated. Yeah, I've I've had a couple of stouts that had, you know, raspberry or cherry in it or something and something to max the beer taste. And I've almost been able to finish the entire glass. finish the entire glass. But yeah, so I prefer, I prefer a Chardonnay most days,

but then I'll have a Cabernet Sauvignon the other days and Washington state Washington state wines are my favorite wines. Big wine culture in Australia. I'm from South Australia. There's a lot of makes sense. Yeah. We were there recently. My wife and I, well, not recently, many years ago actually actually, but, uh, they have this sparkling red is popular in Australia. Okay. That's cause now this, now the sparkling, you know, Rose is making a big comeback right now. I, there was an entire pink wall of glass in my local bottle shop.

It's really become popular again, the Rosé. But I have to say that, you know, this, I was in San Francisco and some people came up to me, so, Dale, what kind of wines you like? I'm in San Francisco, right? I'm just across the bridge from Napa County. And I said, well, Washington State wines. And they just spread away like I poured oil in the

But another guy came up to me look both. I don't know enough about is I don't know enough about that is Napa Valley is the America yeah, yeah I mean to want something from Washington State when you're there when you're right there next to the Mecca is You must be something wrong with you, but then this other guy comes up to me looks both ways to make sure no one hears him. He says I Used to iced it. I'm a wine merchant, but I spent in the wine selling business for 40 years the best Growing region in the world is Washington State and then he snuck away Didn't even say goodbye And then he snuck away.

Didn't even say goodbye. I just slinked off though. Justified my palate. You seem like the kind of man who would have a few good jokes up your sleeve. Well, I do have to tell it the occasional joke. Did you want to hear a joke? I love, I'm a collector of jokes. Okay. I like good jokes.

Well, I've used this one a lot, so stop me if you've heard it. No, don't stop me. I'm going to tell it anyway. So this guy goes to the zoo because he wants a job, because he's always wanted to work in the zoo. And he goes to the zookeeper, he says, I'd like to work here at the zoo, I've always wanted to work here.

Zookeeper says, we don't have any openings. No, you don't understand. I've always wanted to work in the zoo, and I'll do anything, I gotta start working at the zoo I'll do anything the zookeeper says Anything? Yeah, well, okay Our our gorilla just died

Gorilla the most popular act at the zoo until we can get a new gorilla We have to have someone dress up as a gorilla otherwise our admission and our Attendance is gonna just plummet I'll do it. I'll do it. Yeah, okay put on the monkey suit right now You start today so the guy goes out into the gorilla exhibit dressed as the gorilla and he does a very credible job The crowds love it. In fact the attendance even goes up because he's such a great gorilla One day he's climbing up in a tree in the gorilla exhibit. It's got a branch going over the fence into the lion's exhibit.

So he goes out there, starts shaking the branch and harassing the lion. The lion comes out, everybody loves it. It's just great. Then the attendance really goes up. And so one day he's out there hanging on the branch. And you know what happens, right? You know what happens. Oh, the branch breaks, falls into the lion's exhibit. The lion starts coming towards him. The crowds pressing their faces up against the fences cause they want to see blood and the guy sees the lion coming closer. He looks at the crowd. He doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know what to do. He's getting scared.

Finally he just goes, help. And the lion says, shut up, or we'll both get fired. I've heard it, but you tell it way better than how I've heard it. That was very good. It's good. You told me not to stop you. Here's a quick joke. A screwdriver walks into a bar and the bartender says, my goodness, we've got a drink named after you.

And the screwdriver says, what? You had a you had a drink named Steve. All right. So that's a question. That's a good one. We're good. Yeah. Questions there.

So this fella is at a funeral because his best mates died and the widows next to him and she says to him, would you mind getting up and just saying something so he walks up and Adjusts the microphone to his mouth. He he just says one word plethora Walks down and stands back beside it and she pats him on the back and says thanks that means a lot Better worse the same that was exactly the same the screwdriver. But the screwdriver one was good. Plethora as good.

Okay. See all the ones that I think are really funny are really ones I shouldn't be telling on this show. Yeah, I've got a really funny one that I won't tell on this show either. But it's right on the edge of being able to be told on this show. Mine are so far past the edge that they can't even see the mountain.

No, no. Mine's just on the edge but it's really funny. All right, Andrew C says, please ask Dr. Alquist to discuss the contrast between Chesterton and Kierkegaard's philosophies. This doesn't sound like something you'd be that interested in but if you are give it a shot. Well, their concept of paradox is remarkably the same. The idea of the two truths that contradict each other that are both true. But with Chesterton, he would argue that it's an apparent contradiction, whereas Kierkegaard would argue that it is a contradiction, a logical contradiction. But they're both trying to get at the same idea that there's this truth that goes above

our logical comprehension. And in both cases, the ultimate paradox is Jesus Christ himself, fully God and fully man. And I think Chesterton and Kierkegaard would simply agree on that. They also very similarly have this idea that it's almost, they almost use exactly the same line that where biology leaves off that's where theology begins. That there's something that's transcendent about theology. Where they would differ, obviously Kierkegaard,

who I think was on his way to becoming Catholic, if he'd lived longer on that William Blake, C.S. Lewis trajectory, wasn't Catholic as Chesterton was. But I see evidence of Kierkegaard starting to express great admiration for monasticism and for the historical church. Obviously he was a big Augustan fan, as all Lutherans were. He was of a Lutheran background, but he didn't really care much for the state church in Denmark. But Kierkegaard's whole weakness could be summed up by the fact he didn't read

Thomas Aquinas. All right. Well, we own a Chesterton cigar lounge up the road and our general manager, Matt McCloskey, asks, what does he think we should name our Chesterton cigar? Well, I think the Gilbert would not be bad. The Gilbert? Yeah, the paradox would not be bad. I like both of those. Or the Tremendous Trifle.

Okay, what's that from? That's the name of one of his books of essays, the Tremendous Trifles. There you go, Matthew, if you're listening, those are some options. I want to talk a little bit more about distributism, and I'm a newbie. Every time people try to explain this to me, I think I must be stupider than I originally thought, which is quite significant. So maybe you can help me. So the question from Mitch is, did Hilaire Belloc influence Chesterton's conversion to Catholicism? Well, we've discussed that, but how did they develop distributism?

So let me just answer the first part of that question a little bit more. I think obviously Belloc had a huge influence on Chesterton's conversion, but he also may have had an influence preventing his conversion. I told about Belloc's own strange reservations about Chesterton becoming Catholic. But also Chesterton does say something in his book, The Catholic Church in Conversion, that is very telling.

He says, let it never be forgotten to the potential convert, anything that a enemy of the Catholic church should say will have no effect on him whatsoever. But one wrong word from a Catholic can do great, great damage. And I just wonder what Catholic it was who did something to Chesterton that slowed his conversion down. It may have been Bellow. It may have been. Now, as far as his influence on Chesterton in terms of distributism, it was clearly Belloc who first explained the concept to him. Belloc, Chesterton, and most of the people of their circle had gone through their own

young person stage of socialism. One of the great lines that's always attributed to Chesterton, that we have no evidence he ever said it, but of course, if a young man is not a socialist by the time he's 20, he has no heart, and if he's still one when he's 40 he has no mind. It's a great line. I don't think Chesterton said it. But they all were reacting against the 19th century industrial capitalism that was a blight on the face of Europe but especially in the major cities of England, Manchester and London. And they just saw the ugliness of the factories and the oppression of the workers. And naturally the only thing they knew about was the reaction of socialism against it.

Then they encountered Pope Leo XIII and his Rerum Novarum, who just condemns this industrial capitalism, which he says has led to a condition that is little better or no different than slavery. And he says in Rerum Novarum 1891, the wrong solution is socialism. So he condemns capitalism and socialism in the same encyclical. He says the solution is for workers to become owners. More workers should become owners. They should share a stake in the benefit that they bring to a company and to a business. That they should benefit from it by having their own autonomy. And ultimately, if they're, we know that slavery's bad,

autonomy, freedom, ownership is the solution. And that is the nut of the idea. It comes from Rerum Novarm, and Belloc got it, and he explained it to Chesterton, and Chesterton got it. And then that began a movement that unfortunately took on the name distributism. And it's because of a line in Ramnovarm that Pope Leo used, he said justice should be distributive.

In other words, everyone's entitled to justice. But because he said it that way, Belloc for some reasons called the movement distributism or distributivism, which is even worse. And they all… So he coined the term. Yeah, it was Belloc. And everyone didn't like it when he first said it, and Belloc didn't like it that much himself, but they kept using it and kept complaining about the term and and and Chester says it's it's it's descriptive it's correct but it's it's just an

awkward word and it continued to be an awkward word and we when we first started the Chester Society doing 25 years plus ago we said we're gonna come up with a better word and we had a contest Matt we even offered a free t-shirt to the person who would come up with it I know what more do you want? No one came up with a better word? I want to know what some of the contenders were. Oh ugly You know, you don't want to know. Yeah, you don't want to know it's people who people who wanted to Who who wanted to you know prove that they were insane or had no concept of human communication came up with terms

So we finally after a big discussion around my dinner table one night that they were insane or had no concept of human communication came up with terms. So we finally, after a big discussion around my dinner table one night, came up with localism. This was just within the last three years. And localism has an immediate, immediate meaning. Everyone knows right away. Oh, yeah, that means let's keep business local and let's keep commerce local. That's Catholic social teaching, the idea of subsidiarity, the idea that what affects you most directly, you should have control of.

And the idea of localism is your neighbor. Solidarity is the other concept of Catholic social teaching. So you're taking care of your neighbor as well as your yourself. And so what you do then has this local benefit and a benefit to, um, to yourself as well. And so that became the new term that we are using more and more people are starting. If you did it yourself in our early, you said, you said the word localism. I heard you say it. It was great. I didn't know that distributism was thought up by Whatsy's face, Belloc, and

I didn't know that you and your people came up with it. Yeah, Whatsy's face came up with one, and Whatsy's face came up with the other. That's amazing. So why do you like localism? Why did you not like distributism? Just because of how it rolled off the tongue? Well, yeah, because you immediately had to explain what it meant. And then you also have to immediately ask, who's the one doing the distributing? Yeah, exactly. Because it implied that someone had to be doing the distributing.

Yeah. So there was way too much to explain with that word, which is really a testimony to its badness and worthlessness as a word. Localism, you don't have to explain that at all. Everyone immediately knows what it means. And then you can expound on, on how we apply localism. And so that's, I think an answer to somebody's question somewhere. It is. Here's another question from someone.

How do you practice localism in your own life and in your own company? Well, I can answer that. Good. I started a school and that huh. And that's been the most localist thing I could have ever done. And now I've had the great privilege of helping other people start their local schools because all of them are started locally. We aren't starting them. They are starting them where they are and we're just simply giving them the tools they need to start it. And are

you hoping to get to the point or are you already at the point where teachers participate in the financial gains of the business? Well I guess you know since it's a non-profit organization there's no owner but there's just all the local investors. Everybody's invested in it with their blood and their sweat and their tears because it's for the benefit of their school, of their children, of their community with a non-profit organization. Of course that's what it is. There's no owner per se, but everybody signs up for a cause as it were and they share the

benefit. Yes, as the school improves, the teachers get paid better. All right. That doesn't sound terribly different to like a capitalist small business to me. Well, a capitalist small business is one main person is benefiting from it and everybody else is working for him.

I see. There's no one person benefiting and no one's working for one person. The nonprofit, a board of directors is directing how the money is spent and making sure that it's financially sound and they are not benefiting from it at all. Gotcha. I'm seeing beautiful kind of fruits of what we might call localism here in Steubenville. Yeah, absolutely.

You know, we got a Steubenville grocery box about to start up down the road where we're actually going to be selling the produce of the farmers who live around here. Are you seeing this taking off more and more? Absolutely. Who doesn't love the concept of the farmers market? Everyone loves it. Everyone loves it. You don't even have to try to defend it because everyone knows it.

It's the right thing. It's like we're supporting our neighbors. Yeah. The money's staying local. Yeah. Yeah. So do you shop on Amazon? Do you mind me asking? Or do you? I only shop on Amazon if I know I'm going to be going to confession the next day. Okay. Now I try to avoid Amazon at all costs. It's, it's just, it's

a way of watching your money flee from the community and you're stealing it from your neighbor. Stealing it from you and oh, yeah, not by not giving it to them. We have a local bookstore here down the road in Steubenville. Yeah. You you know, a local community should be buying their books from the local bookstore and that's good. Not buying it from you. You've convicted me here because I just bought a, I just bought something on Augustine's commentary on the Beatitudes today on Amazon this morning on my phone when I was sitting next door to a

bookstore that would have really loved my business. Yeah. And they could have ordered for you and they would have gotten part of the profit and you would have supported them. And I would have dealt with the fact that it came in a week after I would have liked to have gotten it or something. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's a good example.

I, there's certain names of big, big corporate retailers that are never used by the Alquist family. This is what difficult to get around, isn't it? I mean, it's Apple, Google, you have to purposely get around it. Yeah. If you just try to find a way to get around it. There's certain things that, yeah, by when they're, when they're that all pervasive, there is no other choice, but that's what Chesterton's great argument is that capitalism ends in monopoly. It ends like a game of monopoly. One person owns everything and that's not a good thing. No one thinks a

monopoly is a good thing unless they benefit of it. But when you have these two options, as you're saying, I suppose you might need them. Like you might need to use an Apple computer or a Windows PC. We haven't found a good, right now there's not a good local computer to use. It's true. For once there is. I'm going to buy my $70,000 laptop from that. There's certain things where if we don't have choice, we don't have choice, but there's so many things where we do have choice. We shouldn't let the fact that we don't have choice in certain areas, yeah, alleviate us

with the responsibility of those. Yeah, that's the idea. I like that. It's a self-tax, if you want to put it that way. We may have already discussed it, but what are some ways you think people misunderstand localism when they're talking to you, other than the fact that they think it's socialist. Yeah. That's the first one.

But they always seem to think you're somehow interfering with the American dream, that somehow you're trying to prevent me from becoming a millionaire. And are you? Well, if I could get to keep you out of hell, yeah, I guess that'd be one. What does Jesus say about rich people? Yeah, harder to- It's not impossible, but if you can get that camera through the eye of a needle, then you can get a rich man into heaven. It'd be a little more effort.

But Chesterton says the way people interpret that verse is they're always trying to manufacture larger needles and breed smaller camels. But everyone is afraid that you might be interfering with their ability to become a millionaire as if that's where their happiness lies. Well, let me see if I understand why they might think that and why that might be a problem. Well, I suppose, I mean, the church doesn't say you should make this much money and no

more. So there's no kind of direct explicit sort of condemnation of riches in the way there is of, say, sexual immorality or something like that. All it's, yeah, no, it doesn't. So we can, we can, presumably there are rich people who go to heaven and poor people who go to hell and they can use their rich as well, right? We know that. But what it does say is that to whom much is given, much will be required. So in other words, if you... You can make a million dollars. difficulty by, by complicating your life with distractions that will somehow fight in the

way of your spiritual life. Just, just like there's that horrible verse in, in the epistle of St. James, let not many of you become teachers, right? Which we all gloss over, gloss it right over. Yeah. And I think about that a lot, because when you're teaching, just think if we say one thing wrong, the ramifications of that. It says we'll be judged with greater strictness. We who teach will be judged with greater strictness. It's almost as bad as having more money.

And yet you wouldn't discourage people from being teachers necessarily. Not necessarily. And you wouldn't discourage people from being teachers necessarily that that's certainly wouldn't discourage people from being rich But you just give them the full the full caveat Yeah, yeah But I think but it goes back to your original cause why what are people? What is the figure the fight against localism? They somehow feel like you're interfering with the American dream But I think the American dream is you know a home with a family and a happy family in that home. Yeah. Yeah.

And from what you're saying about localism, you're trying to give people more autonomy, not less. Right. Yeah. Interesting. Well, thank you. That's a, that's a good introduction. And one day I'll learn enough about it to speak about it for a longer period of time than three minutes. That's about as long as I can talk about it now. But I appreciate it. What is a great homeschooling resource for elementary age kids to introduce Chastatin?

So this is not another softball for you to pitch your excellent school. But people who are homeschooling, when should they introduce Chastatin? Oh, when? I think first question was, what's the homeschool resource? Homeschooling resource for elementary aged kids. Fair enough, you understood the question better than I did and I read it. I would recommend Home School Connections. That's an online home school resource.

There are some courses there where they introduce Chesterton to younger students. And I do know that the Seton homeschool has some Chesterton books for younger readers as well. Clare G. says, What would Chesterton dislike about current public education teaching methods? Well, he was absolutely prophetic about that, Clare G. The things he says about public schools in his own time are as true now as they were then. So one of his great lines, he says, the one thing that is never taught in a public school is this, that there is a whole truth of things and that in knowing it and speaking it, we are happy.

Oh, that is just delightful. whole truth of things and that in knowing it and speaking it, we are happy. That is just delightful. So the cat, the, the public school can't teach the truth and it can't teach the whole truth. They could just teach fragments that may or may not even be true. But what they aren't teaching is how that wholeness and the ability to articulate, to say it is what makes us happy. And we are not teaching happiness in our schools at all. What would Chesterton says?

Quack, sib, sliver, sliver, silver. Not a real name either way. I don't think. Sorry if I just offended you. Quack, sib, what would Chesterton think about the internet? Had he lived today? I think Chesterton actually had a great prediction of the internet. During his time, of course, information was controlled by the newspapers.

And it was really hard to have an alternative newspaper, which is what he did when he edited GK's Weekly, his own newspaper, because you're going up against, you know, four or five major newspapers who are all, you know, each of them owned by one very, very rich, powerful person because he said when you can control information, you have great power. He says people will line up for information, they'll line up for news like they line up for bread in a besieged city. And think about that. He says, but he says, the day is coming when there will be a way to convey information cheaply to a large number of people. He says, I don't know how it will work.

He says, it may be writing on the sky for all I know, but on that day, the Times will be behind the Times. In other words the Times newspaper will be behind the Times because it won't have the monopoly on information. And of course that is what happened with the internet. There was suddenly a way to convey information cheaply to a large number of people. Now of course we're starting to see controls on that flow of information, but there was there was a period of time when the internet really did, and it's still doing to some extent, offer alternative news and it could be used for good in that sense. But the internet, like anything

else, as Chester points out in his book on Thomas Aquinas, there are no bad things, only bad uses of things. What are your thoughts, asks Joe Brew, on Montessori? So Montessori was a Catholic woman who developed this school system that was originally Catholic, an educational system, and most of its modern manifestation has been emptied of its Catholicism, but there are still a few traditional Montessori schools that still keep the Catholic aspect to it,

which was really central to it, because all education should be centered around some eternal truth. And I don't think, I think it's a very powerful and effective educational philosophy, but it is one of many, and it is kind of recent on the scheme of things, and it's less classical, which would in some ways be a point against it, but I can't

give it a big criticism because it is a very effective and good system for young children. Jake B says I'd like to send my children to a classical school, but don't have the option available locally at present. What does it take practically to get a Chesterton Academy school started? Well, thanks for asking that one. You're welcome. All right. So go to chestertonschoolsnetwork.org, chestertonschoolsnetwork.org, and we have a very well laid out system of

what you need to do to open a Chesterton Academy. And if you follow the steps on this great new system, right now, if you call right now, and you get the set of knives too. Throw that in. No, if you go through our scheme, it truly is a step-by-step process

so that you could open a school within 18 months. But it's, so it's all explained what you will go to, what you will face, what your challenges will be, but what each thing that has to be accomplished in order that will allow you to start the school. Okay. And if you have immediate needs and you're still homeschooling and you want a Chesterton curriculum, there is an online option for Chesterton Academy and you can learn about that at ChestertonSchools.org as well. Matthew Smith says, can you discuss Chesterton's view of liberalism? My understanding is that G.K. Chesterton and Hilaia Belloc were quite critical of modern political structures, but

I would love to understand their critiques and proposed solutions. So Chesterton and Belloc originally considered themselves liberals back in the early 20th century. They were members of the Liberal Party. And for them, it had, I think, a much different meaning than it has now. I think, you know, Chesterton said something very similar to what Ronald Reagan said

when he left the Democrat party. He said, I didn't leave the Democrat party, the Democrat party left me. All right. And Chesterton said something really similar. He said, you know, I'm the last liberal. Everyone else, he said, has left the liberal philosophy. I'm the last one who has the philosophy, which is freedom.

That's what the word means. And protecting those basic personal freedoms and that the government's role is to ensure that those freedoms are protected. And they have to do with deciding things for yourself that, um, excuse me. You swallowed wrong earlier. Now it's my turn. It's great fun. All right.

Ah, still not there. Sorry. That's all right. We'll both drink together. We'll just everyone take a drink break right now. Mmm. Vodka. That's what's the problem. Yeah, exactly.

Sorry. That's right. Do you want me to? So that their view of liberalism then was protecting basic liberties. That's what the government's role is and not interfering with those liberties. liberalism then was protecting basic liberties, that's what the government's role is, and not interfering with those liberties. But also allowing people to be autonomous, to make their own decisions of what eventually became the same idea of subsidiarity,

that things that most directly affect you, you should be able to control. And they just saw the liberal government becoming more and more controlling and taking away those basic freedoms, like a compulsory education act, a compulsory insurance act, and all these basic decisions being taken away from the common man and he really having, the common man having no power or say in the things that affect him at all anymore. So his, in terms of Chesterton's commentary on today's liberals versus conservatives, I think he has one line that epitomizes the problem exactly. He says, the modern world is divided into progressives and conservatives.

It's the business of the progressives to go on making the same mistakes. And it's the business of the conservatives to prevent the mistakes from being corrected. It's the most painfully true line in the world. We just watch it happen every day. Forrester1241 says, GK was way ahead of his time in calling out the dangers of the eugenics movement. Ironically, he died just before the seeds of eugenics bloomed into the horrors

of the Holocaust. Also, thanks to Matt's program, I became acquainted with Flannery O'Connor and ended up reading her works. There's a lot more to her than her catholicity. When I read into her stories, it was obvious to me that she had her fingers on a pulse that would explode in society just after she died. The new morality and associated generation gap has done untold damage that society as a whole

has still not fully assessed. What other social evils did Chesterton see coming other than the eugenics movement? He says yes, so the eugenics movement Chesterton was prophetic about it. He he's you know, he called it the argument against a scientifically organized society He saw it as being an attack on the family, on life, and he said the way that the modern world would measure progress was first with contraception, then abortion, then infanticide. All the things that we're seeing. He also before the end of his life

had some great arguments against euthanasia, which he also was very prophetic about. Where we will start putting people to death because the argument will be that it's because they're a nuisance to themselves, but we'll eventually put them to death because they're a nuisance to us. So he saw these social evils in their, in their nascent stage and he predicted where what they would look like when fully blossom. His arguments against contraception are exactly

the same arguments that St. Paul the six uses in humana vitae, exactly the same arguments. So he- The human being would become instrumentalized. Yep, that he said that, he said it would lead to abortion for one thing, it did. It would lead to divorce, it did. It would lead to mistreatment and abuse of women, it did.

And it would lead to sexual perversion. It did. So I'd like to go over some Chesterton quotes. Now I typed in Chesterton quotes while you were speaking. And of course the first thing that came up was this website called Chesterton.org. Ever heard of it? Anyway, it turns out, you know, and most people if you go to their quote page, they'd just be a list of quotes, but here there are categories of quotes.

So, let's have a look. Um... He says, You say grace before meals. All right, but I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing,

and grace before I dip the pen in the ink. The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost. I didn't realize. Is that a second? Is that a different quote? I was trying to melt the two. That's cause they don't quite go together at all. But yeah, the last, that first one, that one called grace, it ends in grace before I dip the pen in the ink. I mean that, that shows Chesterton's always being thankful. What do you hear in the mass? You hear, we do well always and everywhere

to give you thanks. We say that, we hear that every day at mass, and yet- We don't do that. We don't, but Chesterton does. Chesterton says, I always am saying grace before I do all these things. I'm always being thankful because that is, he says, the highest form of thought. And that's what the mass is telling us,

to always be thankful, always and everywhere. If we are always thankful, we will not get upset, we will not get angry, we will not get depressed. Because yeah, everything we have is a gift and all we can do is try to keep giving the gift back forever. He says the greatest giving is Thanksgiving. What's one of your favorite quotes from him that we haven't?

Yeah, that's one of those. I'll tell you the- It's like, which is your favorite child? Yeah, which is your favorite child? I'll tell you, so don't ask me. Now, there's a quote that I put on a plaque that I gave to Mother Angelica when I was doing my show at EWTN, and she had me as a guest on her show. And I think it's a really great one.

It's from Heretics, his book Heretics. He said, charity means pardoningly unpardonableable or it's no virtue at all. This is very close to Lewis, right? Yeah, yeah. I'm making the connection here to Lewis's quote about forgiving the unforgivable in you. And now you're seeing where he got it, right? And then he says, hope means hoping when things are hopeless or it's no virtue at all.

And faith means believing the incredible or it's no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible or it's no virtue at all. And there's faith, hope and charity, but it's in its paradoxical state, you know, because forgiving the unforgivable sounds like a paradox, right? But that's what we have to do. You forgive when there's just no reason for possibly forgiving. And you hope when there's no reason for hoping. And you believe when there's no reason for possibly forgiving. And you hope when there's no reason for hoping. And you believe when there's no reason for believing. Because it really is, you have to do it out of virtue. What was Mother Angelica like?

Well, talk about, I was in a discussion with someone the other day, she said, have you ever met a saint? And I forgot to say why. Yeah, I met Mother Angelica. I think she will be canonized. And she was so full of life and just such great energy. And we had the weird experience of kind of like what we're doing right now.

We got to know each other on the air. That's how it happened. Because there's hardly any pregame at Wormwhip at all. And she was absolutely delightful and just hit all the buttons just in the right place, but just had that little bit of mischievousness in her at the same time. And yet this powerful ability to discern what was right

and what was wrong and what was of the devil or not. So you had both this lightness and this very seriousness underneath it. In some ways, I think that's what the saints do. They really are joyful and yet underneath it, they're doing battle with the devil. Yeah, that's right. It is something disarming about an old woman, but she was a powerhouse. Yeah there was a Terror maybe not a great movie But an interesting premise back in the day could shallow how where this fellow got the ability to see people for who they really were Their personalities, so maybe you're looking at a physically beautiful woman

But she's hideous because she's actually a horrible person right and I wonder what she may have looked even more muscular than you know, it's like the little flower should have been called the iron will or something. Right. Mother Teresa, I heard a story of someone who was I think on death row. And if I'm getting the story right, and he said that if any, if a priest had come in, if the Pope himself had come in, I would haveed him, but this little old shriveled up Nun from Calcutta comes and puts a miraculous medal in my hand. I'll take that That's wild all right Right is right. Even if nobody does it wrong is wrong if everybody is wrong about even if everybody's wrong

Yeah That's pretty straightforward and yet entirely quotable. I like the Like that quote. There's the most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man his ordinary wife and their ordinary children Yes, yeah, and he says the ordinary is More important than the extraordinary he says, nay it is more extraordinary. The ordinary is more extraordinary than the extraordinary, why is that? Because the ordinary thing is what we should be in awe of. It's the same concept as we should be in awe of the earth. We should be startled by the earth not by the earthquake and we should be startled by the earth, not by the earthquake. And we should be more in awe of the sun than of the eclipse.

Cause those, those exceptional things, well, they might be interesting, but isn't the earth more interesting than an earthquake and isn't the sun more interesting than an eclipse really, when it comes down to it, aren't they the more important things? Yeah. Yeah. So the ordinary thing is the more extraordinary thing. Um, we often don't think in our modern society is of, uh, um, Yeah, so the ordinary thing is the more extraordinary thing. We often don't think in our modern society of curiosity being a sin. Aquinas has a whole article on why it is and how he opposes it to studiousness.

We could think of curiosity as the enemy of wonder. I think you'd agree with me. What can we learn from Chesterton about that? Well, yeah, he's got the great line about wonder. He says, the world will never starve for want of wonders, but only for want of wonder. And wonder is a humble attitude, because you're truly just taking something in.

Curiosity could sometimes be a selfishly motivated thing, and that's the difference between wonder, wonder and curiosity. The one is humble and the other can be selfish. Yeah. Yeah. Selfish, inordinate for the sake of evil, something like that. I've shared this story on the show before, but I want to share it with you because I think you'd love it. We just had mulch put out the front of our house and I told my children, especially my youngest son, Peter, to stop bloody jumping into it from the stoop

place because we're planting things out there. It's very important. You understand? Look at me. You're not looking at me. Look at me. Tell me what I just said. Right. And so I was up in my room and I see him jumping off the stoop directly into the mulch. And thankfully I had the sense not to just quickly be like, what are you doing? So I open up the window. Peter, what are you doing? Well, he was teaching an injured bird to fly so I watched him for a little bit Yeah, there's a bird next to him, and he's flapping his wings. That's that's that's the most beautiful thing I think I've ever with almost the most beautiful thing Great cuz when you were telling me you were just giving me the urge to want to go over to your house and jump into the mosh

We could film that that actually might do quite well on YouTube. Yeah We could film that. That actually might do quite well on YouTube. Yeah. Beautiful. Well, this has been lovely. It's been just a joy to get to know you. It is weird to get to know each other on camera, but it's been a delight to chat with you. Likewise. And thank you so much, Matt, for having me here. Anytime you want to talk about Chesterton, you know how to get a hold of me. All right. Yes, I definitely do now. And we've mentioned your books, we'll put links to those in the descriptions, mentioned to your excellent school and your society. Anything else we've missed that we should? Well, I think I should probably close with a great Chesterton quote. Okay, I like that.

This is a good one. He says, It's not always wrong to go down to the lowest promontory and look down on hell like Dante. to go down to the lowest promontory and look down on hell like Dante. It's when you look up at hell that a serious miscalculation has probably been made. Very good. Dale Oquist, thanks so much. God bless. That's love.