Free Republic

Who Dares Attack My Chesterton? OpinionJune 4th, 2012 Zac Alstin The late Christopher Hitchens  It is a cliché of pop psychology that we are least able to tolerate people who remind us of our own selves. There’s only room for one Life Of The Party and we feel a twinge of antagonism toward anyone whose excellence threatens to outshine our own. I was reminded of this when I read Christopher Hitchens’ posthumously published review of a biography of the great British journalist G.K. Chesterton. It certainly was a curious valediction. As an obituary for Hitchens described: “Consider the mix. Constant pain, weak as...

Chesterton and Saint Francis | By Joseph Pearce This essay appears in Joseph Pearce's new book Literary Giants, Literary Catholics. Chesterton enjoyed a lifelong friendship with Saint Francis of Assisi. As a small boy, long before he had an inkling of the nature of Catholicism, Chesterton was read a story by his parents about a man who gave up all his possessions, even the clothes he was wearing on his back, to follow Christ in holy poverty. From the moment the wide-eyed Gilbert first heard the story of Saint Francis, he knew he had found a friend. As such,...

"The God In The Cave" | From The Everlasting ManThis sketch of the human story began in a cave; the cave which popular science associates with the cave-man and in which practical discovery has really found archaic drawings of animals. The second half of human history, which was like a new creation of the world, also begins in a cave. There is even a shadow of such a fancy in the fact that animals were again present; for it was a cave used as a stable by the mountaineers of the uplands about Bethlehem; who still drive their cattle...

Why I Am A Catholic By G. K. Chesterton From Twelve Modern Apostles and Their Creeds (1926)Reprinted in The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, Vol. 3 Ignatius Press 1990 The difficulty of explaining "why I am a Catholic" is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true. I could fill all my space with separate sentences each beginning with the words, "It is the only thing that . . ." As, for instance, (1) It is the only thing that really prevents a sin from being a secret. (2) It is the only thing...

...For there was one particular monk in that Augustinian monastery in the German forests, who may be said to have had a single and special talent for emphasis; for emphasis and nothing except emphasis; for emphasis with the quality of earthquake. He was the son of a slatecutter; a man with a great voice and a certain volume of personality; brooding, sincere, decidedly morbid; and his name was Martin Luther. Neither Augustine nor the Augustinians would have desired to see the day of that vindication of the Augustinian tradition; but in one sense, perhaps, the Augustinian tradition was avenged after...