Saint Chesterton?

Well, two recent Popez are about to become saints, which is bad enough, but, really—G. K. Chesterton? Yes, that’s right: Saint Chesterton may be in the offing!

Last August, Christopher Howse at the Torygraph reported stirrings that there was a groundswell of sentiment toward canonization of the unkempt Catholic writer, though he suggested it would be unwise. Referring to Chesterton’s famous book on Saint Francis, Howse noted:

St Francis was heroic, and as Chesterton recognised, an ascetic who fasted and did penance not because he hated the world, but because he loved it. Chesterton was not obviously ascetic. If he was fat through careless eating, his death certificate gave, as a contributary cause, the effects of alcohol. That is not necessarily a bad thing, any more than the effects of smoking might have been.

But one cannot help thinking that Chesterton’s reliance on his wife had an element of self-infantilisation that was unfair on her. Even when she felt unwell, she knew she had to keep him groomed and organised (no easy task). Again, this should not debar Chesterton from heaven. But though saints have their faults – which are not to be imitated – canonising Chesterton would risk his faults being imitated by mistake.

That should be the end of it. But now the Diocese of Shrewsbury reports, on its website, that a Catholic bishop is opening a case to investigate the possibility of Chesterton’s sainthood:

The Rt Rev. Peter Doyle, the Bishop of Northampton, has appointed Canon John Udris, to lead preliminary investigations into the possibility of opening the Cause for Canonisation of the 20th century journalist and author.

A statement released by the diocese said that the appointment follows numerous approaches from Chesterton devotees from all over the world.

“Since the Rt Rev. Peter Doyle was appointed Bishop of Northampton in June 2005, there have been a number of approaches from people in the UK and, in particular, in the USA enquiring about the possibility of opening the Ccuse of GK Chesterton,” it said..

“In response to these approaches, the bishop has appointed Canon John Udris, a priest of the diocese and currently a spiritual director at St Mary’s College, Oscott, to undertake a fact-finding exercise on his behalf.”

. . .Dr William Oddie, the Oxford-based author of Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy and The Holiness of GK Chesterton, said he was “absolutely delighted that the bishop has now taken a definitive first step toward the opening of GK Chesterton’s canonisation cause”.

“This is something that has been prayed for for many years,” Dr Oddie said.

“Chesterton is a man from whom the simple love of God flows like a river,” he added. “He was a man full of the joy of life that had been given him by his belief in God … it is in every word he ever wrote.”

So does every religious writer deserve sainthood? Where are Chesterton’s goddam miracles? Did somebody get cured of the chilblains when reading one of his books? Well, we all know that the Vatican, like a magician, can pull miracles out of a hat whenever it wants to.

But they’ll have a harder time explaining away Chesterton’s anti-semitism. The Jewish Chronicle recounts that in a post called, “Can this Jew-hater G K Chesterton be a saint?” Their “j’accuse”:

Thus we find that in his Short History of England (1917), Chesterton wrote approvingly of Edward I’s expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290. These Jews, Chesterton insisted, were the “capitalists of their age,” and Edward’s eviction of them was the commendable act of a “tender father of his people.” Moving forward to more modern times, Chesterton had the effrontery to attack the “acrid and irrational unanimity of the English Press” in siding with Captain Alfred Dreyfus, and continued to evince hostility towards Dreyfus even after the French state had admitted his innocence of the charge of treason levelled against him. As Kamm reminded us, Chesterton publicly (1911) denounced the type of Jew who is “a traitor in France and a tyrant in England.”

Chesterton was a leading member of the National League for Clean Government, which in 1913 sponsored meetings attacking Jewish influence on public morals. In 1918, he wrote a discreditable letter to Lord Reading (Rufus Isaacs, then the Lord Chief Justice of England), expressing the hope that Isaacs would play no part in peace negotiations with Germany. “Is there any man”, Chesterton asked, “who doubts that you will be sympathetic with the Jewish International?”

And in The New Jerusalem (1921) Chesterton declared his belief that, ultimately, Jews could never be considered loyal to the countries in which they dwelt. By all means, he argued, “let a Jew occupy any political or social position which he can gain in open competition.” But every Jew (remember this was 1921, not 1221) should wear a distinctive dress: “The point is that we should know where we are; and he should know where he is, which is in a foreign land.”

I doubt that the Vatican will actually make him a saint, for if they did that they’d have to follow with Ceiling Cat knows who, including Saint C. S. Lewis, Saint Evelyn Waugh, and Saint Graham Greene.  I’ve tried to read Chesterton, but simply can’t do it, just as I can’t read P. G. Wodehouse (yes, I know I’ll be faulted for it; but I see it as one of those English/American dichotomies, like my complete failure to even giggle at “Yes Minister”).

At any rate, it shows either the desperation of the weak-mindedness of Catholics that they’d even consider something like this.

You’ll soon be able to get to God more easily by praying to St. Chesterton

h/t: Dom