What’s Wrong With The World

At our recent conference (go to the Conference 2009 page via the website homepage for my opening remarks), I made it clear that it was not intended as the opening shot in a campaign for a cause to be opened towards Chesterton’s beatification: it was simply to ask a question: is there, or should there be, what the Congregation for the Causes of Saints calls ‘a reputation for holiness’ around his writings and his person–the necessary prerequisite for such a cause. This is not a Roman Catholic Society (though many of its members are Catholics) so we can’t as a society ask for a cause to be opened. But many non- Catholics (I used to be one) think that canonization is something the Catholic Church does which they value: one non-Catholic told me that he thought that it was a sign that we take one of our own seriously as a spiritual figure, and if we didn’t take Chesterton seriously, why should he?Chesterton has had a huge influence over non-Catholics like Dorothy L. Sayers and C.S. Lewis, and we should never forget that Orthodoxy was written when he was an Anglican, and is the result of Anglican theological influences. A famously holy American Anglican priest once replied, when asked why on earth Chesterton had become a Roman Catholic, “Oh, it was necessary for him to become a Catholic: only the Catholic Church can canonize him”.

First, though, there has to be some evidence of a cult in England as there is throughout the world. And in fact there is: it was very evident among those who attended our conference. It is quite wrong to say that it is only in America and Argentina that anyone is interested in  Chesterton in this way. And even if there were only a cult outside England, that would be no bar to opening a cause. I have had contacts in Poland, Spain and France who are mostly puzzled that there is no cause already, as well as in America. But an English Bishop would obviously look for some evidence of a cult here, a difficult matter since the English are reticent about such matters. But such evidence is now emerging, shyly, from the shadows: if you are part of it now is the time to make yourself known.

Meanwhile, go to  http://www.zenit.org/article-26454?l=english for evidence  of Chesterton’s ‘reputation for holiness’ in Italy. 

–William Oddie