In an interview with Vatican Radio, Father Ian Boyd, President of the G.K. Chesterton Institute for Faith and Culture, explained why Chesterton’s writings are more powerful now than when he published them:
“What strikes me most of all in reading Chesterton is that his real audience is today’s audience. When he wrote, the things he described must have seemed fantastic to his contemporaries, but we live in a time when we’ve seen his prophecies fulfilled. I think really Chesterton therefore is a writer, a journalist, who speaks it chiefly to us. I was thinking for example of a comment he made a long time ago, when he said that the next great heresy is going to be an attack on morality, and especially on sexual morality. He said not to be so afraid of the Russians and the Bolsheviks. He said, ‘The madness of tomorrow is far more in Manhattan than in Moscow.’”
“He believed that a consumerist culture had a greater power to undermine morality than any totalitarian system. He said when real evil comes, it always comes from within.”
(For the full interview, click here.)
As Father Boyd reminds us of Chesterton’s prophetic insights, Cardinal Dolan confirms that Manhattan and indeed the entire Archdiocese of New York has become “mission territory.” (New Yorkers shouldn’t feel too isolated, since they have plenty of competition elsewhere.)
Far more than earlier times, however, Catholics have embraced the “great heresy,” so they need the New Evangelization as much as anyone. As one observer commented on Catholic Culture’s website:
“Cardinal Dolan is correct and in fact every city in the United States that has a significant Catholic population should be considered mission territory. Catholics in America are confused because they no longer know what the Church’s real position is on the key moral issues … One of the primary reasons for this confusion is the pervasive silence of the Church’s pulpits—to speak out on these key moral issues in a fashion that is clear, loving and steadfastly Catholic. As a result, many Catholics have been led astray by a secular-oriented society, and by various high-profile Catholics who have publicly embraced and defended it. These high profile Catholics are in the government, media, academia, social services, and even the clergy/religious. It appears that Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop Charles Chaput, and other Church leaders are finally realizing the true nature and seriousness of this problem. Hopefully, this will result in the Bishops taking the lead and also directing their local parishes to boldly speak out against the forces of secularism confronting today’s Catholics. For too long the pulpits have been asleep (Bishops and local parishes). It is now time that they are awakened.”
Chesterton, one trusts, would agree.
July 20th, 2012 | 1:07 pm
“He believed that a consumerist culture had a greater power to undermine morality than any totalitarian system. He said when real evil comes, it always comes from within.”
This you call prophetic? Do you really prefer the morality of Russia, China, or North Korea?
July 20th, 2012 | 1:22 pm
I know father Boyd personally and I admire his work and dedication. It is great that the Church and the bishops are finally awakening to the message of Chesterton’s evangelization.
However, it is important to go beyond mere characterization of Chesterton’s works as signs, symbols, riddles, etc., or merely defending family values, morality, education etc. Those who have read the Collected Works of Chesterton know that his “stealth evangelization” depended very much on attacking the “heretics” and their sacred cows, with Darwin, evolution, scientism and pseudo-science being at the centre of Chesterton’s attack. One can find such often surprising and seemingly unrelated puns or comments attacking Darwin or evolution or modern science and technology in many of his works, see a few links below. The whole point of Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man is an attack on the evolutionary theory and pseudo-science of H. G. Wells and those who adopted such a worldview, and it was The Everlasting Man that had such an influence on people like C.S. Lewis or historian William Thomas Walsh.
Chesterton was not scientifically trained, but he was not afraid to attack pseudo-science that masqueraded as science, be it in psychology, but even in hard-core science, in biology, physics or mathematics, and he was not afraid to criticize the misuse of technology. He criticized those who perverted Einstein, and he was not afraid to criticize Darwinian Natural Selection. (See Myths and Metaphors.)
The New Evangelization and the new evangelists better ponder this line of attack of Chesterton, because it may be of more importance than the traditional evangelization which has so far has been failing.
Often it is good to give the whole or fuller quote, and as Chesterton knew one must attack the roots rather than merely trying to to lop off the flower. Chesterton knew that it was about defending the “Nature” itself against all the modern sciences that pervert the nature of Nature, and about attacking the pride of the modern heretic, which is materialistic science and technology:
“The roots of the new heresy, God knows, are as deep as nature itself, whose flower is the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye and the pride of life. …”
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/Myths_and_Metaphors.html
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/On_Darwinism_and_Mystery.txt
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/Doubts_About_Darwinism.html
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/American_Fundamentalists.html
etc.
July 20th, 2012 | 1:47 pm
There are many Catholics who attend Mass on Sunday but that’s it – they don’t bother to read the diocesan paper when it arrives in the mail, or check out Catholic news outlets, or subscribe to Catholic publications or read their online versions. If the key moral issues aren’t mentioned from the pulpit, these Catholics either don’t learn about the Catholic position on them at all, or, if they do, it is from their friends who offer them their interpretation of what the Catholic news has been saying about these issues, which was, depending on the outlet, either an objective, honest report or a “spun” version of the Church’s position. This second hand and often faulty version of the Catholic position on key moral issues, along with the secular news outlets’ position on those issues, is pretty much all millions of Catholics have to go by, as they never hear about these issues directly from the pulpit. If they even know of Cardinal Dolan and Archbishop Charles Chaput, it is still very unlikely that they have the slightest idea what their thoughts are on key moral issues.
They only hope these people have to get solid information on key moral issues is from the pulpit, but the message from the pulpit is silent regarding them. This has been going on for so long, and catechesis was so poor for so long, that Catholic Churches on Sunday contain many, many people with a pretty much secular mindset. Never in God’s providence has the evangelization of millions been made so easy — they show up by the millions at Catholic Churches around the country every Sunday waiting to be challenged by the hard sayings in the Gospel and thrilled by its good news.
The problem is that the Gospel, even though the word means “good news,” actually contains many hard sayings that don’t sound at all like “good news” at first to many people. It is just not the Gospel without both these hard sayings and the good news. Without preaching on the hard sayings it becomes a lame “God is nice so you be nice” message. Without preaching the good news it becomes harsh and downright frightening. When both are boldly preached it becomes the Word of God with divine power to change hearts and minds. Millions of Catholics haven’t ever been challenged by the hard sayings in the Gospel, which is to say the Gospel has never been preached to them, only read to them, which is not the same. That is why a homily has its place in the liturgy.
If Father assumes everybody read about those hard, contentious Catholic teachings that are in direct conflict with the world’s thinking in the diocesan paper or some other Catholic news outlet, so he doesn’t have to preach on them from the pulpit, Father is dead wrong. And even if everybody had read about them, that is NOT the same as having the Gospel passages associated with those issues preached to them in terms of those issues. Father’s failure to preach on those hard sayings in terms of key moral issues is a failure to preach the Gospel. It is not the Gospel without both the hard sayings and the good news.
July 20th, 2012 | 4:12 pm
harry,
The problem is not that the Catholic morality is not being taught, from the pulpit, in Sunday schools, in many Christian magazines, on the internet, etc. It is taught where I live and I think it is pretty much everywhere else in North America. It is also not so much that the laity doesn’t care — most Catholics do care, but they are confused, tired and dispirited fighting the loosing battles on moral issues against the pervasive culture of death.
The problem, as I stated above, is that the root causes are not understood by the Church leaders and by the bishops — they and every honest Catholic should dig deep into Chesterton to understand what is going on and how to fight it. Chesterton is our best ally in this fight, I would say our only chance to make this new evangelization meaningful and effective.
July 20th, 2012 | 4:13 pm
Labarum,
Clearly, you are not familiar with Chesterton’s writings — he was one the smartest and the most consistent thinkers who ever lived, deeper and more profound then all the other Christian apologists, including C.S. Lewis or Ravi Zacharias. If you had bothered to google the quote, (such as here http://americanchestertonsociety.blogspot.ca/2010/03/next-great-heresy-quote.html) you might have understood what Chesterton was talking about.
Also, you are obviously not familiar with socialist or communist totalitarian systems – they had or still have double standard of morality, one for the workers (TV, movies, literature, magazines etc. were censored, drugs were not allowed), the other for the high ranking Party members. The privileged had their private clubs and access to smut, screening banned movies that the workers never had a change to see, etc. The masses and the workers had to be kept in line and productive, being imposed on by the official sham morality presumably leading to the workers’ paradise promised by Marx, Stalin, Mao, Castro, etc.
Oh, by the way, Marx and the communist totalitarians too were very fond of Darwin and evolution — Marx even offered to write a Preface to Darwin’s Origin of Species!
July 20th, 2012 | 6:21 pm
[...] Chesterton and the Great Heresy of Our Time (First Things) In an interview with Vatican Radio, Father Ian Boyd, President of the G.K. Chesterton Institute for Faith and Culture, explained why Chesterton’s writings are more powerful now than when he published them: “What strikes me most of all in reading Chesterton is that his real audience is today’s audience. When he wrote, the things he described must have seemed fantastic to his contemporaries, but we live in a time when we’ve seen his prophecies fulfilled. I think really Chesterton therefore is a writer, a journalist, who speaks it chiefly to us. I was thinking for example of a comment he made a long time ago, when he said that the next great heresy is going to be an attack on morality, and especially on sexual morality. He said not to be so afraid of the Russians and the Bolsheviks. He said, ‘The madness of tomorrow is far more in Manhattan than in Moscow.’” [...]
July 20th, 2012 | 7:02 pm
Thanks to everyone for their comments.
With regard to the radical evil of totalitarianism, Father Boyd never said anyone should “prefer the morality of Russia, China or Noth Korea”–that would be absurd to anyone who values human dignity, freedom, human rights and faith. Of course we should emphatically oppose totalitarianism by all moral and just means.
The point of Father Boyd’s comment, conveying Chesterton’s thinking, was not to diminish or relativize the appalling evil of totalitarianism (or suggest we should lessen our fight against it), but to point out that, precisely because Western-style consumerism is far more humane and tolerant, people are more susceptible to its destructive enticements when they do arise.
Totalitarianism is obviously and blatantly evil; damaging policies within open, democratic and pluralistic societies are much more subtle, but can have devestating consequences for Judeo-Christian principles if they are not recognized and resisted: this was among Chesterton’s many profound insights, which are certainly applicable to our time, and consistent with the teachings of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
July 22nd, 2012 | 6:09 am
Chesterton is a great resource for our time, and a joy to read. He is correct in critiquing materialism, which some of the immoderately zealous advocates of Darwin are promoting.
Yet while Christians should oppose materialism, we need not fear natural selection or Darwinism. These are compatible with both materialism and Christian metaphysics. The Church in recent years has basically gotten it right on this issue, embracing the truths of evolutionary science while rejecting materialism, determinism, and other metaphysical errors that some Darwinists unfortunately promote.
Some of the particulars about multilevel selection vs. gene-centered selection, the neutral theory of molecular evolution, the group selection controversy, eusociality, the role of epigenetics remain to be ironed out. Christians and other religious people should take the time to learn about these debates, thereby gaining more appreciation for the beauty and complexity of Creation.
July 23rd, 2012 | 5:20 am
“Oh, by the way, Marx and the communist totalitarians too were very fond of Darwin and evolution — Marx even offered to write a Preface to Darwin’s Origin of Species!”
Only half true. Marx — along with many other intellectuals in England and elsewhere at the time who had nothing to do with socialism — found Darwin’s case compelling for the simple reason that it’s true.
On the other hand, you would be wrong to suggest that, for instance, Stalin was fond of Darwinian evolution. Stalin’s government infamously promoted the crank pseudo-science of Lysenkoism as an alternative to Darwinian evolution by natural selection.
July 23rd, 2012 | 6:51 am
Owen McNally
One recalls Bl Joh Henry Newman’s 1863 note, “There is as much want of simplicity in the idea of the creation of distinct species as in those of the creation [of] trees in full growth (whose seed [is] in themselves) or of rocks with fossils in them. I mean that it is as strange that monkeys should be so like men, with no historical connexion between them, as that there should be, or the notion that there was no history or course of facts by which fossil bones got into rocks. … I will either go the whole hog with Darwin, or, dispensing with time and history altogether, hold, not only the theory of distinct species, but that also of the creation of the fossil-bearing rocks”
He also wrote to Pusey, ” “Mr. Darwin’s theory need not be atheistical, be it true or not; it may simply be suggesting a larger idea of Divine Prescience and Skill.”
It was Evangelical Protestants, with their theory of Scriptura Sola, who were predisposed to a literal interpretation of scripture. Catholics and Tractarians were far more interested in the mystical, allegorical or typical sense of the OT.
July 23rd, 2012 | 3:22 pm
Re: That it is supposedly only half true that Marx offered to write a Preface to Darwin’s Origin…
Mark,
I have it from other sources, but here is what the British Socialists are saying:
“In Marx’s initial enthusiastic reading of The Origin of Species he had written to both Engels (19 December 1860) and Lassalle (16 January 1861) that it “contains the natural-history foundation of our viewpoint” and that “it provides a basis in natural science for the historical class struggle.” … It is unlikely that in the 18 months separating what he wrote in the famous 1859 Preface …”
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2010/no-1272-august-2010/marx-and-ideology-darwin
I can understand why the British Socialists are trying to dissociate Marx and Darwin, but I know that the hardcore Eastern Bloc marxists, ideologues and philosophers were very fond of Darwin and evolution. Lysenkoism was used mainly for agricultural propaganda, and not to prop up marxist ideology philosophically. If I wanted to be cynical, I could point out that genetically Lysenkoism was partly based on Lamarckism, not unlike some of the modern biologists subscribe to because they know that Darwinism is simply wrong as a scientific theory of biology.
July 23rd, 2012 | 3:51 pm
Owen McNally,
I agree with you that many Catholics ought to learn more about these evolutionary debates and controversies. Unfortunately, there are still many high profile Catholics, like the group of Vatican astronomist Jesuits, who should know better than indiscriminately insist on defending Darwin and Teilhard de Chardin. The 5 day Vatican conference on Darwin in 2009 was a shameful joke.
It is not about “fearing” Darwinian natural selection, rather scientifically it matters whether it is true or false. Many biologists today know that it is simply false or seriously unexplanatory or actually counter-explanatory. (Chesterton said so almost 100 years ago, read his Myths and Metaphors. Notice how he mentioned the “last surviving Darwinians” in 1929. ) That is why an increasing number of high-profile biologists have been quite critical of the original Darwinism, including the pseudo-genetic New Synthesis theory concocted by the British eugenicist “sir” Ronald Fisher in 1930 under the guidance of Darwin’s son Major Leonard Darwin. Biologists are today still searching for some theory or theories that would truthfully explain the mysteries of life.
However, as Chesterton aptly put it in his essay On Darwinism and Mystery. (Notice how Chesterton calls Darwinism “old” biology) :
“It is not my theology, or the old Puritan theology any more than the old Darwinian biology. What remains is mystery–an unfathomed and perhaps unfathomable mystery.”
July 23rd, 2012 | 4:28 pm
Michael PS,
I have nothing against Bl. John H. Newman, in many respects he was a very wise and respectable scholar, but I will rather bet on or go with Chesterton’s insights about Darwin and evolution.
In any case, as your quote “Mr. Darwin’s theory need not be atheistical…” indicates, even Bl. J. H. Newman considered Darwinism atheistical, at least in practical terms. Lately there has been a push in Christian circles to theoretically reconcile Darwin and Christianity or theism, but without any success yet. It all depends on how one understands or misunderstands or gets confused or gets sloppy about the metaphors for “random”, see my reply to the Olde Statistician here, Dec. 20, 2011 at 1:27pm
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2011/12/16/plantinga-on-naturalism-and-evolution/
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