A Chestertonian Adrift in an Ideological World
CONFESSIONS OF AN APOSTATE
I have a story to tell you, and I’m afraid it’s rather a personal story; within it, the pronoun “I” will recur with sickening frequency. But you’ll soon see why.
G.K. Chesterton died in 1936. I was a schoolboy at the time, at Douai Abbey in Berkshire, and my headmaster — Dom Ignatius Rice, O.S.B., a great man — had known G.K.C. closely and was bowled over by his death.
A few days later, he summoned me into his presence. “Christopher, I understand that you’re thinking of a scientific career?”
I was: the love of my life was then chemistry.
“Well, I’m asking you to change your plans: I want to lay a charge upon you, a duty, a vocation. The world has quite enough chemists, but it hasn’t got nearly enough good Catholic writers. You write well for your age: I want you to continue Chesterton’s work to the best of your ability. Will you please make that into your career?”
You May Also Enjoy
How can good-hearted people, whose hearts bleed for peace and for poor people, not feel the excruciating pain of the child who is destroyed in the womb?
It's the ordinary things that I'm fighting for: the bond between mother and child; the family; the dignity of the body, which is not "owned" and is more than matter.
To women and men alike, just passing by or going into the clinic, I’d repeat my 22-second message with no nuance. You come quickly to the point. You have to.