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
People who run no hospitals and who do nothing to help the world's poor are envious of the Church's works of mercy and aim to persecute her.
Scrooge stated, “Let those poor go to the prisons and the Union workhouses. And if they’d rather die, they had better do it."
GKC won not only a popular following but also the respect and admiration — if not always the agreement — of serious intellectual and literary figures of his time.