Book Review: The Thing Why I Am a Catholic

I finished this book last week, but it's taken me a while to collect my thoughts. As with any book by Chesterton, there's a lot going on here. One reading, which is all I've really had time for, is rarely enough background to provide a really insightful analysis. Nevertheless, I'll do the best that I can.

First, the layout Chesterton chose for the book is not one that I generally approve of. Rather than a book with a single argument, The Thing is a series of articles connected only by their defense of Catholicism. Without an overarching theme, these articles could be rearranged with little hurt to the integrity of the volume.

With the preliminaries out of the way, The Thing really is typical Chesterton: almost always brilliant but often maddening. As the illustrious Mr. Jas. Brennan recently told me: "He never lets the facts get in the way of an argument." This pithy saying again rings true. Chesterton will undoubtedly always seem a little dated due to his seemingly irrational opposition to evolution. He claims, both in The Thing and in other works, that he has no objections to the theory per se; however, it is abundantly clear that he loves tweaking the nose of the liberal establishment and will do so at every turn, thus his continued opposition. I really could do without "If They Had Believed" as well, the argument Chesteron insists on making there is tendetious at best. Also somewhat maddening is Chesterton's journalistic style of philosophy. Points are often buried with paragraphs, while frequent references to contemporary persons and events often make what are clearly brutal salvos completely incomprehensible. Part of the problem undoubtedly rests in my reading of an ancient version of The Thing; however, the recent edition of Orthodoxy by Ignatius Press did not exactly contain copious footnotes. This lack of textual scholarship is probably a difficulty we will be forced to live with for the near future.

On to the brilliant. Chapter Two, "The Skeptic as Critic," is a devastating attack on the then current literary establishment that is still sorely needed. Chesterton, I think, convincingly shows, that if a critic holds no values absolute, then he ceases to be a critic. I think that we can take Chesterton's argument and apply it to the banes that are post-modernism and multiculturalism. Other worthy chapters include "Is Humanism a Religion?" where Chesterton shows that a lack of first principles mean the doom of Humanism and "The Drift from Domesticity," where Chesterton argues that true freedom lies in the preservation of the family. "The Call to the Barbarians" is also rather worth reading, as Chesterton mocks the absurdity of the Nordic Superman. "The Hat and the Halo," "The Protestant Superstitions," "The Slavery of the Mind," "The Suicide as Optimist," "The Idols of Scotland," "Peace and the Papacy," and "The Spirit of Christmas" are all gems. The astute reader will have realized by now that I have exercised considerable restraint in not quoting the ever-quotable Chesterton; however, this restraint cannot go on forever. First, I'd like to highlight his broadside against those people who insist on taking only what they personally want from the Gospels while demonizing the rest, all the while outside the rubric of organized religion:

If a school of critics were found prepared to pay divine honours to a certain person while doubting whether he was divine, men who took off their hats in his churches while denying that he was present on his altars, who hinted that he was only a religious teacher and then hinted again that he must be served as if he were the only teacher of religion; who are always ready to treat him as a fallible individual in relation to his rivals, and then to invoke him as an infallible authority against his followers, who dismiss every text they choose to think dogmatic and then gush over every text they choose to think amiable, who heckle him with Higher Criticism about three-quarters of what he said and then grovel before a mawkish and unmanly ideal made by misunderstanding the little which is left--if there were a school of critics in this relation to a historical character, we might very well admit that they were not getting to grips with it, but surrounding it with "a halo of false sentiment."

Second, in "The Protestant Superstitions" Chesterton manages to put into exquisite prose the problems I have with practicing Christians who deny the Real Presence in the Eucharist:

The whole point of this last position might be expressed in the line of M. Cammaerts's beautiful little poem about bluebells; le ciel est tombe par terre. Heaven has descended into the world of matter; the supreme spiritual power is now operating by the machinery of matter, dealing miraculously with the bodies and souls of men. It blesses all the five senses; as the senses of the baby are blessed at a Catholic christening. It blesses even material gifts and keepsakes, as with relics or rosaries. It works through water or oil or bread or wine. Now that sort of mystical materialism may please or displease the Dean, or anybody else. But I cannot for the life of me understand why the Dean, or anybody else, does not see that the Incarnation is as much a part of that idea as the Mass; and that the Mass is as much a part of that idea as the Incarnation. A Puritan may think it blasphemous that God should become a wafer. A Moslem thinks it blasphemous that God should become a workman in Galilee. And he is perfectly right, from his point of view; and given his primary principle. But if the Moslem has a principle, the Protestant has only a prejudice. That is, he has only a fragment; a relic; a superstition. If it be profane that the miraculous should descend to the plane of matter, then certainly Catholicism is profane; and Protestantism is profane; and Christianity is profane. Of all human creeds or concepts, in that sense, Christianity is the most utterly profane. But why a man should accept a Creator who was a carpenter, and then worry about holy water, why he should accept a local Protestant tradition that God was born in some particular place mentioned in the Bible, merely because the Bible had been left lying about in England, and then say it is incredible that a blessing should linger on the bones of a saint, why he should accept the first and most stupendous part of the story of Heaven on Earth, and then furiously deny a few small but obvious deductions from it--that is a thing I do not understand; I never could understand; I have come to the conclusion that I shall never understand. I can only attribute it to Superstition.

Finally, I'll leave you with Chesterton's take on Emerson, certainly the best I've ever read:

A Puritan tried to be a Pagan; and succeeded in being a Pagan who hesitated about whether he ought to go and see a girl dancing.

The Thing is definitely worth your time in reading. Chesterton is one of the masters of English prose. Even if you disagree with him philosophically, he is still eminently enjoyable. However, if you are new to Chesterton, I would start with Orthodoxy or The Everlasting Man. These two are his masterworks and best explain him philosophically.