Chesterton on the Irish Times Letters Page

G.K. Chesterton is, of course, one of the most quotable (and quoted) writers ever to have written in the English language, and one often comes across his more famous aphorisms, but a (presumably Catholic) priest who contributed a letter on the abortion debate to today's Irish Times uses a lesser-known quotation, one I don't recognize myself. (Searching for it on the internet leads me to think that the correspondent might have taken it from Maisie Ward's biography). Here is the letter:

Sir, – The abortion Bill before the Oireachtas is a concoction of the Cabinet, embellished with a false sense of urgency.

The unbending parliamentary process applied to the Bill is causing crises in the political parties and in society; crises that could have been avoided had we a more flexible process.

In 1911 GK Chesterton pointed to the flaw in the old British process; the one the Cabinet here is now enforcing. Chesterton wrote,“Our representatives accept designs and desires almost entirely from the Cabinet class above them; and practically not at all from the constituents below them. I say the people does not wield a Parliament which wields a Cabinet. I say the Cabinet bullies a timid Parliament which bullies a bewildered people . . . If you ask me why we have thus lost democracy, I say from two causes (a) the omnipotence of an unelected body, the Cabinet; (b) the Party system, which turns all politics into a game like the Boat Race.”

The British parliament has wisely made its procedures more flexible since 1911, for instance allowing for a free vote on major issues.

The promotion of abortion by the Government, being concerned with life and death, involving the most fundamental of all human decisions, demands that the Irish people be directly consulted in a referendum. Or at least, that their representatives be given a free vote.

The Cabinet’s refusal to do either makes a mockery of its claim to be reforming the political process. – Yours, etc,

Fr MICHAEL G MURPHY,

Uam Var Avenue,

Bishopstown, Cork.

Photos from the Sixth Chesterton Meeting

Apologies for the delay in mentioning it on the blog, but the sixth meeting of the G.K. Chesterton Society of Ireland was held in the Central Catholic Library, Merrion Square, Dublin on Saturday, the sixteenth of March.

As you can see from the photos, the turn-out was modest this time, with only seven people present. But the discussion was wide-ranging and deep. In some ways I think this was actually our best meeting so far!

Invisible in the pictures are are photographer Angelo Bottone (seen here at another event), co-founder of the Society!

Apologies for the lack of activity on the blog, I am rather busy with other things at the moment!

Meeting Deferred

Dear friends and fellow Chestertonians

Apologies, but the Chesterton meeting scheduled for the sixteenth of this month has been deferred to the 23rd. The time is still twelve o'clock and the location is still the Central Catholic Library, 74 Merrion Square, Dublin.

I have been reading Ian Ker's biography of the great man, and I plan for this to be a topic of the meeting, so if you have a copy of can borrow a copy you might browse through it. If you don't, or can't, or don't want to, don't worry about it.

As always, admission is free and all you need is to have an interest in G.K. Chesterton.

See you there, hopefully!

Simon Conway Morris on Chesterton

Who the heck is Simon Conway Morris, I hear you ask? Well, he's a biologist, and a highly respected one. But don't hold that against him, because he's also a Christian and a fan of Chesterton. In fact, he opened his 2005 Boyle Lecture (the Boyle lectures deal with the subject of science and religion) with a Chestertonian quotation:

It was G.K. Chesterton who trenchantly reminded us that, if one was going to preach, then it was more sensible to expend one’s energies on addressing the converted rather than the unconverted. It was the former, after all, that were – and even more so are – in constant danger of missing the point and sliding away from the Faith into some vague sort of syncretistic, gnostic, gobbledegook. Chesterton, as ever, was right and should you think this is just another of his tiresome paradoxes may I urge you to re-read him: his prescience concerning our present situation and, worse, where we are heading is astounding. Yet, it might seem a little odd in a lecture devoted to the ancient and ongoing debate between science and religion to invoke at its onset the name of Chesterton. Well, no, I don’t think so. First, as Stanley Jaki has reminded us, it is over-simplistic to regard Chesterton as anti-science2. What Chesterton regarded with the deepest alarm was not science, but its mis-use.

Not only that, but his potted biography for the occasion concludes with the words: "If undisturbed, he can usually be found reading G.K. Chesterton, with a glass of wine nearby." Sounds like my kind of bloke.

Sixth Meeting of the GK Chesterton Society of Ireland

The sixth meeting of the GK Chesterton Society of Ireland will take place on the sixteenth of March at twelve o'clock, in our usual location of the Central Catholic Library, 74 Merrion Square, Dublin.

Hope to see you there.