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.

Hear Chesterton Talk!

This wonderful Youtube video contains clips from four speeeches, including a lengthy recording of a speech he made in Canada at a luncheon honouring Rudyard Kipling. One interesting aspect of this speech is that you can hear Chesterton laughing at his own jokes.

It seems to me that everybody in the 1930's spoke in exactly the same voice, but doubtless that's the same phenomenon as Westerners thinking that all Chinese people look the same.

Father Brown on TV

I have yet to see the new BBC TV series of the Father Brown mysteries. To be honest, I am not at all a fan of detective stories-- even Chesterton's detective stories. If Sherlock Holmes was the only literary detective in existence, I think the world would be a better place. But that's me being a curmudgeon, I suppose.

I've heard they are very gentle, which is good. We need some gentleness on TV!

Apparently they have been updated to the 1950's, which is rather bizarre. Why the 1950's? Why not go the whole hog and update them to the modern world?

I do, however, think Mark Williams is an excellent choice to play Father Brown.

In any case, I hope to force myself to watch catch an episode or two at some point in the future.

Apologies for the lack of blogging recently. I have been rather focused on my other site, Irish Papist.

Apologies also for the long hiatus since our last meeting. We actually had an exciting speaker lined up for a meeting in January, but this and that intervened and it fell through in the end. Hopefully we will have one soon, possibly in early March.

Chesterton on Fireworks

Fireworks are of the nature of many other human rites; for fire is the essence of nearly all ritual. To burn something, to make a blaze, is one of the most natural outcomes of strong conviction of any sort. Faith exhibits itself in works, and above all in fireworks. To set fire to a thing is perfectly right, especially when we are celebrating some great principle; but do not set fire to the other man; the other man seldom burns well.

From the Illustrated London News, November 25 1905