Newspaper' Attacks on the Church

New Zealand Tablet, 17 April 1924, Page 27

Newspaper' Attacks on the Church

VIGOROUS REPLY BY G. K. CHESTERTON. 1 \ Mr. G. K. Chesterton dealt with certain newspaper"V attacks on the Catholic Church in delivering his presidential ; . •' address at the Birmingham r Catholic Reunion. - He said f M the fact, obvious even-rto ordinary people, about the Cath- ’ olic Church, was that almost all kinds' of persons’’ in the ' world belonged to it. It was obvious that almost every other ’';. religion or philosophy did' imply more or less some particular ? - social type or some particular association with social life. ‘; - If they took a hundreds stockbrokers, no one would be surprised at a certain minority being Catholics. Similarly with scavengers, crossing-sweepers, or any people doing" what r was called the, lowest offices of society. They could invent ' ■ suggest any kind of occupation or function of life; however : v : extravagant or extraordinary or rare, and it would cause them no particular surprise to learn that a small representation of .the occupation belonged to the Universal Faith. For instance, if they imagined a man whose whole duty in >- life consisted in swallowing knives, they • would probably be slightly surprised to learn that he .also learned to swallow ' ' the Shorter Catechism of the Scottish Church or the Westminster. Confession; but"they would not be in the least surprised to find that he was a Catholic. ’ Or imagine a man whose destiny was to act the hind legs of an elephant;’ they r would be surprised to hear him say that he belonged to ? the respectable Scottish' sect which : was called ' “the Upstanding Glossites.” But there would be nothing extraordinary about his being a Catholic.- They could range over the whole social zoology , of mankind, and there was no kind of person so rare or so curious who, being human, 1 could n&t be a Catholic. Indeed, there was. no type of person whom it would in any particular sense surprise them to find was a Catholic; That being the stupendous fact, it was quite impossible for any kind of address to be delivered to Catholics which would not be a great deal too sectional and 'professional and peculiar to the position of the speaker. The Corner of Journalism; He proposed to draw f ,their attention to one particular corner of the modern world in which he happened to live v the corner of journalism; a dusty and, as some would say a dirty corner. He proposed to say a. few words about ; things that had happened lately in the world of magazines, of books and newspapers, and, generally speaking, in the whole of the intellectual world; or, if they preferred to be ' 'more precise, in the world which was supposed to be intel- * lectual. (Laughter.) The chief thing he desired to note „>• was this: that comparatively recently a change had taken place in the tone and habit of newspapers. That change was that a sudden and violent-outbreak., aghinst the Catholic Church had been permitted in the ordinary press. It. was only sporadic here and there, but when he was young the whole subject was avoided in journalism. ✓ • It was con- ' sidered bad taste to attack anyone else’s religion; indeed, - it was considered to be bad taste to have any religion at all. (Laughter.) There had recently appeared in ordinary journalism a certain patchy, abrupt, but very obvious attack. It had come largely from two or three types and sources ’ ' but the’ point which the speaker wished to insist upon was : that it had appeared, not in fanatical or sectarian papers -1 which were devoted to that object, and which no doubt were - pursuing' their courses, honestly enough; but in the- ordinary press. “The Gloomy Dean.” One example out of many was the case of their dear old friend, “the Gloomy Dean,” who-had been for some time past appearing every week in the . pulpit, not of St. Paul’s, but of the Evening Standard. And nothing had been more notable than ; the manner in which that very distinguished, very learned, and sometimes very brilliant . man, suddenly and completely went mad when he men- , tioned the Catholic Church. The peculiar _ thing about it was that he was allowed to conduct his wild-dervish dancing ' (laughter)for only a short time ago , he would have, been discouraged: from doing so. . . He thought what had happened— put it shortly—jgas this, " that' the Pyotestant and anti-Catholic world had sud- ; : denly wakened up to-find its position outflanked. It was

indeed 1 ;' a curious and interesting ; position. T We were still only a : tiny minority/ in this country,; and the greater part of. our co-religionists were exceedingly, poor. Of course, we knew that all the, world? of religious opinions prided itself since the sixteenth century on what it called .thinking for itself. As time went on, he was convinced that it soon ceased to think' at all. , (Laughter.) ,He - believed that in the beginning it did think, and think hard; but there was a fallacy in the idea that freedom of thought ; led to thinking. 'lt: had ; led, as. a matter of fact, to freedom from thought. " Every Protestant' controversialist; would say: “Look at the *■ awful state of the Catholic countries.” In the-next breath the same critic would refer to Mussolini and Italy and wish well to Ireland, now it was free'.. It was no use making lists of Catholic nation's and, after praising or envying them or fearing. them, to turn round and say “Look at their pitiable and deplorable conditions.” Tho psychological explanation of - these outbursts was the Silent growth of the logical conversion of the people to Catholicism/ and it had taken these critics by surprise. The whole thing could be related to. (]ie psychology of surprise, and he thought those people would -be very .soon much more surprised. They had never really -realised that Catholicism could be and was a powerful thing. Catholic emancipation was, no doubt, due to great and noble men. like Daniel O’Connell; but, paradoxical as it might sound, in so far as the pagan aristocrat accepted it he accepted it because he assumed the Catholic faith was a dying faith. Contempt for the faith produced Catholic emancipation He thought it was not at all impossible that respect for the faith might produce persecution.