I have less problems with Chesterton’s Catholicism (I’m a Lutheran, after all) than with his frequent outbreaks of appalling, pig-ignorant anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism? What the heck? I don’t understand that particular tendency in some of our great thinkers. Augustine had it too, as I understand. Was it a cultural attitude they did not examine?
Chesterton’s anti-Semitism should be distinguished from the later, Nazi kind. It had nothing to do with race, but with the idea (common in the politically radical groups the young Chesterton frequented) that the “hidden hand” of the Jews controlled world banking, and that the governments had sold out to them, etc. You hear much the same thing today, and tragically, it’s regaining some respectability. Read “The Man Who Knew Too Much” (if you can find it) and shudder.
– if we want to go easy on him I guess we could point to the fact a lot of what he wrote was done quickly in a rush to meet a deadline. (As he says in his introduction to ‘All things considered’ where he apologizes that so many of the essays are serious… he had no time to make them humorous.
I have less problems with Chesterton’s Catholicism (I’m a Lutheran, after all) than with his frequent outbreaks of appalling, pig-ignorant anti-Semitism.
And yet I love him.
“We have this treasure in earthen vessels.”
Anti-Semitism? What the heck? I don’t understand that particular tendency in some of our great thinkers. Augustine had it too, as I understand. Was it a cultural attitude they did not examine?
Chesterton’s anti-Semitism should be distinguished from the later, Nazi kind. It had nothing to do with race, but with the idea (common in the politically radical groups the young Chesterton frequented) that the “hidden hand” of the Jews controlled world banking, and that the governments had sold out to them, etc. You hear much the same thing today, and tragically, it’s regaining some respectability. Read “The Man Who Knew Too Much” (if you can find it) and shudder.
I’m aghast at times at the outrageous things Chesterton says about those ‘damned calvinists’ but I too forgive him. (He’s so much fun you have to.)
– Along these lines I recommend an essay by James Schall ‘The enemies of the man who had no enemies’
http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/schallj/3.htm#purpose
– scroll down the page a bit.
– if we want to go easy on him I guess we could point to the fact a lot of what he wrote was done quickly in a rush to meet a deadline. (As he says in his introduction to ‘All things considered’ where he apologizes that so many of the essays are serious… he had no time to make them humorous.
– you can find most things C. wrote online at;
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/index.html