Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...

Monday 14 June 2010

“The Devil Made Me a Catholic”

The anniversary of GK Chesterton's death.
A little tribute on Universalis (the first, I think, I've ever seen on that for an individual who is not even beatified, though he is sometimes called the "apostle of common sense." Universalis is careful to say "pray FOR him.")
In youth, he went through a crisis of nihilistic pessimism and it was his recovery from this that led him to God and ultimately to conversion. “The Devil made me a Catholic,” he said – meaning that it was the experience of evil and nothingness that convinced him of the goodness and sanity of the world and his creator. His poem “The Ballade of a Suicide” celebrates the salvific value of ordinary things

...He took part in all the major controversies of his age, and was a lifelong adversary and friend of socialists and atheists such as George Bernard Shaw. These controversies were conducted with passion but with unfailing charity: he never sought to defeat his opponents, only to defeat their ideas. He would never cheat to score a point: and his love for the people he fought against is something that all controversialists should imitate, however hard it may be
[Emphasis supplied throughout.]
Wise, wise stance, and wise, wise words, no?
Lord, help me to grow in love in imitation of GKC.

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