When he wasn’t ideating Morlocks and alien tripods, H. G. Wells took a moment to snark that “Belloc and Chesterton have surrounded Catholicism with a kind of boozy halo.”
There’s something to that: Along with their other accomplishments as authors, speakers, and defenders of the Faith, Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton invented—or at least perfected in their time—the jolly melding of Church and tavern that celebrated God’s presence in creation from tabernacle to tankard.
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As both a guest and, at times, a host on our radio broadcast, Catholic Answers Live, I have spoken on many different topics over the years. Mostly, I do the “Open Forum Q&A” on Tuesdays, but my favorite hours have been our “Open Forum for Non-Catholics,” when we take calls only from non-Catholics or from people who are in the process of coming into full communion with the Church but who are not yet formally Catholic.
After a recent hour of “Open Forum for Non-Catholics,”...
As a professional Catholic speaker I visit dozens of parishes every year. In addition to giving general talks, I am sometimes asked if I would be willing to speak to the children in the parish school. I always welcome the opportunity, especially when speaking to the lower grades, since I have five young children of my own.
I always ask the schoolchildren for a show of hands if a grownup has ever asked them,“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Invariably, all hands go up....
In 1910, G. K. Chesterton published What’s Wrong With the World, a book of such insight and prescience that it is more timely today than it was a century ago. The book confronted the afflictions of Chesterton's age, which, you will not be surprised to learn, are the afflictions of our own age, only today they are considerably worse. The book contains Chesterton’s quip “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” (My sons love to haul that one out after cutting the grass or...
When Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran stepped onto the balcony and announced that Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina had been elected pope, I remember my mind scrambling to put a face with the name. Only seconds later news came that he was a Jesuit. Panic set in. Words like liberation theology, dissent, and modernism read like a digital road sign across my mind. It wasn’t until I learned that he was a "well-formed" Jesuit that my fears eased.
On the other...
"The more I know, the more nearly is my faith that of the Breton peasant."
