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Chesterton scholar speaks on muddle of modern culture

By KARA KOCZUR, Globe staff reporter
(Email Kara)

CARROLL – The first time he read a work of G.K. Chesterton’s, Dale Ahlquist knew he was encountering a writer unlike anyone else he’d ever experienced.

“My first thought was, ‘How did they manage to give me a college degree without having exposed me to this writer?’” Ahlquist said.

Ahlquist, president and co-founder of the American Chesterton Society, host of the EWTN show “G.K. Chesterton: Apostle of Common Sense” and extensive writer on Chesterton, spoke to 155 people Feb. 26 at the Santa Maria Winery on “Matters of Life and Death: Chesterton on the Muddle of Modern Culture.” The evening began with a social hour, followed by dinner and then the talk.

While Chesterton is known for his wit and wisdom, Ahlquist, who is from the Twin Cities, showcased his own wit as well.

“I started reading Chesterton like anybody else, on my honeymoon,” he said, as laughter filled the banquet room. “I was a Baptist, so like any good Baptist, we honeymooned in Rome.”

However, 15 years after being introduced to Chesterton, Ahlquist became a convert to Catholicism, just like Chesterton.

G.K. Chesterton, who was born in 1874 in England and died in 1936, was one of the most prolific writers who ever lived, Ahlquist said. He wrote 5,000 essays, the Father Brown mysteries, “Orthodoxy,” “The Everlasting Man,” biographies on St. Francis and St. Thomas Aquinas, as well as many other books and articles. In fact, Chesterton’s writings are still being tabulated, Ahlquist said.

“Chesterton could actually write two essays at once,” he said. “He could literally write an essay out in longhand and dictate an entirely different essay to his secretary at the same time.”

Those skills came in handy as he was always writing under deadline. There would usually be a messenger standing at the door waiting for his copy, Ahlquist said. And that’s if Chesterton wasn’t writing at a pub, restaurant or bakery, for he loved writing with the most amount of chaos around him.

All his time spent writing meant Chesterton had little time to concentrate on the details of life, Ahlquist said. Those were left to his wife.

“He once hailed a cab to take him to an address that was across the street,” he said.

A popular writer of his day, Chesterton was taught in every English-speaking university in the world, making him required reading during his lifetime, Ahlquist noted. However, following World War II he dropped off the map, but is slowly making a comeback today.

“They’re discovering how timely he is and how he is a master of the epigram, how he can put a complicated idea into just a few words,” he said.

Ahlquist called Chesterton a prophet. Chesterton predicted the next great heresy would be an attack on morality, especially sexual morality. He said men didn’t differ in what they called evil, but in what evils they called excusable. Humans are learning to do many clever things, he once said, but the next thing they’ll have to learn is not to do them.

Chesterton called abortion a “more than usual barbaric form of birth control,” and predicted that what was being done to babies then, would also eventually be done to people at the other end of life.

“He said that euthanasia is essentially the argument that we were going to start to murder people because they were a nuisance to themselves,” Ahlquist said. “But he said it would be a short step to where we murder them because they’re a nuisance to us.”

Chesterton was shocked when he learned Americans could divorce because of “incompatibility.”

“If that’s the case, they should all be divorced because men and women as such, are incompatible,” Ahlquist said, quoting Chesterton. “The whole point of marriage is to work through the incompatibility. Marriage is a duel to the death.”

Chesterton also predicted that wherever there’s animal worship, there will be human sacrifice.

Ahlquist stressed that Chesterton wasn’t a gloomy writer. He was just warning people of what would happen if they didn’t turn around. Chesterton was actually one of the most life-affirming and joyful writers of the modern world, Ahlquist said. He was a writer full of grace and full of gratitude.

“We should always endeavor to wonder at the permanent things, and not at the mere exceptions,” Ahlquist quoted Chesterton. “We should be startled by the sun, and not by the eclipse. We should wonder less at the earthquake, and wonder more at the earth. The supreme adventure is being born. The test of all happiness is gratitude.”

Katherine Dea, 15, of Sacred Heart Church, Templeton, said she enjoyed the evening. She and her family have been Chesterton fans for a while, she added, attending a couple of the Chesterton conferences in Minnesota and watching Ahlquist’s show on EWTN.

Katherine estimates she’s read five to six of Chesterton’s works, with the Father Brown mysteries being her favorite.

“I like how he’s deep and complicated, but simple,” she said.

Chesterton’s ability to take complicated issues and express them in a common sense way is also appreciated by Father Brad Pelzel, diocesan vocations director.

“I’m not a good writer and so when I read [him] I go, ‘Wow, I don’t even know if I could have thought of that, much less written it down,’” he said.

Father Pelzel heard about Dale Ahlquist’s visit to Carroll by chance. He had been in town finalizing some Theology on Tap details and decided to stay an extra day. The priest has been listening to and watching Ahlquist on Catholic Radio and EWTN for a number of years and has read a handful of Chesterton’s books.
Father Pelzel said the evening was entertaining and endearing.

“In person [Ahlquist] comes off the same way as he does on TV: approachable, likeable, knowledgeable, sincere, frankly, in a sense in love with Chesterton,” Father Pelzel said. “But more than that, [he’s in love] with the truth of Catholicism that Chesterton revealed to him.”

Jean Ludwig of Holy Spirit in Carroll invited her friend, Marilyn Setzler, of Carroll St. Lawrence to the talk.

While Ludwig has heard and seen Ahlquist on Catholic Radio and EWTN, this was Setzler’s first exposure to Chesterton.

“I’m curious to learn more,” she said. “It piques my interest.”

The two ladies plan on reading Chesterton, but want to first start with an introduction by Ahlquist in order to get their feet wet.

Ahlquist’s comments about Chesterton being in wonder of everyday things, instead of the extraordinary, particularly stuck out in Ludwig’s mind.

“That’s why people celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary, you know,” she said, “and I always think that every day you don’t kill each other is a good one.”

Those wishing to learn more about Chesterton can visit www. chesterton.org