The Boozy Apologists

Hitchock's critique has several components, ranging from his discomfort with the celebration of drinking alcohol as somehow a necessary emblem of the faithful Catholic life, to a deeper question about methodology and the level of serious engagement with the core questions of unbelievers.

We are the resurrection people, as modern spiritual teachers never tire of reminding us, to the point where it is no longer appropriate to mourn at funerals and, some would have it, to display crucifixes in our churches. But both dogma and human experience tell us that there can be no resurrection unless there is death first, and in a way that is what I think is lacking in the kind of faith I am here criticizing.

 

It was of course not lacking on the doctrinal level. Chesterton, Belloc, Lewis, and others of their school had much to say about sin and death, reminding modern skeptics precisely of the unavoidable reality of those things. But it seems to me that in practice the faith they displayed to the world was by design relentlessly cheery, just as they fashioned relentlessly cheery public personae for themselves.

 

When Chesterton portrayed evil men, as the master criminal Flambeau, who was converted, or his adversary the detective, who became a criminal, they were never more than pasteboard cutouts. Father Brown's victories over evil are usually facile, as in the famous scene where he unmasks Flambeau as an impostor priest by observing that "You disparaged reason; it's bad theology." Has there never been a Catholic theologian who disparaged reason? Or, whatever theologians might say, have there never been priests who did so? The technique is not merely a way of resolving the plot of the story but a way of once again assuring the reader that through the eyes of faith the world is a tidy and controllable place, its mysteries readily penetrable by healthy common sense.

 

 

Lewis was a powerful theorist of evil, but he chose to portray it primarily in fantasies that, while they teach valuable theological lessons, do not touch directly the concrete, detailed evil in human souls.

 

In my limited experience, manic-depressives are often very devout, for obvious reasons -- they undergo in their daily lives the dialectic of death and resurrection, of despair and salvation. Chesterton appears to have been prone to depression, and Lewis also had his private demons. I do not at all imply that they were deficient as human beings, somehow missing the tragic dimension of life. On the contrary, perhaps the harpies of personal anxiety pursued these men only too relentlessly. If so, they understandably found in their faith an antidote to such things, and they were eager to proclaim to the world the news that indeed there was such an antidote. In the process, however, I think they skewed the faith in certain ways.

Again, commenters take issue with Hitchcock's characterizations, pointing out the personal loss all the writers in question had suffered.

And there is no doubt - no doubt! - that the work of Chesteron and Lewis, in particular, has been so very important in the opening of so many hearts and minds to God.

But is there something missing in their work? Have you ever experienced this? Does Hitchcock have a point..or not?