Chesterton and the Eastern Church
Posted: October 19th, 2009, 5:12 pm
It is with some misgivings that I post here at all. I feel that people who hold conscious dogmatic beliefs are not terribly welcome here, and that respect for other's beliefs increasingly means not suggesting that they may be wrong; ie, it seems that here doubt is only respected in regards to one's own beliefs.
However, in the hopes that not all serious and dogmatic Catholic and Orthodox posters have fled the boards here, I would like to pose a question specifically to them; most specifically to Catholic posters - whose faith G.K. Chesterton ardently and specifically defended, and that is this: What knowledge did GKC have of the eastern (Orthodox) Church? I have become an Orthodox Chestertonian, and have read perhaps half of GKC's published works (more actual books, not as many journalistic essays as I'd like - the man wrote well over 4,000 essays and close to a hundred books), and despite his enormous knowledge spanning Protestantism, Buddhism, Islam, and atheist/skeptic thought, he shows essentially no knowledge of the Orthodox Church. I have found perhaps three or four vague references (two, I think, in his book on St Thomas Aquinas) to the eastern Church, period.
The result is that Orthodox Christians can essentially claim Chesterton as their own - in nearly everything he says, they may confidently replace the word "Catholic" with the word "Orthodox", and the effect and meaning is the same. (Never mind his broader use of the word "orthodox".) Of course his emphasis is on medieval history, and his intent is Catholic, but it seems pretty clear that his information on Orthodox Christianity is acquired straight from (obviously biased) Catholic sources, and the policy of the Catholic Church regarding the general public seems to have been to maintain silence on the existence of the Orthodox Church.
This is not at all to debate Orthodoxy vs Catholicism per se; I'm only interested in GKC's relation to it. Not to argue, but to learn (maybe someone here really does know something I don't know). It certainly is an anomaly - a serious gap in his enormous knowledge and thought, which I have the greatest respect for (heck, I'm dedicated to reading all of his works and to getting as many as possible translated into Russian, lest anyone think I want to knock a truly great man).
However, in the hopes that not all serious and dogmatic Catholic and Orthodox posters have fled the boards here, I would like to pose a question specifically to them; most specifically to Catholic posters - whose faith G.K. Chesterton ardently and specifically defended, and that is this: What knowledge did GKC have of the eastern (Orthodox) Church? I have become an Orthodox Chestertonian, and have read perhaps half of GKC's published works (more actual books, not as many journalistic essays as I'd like - the man wrote well over 4,000 essays and close to a hundred books), and despite his enormous knowledge spanning Protestantism, Buddhism, Islam, and atheist/skeptic thought, he shows essentially no knowledge of the Orthodox Church. I have found perhaps three or four vague references (two, I think, in his book on St Thomas Aquinas) to the eastern Church, period.
The result is that Orthodox Christians can essentially claim Chesterton as their own - in nearly everything he says, they may confidently replace the word "Catholic" with the word "Orthodox", and the effect and meaning is the same. (Never mind his broader use of the word "orthodox".) Of course his emphasis is on medieval history, and his intent is Catholic, but it seems pretty clear that his information on Orthodox Christianity is acquired straight from (obviously biased) Catholic sources, and the policy of the Catholic Church regarding the general public seems to have been to maintain silence on the existence of the Orthodox Church.
This is not at all to debate Orthodoxy vs Catholicism per se; I'm only interested in GKC's relation to it. Not to argue, but to learn (maybe someone here really does know something I don't know). It certainly is an anomaly - a serious gap in his enormous knowledge and thought, which I have the greatest respect for (heck, I'm dedicated to reading all of his works and to getting as many as possible translated into Russian, lest anyone think I want to knock a truly great man).