Dale Ahlquist, Author at Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The Society of G.K. Chesterton

Dale Ahlquist

One of the most respected G.K. Chesterton scholars in the world, Dale Ahlquist is President of the American Chesterton Society, and publisher of its flagship publication, GILBERT. Dale is also the creator and host of the popular EWTN series The Apostle of Common Sense, and he is the author of three books on Chesterton including G.K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense, Common Sense 101: Lessons from G.K. Chesterton and The Complete Thinker. His books deliver Chestertonian perspectives on such topics as faith, education, love, and marriage, and unpack the wisdom of Chesterton to explain why modern man has lost his ability to think clearly. He has also edited eight books of Chesterton’s writings.

Unnatural Ignorance

Nobody realizes (or anyhow admits) that our mechanical civilization is on the verge of the abyss. (G.K.’s Weekly, Jan. 7, 1928)  A friend of mine asked ChatGPT to write an essay listing the villains from G.K. Chesterton’s novels. I’m not sure why he thought this was an exercise worth undertaking, but in any case, he …

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Nothing to Shout About

We are nearly a quarter of the way into the 21st century. It might be a little too early to sum it up. But G.K. Chesterton was already trying to sum the 20th century when he was only a third of the way into it. And he found it no easy task, not because of …

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Soaring Higher

“Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.” It is one of G.K. Chesterton’s best lines. A perfect quotation: humorous and serious, light and profound, commanding the language to serve the idea, with the added and unlikely device of a pun. A masterpiece in one sentence. But what does it mean? As some of …

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Lecture 118: Tyranny

Essays from The Daily News, October, 1910 – December, 1911 

Woman Who Was Chesterton

[mp_row] [mp_span col=”8″] [mp_row_inner] [mp_span_inner col=”12″] [mp_heading margin=”none,none,none,none”] The life of Frances Chesterton, wife of English author G.K. Chesterton. [/mp_heading] [/mp_span_inner] [/mp_row_inner] [mp_row_inner] [mp_span_inner col=”12″] [mp_code margin=”15,none,none,none”] In The Woman Who Was Chesterton, Nancy Carpentier Brown combs through the fascinating life of Frances Chesterton, wife of the famous English author G.K. Chesterton. The first biography of …

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Meet the Staff

Meet the Staff Dale Ahlquist | President A renowned G.K. Chesterton scholar and speaker, Dale Ahlquist is the host of EWTN’s The Apostle of Common Sense. He is the author of G.K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense, Common Sense 101: Lessons from G.K. Chesterton, The Complete Thinker, and All Roads: Roamin’ Catholic Apologetics. Dale is a regular columnist …

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The Return of Father Brown

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The Hound of Distributism

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ACS Books

[mp_row] [mp_span col=”12″] [mp_heading margin=”none,none,none,none”] ACS BOOKS [/mp_heading] [/mp_span] [/mp_row] [mp_row] [mp_span col=”12″] [mp_row_inner] [mp_span_inner col=”12″ classes=” motopress-space”] [mp_space margin=”none,none,none,none”] [/mp_span_inner] [/mp_row_inner] [mp_row_inner] [mp_span_inner col=”6″] [mp_text margin=”none,none,none,none”] ACS Books is the publishing division of The American Chesterton Society. Our objective is to print books grounded in the tradition of the English writer, G.K. Chesterton with a broad scope covering …

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Join

The American Chesterton Society (ACS) works tirelessly to promote the writings and ideas of G.K. Chesterton. We have operated on the simple principle that exposing Chesterton to as many people as possible in as many ways as possible will contribute to a renewal of culture.

The Catechism of Hockey

[mp_row] [mp_span col=”8″] [mp_row_inner] [mp_span_inner col=”12″] [mp_heading margin=”none,none,none,none”] The Catechism of Hockey [/mp_heading] [/mp_span_inner] [/mp_row_inner] [mp_row_inner] [mp_span_inner col=”12″] [mp_code margin=”15,none,none,none”] Why does hockey have so many rules? Do we still need to have penalty boxes? Can’t we get rid of offside? And why is practice so important? What’s the big deal with the Commissioner? And …

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All Roads

[mp_row] [mp_span col=”4″] [mp_row_inner] [mp_span_inner col=”12″] [mp_code margin=”none,none,20,none”] [add_to_cart id=”13021″] [/mp_code] [/mp_span_inner] [/mp_row_inner] [mp_row_inner] [mp_span_inner col=”12″] [mp_heading margin=”none,none,none,none”] About the Author [/mp_heading] [/mp_span_inner] [/mp_row_inner] [mp_row_inner] [mp_span_inner col=”12″] [mp_code margin=”10,none,none,none”]           Dale Ahlquist is president of the American Chesterton Society, creator and host of the popular EWTN series, The Apostle of Common Sense and …

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Jousting with the Devil

[mp_row] [mp_span col=”9″] [mp_row_inner] [mp_span_inner col=”12″] [mp_heading margin=”none,none,none,none”] G.K. Chesterton believed in the Devil before he believed in God. [/mp_heading] [/mp_span_inner] [/mp_row_inner] [mp_row_inner] [mp_span_inner col=”12″] [mp_code margin=”15,none,none,none”] In this follow-up to his earlier book The Tumbler of God: Chesterton as Mystic, Fr. Robert Wild explores G.K. Chesterton’s fascinating duel with Satan, both on paper and in his …

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Was G.K. Chesterton Anti-Semitic?

QUESTION: Is there any truth to the accusation that G.K. Chesterton was anti-Semitic? ANSWER: For those of us who love Chesterton, we are always distressed to see him falsely accused of something vile. But we have gotten a little tired of the charge of anti-Semitism. He has been absolved of that charge too many times for …

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Detective Stories

It strikes some readers as strange that Chesterton, a highly respected literary critic, could take seriously the lowly detective story. But he did take it seriously.

Pacifism

“The horror of war,” Chesterton wrote, “is the sentiment of a Christian and even of a saint.”

Pride

Chesterton wrote that if he had just one sermon to preach, it would be a sermon against the sin of pride.

Career Women

It was quite clear to Chesterton that having a job might make a woman independent of husbands and families, but it also made them dependent on employers, dependent on wage-earning, and servants to a business as most men already were.

Hudge and Gudge

Hudge and Gudge, Big Government and Big Business (and sometimes Sludge–Big Science) overstep their bounds and interfere with the average family, whom Chesterton calls the Jones family.

Crime and Punishment

If heredity and environment account for all crimes, Chesterton argued, then law enforcement would become focused on certain types of people (perhaps the poor) and in certain neighborhoods (perhaps the slums). Chesterton was opposed to such views.

The Common Man

Chesterton called plain folks “the million masks of God” and praised them for their common sense, common decency, and their humble institutions: hearth and home, the family, the church, and the pub.

The Medical Mistake

Each politician has a portfolio of solutions to major problems as if he were a physician with a black bag full of pills.

Scientism

If there is a spiritual presence in the material world, physical science will not discover it; and if we discover it, physical science will have no idea of what it means.

Scientific Determinism

Chesterton argues against the theory of scientific determinism: that a man’s life is determined for him by factors beyond his control, be they the environment, heredity, or a host of other external forces that play upon him.

Puritanism

Puritans argue against the goodness of creation, finding the source of evil in material things of pleasure (as tobacco, alcohol, art, and so on) rather than in the disordered human will to misuse the good things nature affords us.

The Family

Liberty, Chesterton argued, is merely the right to choose between one set of limitations and another. It is limitations, he wrote, that create “all the poetry and variety of life.”

The Deadly Sins

Unlike the pleasure-seeking hedonists, Chesterton believed in the reality of sin. Unlike the prohibition-minded Puritans, he believed in enjoying God’s pleasures to the full.

The Cult of Success

Chesterton urges people to judge the world and themselves not by the way things are, but by the way they ought to be.

Consumerism

Chesterton reminds us that the end purpose of work is a product, not a wage, and that all the exchanges in which people exploit one another, both socially and financially, are also opportunities for people to dignify one another.

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