Gilbert Featured Articles

As this year marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of America, it provides occasion and opportunity to reflect on how the thing has been getting along—to render up the nation’s report card, as it were. George Washington, in his first inaugural address, reflected on the prospects of the new-born country with sober foresight, setting […]

Guys of a certain vintage have a favorite bragging rights contest. It begins with, “We had it really bad when I was young,” followed by gritty, liberally embellished details of some near apocalypse in early life. The finishing touch is a smug, dismissive comment about the weak-pulse and sedentary lives of “young people these days.”

Zach Summers is Headmaster of Chesterton Academy of St. Margaret Clitherow in Knoxville, Tennessee. Even more difficult than opening a classical Catholic school in East Tennessee is opening a Chesterton Academy, for the mere reason that no one here knows who G.K. Chesterton is. The Appalachians are full of committed Catholics, but few have heard

Next year, the United States will celebrate its Semiquincentennial, or 250th anniversary. Per Wikipedia, other names under which this occasion is being heralded include “Bisesquicentennial,” “Sestercentennial,” “Quarter Millennium,” and—inspired, no doubt, by the advertising and marketing fads of late capitalism—the banal “America250,” which sounds more like a software suite than a memorial. The date of

You may know Jack. Jack’s a fairly typical American male in his late 30s – a bit out of alignment at the waistline and in a few other respects. A majority of his muscles retired from active service 20 years ago after he played his last high school football game, and his weakness for cheeseburgers

One of the signs that a creative genius has made a lasting impact on culture is when his or her name enters the lexicon itself. This truth was brought home to me recently with the death of celebrated filmmaker David Lynch. In the days following, much ink was spilled on the word “Lynchian.” Whether one

(Warning: Spoilers for “The Eye of Apollo” follow.) In the first nine stories in The Innocence of Father Brown, the priest discussed reason, redemption, pride, humility, and the presence of evil. In “The Eye of Apollo,” Father Brown sermonizes on a form of neopaganism and the arrogance of mind cure theories. As the narrative opens,

In my 26 years, I have an admission that might surprise fellow bibliophiles: I tend to not enjoy re-reading books. Although I occasionally notice new insights the second time around, the familiarity of the plot in fiction or the arguments in non-fiction generally dampens the experience for me. Perhaps my perspective will shift with time,

I was recently reminded of an old joke about education. According to the joke, there are three great reasons to be a teacher: June, July, and August. Now, I haven’t heard this joke among Chesterton Academy faculty members, but I have heard teachers in other settings make further statements that imply that they actually may

There are more surprises in the past than in the future. That’s because the past keeps filling up and the future is still empty. When we look back, we see a mountain of material to be discovered, contemplated, and learned from. When we look ahead there is only a vast unknown. As G.K. Chesterton says,

We believe there really is a peril. It is not so much in the actions as in the assumptions. It is not so much in the sins for which individual sinners are pilloried, as in the sins for which they are not pilloried; the sins that seem to be no longer regarded as sins at

When G.K. Chesterton celebrated his 100th birthday in 1974, he had been in his grave for nearly forty years. I, too, missed the birthday party, but I was still alive. I was a sophomore in high school, and I was a big fan of C.S. Lewis, something that would lead me to discovering Chesterton a

“I tell you …” he repeated, with wild eyes, “… they were full of men in masks!”  In G.K. Chesterton’s marvelous and mystical novel, The Man Who Was Thursday, there is one scene that is striking for its prophetic power.  The main character, a poet named Gabriel Syme, is recruited by a policeman to become

Writing of what he called “the thrilling romance of orthodoxy,” Chesterton observes: “People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy.”  He goes on to relate how the historic Christian Church was in every age beset

G.K.’s Weekly, Volume 15 March 12, 1932 – September 3, 1932  Normal people generally take normal things for granted; even when they are no longer there. (G.K.’s Weekly, Mar. 19, 1932)  The normal things are not there anymore. But the “new normal” is not normal. We have fallen into a complacent compliance with this abnormal

A beetle may or may not be inferior to a man— the matter awaits demonstration; but if he were inferior by ten thousand fathoms, the fact remains that there is probably a beetle view of things of which a man is entirely ignorant. If he wishes to conceive that point of view, he will scarcely

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

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

“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

Just as G.K. Chesterton says that every city is built over a volcano, it seems that every year is tumultuous. But 2022 somehow managed to end rather quietly, and it was fitting that it ended with the quiet death of the humble, holy man who once led the Catholic Church. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI closed

“Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer.” These were the words with which Giorgia Meloni, the presumptive next Prime Minister of Italy, concluded a portion of a speech that went viral on social media, hours after her political

It’s a sad state of society that in the last 25 years our TVs have gotten thinner while most of us viewers have gotten fatter. Even worse, the empty calories dished up in the programming streaming into homes these days do nothing to nourish the mind. With hundreds of reality shows and Hallmark Christmas movies

We have already become dull and unresponsive even to the marvels made in our own life time. We are no more amazed at telephones than at trains; and no more amazed at trains than at tubs. If the process goes a step further, we shall be no more amazed at television than at telephones. Some

Why is G.K. Chesterton so prophetic? I would meekly suggest that it is because in his own age he never submitted to the Spirit of the Age. He is never swept away by fads and fashions. Rather, he recognizes and ridicules them. He always keeps his eternal perspective. By focusing on the timeless truths, he

It is a morbid and suicidal thing for two great nations to hate each other. But when they do hate each other it is not because their aims are different, but because their aims are alike. G.K. Chesterton, Illustrated London News, May 9, 1908 Of all the things I expected to be writing about right

When you know the story behind the origin of legal contraception and abortion in the 20th century you should properly shudder, if not be repulsed. It was not about sexual liberation. It was not about a woman’s right to choose. It was not about the population bomb. It was about eugenics. The pretty word means

At the risk of sounding like Scrooge, I fully intend to shoot Rudolph and mount his head, red nose and all, over my mantelpiece this holiday season. And I really don’t mind sounding like Scrooge, the immortal Dickens character from “A Christmas Carol.” His complaints are compelling, and we can laugh at them in a

Today – the day I am writing this – I received two letters. The first was from the White House. It was written on behalf of the President of the United States, who was requesting me to resign from the National Board of Education Sciences. It further informed me that if I did not resign

There are two ways of looking at the world. We can focus on the decline of our civilization, the collapse of our institutions that are supposed to represent us, the loss of truth in politics and public discourse, the caprice of tyranny, the assertion of godless philosophies, the unreliability of information, the loss of control

J.R.R. Tolkien and G.K. Chesterton, two giants of the 20th century literary scene, might even be considered as a pair of patron saints for Catholic writers. It is all the more fitting, then, to discover that Tolkien knew Chesterton’s work well—in fact, his daughter Priscilla said he was “steeped in it”—and delighted in it. Chesterton

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink. In June of

I should naturally be inspired to sympathy with the ideal of turning all the rising generation into good citizens, if I could believe that what we call education really was turning them into good citizens, or into any kind of citizens. G.K. Chesterton, New Witness, Dec. 27, 1918 In a recent essay entitled “Taking Advantage

Before I return to profiling some of Chesterton’s most famous debates with prominent figures, I believe that it is important to address a pressing issue that is a growing concern in today’s society. That issue is the phenomenon of people expressing opinions others object to, which leads to an uproar, often on social media, which

In his Illustrated London News column on September 18, 1909 (Oct. 2 American edition), G.K. Chesterton wrote the following: Suppose an Indian said: “I heartily wish India had always been free from white men and all their works. Every system has its sins: and we prefer our own. There would have been dynastic wars; but I prefer

Dear Mr. Chesterton, What’s the difference between a farmer and a financier? Signed, Agros Dear Agros, The farmer does farm; whereas the financier does not finance. As a rule, he only induces farmers and similar people to finance him. Your friend, G.K. Chesterton (G.K.’s Weekly May 14, 1932) — Dear Mr. Chesterton, What’s the difference

If you have read the very brief epistle of St. Jude, as I’m sure you have, you will know that St. Michael had to fight the devil for the body of Moses. I don’t know why I brought this up. Today it is hard to imagine a bishop strolling onto a soundstage and simply talking

I confess that I have had this plan all along and Dale fell for it! Even if my clerihew submissions for the Kansas City Conference did not impress themselves upon the judges as winners, how innocently I could volunteer to write a piece on Newman’s canonization as a way to ensure that my sad clerihew