This year’s ChestFest, the seventh festival dedicated to work and thought of Gilbert Keith Chesterton, brought together speakers and the audience around the motto “The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man. Among the speakers was fr. Spencer Howe from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Fr. Howe converted from Protestantism to Catholicism; G. K. Chesterton, a lucid English writer whose spirit still guides readers towards the true, the good and the beautiful, played an important role in his conversion and discovery of the priestly vocation. In an interview for Glas Koncila, he spoke about the witness of faith in today’s world, the challenges facing the Church in America and Europe, and best ways to respond to them.
From Chesterton to English martyrs
“Little by little and then suddenly, all at once, I realized that my life was a gift from God and that the only adequate response was to render my life back to God as an offering”, fr. Howe explained. “Priesthood is the shape of the offering the Lord called me to. If this sounds abstract, it is actually very concrete. When I was first in England in 2004, while I was in high school on a pilgrimage to sites related to Catholic history as well as to Chesterton’s life and writings, I had a chance to learn about the English Martyrs who died for the Faith and for the Priesthood and Sacraments. My deepening conversion was very much helped by that pilgrimage, and a real seed for my priestly vocation was the learning about the priest martyrs, visiting with the three priests on our pilgrimage and climbing into a so-called ‘priest hole’ where priests were hidden from the authorities who were seeking to arrest, imprison and torture them. As I emerged from the ‘priest hole’ I had a new sense of my life lived against the backdrop of God’s plan for the entire Church. Chesterton has ever been a help to live my Catholic faith to the full and I like to say that he saved me from being a ‘fallen-away Catholic’!”
Acceptance and gratitude for the givenness of life
Fr. Howe’s lecture ate the 7th ChestFest was entitled „Chesterton as Scrappy Evangelist and Challenges of Catholic Faith Today“, so it was natural to ask what are the most important lessons that Chesterton can teach us today. “So many lessons, if we are humble and attentive enough to learn from him! He wants to take us by the hand and lead us to know the Lord who is Truth, Goodness and Beauty Himself. Chesterton loved God and as an Evangelist, he proclaims the God who is Love. He does it in a scrappy—that is to say, non-systematic way—but at the same time he helps us take an integrated view of the whole and to see reality as it is, not as we would like it to be. Chesterton’s great genius is acceptance and gratitude for the givenness of life. We don’t get to make reality in our own image, for we ourselves are in the image of Another. Yes, this is a limitation—but a glorious one, to be a creature called to communion with our Creator”, fr. Howe said.
Chesterton and so-called Artificial Intelligence; “a culture that pays other to dance”
“I think Chesterton, the great lover of reality, would want us to stay grounded in what is real and tactile. Technology is a tool, but it brings abundant temptations—to hybris, to distraction, to manipulation and dissipation and ultimately to a kind of forgetfulness by relying on something outside of ourselves to take the place of one of our God-given faculties. Technology functions as a caustic solvent of tradition, easily dissolving our connection with the past. Gilbert Keith Chesterton says somewhere that a culture that pays other to dance, sing and put on play for it is a culture in decline. Likewise, we hand over so much of our inalienable dignity to AI by asking it to reference, write, research, summarize and think for us. Chesterton is always urging us to remain human and to recover our human dignity and to fight vigorously against whatever militates against it. He wouldn’t be adamantly against AI, but neither, I think, would he be one to use it. I couldn’t imagine him using a computer as he didn’t use a typewriter. He often wrote by dictation if not by longhand. Why outsource the noblest human faculty to a machine just so that we can supposedly expand our capacity and become stupid in the process! He preferred a human scale of living”, reminded fr. Howe.
Via Pulchritudinis (The Way of Beauty)
In his talk, fr. Howe pointed out that, apart from the way of truth and the way of good, that both lead to God, nowadays people feel most easily attracted to the divine through experience of beauty.“In my pastoral ministry as a parish priest I have found how effective an experience of authentic beauty is to touch hearts and sneak past the defenses that so many have regarding the good and the true. Beauty pierces us and invites us deeper. It helps us know we are made for the infinite and for the Eternal God. Chesterton loved beauty and held it up. He brought beauty into the world through his writing: both his poetry and poetic prose. He was a champion of the Beautiful. His interest in beauty was much more than mere aestheticism which was one of the intellectual and cultural movements of his day that he critiqued and challenged to go further: effectively asking, where does beauty come from? If there is a gift there must be a gift-giver; if there is beauty there must be one who is Source of all beauty.”
Christianity – a counterculture of the present age
Understanding the language of church architecture
“I readily commend letting our church buildings speak for themselves, especially those that are unambiguously built for the worship and glory of God. Chesterton says that when Jesus says, entering Jerusalem, that if his disciples were silent the very stones would cry out to acclaim Him. This is what our beautiful churches do, they cry out to acclaim Christ. St. John Damascene says that if someone asks you about your God, take them into the church to see the icons. Our beautiful churches are a deep affirmation in a visually obsessed culture of the radiant beauty of the invisible God. I often give church tours and never tire of pointing out details made evident in the structure and decoration of the three historic churches where I serve (historic at least by American standards!). We need to let our churches preach and help people understand the language of sacred art and architecture to understand the deep meaning of their every aspect”, fr. Howe stressed.
„Go to the peripheries“
At the end, fr. Howe reflected on what is the meaning of pope Francis’ call to go to the peripheries. “I often reflect about the history of North America that we are very much not at the center of the evangelical mission of the Church, but in a real sense at the far reach of Christ sending the Apostles to the furthest limits of the earth. America has many features and ingredients, but at its core, both the native population as well as the immigrant populations experienced the meaning of being far off, on the frontier. Even with the remarkable growth, unfolding and prosperity of the Catholic Church in America, the heart of the Church has not been the most influential or affluent segment of America, but a creative minority and counterculture. Perhaps one of the worst things to happen to the American Church was to reach the heights of prestige, represented in a certain way with John F. Kennedy’s presidency. The purpose of the Church is to continue the saving mission of Christ. Cultural ascendency and acceptance is often sought after, but not essential or particularly helpful for followers of Jesus. It can be detrimental to chase acceptance as it causes us to forget our Lord’s words, „In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world“ (John 16:33). Christ teaches us by His Incarnation and by His Saving Passion and Death the meaning of our own mission. The Church indeed must always go out of herself and her comfort zone in imitation of the Lord, especially to meet the poverty of our times, especially the spiritual poverty and poverty of meaning and hope so pervasive in the West”, said fr, Howe.
