Odd, I was just thinking about Chesterton last night because Eamon quoted him.
I didn't want to be antagonistic but I don't like Chesterton. I find him smug. The tone of his writing with its condescending, needling rhythm and incessant twee jokes drives me crazy. And yes, he was probably a left-wing infiltrator. He was greatly in favor of the French Revolution -- shouldn't that be cause for automatic excommunication? -- and democracy. How can you be AGAINST unrestrained capitalism and FOR the left-wing ʝʊdɛօ-Masonic democracies that spawned it? You see, this is the 20th century for you, lies within lies within lies.
I do not know enough about distributism to comment effectively about it. From what I understand it is saying that each man should own his own property and it is supposed to be "medieval." The emphasis on ownership protects Chesterton from being accused of communism, which he sometimes appears to skirt dangerously close to. But the Middle Ages were feudal. Yes, lords allowed the peasants to own their land, but there were still lords and still peasants, while Chesterton seems to promote a weird English-romantic agrarian pseudo-Catholic farm with everyone brought down to the same level. It's like utopianism with convents instead of casual sex.
He is also one of those who tries to make Christ sound like a Che Guevara figure, saying He spoke of the evils of wealth with "savage monotony." What a nonsensical, pseudo-clever phrase. It was neither savage nor monotonous -- He simply told a young man of high spiritual virtue that if he wanted to improve himself even further, he should sell his property.
Chesterton made out the evil of money to be the CENTER of Christ's message. But it was not. The CENTER of Christ's message is "Love God with your whole mind and whole heart."
Saying "Money is the root of all evil" does not mean those who have money will necessarily succuмb to the vices it tends to bring in its train, and history has furnished us with numerous examples of that. Was not St. Aloysius of a wealthy family, yet the purest of pure youths? How about St. Louis IX, a detestable monarch, bleargh! There are many, many less saintly Catholics throughout history, such as in the Austrian royal family, who lived good Catholic lives without being dirt-poor, even if they did not achieve the perfection of St. Louis IX or St. Aloysius.
Christ said "Blessed are the poor IN SPIRIT." In spirit, you see, as opposed to fact. It is especially obnoxious that a rather worldly and gluttonous man like Chesterton would make himself the apostle of poverty.
What is this absolute rot?
If the French democracy
actually desired every detail of the mediaeval monarchy, they could have
it. I do not think they will or should, but they could. If another
Dauphin were actually crowned at Rheims; if another Joan of Arc actually
bore a miraculous banner before him; if mediaeval swords shook and.
blazed in every gauntlet; if the golden lilies glowed from every tapestry;
if this were really proved to be the will of France and the purpose of
Providence--such a scene would still be the lasting and final
justification of the French Revolution.
For no such scene could conceivably have happened under Louis XVI.
This is again nonsensical, despite the attempt at cleverness so endemic to the English.
( 1 ) There was no need for a counter-revolutionary battle to restore the monarchy at the time of Louis XVI because he already was a Catholic monarch.
( 2 ) If he's saying the French Revolution will ultimately restore us to greater purity, that's like saying we should thank the Arians because without them Athanasius would never have triumphed, or the Protestants because without them Trent could never have happened. Except Louis XVI was neither an Arian nor Protestant. He was just another flawed Catholic king. Maybe too young to be even called flawed. How does anyone who calls himself Catholic justify chopping the King's head off and handing over the economy to Freemasons and Jєωs, and the worst, most ambitious and unscrupulous, scuм of society who lick their diseased feet to get ahead? This resulted in a government of mobsters and we have been living in it for hundreds of years now.
Hie thee hither from my sight, Chesterton. You have not endeared yourself to Raoul76.