The Red Book of Chinese Martyrs

The Red Book of Chinese Martyrs: Testimonies and Autobiographical Accounts, edited by Gerolamo Fazzini, translated by Michael Miller, with a preface by Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-Kiun, Bishop of Hong Kong, Ignatius Press, 2009.

 

Americans, living under the protections of the First Amendment, often take freedom of religion for granted.  Unfortunately, religious persecution continues to be widespread around the world, and one of the most dangerous places to be a Christian during the mid-twentieth century was communist China.  This is true to a much lesser but still very real extent today­.  Communism is inherently hostile to religion, and often people who live under totalitarian rule turn to religion in order to survive.

 

It is a popular trope in many circles that religion, particularly Christianity, especially Catholicism, is on the decline.  In Europe and other portions of the West, there is indeed a secularist trend, although this may not be nearly so strong as is often believed.  Although Islam, Mormonism, and Scientology are each frequently cited by pundits as the world’s fastest growing religion, most demographers and religious scholars believe that Christianity actually holds that title. Christianity is booming in Africa, and converts are also abundant throughout Asia.  China, in particular, has a substantial Christian population, and this fact is deeply unsettling to the communist government.

 

The horrors of communist totalitarianism and the crippling effects it can have on the human soul have been recorded, often with great power and skill, such as in the great novels of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, or the movie The Killing Fields, but the communist atrocities have not permeated the public attention to the extent that they ought to have.  Many Americans are completely unaware of the horrors of the gulags, and unfortunately much of today’s news coverage of life in China is sanitized for the protection of the Chinese government’s reputation.  Other books that have exposed the terrors committed under Mao, such as Cheng Ming’s Black Clouds Thicken (2006) have been censored from publication in China, and many revelatory books that have been published in the West have not yet been translated into English.  Jean Pasqualini’s Prisoner of Mao (1973) tried to reveal the facts of prison camp life, but the scholarly establishment in France banded together to label the book CIA-backed propaganda, and Paqualini’s experiences were largely dismissed due to the efforts of those who wished to advertise China as “the ‘good face’ of communism.”  

 

The Red Book of Chinese Martyrs is a collection of firsthand accounts by Chinese Catholics, both priests and laypeople, explaining just how desperately the Communists sought to crush the soul of every believer.  During the Cultural Revolution, Mao attempted to render China a completely atheistic nation.  Untold numbers rebelled, and such “counterrevolutionaries” were rounded up and placed into reeducation camps.  Thousands died, many conformed to the dictates of the regime, and others, like the individuals included in this book, fought the system.

 

The stories in this book are political and moral dynamite.  The moral outrage in each memoir is palpable, yet firmly understated.  As Cardinal Zen notes in his introduction, the writers are all committed Catholics, and they firmly believe in forgiving their oppressors.  Cardinal Zen declared at one Mass he celebrated in Rome that, “The color red that I wear expresses the willingness of a cardinal to shed his own blood.  But it is not my blood that has been shed: it is the blood and tears of the many unnamed heroes of both the official and the underground Church who have suffered for being faithful to the Church” (7).

 

Many of the atrocities committed in this work occurred decades ago, but there has been little if any coverage of them.  There are many reasons for this.  Innumerable individuals of character and courage who have endured the persecutions firsthand, and a substantial amount of them have attempted to document their sufferings and indignities.  With so many people who are willing and able to bring these deeply disturbing issues to light, one might reasonably wonder why a Chinese version of Solzhenitsyn has not yet emerged.  There are many reasons for this.  Plenty of survivors have written personal accounts of anti-religious violence and persecution, but most of these accounts have failed to find a publisher in their native country, partially because the government’s fears that undermine its authority in China and abroad, partially because of self-censorship due to fears of reprisals and concern over the safety of loved ones.

 

Many manuscripts were written and then hidden, only brought out years later after political turmoil subsided.  Some entries in this anthology are journal entries written during incarceration in labor camps.  Father Tan Tiande and Father Huang Yongmu’s diary entries are included here.  In some cases, these memoirs are published posthumously, with relatives of the deceased deciding that it is time for their family members’ tribulations to be revealed to the broader public.  Much of the book is composed of the experiences of priests and monks, although some lay Catholics are included.  Gertrude Li Minwen, a Catholic who faced the wrath of the Maoists for her devotion to her faith, had to resort to deceptive tactics in order to bring her story to the West.  She wrote out her experiences in tiny characters on wafer-like paper sheets trimmed into shoe insoles, and the missionary Father Giovanni Carbone tucked the stacked papers into his footwear and escaped with them when he was driven from China in 1952.

 

Cardinal Zen writes: “How many times journalists have asked me: is the Church in China still persecuted today?  It is not easy to answer this question in a short sentence because, as you know, the situation is quite complex.  The Communist regime that was responsible for the sufferings described in this book is still in power; while it has rejected the radical policies of Maoism, it has never asked pardon for the outrages inflicted on believers and on so many other innocent Chinese citizens.  From the political perspective, the ultimate cause of the persecution against the Christians is still very much in effect: the one-party system, which has governed uninterruptedly for almost sixty years without popular mandate or endorsement, without democracy” (14).

 

The experiences in this book are deeply unsettling, but many passages are also inspiring.  The harsh weather conditions in North Chinese prison camps are described by people accustomed to the more clement temperatures of southern China.  Father Francis Tan Tiande describes how he debated a Communist Party official over the existence of God, and at the end of their conversation, the official locked the priest in chains.  Father Joseph Li Chang and his friends had to search for colleagues of theirs who vanished mysteriously, only to wind up with no definite answers.  Punishments in prisons included starvation, solitary confinement in lightless cells, or corporal punishment.  Christians were repeatedly ordered by authorities to put their duties as Chinese citizens above the dictates of their faith, which became a major sticking point between believers and the government.  

 

The accounts of this book are set during a very dark time in China’s past.  Gerolamo Fazzini writes, “Even though disturbing reports continue to surface from time to time– arrests of bishops and priests, severe tensions and restrictions, appointments of illegitimate bishops, heated disputes over church properties– the present situation of the Church in China is not even distantly comparable to the environment reflected in The Red Book of Chinese Martyrs.  Since the early 1980’s a decidedly different climate has emerged” (31). It is easier to be a Christian in China now, and indeed, Christianity is becoming an increasingly powerful force in Chinese life, politics, and culture.

 

Today, there are two main Catholic churches in China.  There is the official, “patriotic” branch of the Church that is sanctioned by the government, which selects bishops and is hostile to the influence of the Vatican.  The second is the underground branch of the Church, which rejects the influence of the communist government and refuses to register its members with the authorities.  The fact that many Christians keep their religious affiliations secret in for safety reasons makes exact statistics hard to determine.

 

Father Angelo Lazzarotto sums up the current state of Catholicism in China, explaining that: “Through the dramatic events ushered in by Communist policies in China, a clear light is shed on the fundamental contradictions that still exist that make it extremely dangerous and precarious for Christian communities to safeguard their faith, especially the Catholic faith.  For the reigning ideology, it remains intolerable that the churches should claim to offer a different and autonomous answer to the fundamental questions of life and death, and thus to the meaning of man and society, an answer that contradicts the “scientific” version of truth devised by Marxism-Leninism and the thought of Mao Zedong.  Here is the key to understanding the persistent uneasiness and the barely concealed repression that the Church still continues to experience today” (32).

 

The Red Book of Chinese Martyrs is crucial to understanding the history of both Catholicism and communism in China.  These brief biographical passages give a human face to the struggle to preserve one’s conscience in spite of a hostile power.  The Red Book of Chinese Martyrs does not quite have the same level of scope and drama as The Gulag Archipelago, but hopefully once more hidden memoirs are released and further scholarship can be performed, a Chinese equivalent of Solzhenitsyn’s masterwork can be written.  In the meantime, The Red Book of Chinese Martyrs has the power to enflame the consciences of its readers and make Westerners realize just how lucky they are to have the right to religious freedom.

 

 

–Chris Chan

The Cambridge Companion to John Henry Newman

The Cambridge Companion to John Henry Newman (Cambridge Companions to Religion), edited by Ian Ker and Terrence Merrigan, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

 

John Henry Newman is one of the most studied, respected, and beloved figures in English Catholic history.  His beatification is imminent, and his life story is legendary, particularly his prominent conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism, and his vast literary contributions to Christian theology and culture.  His work is so extensive and his career so distinguished that he has few peers of similar stature.  As such, a vast scholarship has been build up around his work, and this anthology demonstrates Newman’s considerable intellectual influence.

 

Roderick Strange’s Newman 101: An Introduction to the Life and Philosophy of John Cardinal Newman (reviewed here in March 2010) was carefully crafted as a go-to book for people with little or no knowledge of Newman’s life and work.  If Newman 101 was meant to be the equivalent of a college freshman introductory course, The Cambridge Companion to John Henry Newman is a senior seminar, meant for those with a solid background of the man, his biography, and his major writings; who also wish to gain a better grasp of Newman’s legacy and the behind-the-scenes details of his work.

 

In their introduction, Ker and Merrigan declare that there are multiple reasons why Newman is a critical figure to study for the person who wishes to gain a more comprehensive grasp of Catholic theology.  They write:

 

            “[F]irst, Newman is an excellent point of entry to the history and development of theology since the nineteenth century.  Second, Newman’s work is significant in its own right.  He was a seminal thinker who anticipated modern and postmodern concerns and themes and who explored these in an original fashion.  The ongoing interest in Newman is ample testimony to his contemporary relevance.  And third, in the face of more and more specialized studies of Newman, there is a great need for an accessible, comprehensive and systematic presentation of the major themes in his own work.”

 

There are thirteen essays in this anthology.  Contributors include the editors, Avery Dulles, and several other scholars, many of them priests.  The first essay is an overview of Newman’s life and writings.  This is followed by analyses of Newman’s work regarding the Church Fathers, revelation, faith, justification, development of doctrine, the Church as communion, infallibility, authority in the Church, conscience, theology in the university, and preaching.  The anthology concludes with a summation of the great man’s career, titled “Newman in Retrospect.”

 

One does not need to be familiar with Newman’s writings in order to read The Cambridge Companion to John Henry Newman.  If a reader is completely new to Newman, then the book will serve as a useful overview of his work and major themes.  Comparatively, those who are well-versed in Newman’s oeuvre will find these critiques to be useful tools to better understanding his ideas and goals.

 

With thirteen different writers collaborating on this collection, it is unavoidable that certain details about Newman’s life and career would be overlooked and others repeated frequently.  The first essay is a very brief biography of Newman, so novices to Newman will be grateful for this if they wish to get an overview of his life and career.  However, there are certain gaps (or at least empty spaces) in the biographical narrative, leaving some of the major events of his life (which in turn fueled some of his most famous writings) sketched out in only rough detail.  Thankfully, all of the authors have been careful to provide sufficient biographical details so that no one need feel lost at any point, although many readers may occasionally crave additional details.  

 

The turning point of Newman’s life, his conversion to Catholicism, is described in nearly half of the essays, and intriguingly, each author brings a different perspective to event.  One scholar insists that by converting, Newman did not make much of an intellectual leap from his years as an Anglican.  In contrast, another argues that a Roman Catholic worldview radically altered Newman’s entire intellectual framework.  Likewise, all of the other authors bring a slightly different perspective to Newman’s character, though never in a negative way.  All of the authors treat their subject with deep respect and sincere admiration.  

 

Each of the essays in this volume focuses on a specific theme, one which Newman himself addressed in his major works. One of the more interesting essays centers on “The University and Theology,” by Gerard Loughlin.  This article looks at the contemporary university and the importance of the topics that are taught there.  The author notes that with the exception of universities with religious affiliations, most of today’s institutions of higher learning devote little if any attention to theology.  This is not the place to enter into the debate over academia’s current obsessions and which classics have been jettisoned in favor of trendy new works, and which subcategories of disciplines are in fact acceptable major, but it is important to understand the state of contemporary higher education.  

 

Loughlin references a couple of prominent New Atheists and how they argue that religion has no place in higher education, claiming that only hard, verifiable science should reside within the halls of academia.  They only receive about a page and half of coverage, and then the focus shifts to Newman and his own views on the importance of theology in the mind of the truly educated person, especially as outlined in his classic The Idea of a University.  Granted, the author’s bias is clearly in Newman’s favor, but when Newman is pitted against the New Atheists, it seems as if Newman has brought a machete to a toothpick fight.  

 

Newman stresses more than the importance of developing one’s faith when studying theology.  Contrary to the arguments of religion’s detractors, theology is not based on irrationality and blind adherence to unquestioned dogma.  Theology (at least when studied properly), teaches logic, thorough critical thinking, and requires one to exercise   Indeed, it might justifiably be argued that the scientific method has its origins in the discipline of theology.  

 

This anthology will be a welcome addition to the collection of anyone who wants to find out more about Newman or simply learn about the fundamentals of Catholic doctrine.  Those readers who are studying Newman may find it salutary, when reading one of Newman’s books, to read in conjunction an essay on this volume on a comparative topic.  One of Newman’s greatest legacies may be his continuing ability to shape the minds and souls of his reader decades after his death.

 

–Chris Chan

The Christ of the Creeds & Other Broadcast Messages to the British People during World War II,

The Christ of the Creeds & Other Broadcast Messages to the British People during World War II, by Dorothy L. Sayers, The Dorothy L. Sayers Society, 2008.

 

Dorothy L. Sayers is best known for her detective fiction.  During the 1920’s and 1930’s, Sayers established herself as one of the preeminent mystery writers of the era, rising to prominence by setting rules and standards for fair-play writing, and striving to make the genre “respectable.”  Her primary detective, the aristocratic sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, struck many readers as an unlikely sleuth, but many of the best fictional detectives are improbable investigators.  A monocle-sporting, part-time diplomat who was fond of rare books and fine wines, Lord Peter solved mysteries in eleven novels (a twelfth was started but abandoned), twenty-one short stories, and a series of fictional letters supposedly written by Sayers’s recurring characters, but with nearly twenty years left in her career, Sayers abandoned Lord Peter and turned to a new genre: Christian apologia.

 

From the start of the Second World War onwards, Sayers felt it increasingly difficult to continue writing about the scientific details behind rigor mortis and the physical effects of poisons, and considered it far more important to focus her talents on a subject that is absolutely vital to the wellbeing of society: Christianity.  Sayers wrote extensively in an attempt to explain the essentials of Christianity to a broad audience.  Sayers was a High Church Anglican (also known as an Anglo-Catholic), although her writings tended to be strictly ecumenical in nature, carefully crafted to appeal to Christians of all denominations. 

 

Sayers used various forms of prose in order to relay her messages.  One of the late Lord Peter novels, The Nine Tailors, contains many of the most overtly Christian themes ever to appear in Sayers’ mystery fiction.  Monographs like The Mind of the Maker expounded upon how the Holy Trinity guides the thought and creativity of Christians.  Sayers took particular umbrage to squishy moral relativism and popular shoddy disregard for theological logic, as evidence by her use of titles such as Creed or Chaos?: Why Christians Must Choose Either Dogma of Disaster (Or, Why It Really Does Matter What You Believe). 

 

Playwriting proved to be a particularly enjoyable medium for her.  Her best-known work in that format is a twelve-part series of radio plays on the life of Jesus, titled The Man Born to be King.  Other plays included The Zeal of Thy House, based on the life of architect William of Sens, who had been commissioned to repair a burned portion of Canterbury Cathedral; The Devil to Pay, a retelling of Faust; and The Emperor Constantine, about the crafting of the Nicene Creed. Sayers’s self-proclaimed masterpiece was her translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy.  She completed editions of Helland Purgatory, but her sudden death in 1957 left Paradise to be finished by her goddaughter and colleague Barbara Reynolds.  Sayers also published multiple volumes of critical essays on Dante, and long after her death several collections of her personal letters were released.

 

A substantial portion of Sayers’ work has been left ignored and unpublished (or at least out-of-print) for decades.  Several essays on mystery criticism written during the postwar years have only been collected and reprinted by small specialty presses in recent years. Much of her non-Wimsey mystery fiction and true crime work is currently out-of-print, and old copies of these books have been hard to find for over twenty years.  Her unfinished Lord Peter Wimsey novel, Thrones, Dominations, was completed by Jill Paton Walsh and published in 1998.  Walsh would later publish a largely original novel A Presumption of Death, based on Sayers’ wartime-era Wimsey Papers, in 2002, and a third, “prequel” novel revolving around Lord Peter’s oft-mentioned but never recounted first case, The Attenbury Emeralds, is scheduled to be published in September of 2010.  The Dorothy L. Sayers Society and the American Chesterton Society have also been involved in bringing several of Sayers’ lost works either back into print or helping them to be published for the first time. 

 

One of the Dorothy L. Sayers Society’s most notable efforts to rescue some of her works from obscurity is their publication of The Christ of the Creeds & Other Broadcast Messages to the British People during World War II.  This book is composed of a series of lectures that Sayers gave over the radio during the early years of WWII.  The lectures were meant to boost the spirits and souls of a populace living in the constant threat of war.  In 1940, Sayers declared that “I think it quite likely that these talks will eventually be published in pamphlet form,” and the Dorothy L. Sayers Society wryly observes that in this case, “eventually” wound up meaning sixty-eight years.  

 

These lectures have a number of purposes.  They were meant to educate the people of England about the fundamentals of Christianity.  One might think it odd at first glance that the English of the WWII-era would need to be educated regarding Christianity, but Sayers continually states her incredulity about how poorly catechized the average English Christian was, or how easily it was for educated Christians to fall into heretical beliefs, or to unquestionably accept historically inaccurate assumptions about the history of Christianity, or to concede the arguments of anti-Christians without taking the time to realize the holes in the anti-Christians’ logic, or confront basic errors of fact.  

 

One point that provokes particular umbrage in Sayers’ mind is how self-styled “defenders” of Christianity praise their religion by talking about its charitable work, or its contributions to art and architecture, and speak of airy “spirituality,” but they never talk about the truly important point: God himself.  Sayers is continually frustrated by such behavior, arguing that when Christians act as if they are ashamed of the supernatural aspects of their religion, they undercut any and all arguments that they might make in favor of their religion. Sayers sets herself apart from the would-be evangelists who argue that religious ritual, tradition, and dogma are not relevant, and that Christians only have to BELIEVE– nothing more.  Such an attitude is infuriating to Sayers, who argues that there Christianity is far more than a mere amorphous feeling of faith, it is a worldview, a mentality, a way of life, and a code of behavior.

 

It is important to understand the original format of these lectures and Sayers’ purposes in creating them.  Sayers writes these lectures in a colloquial style, economical with her words but firm in her tone.  She frequently refers to everyday events in order to explain Christian attitudes through metaphors.  For example, in her essay “The Nature of Redemption,” Sayers writes:

 

"One muddle about forgiveness is of the same kind - forgiveness is the restoration of a good relationship, but it doesn't abolish the consequences of the offence, nor is it going back to where we were before the offence was committed. It's got to be a new relationship (in that sense, certainly, "a fresh start') which contains and transmutes the disturbance caused by the offence. If I borrow money from you and squander it, your forgiving the debt doesn't put back the money - that's lost and you bear the loss and so "carry the guilt.” If I get in a rage with you and throw your best teapot out of a window, no amount of forgiveness will unbreak the teapot - all we can aim for is a relationship in which both you and I can bear to sit down and breakfast together out of a shaving mug without feeling uncomfortable and without an ostentatious avoidance of the subject of teapots. The universe can't "break the iron law of cause and effect" - that would mean an irrational universe; but the effects can be so "made good" that the whole process is redeemed - "O felix culpa-." 

 

Fans of Sayers’ mysteries who are unfamiliar with her Christian writings will have no cause to be disconcerted.  Despite the very different subject matter, there are several clear and unambiguous parallels between her work in the two genres.  Both her mysteries and her Christian writings feature clear and forthright logic, both are heavily peppered with literary and historical allusions, and both try to enrich and entertain the reader simultaneously.  Sayers once commented through her literary parallel, Harriet Vane, that she no longer felt comfortable writing mysteries in a world where twisted dictators massacred millions of innocent people.  Mystery fans have good cause to mourn Sayers’ retirement from the mystery genre, but Christians seeking forthright and intelligent arguments in defense of their faith ought to be grateful that Sayers took an interest in explaining Christianity.

 

–Chris Chan

The Well and the Shallows

The Well and the Shallows, by G.K. Chesterton, originally published 1935, reprinted in 2006 by Ignatius Press.

 

The Well and the Shallows was one of the last books Chesterton published before his death, and though Chesterton is clearly upset with the state of the world, he still obviously believes that none of the ills plaguing society are irreparable.  This volume is a collection of short essays that Chesterton had previously published in various newspapers and journals. 

 

Although the essays cover a wide variety of topics, there are several common themes binding them together; ranging from religion to international politics, from institutionalized bigotry to scientific quackery.  One of the most pervasive themes is Chesterton’s belief that several powerful forces threaten to damage or even destroy what is good and just in the world.  Nazism, communism, corporate greed, thoughtless secularism, and several other trends are addressed with a tone that is both wary and rallying.

 

Chesterton opens with a statement that underlines the morality behind his writings, which compels him to flaunt public opinion and attempt to change minds,

            I have had, if I may say so, a very happy and lucky literary life; and have often felt rather the indulgence than the impatience of critics; and it is in a perfectly amiable spirit that I note that it has involved a certain transition or change.  Up to a certain point, I was charitably chaffed for saying what I could not possibly mean; and I was then rather more sharply criticized, when it was discovered that I did really mean it.  Now anybody driven to the defense of what he does really mean must cover all the strategic field of the fight, and must fight at many points which he would not have chosen in fancy, but only in relation to fact.

 

The recent Ignatius Press edition boasts an introduction by Dale Ahlquist, the President of the American Chesterton Society.  Ahlquist argues that this book does a great deal to bolster the contention that Chesterton possessed nearly prophetic powers, due to his amazingly prescient conjectures about ensuing political dangers and social follies.  Ahlquist observes that the heart of The Well and the Shallows is Chesterton’s belief that the Catholic Church manages to be right in regard to social, cultural, theological, and political issues where other ideologies and schools of thought are at best incomplete and at worst horribly misguided.

 

The title metaphors refer to the Catholic Church and the modern world of doubt and trendy theories.  The Catholic Church is the “well,” a deep and life-sustaining source.  Modernity and recent philosophies are the “shallows,” pools that may appear to contain rich and satisfying depths but which in fact only hold scant amounts of anything useful.  Chesterton muses on how so much effort and intellect go into crafting modern philosophies with such paltry returns, writing, “I do not deny that modern doubt, like ancient doubt, asks deep questions; I only deny that it provides gives any deeper answers. I will even concede the questions from what is called modern thought are often really deep, but I must conclude that the answers are often decidedly shallow. And perhaps it is even more important to remark that, while the questions are in a sense eternal, the answers are in every sense ephemeral.”

 

Though a substantial portion of the book is mainly religious in subject, Chesterton spends a lot of time on all sorts of other topics.  Economics and morality are covered in detail in the essay “Reflections on a Rotten Apple,” which Dale Ahlquist dubs one of Chesterton’s finest explanations of Distributism, an economic system devised by Chesterton and his friend Hilaire Belloc based on the encyclicals of the popes.  Sir Thomas More’s becoming a saint (an event that didn’t happen until the 1930’s, centuries after his death) is also discussed.  Politics, both domestic and international, figure increasingly prominently over the course of the book.

 

It is important to put Chesterton’s righteous indignation into historical context.  Though Chesterton’s warnings against Nazism sound prophetic today, it must be remembered that Chesterton was making himself unpopular by voicing the opinions he did.  The public was still sick of war after the First World War (then known as the Great War), and the spirit of appeasement, as well as the intellectually dishonest arguments of certain public figures, were working in tandem in order to help silence opinions like Chesterton’s.    (For a more in-depth look at Chesterton’s prescient thoughts on the upcoming fascist crisis in Europe, along with the socio-political climate that branded Chesterton’s honest warnings as anathema, please read Chesterton on War and Peace, an anthology consisting of Chesterton’s writings on the title subjects over the course of the twentieth century, recently collected and edited by Michael W. Perry).

 

Furthermore, Chesterton uses his pen as a sword in order to attack the pseudoscientific theories that would eventually be used to persecute and murder millions of Jews and other assorted ethnicities.  Eugenics, the belief that certain races were intrinsically superior to others and that certain actions (ranging from sterilization to incarceration) ought to be used in order to allow the propagation of “fit” races and the prevention of the expansion of “unfit” people, was becoming increasingly popular.  Here, Chesterton touches upon several themes that he expounded upon in his book Eugenics and Other Evils, especially just how dangerous it is to believe that certain types of people have no right to exist.

 

In a society that praises moral relativism and where believing one’s religion to be the only true one is dismissed as tacky, Chesterton declares that, “It may be incredible that one creed is the truth and the others are relatively false. At the same time, it is not only incredible, but intolerable, to believe that there is no truth in or out of the creeds, and all are equally false. For then nobody can ever set anything right, if everybody is equally wrong.”  Chesterton’s work is always directed by an unshakeable moral compass.

 

The essays in this volume are mostly quite short, so readers who are looking for easy and salutary reading will have much to delight them in this volume.  Even the most harried reader has the time to fit at least one of Chesterton’s little pearls into a busy day.  It is fortunate that the recent Ignatius Press edition contains several annotations, because as usual, Chesterton refers to several then-current events that will completely elude the average reader.  This makes the book not only an outstanding commentary on religion, but also a unique history of the intellectual, social, and political climate of pre-WWII England.

 

 

­–Chris Chan