de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 0:00 This is Episode 37 of Ethics and Culture Cast from the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 0:17 Welcome to Episode 37 of Ethics and Culture Cast from Notre Dame's de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. I'm Ken Hallenius, the communication specialist at the center. In this episode, we sit down with Dale Ahlquist, president of the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton, and the author of The Apostle of common sense and Common Sense 101. We chat about Chesterton's 1930 visit to Notre Dame, his interdisciplinary approach to writing and the meaning of The Man Who Was Thursday. Let's pop into the Marion Short ethics library for this week's conversation. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 1:06 Dale Ahlquist, thank you very much for coming to be with us. Dale Ahlquist 1:08 A great pleasure, Ken. God bless you. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 1:11 So tell us a bit about yourself. Where are you from? Where did you study those sorts of things? Dale Ahlquist 1:15 Well, I'm from the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. And I did all my studying in Minnesota as well. Of course, most of that studying is reading G.K. Chesterton. I still reside in Minnesota. But I went to Carleton College for my undergraduate and did a master's degree at Hamlin University in St. Paul. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 1:36 Okay, so you don't like traveling far from home except to preach the gospel? Dale Ahlquist 1:41 Exactly. Yeah, I travel when I'm invited to speak somewhere, that's taken me all around the world. So I've been really – and all around the country as well. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 1:48 Wonderful. Yeah. Well, so how did you come to discover G.K. Chesterton? What drew you to him? Dale Ahlquist 1:55 Well, I grew up as a Baptist, evangelical, very devout and certainly not one who was thinking about that I'd be a Catholic lay evangelist one day, you know, on Mother Angelica's EWTN. And that's not why I thought my life was going. But I was a big CS Lewis fan as a result of being an evangelical and CS Lewis is important to evangelicals. He's, he's there guy. Yeah. If CS Lewis said it must be right. You know, there's CS Lewis. There's Billy Graham. Right. And but we don't believe in the Pope, right. Well, I, I was reading a Mere Christianity by CS Lewis. And someone said to me, You like CS Lewis? And I said, Yeah, I love CS Lewis. He said, Well, have you ever read Gk Chesterton, I said, I've never heard of Gk Chesterton. And then he said something that's planted important seed. He said, If you read Gk Chesterton, you won't need to read CS Lewis because all of CS Lewis is in Chesterton, Well, this was a blasphemous remark in my in my regard, but I'll tell you, it stuck with me. And it wasn't till three years later, when I finally did pick up my first Chesterton book, and it was the book that was so influential on CS Lewis it was the everlasting man. That was the book that really shook CS Lewis out of atheism, and, you know, made him say that a young man who's serious about his atheism cannot be too careful about what he reads. So this is a book that changed CS Lewis his life as Okay, that's the book I'm going to read and it's it's a tough first read, but it was one that certainly drew me in and I found a writer unlike any I'd ever encountered before because Chesterton really put it all together in that book. He writes about history, and philosophy and theology and literature and mythology, and art and really, you know, anthropic As well as he hits it, all right, and he puts it all together. And I, I had never encountered anything. So, so broad before I just was used to very narrow theses and, you know, one thought at a time. Yeah. And I realized I was encountering a great mind. And even though I didn't understand probably more than 10% of what I was reading, I certainly understood that this is someone I want to read more of. I can't get enough of this. And I, that began, you know, a great, a great friendship with G.K. Chesterton. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 4:35 His is kind of an interdisciplinary approach to questions, right. I mean, you've hinted at it there. You know, he writes about history, he writes about, you know, current at his time, current controversies, as he might say, you know, and for us as readers now a hundred, one hundred and ten years later, sometimes that can be very difficult because we need the annotations. We don't know these things. These names that he's throwing about things like that. Dale Ahlquist 5:02 Yeah, Chesterton never – Chesterton was primarily a journalist and, and so he he thinks that most of his writing is going to be wrapped around fish the next day. And and his books are written sort of in the same vein of his of his journalism. He's making local references here. He doesn't imagine anyone you know, in in the next county is going to be reading it. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 5:25 Right. And his stories are, or his pieces are going to be surrounded by the stories of which he's commenting on, too, right? Dale Ahlquist 5:30 Right, right. But having said that, you can get past most of those references and completely grasp what he's talking about. You know, they really are just, you know, little pebbles on the road that you have to step to step around to get the main argue because because when he makes his great points, they are universal points and they're just beautifully stated. He's just such a master of the aphorism. Right? That is so quotable. And those great quotations are not marred by local and references that are of time and place at all. So that's where it becomes eternal. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 6:07 Wonderful. Well, now the University of Notre Dame has itself a long history with Chesterton, welcoming him to campus in the fall of 1930 to deliver two lecture series and even giving him an honorary doctorate. Now, I know you've been here while you've been on this visit, you've been doing a bit of research in our Rare Books room and in our archives there at the Hesburgh library. Tell us what you found about you've been kind of learning new things about his visit to campus. Dale Ahlquist 6:35 Yeah, it's actually my it's my third visit here to the campus and my also my third trip to the special collections, as well. And my second trip to the archives. Yeah. And I, I did find some new things, which is just wonderful. I mean, one of the things I found was the uh, when Chesterton gave his very first lecture on campus. He was introduced by President O'Donnell and President O'Donnell said, "This is the greatest Man we've ever had lecture at Notre Dame." I mean, just without any qualifications. "We are so privileged. This is the greatest person we've ever had come and lecture at Notre Dame." Wow. So that was the high praise that they had for Chesterton at the time. Sure. And they, they, they were truly amazed that they were able to get Chesterton to come. He was supposed to come earlier in the year and he was actually ill. He supposed to come in the spring and they were going to give him the honorary doctorate at graduation, right. Yeah. But he was ill. So they had to change his his trip to the fall. And because he came in the fall, he was able to be here for the opening of the football stadium. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 7:39 Of Notre Dame Stadium. Knute Rockne and everything. Unknown Speaker 7:43 And when they introduced you know, Knute Rockne got up and gave a speech and, and the Navy Admiral who was the first game was played with, the Navy, and then President O'Donnell says, "I'd like to welcome our very special guest from England, G.K. Chesterton." And the whole stadium stands as one and cheers for G.K. Chesterton at the first game in the Notre Dame football stadium. It's not – it's not two things that you put together in your mind, normally. But what's interesting though is is he got the honorary doctorate in the fall then and that was the first time that Notre Dame ever bestowed an honorary doctorate outside of commencement was when they gave it to him. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 8:24 That's awesome. And it's from that visit, and we were talking about this earlier on our way to lunch, that we get the great poem by G.K. Chesterton about that compares the the, you know, the martyrdom of Christians to the game of football that he sees taking place. Yeah. And Our Lady... Dale Ahlquist 8:41 Yeah, it's this bloodless battle that's going on in the you know, he compares the arena, it's called "The Arena," and comparing it with with the Roman games that you know, were, were killing Christians at the time but this was bloodless and this is in honor not of Caesar, but of Our Lady and and he has the great line at the end, "We who are about to live salute you." de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 9:03 Yeah, so beautiful. Gonna be linking to that in the show notes definitely. Beautiful. Well now there's a further connection here at the university in that our London Global Gateway has just taken possession of the G.K. Chesterton library, which contains his papers, books, personal effects, art and other items that are related to his life. And these are going to be made available to scholars and researchers who visit the London Global Gateway there on Trafalgar Square. Now, you know a little bit about this collection and about a tiny bit about its history. Maybe you can tell us about that? Unknown Speaker 9:39 Yes, I certainly am familiar with it. It was mostly the work of a lifelong Chesterton scholar and collector over there named Mr. Aidan Mackey, who is still alive. He's 97 years old. I mean, he he knew people who knew Chesterton, right. He was he he's very much a living link to to that era. And, and a wonderful gentleman besides but, you know, he he was building this collection for many, many years. And always concerned about putting it in a place where it was not only going to be safely kept, but also made available for for researchers and students. And they had a pretty good location in Oxford and Oxford is a nice address, of course, to have a Chesterton library. And I actually was a I'm a, I'm a Senior Fellow of the Chesterton Library, a purely honorific title, but it sounds good. Yeah, sounds good. And the concern, however, was at the it was the keepers of it were the Oratorians of Oxford. And they really were not able to provide the facility and the access to the collection that that was optimum. And so they decided to, to look to another institution to who would become the caretakers of library, and they there was more than one institution that was interested in doing so. And clearly when Notre Dame came along and made his proposal, they were, you know, they were in competition with some other institutions. But what drew them, I think to Notre Dame and was that they really wanted to put this library in a very good setting that would not only be a city worthy of the collection, but also one that's accessible to the public. And it certainly didn't hurt that their location is right across the street from Trafalgar Square in London. Right. So it's a terrific address. I think there's there's really great excitement in in England for for the new home for the library over there. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 11:41 Do you know of some highlights of this collection? I mean, being a senior fellow? Dale Ahlquist 11:49 They have some of Chesterton's walking sticks. That the typewriter that was that his secretary typed, you know "The Everlasting Man" and "St. Thomas Aquinas" was typed on that typewriter, lots of samples of his drawings and books that he owned that have his his interesting doodles in it. The... also I think what's important is it has books. This is the footnotes stuff – it has books that Chesterton refers to in his books, okay. And this is really important for scholars because those books could have easily been lost to us. But Aidan Mackey made a point of getting those books and and so now, when Chesterton makes references you can you can actually get your hands on the book he's referring to and it could be a very obscure book written by an obscure author. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 12:40 Long out of print, they've destroyed all other copies. Dale Ahlquist 12:41 Yes, exactly. Exactly. So I think that's one of the great importances of the library. I will say they also have one other thing that is really quite important and they have the only first class relic of Chesterton is in the is in the library. Some of his hair. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 13:01 Oh my gosh! Dale Ahlquist 13:01 Yeah. And that could be quite an item of, of importance because of the next question you're going to ask, de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 13:10 How did you know? Well, so yes, recently, there has been some discussion about the cause for Chesterton's sainthood. Now without getting too much into the details of the of the process, sell me on the virtues of G.K. Chesterton. Why should we consider him among the saints? Why should we raise him to the honor of the altar? Dale Ahlquist 13:33 That's a great question. And I'm, you know, I have I have been thinking for a long time that Chesterton deserves to be raised the altar and should be a saint he, he's the one who's responsible for bringing me to the Catholic Church, as he's done with hundreds and maybe even thousands of others as I've, I've continued to collect stories. In fact, I I just edited a book of conversion stories called "My Name is Lazarus." All of whom Chesterton played a role in their conversion and was want to pave their, their path to Rome and David Fagerburg, a professor here. Yeah, he's he's in that book, and he wrote a chapter for it. But there's former Jews, Muslims, atheists, all different stripes of Protestants. And they all have a slightly different story, but Chesterton connected with them in some way, and brought them into the fullness of the faith of the Catholic Church. And that, you know, cannot be ignored that role that he's played, right. And it's not, they're not drawn because of some argument that he's made. They're drawn by His goodness, he points to the truth and he and people see what he's pointing to because he expresses the beauty of that truth so well. So that's one of the main arguments i think that that absolutely has to be dealt with the fact that Chesterton is bringing people into the into the Catholic Church and and, you know, you think of the who the great saints of the 20th century are. You think right away of Mother Teresa and St. John Paul II. They are dynamos. They are giants of the faith. But you know what they are not, in general a cause for conversion. They're not the reason people become Catholics. They are an inspiration to Catholics and to non-Catholics. But Chesterton is a tool of conversion. And Chesterton says that "the age is often converted by the saint who contradicts it the most." And he is very much the guy who's contradicting the age that we live in. So, so that's probably obvious. There's this, there's other evidences of goodness. And I'm happy to say that in my research yesterday in the special collections, I just found a lot of neat things quickly. A writer named R. Scott James, who knew Chesterton says that Chesterton was as near perfection as fallible human nature is capable of. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 15:59 Wow. Unknown Speaker 16:00 Yeah, Edward Shanks, another contemporary writer of Chesterton said, "there was something saint-like about him. He had this pity for the poor, he had this great magnanimity, and he was always willing to help other people no matter what they needed." And another guy who, who knew him, from child from his own childhood, said that "what was amazing about Chesterton, how he could maintain his work, while he was giving his head and heart in service to those around him." And you think about how much he wrote this one, the most prolific writers who ever lived, just, you can't even comprehend how much he wrote. And yet he still was able, in spite of that amazing literary output to give himself to others. And it was an article by a Jesuit, who was about this is about two years after Chesterton's death, maybe even less, says, "you know, the Catholic Church probably is not going to canonize Chesterton, but I think they should I think Chesterton should be canonized. In fact, I think he should be a doctor of the church." And this was a Jesuit writing less than two years after Chesterton's death. Wow. So there was talk about his goodness and his heroic virtue right away after his death. What never happened was there was never a cult formed, but that cult has been formed since. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 17:22 So now that's what you've spent your, you know, essentially your professional life kind of promoting. I mean, you had a show on EWTN, "The Apostle of Common Sense." Not Not you, but Chesterton was that, was the goal. I mean, you talk to me about this cult talk to me about you know, what have you seen in your own experience? traveling the world? Dale Ahlquist 17:44 Yeah, I've you know, I've been watching how Chesterton changes people's lives. How when people start reading him, they are transformed for the good and he he does make you think about what's important. But the great appeal of him as a writer is that he does write about everything. And it's people connect to him for all kinds of different reasons. And I think that's, that's what's so amazing if you're reading about economics and social justice, Chesterton is way out in front of everybody else in that regard. But if you're writing just classic apologetics, you know, where did CS Lewis get all his arguments? He got him from G.K. Chesterton. They are there. But then he illuminates the lives of the saints like Saint Francis and St. Thomas Aquinas. Fulton Sheen, who's about to be beatified, said the writer who influenced him the most was G.K. Chesterton. You know what I found in a special collections yesterday, Ken? I found a photograph of Fulton Sheen at Chesterton's funeral in 1936. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 18:50 Wow. Yeah. He traveled to London for it. Yeah. That is awesome. I've got to see that! de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 18:58 It's in my phone. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 19:04 What about for the absolute novice, the person who has never read Chesterton? Where's a good starting point for them? What essays or books or poems? What can they read to get a taste and see, "Is Gilbert for me?" Dale Ahlquist 19:18 Well, you know, this is a question I, I didn't used to like to answer, because I was never content with the answer that I gave. Because every time I suggested one book, I always thought, this is a good book to start with, especially after you read this other one before that one. So then what I did was I wrote a book, I wrote a book to introduce people to Chesterton. Well, and that's called "The Apostle of Common Sense." But you know how, you know when you really want to sell someone something you don't just send one limo to pick them up you send to case the first one doesn't arrive, right. So I wrote another book called "Common Sense 101: Lessons from G.K. Chesterton." I say that both those books, or either one is an excellent way to open the door and get people into Chesterton, they're unintimidating. I draw on lots of different material and talk about the main things he talks about, and that those are the two primers. So Common Sense 101: Lessons from Chesterton" and "The Apostle of Common Sense." de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 20:19 Wonderful. Do you have favorite books? A favorite book of Chesterton's? I know it's I know, I it's, I'm asking you to choose your favorite child essentially. Dale Ahlquist 20:30 Yes, you are. But I could tell you you know who my favorite child is, and that could be a lot of trouble. Yeah, right. Right. So I really you know, I know that Orthodoxy is, you know, an essential book for me that is always going to be the book you come back to. But you know, his books on the on the saints are so important, his book on Charles Dickens is so important. Everlasting Man, the first one I started with you, you when you re-read a Chesterton book, you're always going to get more out of it. But you know, I I have to say, Chesterton made his living as a journalist and writing these essays and I, I just enjoy reading a daily essay from G.K. Chesterton. I think he's just the master essayist. And that's kind of my bread and butter is reading the daily essay. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 21:19 And you said there's something like 6000 of these. Dale Ahlquist 21:21 Yeah, it's just astonishing. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 21:23 That's a lot just to stash. What was his what was his daily, kind of work like? Dale Ahlquist 21:29 Well, you know, he had a secretary and he dictated his essays to her. But one of the great astonishments to tell you about his mind is that he could actually write an essay in longhand while he's dictating a different essay to his secretary. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 21:45 That's – That's insane. Dale Ahlquist 21:46 Yeat, it is insane, but it explains why he's so prolific because if you're writing two things at once, you can get a lot written. Yeah. And and so you know, he was always writing part of his day was always spent writing and the fact that you keep churning these things out, even if he was traveling, if he was lecturing somewhere, he did some of his best writings in a pub or in a railway station while waiting for a train. There's there's a great story of him sitting in the pub laughing. And the waiter telling someone else who came to get him, "Is that your friend over there? He'd write and he'd laugh and he'd write and he'd laugh." de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 22:24 He entertained by what he's own writing entity and also distilling what he's Dale Ahlquist 22:29 Absolutely he says, He says, it's arrogant not to laugh at your own jokes. He said, can't an architect pray in his own Cathedral? de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 22:43 You know, one of my favorite books that I've read, and I've read multiple times, is "The Man Who Was Thursday." And this is, I mean, I don't need to tell you but it's it almost defies description. It's a mystery novel. It's a detective novel, its reflection on the problem of suffering. It's a reflection on the little signs of God that we see spread throughout the world that point to Him, but don't explain Him. And yet the more I read it, the more almost confused I've gotten. Although I have to say this, he wrote, you know, when he has the chase scene, how does somebody write a chase scene that is more vivid than seeing it on film, which I guess is a good thing, because it's never I mean, it's never really been made into film. I understand in 2016, there was a Hungarian attempt, but we've never seen it on the big screen. We've never even seen it on the small screen. This is a wacky story. Dale Ahlquist 23:37 The movie that was made called "The Man Who Was Thursday" doesn't have anything to do with it with the novel so don't don't don't be distracted by that. But yeah, you're right, the chase scene. If you saw it, it would be less vivid because your imagination's working so hard, trying to picture each one of those scenes, you know, the the guy riding the elephant and everything. Just an amazing set of imagery. Well, it's it's interesting, you should say, the more you read, the less convinced you are that you know what's going on. But yet everything you said about it Ken, showed that you understand, you know what the elements are in the book. So now you understand I – Chesterton says that to give away the end of a, of a mystery is, is one of the worst sins you could ever commit, right? He says, the people who give away the end of the mystery belong on the lowest level of hell, with Brutus and Judas and the other, you know, betrayers... de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 24:35 Where it's cold, not hot. Not to give away the ending. Dale Ahlquist 24:37 Right. Not to give away the ending. But so, so I'm, I'm just telling you this. I'm not telling any of your listeners. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 24:44 Spoiler alert, kids. Turn off the podcast right now! Dale Ahlquist 24:47 Right. Yeah. So you talked about the mystery of suffering. The book itself is a retelling of the book of Job and the main character Gabriel Syme is Job and he's the one who who watches his world coming apart around him. Remember the subtitle of the book is "A Nightmare." And everything in a nightmare it just seems out of your control and seems bizarre. And you know, as readers were following things we're forgetting how bizarre it must look to Gabriel Syme because it's or at least following the narrative but imagine what it is from his point of view how people keep ripping their faces off and there's someone else yeah, and everything is changing. Then of course the guy who seems to be the good guy is the bad guy is the good guy. Right? Right. There's the that whole thing and at the very end, there's, here's Syme saying you know, "Why'd we go through all this?" Isn't that what job is asking God? And when when God finally appears to Job, does God answer any of Job's questions? The answer is No, he doesn't. He says, Hey, Job, you've asked your questions. Now I'm going to ask my questions. And here's my first question. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? And have you ever really looked at the world that I've made? Have you ever looked at creation? Have you looked at Leviathan, have you ever looked at behemoth, aren't they the most amazing things you've ever seen? And doesn't – he just starts asking Job to contemplate creation. When when, when the morning stars sang together and – a line that Chesterton repeats throughout all of his writings. Clearly job is the book of the Bible for him. And so here is Gabriel Syme thinking, well, maybe, um... Maybe I didn't go through such a big thing. But then here, along comes the adversary at the end, whose name happens to sound like Lucifer – Lucian. And says, you know, you guys really haven't suffered at all. You haven't really been through it because, hey, we wait, we've suffered, I have suffered. And then, of course, Sunday looks at him and says, "Can you drink the cup that I drink of?" The only answer he gives is a question just like the only answer God gives Job is a question. And he gets the only direct quotation of Scripture. So now you've you've been through it, follow me and now you're really go through it. Right. Yeah. And there's the there's the riddle of suffering retold once again by G.K. Chesterton. And that is – that's the eternal riddle that that that we're always trying to solve in all of the literature that we read. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 27:50 Well, now you just made me want to read the book again. Dale Ahlquist 27:51 I hope so. I want to read it again myself. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 27:55 Well, Dale, this has been a delightful chat. Thank you so much for coming in. And so the talk that you're going to be giving here, which will be in the past by the time our listeners hear this, that will be up on our YouTube channel. So they'll be able to hear what you have to say about, "The Critic's Critic: G. K. Chesterton on God and Literature." Dale Ahlquist 28:13 I would certainly encourage people to go to our website at chesterton.org for more information on Chesterton, and if they want to join the Chesterton society, get "Gilbert!" magazine, and discounts on the books that we sell and that we publish, but there's lots of good reasons to make Chesterton your friend. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 28:32 Awesome. Thank you so much for your time. Dale Ahlquist 28:34 God bless. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 28:41 Thank you to Dale Ahlquist. You will find links to the poem, "The Arena," and to Dale's recommended books about Chesterton in the show notes. Subscribe to Ethics and Culture Cast so that you can always get the latest episodes by visiting ethicscenter.nd.edu/podcast. We would love your feedback. Please review the show on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you get your podcasts, and email your suggestions to cecpodcast@nd.edu. Our theme music is "I dunno" by grapes, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license. We'll see you next time on Ethics and Culture Cast. Until then, make good decisions. Transcribed by https://otter.ai