Some Lyceum News

A few months ago, the St. Sebastian Chesterton Society ventured north to a Dale Alquist appearance sponsored by the Lyceum, a school founded on the age old principles of classical education. They recently sang at the Mass celebrated by His Excellency Richard Lennon, Bishop of Cleveland, before the rally in downtown Cleveland in support of religious liberty.

His Excellency's homily is first, and the last minute or so is of the Lyceum choir.

Current St. Ausin Review

The March issue of the St. Austin Review (StAR) is now out. This issue is dedicated to exploring "Faith and Fiction" and contains two excellent reviews by St. Sebastian Chestertonian Matt Akers.

If you don't already subscribe, you may want to consider adding it to your wish list. It's a great publication.

New Chesterton Society Up North!

Fr. Valencheck recently received this email:

Father Valencheck:

...

I am forwarding to you the email announcement of the initial meeting of the Cleveland Chesterton Society. I thought you might want to know of the onset of a sister group. Any prayers for our beginnings will be much appreciated.

If you have an email list, I would also like you to put me on it. I think it might be nice if we all kept some knowledge of each other.

John Hissong

Folks:

As I had hoped earlier, we will have the initial meeting of the Cleveland Chesterton Society, on Sunday March 18th at 3:00 PM in the GK Chesterton Rare Book Room at the Grasselli Library on the campus of John Carroll University. The library is fully handicapped accessible, with an elevator near the front door. The Chesterton Room is on the second floor. There is handicapped parking on the southern corner of the library. (Most of the university is oriented on a SW to NE axis, so most of the buildings face towards NE, SE, NW, and SW and have N, E, S, and W corners.)I

As I also mentioned earlier, the Chesterton Room is the Grasselli Library's rare book room and the curator has to be present when the room is open. Future meetings will probably be in some other room in the library. If you get a chance, please express your gratitude to Chuck Zarobila, the room's curator, who is giving up part of his Sunday so that we might meet in the Chesterton room.

I propose to start with an exchange of what attracted us to Chesterton. As an icebreaker, I will also prepare a hat full of Chesterton quotes to stimulate what will hopefully be thoughtful comment.

Barring major objections, we will start with Ahlquist's The Apostle of Common Sense, available at the American Chesterton Society. Through a complicated series of mishaps, I have a second copy of The Apostle of Common Sense which I will be happy to sell anyone of you for it's cost to me.

Dale Ahlquist is going to be in Cleveland to speak at Cleveland Right to Life's March Symposium, the weekend before we meet, so perhaps that will help get you in the mood.

Please feel free to pass this on to anyone you feel might be interested in G. K. Chesterton.

I look forward to seeing you.

John Hissong

Anyone who lives up that way may want to get in touch with John. Please email me at mattwyszynski1[at]gmail.com and I'll pass on the query.

From Dale Alquist

We recently wrote to Dale Alquist about a possible return to the Akron area. Here is part of his reply:

"I will be back in Cleveland this weekend, speaking at the Right to Life Conference on Saturday. Please let the Akronites know about it.

I would love to return to Ohio, as I’ve made some good contacts who are also interested in hosting a talk. Perhaps we could arrange something for next fall in conjunction with some other talks.

That Christopher Hitchens story is quite something! Here he was wrestling with Chesterton during his last days on earth. How marvelous. His article indicates that he missed the point, but we have to wonder about what he was really thinking as he purposely evaded the major questions in print."