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."

February Recap and March Meeting

Last night was the February meeting during which we discussed book III of The Napoleon of Notting Hill. We had a great and wide-ranging discussion! GKC would have appreciated it, I think.

The next meeting is March 18 (Laetare Sunday) at 7:00PM at the rectory.

Thanks to Mike for pointing out this review by C. Hitchens of Kerr's Chesterton biography. In the words of Mike, "Only read it if you're in a good mood and want to be put in a bad mood." One of the comments from a reader was

I could not disagree more with Hitchen's summary of Chesterton in the last paragraph. Hitchens is unknowingly describing himself there.

The consensus last night was that we'd like to read a response from a veteran Chestertonian like Alquist.

February Meeting

The next meeting of the St. Sebastian Chesterton Society will be on February 19 in the rectory. We'll be discussing the third book of The Napoleon of Notting Hill.

During our discussion of Book II, one of our intrepid members (a Johnny Andrew-come-lately) made the connection between GKC and Gabriel García Márquez. That may not be as far a stretch as it may first glance appear to be. GGM has been a big fan of Jorge Luis Borges, who was a fan (and translator of) Chesterton. Grist for the literary crit mill.

A NEW YEAR OF CHESTERTON!

There was a cozy gathering of Chestertonians last night at the rectory. There was a fire in the fireplace and refreshments provided by Mr. A. It was a larger group than expected because there were a number of cancellations. Somebody had a daughter get married the same weekend as a meeting (again) and somebody's sister came in from out of town for one night the same night as a meeting (again) and somebody else said they had an emergency but we know it was because he did not read the first book. (If it was serious I hope all is Okay.)

Welcome to our newest member even though his name is not Matt, John, or Mike. I suppose we can start to branch out a little bit.

The next meeting will be January 29th at the rectory. We will be discussing the second "book" of our book. If you need a copy please see the previous post.

Merry (almost) Christmas!

December meeting UPDATE

There was no date that everyone could agree on as good for our December meeting (herding even this few Chestertonians is like herding cats), but the least worst date seems to be December 18. Therefore, we will meet December 18 at 7:00 PM in the rectory. We'll start The Napoleon of Notting Hill. I haven't seen it even, but I imagine we can get through chapter 1 before then. The text is available on Project Guttenberg in multiple formats here, or you can purchase it through Amazon (yes, I realize the irony of directing a bunch of budding Distributists to that website).

December meeting

It is now time to decide when we will hold the December meeting of the St. Sebastian Chesterton Society. Since we had a road trip for the November meeting (details on Fr. V's blog here), we couldn't conveniently decide on a date. Not all of us have Magic Phone. Possible dates are 12/4, 12/11, and 12/18. We must also decide what the topic will be. I've been hankering for a novel, and when I mentioned this to Matt A, he responded:

Two of Chesterton's novels that I really enjoyed are The Napoleon of Notting Hill and The Flying Inn. The first is a celebration of localism, which features a futuristic London that is broken up into shires. Adam Wayne, the hero of the novel, defends Notting Hill and specifically Pump Street against the threat of take-over by big government types. It's a funny, thought-provoking read. The Flying Inn is also set in a futuristic England in which Islam has taken over and outlawed alcohol. The heroes of the story take kegs of booze around England in a cart (hence the name!), allowing the faithful to drink their fill. Another funny novel, but it raises serious questions about the aggressive nature of Islam and its clash with Christianity. Some of Chesterton's depictions of how Islamic leaders changed the laws in England are positively eerie in light of modern events.

The Man Who Was Thursday is another popular novel, though I did not are for it as much.

So, any other ideas? Please post comments or email the group and we will decide that way.

Ahlquist on Local Radio

Via Mr. Macik, Headmaster of the Lyceum:

Tomorrow night at 9:00 p.m. on 1220 WHK, I will be a guest on ‘From the Median, A Report from the Frontline of the Prolife Movement” hosted by Molly Smith as she interviews Dale Ahlquist. See the information below if you would like to listen to the program.

See this link for scheduling information.