Uncommon Sense - The Official Podcast of the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Erin Lewis opens her award-winning novel Firetender with G.K. Chesterton's line that hope begins to dawn only for those who hang on after all is hopeless. She tells Joe Grabowski how that paradox became the premise of a story about a young man who has to hit rock bottom before he can work his way up. One of her characters is always carrying around a copy of Orthodoxy. In This Episode: How G.K. Chesterton's line about hope dawning after all is hopeless became the premise of Firetender Why Lewis gave the novel's Channing, a quiet 17-year-old who came to faith through reading books, a copy of Orthodoxy he is always carrying around—her way of showing that people come to God in different ways Joe Grabowski on the paradox G.K. Chesterton saw in the virtues: hope means hoping when all things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all How a parish Chesterton club reading What's Wrong with the World introduced Lewis to G.K. Chesterton, and why she finds his appeal crosses every age Why the word guild makes a Chestertonian's ears perk up—G.K. Chesterton was big on guilds—and what the Catholic Writers Guild offers writers, including critique groups that flag writing that sounds preachy Resources Mentioned: Firetender (Chalice Book 1) by Erin Lewis Erin Lewis, Author Shining Light into the Dark, Erin Lewis on Substack Catholic Writers Guild Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton FOLLOW US Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT Consider making a donation Visit our Shop Chapters: 00:00: Introducing Erin Lewis 01:26: Returning to fiction during the shutdown 03:01: Dark themes and "clean fiction" 07:14: A parish Chesterton club 09:01: The Chesterton epigraph to Firetender 10:03: Channing and Orthodoxy 11:39: The paradox of hope 14:05: The Chalice trilogy and a call to the priesthood 18:22: The Catholic Writers Guild 22:08: Book clubs and discussion questions 24:04: Reading together in an age of short attention spans 27:15: Where to find Erin Lewis Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

G.K. Chesterton wanted his wife to enter the Catholic Church alongside him, but Frances took four more years, until she felt God had shown her the way. She was received on All Saints Day, 1926, and a century later Joe Grabowski talks with her biographer, Nancy Carpentier Brown, about the saints the Chestertons loved and the ways they honored their dead. Fitting, in the month of All Souls. In This Episode: Why Frances waited four years after G.K. Chesterton's conversion, and why All Saints Day was the day she chose The confirmation names the Chestertons took from St. Francis and St. Clare of Assisi How Chesterton's democracy of the dead grew into a sense of the dead still taking part in our lives Why the road to Lourdes, on the couple's last trip together, ran right past the grave of Chesterton's brother Cecil in France What Chesterton seemed to sense about modern medicine keeping death out of sight Resources Mentioned: The Woman Who Was Chesterton by Nancy Carpentier Brown St. Francis of Assisi by G.K. Chesterton The Trial of Jeanne d'Arc, translated by W.P. Barrett Uncommon Sense: The Big Guy and the Little Flower: Chesterton and Saint Therese of Lisieux Gilbert Magazine FOLLOW US Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT Consider making a donation Visit our Shop Chapters: 00:00: Frances Chesterton's centenary 02:11: Received on All Saints Day, 1926 02:39: Why Frances waited four years 05:02: The democracy of the dead 05:50: St. Francis and St. Clare 07:06: Joan of Arc and the English martyrs 09:36: Saints of their era 14:13: A married couple for the altars 17:24: Honoring the dead 19:23: The road to Lourdes 22:04: How modern life hides death 25:43: Conversion as dying to self Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

Emily Stimpson Chapman had been away from the Church for years when a coworker handed her G.K. Chesterton, and he reminded her of an enchanted world where every person is a mystery and a wonder. She joins Joe Grabowski to talk about the theology of food and hospitality behind The Catholic Table and Around the Catholic Table, and about the Chestertons, who could not have children and decided to open their home instead. Hospitality, Joe argues, is the Chesterton legacy most in need of recovery. In This Episode: Why G.K. Chesterton's high view of the home, sometimes mistaken for misogyny, was really a celebration of the woman's role in making a home a place of comfort and welcome How the Chestertons, unable to have children, opened their home instead How G.K. Chesterton and the sacramental worldview helped Emily Stimpson Chapman heal from anorexia through the Eucharist Why hospitality is a way of being open to life Why entertaining is about the host, while hospitality is about others Resources Mentioned: Emily's website—buy her books! Emily's Substack and podcast The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, Vol. 7 (includes The Flying Inn) FOLLOW US Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT Consider making a donation Visit our Shop Chapters: 00:00: The theology of hospitality 02:42: A Catholic hack writer in Chesterton's tradition 07:07: How Chesterton led her back to the Church 08:21: Healing through the Eucharist 12:05: A cookbook to fund an adoption 16:53: The Chestertons as hosts 19:18: Hospitality as openness to life 20:55: The antisocial century 24:47: The graciousness of being a guest 28:32: Don't be Pelagian about it 31:43: Entertaining vs. hospitality 35:28: The leftover party Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

G.K. Chesterton never lost his outrage at true injustice, yet when a woman called him a coward for not being at the front in World War I, he answered with a joke about his own size. Grettelyn Darkey and Joe Grabowski trace how he held both, through his portrait of St. Francis chasing a leper he had recoiled from and his insistence in Orthodoxy that a man fighting sin must be not a patient but an impatient.  In This Episode: The formula G.K. Chesterton helps unpack: be impatient with injustice when others suffer it, and patient when you suffer it yourself How Chesterton's St. Francis kept the impatience of a young man who dreamed of fame as a soldier, and used it on errands of mercy Why Chesterton said a man may lie still to be cured of a malady, but must get up and jump about violently to be cured of a sin Why Chesterton held that the rational optimist fails Chesterton's challenge: can a man hate the world enough to change it, yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Resources Mentioned: St. Francis of Assisi by G.K. Chesterton Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton FOLLOW US Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT Consider making a donation Visit our Shop Chapters: 00:00: Holy impatience and righteous anger 04:44: Impatient for others, patient for ourselves 11:51: Rage bait, the currency of our culture 17:22: What makes anger righteous? 18:43: Francis the Fighter 22:15: "A certain precipitancy was the very poise of his soul" 27:50: Anger as an opportunity cost 30:32: Chesterton's own anger, and where it veered 32:42: Orthodoxy: not a patient, but an impatient 33:55: Easy on ourselves, no quarter to the enemy 38:05: The Buddhist saint and the Christian saint 41:26: "A fierce delight and a fiercer discontent" Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

In 1926, the year his wife Frances entered the Church, G.K. Chesterton published The Queen of Seven Swords, a small book of poems about Our Lady. Grettelyn Darkey and Joe Grabowski skip the expected devotional pieces for the surprising ones, where Chesterton turns his love for Mary into an answer to his critics.  In This Episode: Why 1926 may have turned G.K. Chesterton's mind toward Our Lady: his wife Frances entered the Church that year, and his biographer Maisie Ward calls it a lonely time of lost friends Who J.S. Phillimore was, and why Chesterton dedicated a book of poems to this fellow convert and champion of the ballad "A Party Question," Chesterton's reply to Arnold Lunn, an agnostic who attacked his conversion and later became a Catholic himself How "The White Witch" moves the moon from a pagan goddess's brow to beneath Mary's feet Chesterton's short poem against treating birth control as the test of liberality Resources Mentioned: The Queen of Seven Swords by G.K. Chesterton Gilbert Keith Chesterton by Maisie Ward Lepanto by G.K. Chesterton Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, Vol. XVIII (includes Chaucer) FOLLOW US Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT Consider making a donation Visit our Shop Chapters: 00:00: G.K. Chesterton's book of poems to Our Lady 02:45: Frances Chesterton enters the Church 06:30: A lonely year for Chesterton 08:02: The dedication to J.S. Phillimore 15:00: "A Party Question" 21:22: Arnold Lunn and Roman Converts 25:43: Our Lady's share in Chesterton's conversion 28:25: Our Lady's champion 29:59: Losing sight of Mary, losing sight of Christ 33:06: "The White Witch" 40:58: "An Agreement" 46:35: Bringing the book back into print Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

Some of the G.K. Chesterton in the new issue of Gilbert isn't collected anywhere else. Grettelyn Darkey and Joe Grabowski open with a 1933 essay on why the two usual arguments against communism fail, and why those arguments push the young toward communism rather than away from it. Then comes Chesterton on shapeless art, and a leisure state run by robots that he could only call all wrong. In This Episode: Why G.K. Chesterton thought both common ways of arguing with communists were wrong: insults win no one over, and sneering at a young person's ideals only sounds like a greedy old man forbidding them to be anything else Chesterton's alternative: appeal to the natural desire for a home and a plot of land, and show that real private property protects everyone's fair share Why, for Chesterton, the opposite of art is shapelessness rather than ugliness Chesterton's 1927 claim that films are more unreal than portraits because they are more like life, read against today's AI-generated actors A blended Chesterton essay on a leisure state where robots do all the work, and his warning that "Millions now alive will never live" Resources Mentioned: Gilbert Magazine Become a member of the Chesterton Society and get Gilbert Magazine! Justice & Charity by Fulton J. Sheen "Awakening the Sense of Wonder" by G.K. Chesterton, The Illustrated London News, March 19, 1927 Uncommon Sense: G.K. Chesterton vs. Communism and Socialism FOLLOW US Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT Consider making a donation Visit our Shop Chapters: 00:00: A new issue of Gilbert 01:15: Dale Ahlquist's finds from the archives 04:11: "How Not to Do It" (1933) 08:32: The argument from liberty and private property 10:33: Fulton Sheen and the third way 15:08: More from this issue of Gilbert 17:52: The Venus de Milo on the trombone 19:50: Shapelessness, the antithesis of art 26:35: Waxworks, films, and Felix the Cat 28:53: Robots and the leisure state 32:19: "Can't you see? It's all wrong" 37:39: "Millions now alive will never live" Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

In 1929, with the world at peace, G.K. Chesterton wrote a prayer to St. Michael, the warrior archangel. For Michaelmas, Grettelyn Darkey and Joe Grabowski read "To St. Michael in Time of Peace" and ask what Chesterton saw coming that made him call on Michael then—and why he still counted Gabriel, stooping to greet a peasant girl, the more glorious angel. In This Episode: The Pope Leo XIII backstory behind the poem: his Prayer to St. Michael, and a famous 1884 vision no one has traced to a source Why G.K. Chesterton prayed to the warrior archangel in a year of peace: he sensed what he called Prussianism returning The poem's image of St. Michael at the Crucifixion, hand on the hilt, holding back his legions until Christ said "It is finished" Chesterton's warning against a peace kept by money A 1926 G.K.'s Weekly passage where Chesterton, arguing against Nietzsche, calls St. Gabriel stooping to greet the peasant girl more glorious than St. Michael striking down the traitor, and how Joe connects it to the single feast the three archangels now share Resources Mentioned: To St. Michael in Time of Peace by G.K. Chesterton Lepanto by G.K. Chesterton Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton "A Word with Dr. Oscar Levy" by G.K. Chesterton, G.K.'s Weekly, October 16, 1926 FOLLOW US Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT Consider making a donation Visit our Shop Chapters: 00:00: Michaelmas and the Feast of the Archangels 01:43: Oxford's Michaelmas term and the darkening of the year 05:17: St. Michael through the centuries 08:19: Leo XIII and the Prayer to St. Michael 13:38: The 1884 vision: a legend without a source 16:42: "To St. Michael in Time of Peace" (1929) 21:23: St. Michael at the foot of the Cross 25:56: Why invoke St. Michael in time of peace 31:30: Why the archangels belong together 34:14: Michael, Gabriel, and the Sacred Heart 37:09: Humility, Tobit, and the Annunciation 40:18: Michaelmas in Tolkien Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios Episode art image credit: "St-Michel-Mont-Mercure, Vendée", original photo by Pom', 26 July 2023; on Flickr; CC BY-SA 2.0

A seminarian once wrote Fulton Sheen asking to write a master's thesis on his work, and Sheen wrote back telling him to write on G.K. Chesterton instead. Ahead of Sheen's beatification, Grettelyn Darkey and Joe Grabowski trace what the American broadcaster took from the English journalist—down to two passages read aloud here that turn out to be Chesterton with an American accent. In This Episode: The 1925 request that started it: Sheen asked G.K. Chesterton to write the introduction to his first book, received "I know nothing about philosophy" in reply, and got the introduction anyway What Sheen wrote in his autobiography about where his style came from: Chesterton above all, with C.S. Lewis arriving later A priest's letter, published years afterward, recalling that Sheen told him to drop the thesis on Sheen and write on Chesterton Two passages read in full—one on why a child says "do it again," one on a drop of gutter water lifted into snow—and what in them comes straight out of the ethics of Elfland Sheen's distributism: the American extension of a critique he took from Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, collected in a volume of his 1930s writing on communism Resources Mentioned: God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy by Fulton J. Sheen, with an introduction by G.K. Chesterton Treasure in Clay: The Autobiography of Fulton J. Sheen Chesterton's Marriage Proposal Justice & Charity by Fulton J. Sheen St. Austin Review FOLLOW US: Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT: Donate Shop Chapters: 00:00: A Chesterton podcast for the week of Fulton Sheen's beatification 01:09: How each host came to Sheen 04:14: Illinois, 1895: a quick bio of Fulton Sheen 09:20: An hour of preparation for every ten minutes of speaking 12:30: "I know nothing about philosophy": the 1925 meeting in London 15:25: What is actually known about Sheen at Chesterton's funeral 17:01: Treasure in Clay names Chesterton the greatest influence 21:37: Justice & Charity and Sheen's American distributism 24:40: A priest's letter: "Chesterton's the man" 28:39: "Do it again": Sheen on the eternal appetite of infancy 33:07: A drop of gutter water and the one thing saved for heaven 36:28: Musical lineage and the communion of saints Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

Somebody once wrote a fairy tale where the quest that wins the princess was to find a single newspaper that didn't contain an article by G.K. Chesterton. Dr. Susan Hanssen wrote her doctoral dissertation on him and now teaches history at the University of Dallas, and she argues he's the hinge of what Adam Schwartz called the third spring of English Catholicism. She ends the episode reading Lepanto aloud. In This Episode: Why G.K. Chesterton reached readers the Catholic converts before him never could. John Henry Newman was an Oxford man writing for an educated elite, and Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote poetry too esoteric for the common reader. Chesterton never went to university at all. The claim behind G.K. Chesterton's range: that he could start from any subject whatsoever, Victorian china shepherdesses included, and bring you back to a Christian understanding of the human person. Why nearly every movie preview is about the end of the world now, and how G.K. Chesterton was already correcting both Hegel's coming utopia and Oswald Spengler's inevitable decline. The essay in Heretics with the dull title that Dr. Hanssen calls the absolute cure for family troubles.  What "the English-speaking world" actually meant in 1910, and why an illustrated London paper could put G.K. Chesterton in front of Gandhi in Calcutta and an oil widow in Texas. Resources Mentioned: Dr. Hanssen's talk at this summer's Chesterton conference What I Saw in America by G.K. Chesterton Lepanto by G.K. Chesterton Heretics by G.K. Chesterton Literary Converts by Joseph Pearce Chapters: 00:00: Introduction 00:30: Meeting Susan Hanssen, and a dissertation on Chesterton 02:53: The English-speaking world goes silent after the Reformation 07:35: Newman's second spring, and the third spring that followed 11:09: Belloc, the Latin south, and Chesterton as the Dickens of his age 14:30: High characters, middle characters, and the low characters Dickens let in 15:41: When the Mediterranean was the whole world, and then it wasn't 21:02: The illustrated papers, and writing for absolutely everyone 23:02: Three volumes that only list what he published 24:38: The fairy tale quest to find a paper without Chesterton in it 33:39: Chesterton the painter, and why his essays read like wet canvas 46:01: Lepanto, read aloud FOLLOW US Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT Donate Shop Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

G.K. Chesterton spent his life writing about Our Lady, and the poems are still doing their work. Maria Romine, drama teacher at Chesterton Academy of St. Louis, traces her entry into the Catholic Church to a rosary handed to her in a gift shop, and her love of Chesterton to a poem about the Mother of God. On Our Lady's birthday, the conversation covers the Frances Chesterton Rosary League, saints on the high school stage, and Gilbert and Frances Chesterton as a model for married life. In this Episode: Chesterton's Marian poems, "A Little Litany" above all, did what no argument had: they sent one Presbyterian convert on a years-long search to understand how a man comes to write that way about the Mother of God. A Chesterton reading group in St. Louis began praying the rosary together, and within a few years an eager parent group had opened a Chesterton Academy there—a sequence the guest describes as the Holy Family finally getting its mother. Chesterton built a theater inside his own house and wrote plays for the neighborhood children; his play The Surprise dramatizes the idea that human makers work under God as subcreators. Memorizing a saint's words changes the actor who speaks them—the argument behind a Catholic high school's practice of building each year's production around a single saint. Freshmen learn two lines before they learn any steps: "May I have this dance" and "I would be delighted." Nobody can be rejected, so nobody has to be nervous. Resources: G.K. Chesterton and Our Lady, edited by Nancy Carpentier Brown, with an essay by Maria Romine The Surprise, G.K. Chesterton's play adapted for television by Dale Ahlquist The Frances Chesterton Rosary League Chesterton Academy of St. Louis on Instagram Chesterton Academy of St. Louis on Facebook FOLLOW US Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT Donate Shop Chapters: 00:00: Welcome, and a guest on Our Lady's birthday 01:25: A convert, a gift-shop rosary, and Our Lady's last nudge 03:47: Three strangers, one question: are you consecrated? 05:33: Chesterton's Marian poems, and the quest they started 09:20: A rosary league first, then a Chesterton school in St. Louis 12:40: The stage as an incarnational art, and Chesterton's play The Surprise 14:28: Playing saints, and what memorized words do to a student 19:07: Teaching English country dance to freshmen 21:19: "May I have this dance": two lines that end the awkwardness 23:57: Daily Mass, and becoming small versions of Gilbert and Frances 27:32: The Society as the Chestertons' extended godchildren 31:41: The Legion of Mary, and a Marian plan for October Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios