Why would “Everybody Loves Raymond” and “Mom’s Night Out” actress Patricia Heaton urge followers on Twitter to read 20th-century Christian philosopher G.K. Chesterton’s writings? “If you want to be transported out of this vulgar, hate-spewing brainless, illiterate world we live in, G.K. is your man,” she tweeted on Sept. 18.
Heaton, a Catholic, is reading Chesterton’s biography by Maisie Ward before going to bed, which included many of his letters. Ward was a friend of the Chestertons, publishing the biography in 1942, six years after he died.
Chesterton took on the trends taking over culture like materialism, moral relativism, and spineless agnosticism, wrote Dale Ahlquist, the president of the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton. “He also argued against both socialism and capitalism and showed why they have both been the enemies of freedom and justice in modern society.”
A plethora of esteemed writers praised his work like Ernest Hemingway, Agatha Christie, Sigrid Undset, Orson Welles and many others.
Chesterton shared the following wisdom.
The “problem of disbelieving in God is not that a man ends up believing nothing. Alas, it is much worse. He ends up believing anything.”
Chesterton, who influenced the Christian conversions of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, was a celebrated thinker. Pope Pius XI called him ‘a gifted defender of the faith.’
Perhaps this is the reason Heaton added the Catholic layman’s letters/writings are “witty, optimistic, learned, insightful, gentle, joyous – a balm for the soul.”
By Corine Gatti-Santillo