Reports of Heavy-Duty
Religion’s Death Even in Ivy League Schools Premature
June 8, 2002
by Andrew E. Carlan
I have been holding forth with the director of Chesterton House
at Cornell University in upstate New York. Whether he has been
holding forth with me is another matter. I asked him how evangelicals
could be such fans of Chesterton who entered the Church saying
"I did it in order to be saved."
The Chesterton site had a review of one of Woody’s "artsy"
films. I am collecting Woody Allen repartee in contrast to his
politically correct and unfunny films. The man has problems
like the old Studebaker. He doesn’t know whether he is coming
or going nor how dangerously close he is Chesterton and therefore
Catholicism. I wrote to the director of Chesterton House who
pointed out that Chesterton traveled the road from Unitarianism
to High Anglicanism and only toward the end of his life did
he enter the Roman Catholic Church.
"You taught me something. A man particularly like Chesterton
wouldn’t have jettisoned the truths he discovered early just
before of the calendar. While he changed his view of democracy
and liberalism, he had an abiding dislike for rampant capitalism
as evangelicals do as to collectivism. His challenged easy evolution
and the inevitability of progress. How any sane person in the
20th century could believe in the inevitably of progress shows
as George Orwell wrote "intellectuals will believe anything."
Or as Chesterton commented:
I am tired of arguing that Thursday isn’t an improvement
on Wednesday just because it is Thursday.
Papal infallibility compared to secular political correctness
is like an invitation to debate. It is strange that anti-Catholics,
anti-fundamentalists have problems with religious authority
which is at least voluntary and usually rather ineffective.
The more antithetical they are toward Christianity and Judaism
the more likely they are to worship at the feet of the Supreme
Court which issues rea; papal bulls. I will refrain from adding
the second and more important part to the word because children
and elderly ladies may read this site; and they issue them on
things they know absolutely nothing about, as whether a golf
cart is essential to professional golf competition or when human
life begins.
It would be nice for someone like me, who hates shopping, to
be able to go into this store and not have to choose among hundreds
of alternatives. Unfortunately, issues like apostolic succession,
which seems to me at least as reasonable as precedent in law
(too bad it isn’t practiced) and the ordination of women keep
Christendom from reuniting.
The modern habit of saying, "Every man has a different
philosophy; this is my philosophy and it suits me,"-- the
habit of saying this is mere weak mindedness. A cosmic philosophy
is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed
to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion
than he can possess a private sun and moon. -- G K Chesterton,
from a forward to an edition of the Book of Job, 1907
I have found as a "shocking" prefiguration of Christianity
in the writings of Woody Allen as distinct from his movies,
where I think Woody wants to be Hegel. Why anyone would be is
incomprehensible. Even Hegel didn’t want to be Hegel.
Mark Twain described German as "the language which enables
a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars."
As for Woody, I don’t want to give away the house yet. You’ll
get the whole dumped on you when I have polished it up to a
glisten. Surprises are fun. But to tickle you:
Death is an acquired trait.
I am two with nature.
I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work.
I want to achieve it through not dying.
I thought that’s what Christ came to do.
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