on Chesterton and Notre Dame

I have been reading the Ralph McInerny series of murder mysteries set in the Notre Dame Campus. Fun stuff! The titles are all puns on Irish/Notre Dame jargon: On This Rockne, The Lack of the Irish, The Book of Kills, Celt and Pepper and so on. The one I am currently reading, Irish Tenure, revolves around academic intrigue all too familiar to this academic wife.

An interesting side note is how the author wove in the writings and life of G. K. Chesterton in this story, via a professor who seems to have gotten hold of an original unpublished story of the great British Catholic author, supposedly written during his short term at the University of Notre Dame. The book opens with a poem Chesterton wrote about Notre Dame:

I have seen, where a strange country
Opened its secret plains about me,
One great golden dome stand lonely with its golden image, one
Seen afar, in strange fulfillment,
Through sunlit Indian summer
That Apocalyptic portent that has clothed her with the Sun.

I am not an expert on Chesterton by any means. I have read quite a bit of his stuff-- but in tidbits. His fiction, aside from the wonderful Fr. Brown mysteries, is not my style at all. But I grew up with Chesterton-loving parents, Chesterton books on the shelf, and Chesterton quotes around the dinner table. I did attend the Chesterton conference last year and was impressed with the speakers. I have great respect for the man and by studying some of his life and writings it is easy to see that he was a great and holy man.

This morning I read in the National Catholic Register Blog that the upcoming British Chesterton meeting will bring up the holiness of the great author, and advocate for his canonization cause. For one, there were more than 130 people, the blog states, that were converted because of the fmaous writer. I'd say our dear Catholic Church has canonized some very unexpected characters-- I wouldn't be surprised if the jolly British author join the ranks.

To close, I also visited the new Chesterton Academy (in the Twin Cities) website and was totally impressed! The faculty alone blew me away, and the curriculum seems to get so many things right! In a perfect world, the academy would be 2 miles from our home.