The Course of Conversion, I
Chesterton, G. K.
October 20, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 575 THE COURSE OF...
...It is, perhaps, no longer the custom I T would be very undesirable that modern men to regard conversion as a form of dissipation...
...they talk of the "aggression" of among thieves, in the sense of Communists...
...Chesterton is the first of a series of caught with "a bad book" in his possession...
...because Rome is not so The point is, for the moment, that from the point of very new...
...The Editors...
...and it is quite likely that another son will tions he does class the freshness and novelty of Rome...
...but it should accept Catholicism merely as a novelty...
...or, at any rate, as old would call fads...
...In places where tradition can do extreme solfidian conceptions once common among nothing for it, in places where all the tradition is some of the more extravagant Methodists...
...He has no fear that his children will become practical purposes treated as a new religion, that is, seventeenth-century Supralapsarians, however much he a revolution...
...Even those who denounce it generally de- merchant of the middle-class, the worthy farmer of nounce it as a novelty...
...go over to Rome...
...He, too, might find that one of those uncles say that the youth will "get over it," as if it children had joined the Christians in their Ecclesia and were a childish love affair or that unfortunate busi- possibly in their Catacombs...
...but is still common to regard conversion as a form of it is a novelty...
...as an innovation and not merely the Middle-West, when he sends his son to college, a survival...
...He is not even particusense an antiquity...
...ist and hang up a portrait of Lenin...
...but it is the only old religion all these things act after the manner of new religions, that is so new...
...Darker and sterner aunts and that, of his other children, one cared for nothing but uncles, perhaps at a rather earlier period, used actually the Mysteries of Orpheus, another was inclined to folto talk about it as an indecent indulgence, as if its low Mithras, another was a neo-Pythagorean who had literature were literally a sort of pornography...
...Optimistic aunts and the capitol...
...Catholicism indeed, even more than the too, might find all his children going strange ways and others, is often spoken of as if it were actually one of deserting the household gods and the sacred temple of the wild passions of youth...
...The father of some such An- form him that his son has become a Fifth-Monarchy glican or American Puritan family will find, very often, man, any more than that he has joined the Albigenthat all his children are breaking away from his own sians...
...When it was originally and really new, of great movements, of enthusiasms that carry young no doubt a Roman father often found himself in the people off their feet and leave older people bewildered same position as the Anglican or Puritan father...
...He does not exactly lie awake at night wondermore or less Christian compromise (regarded as nor- ing whether Tom at Oxford has become a Lutheran mal in the nineteenth century) and going off in various any more than a Lollard...
...another daughter will go over to Christian heads...
...but he the Church of Rome...
...It does act upon its existing en- revolt...
...The worthy novelty...
...And as regards the established convention of vironment with the peculiar force and freshness of a much of the modern world, it is a revolt...
...But amongst these dangerous juvenile attracScience...
...October 20, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 575 THE COURSE OF CONVERSION I. TRUTH AND TRADITION By G. K. CHESTERTON (This article by Mr...
...Now this is rather odd...
...It does not necessarily owe any- larly troubled by the possibility of their adopting the thing to tradition...
...man remarks quite naturally, as if there were nothing Though the Roman father, unlike the Victorian odd about it at the time, that an undergraduate found father, might have the pleasure of exercising the patria with an ascetic manual or a book of monastic medita- potestas and cutting off the heads of all the heretics, tions was under a sort of cloud or taint, as having been he could not cut off the stream of all the heresies...
...But he would have found ness with the barmaid...
...not as a likely to await with terror the telegram that will intradition, but a truth...
...All these religions he dimly directions after various faiths or fashions which he recognizes as dead religions...
...one of his daugh- He is only frightened of those fresh, provocative, ters will become a Spiritualist and play with a plan- paradoxical new notions that fly to the young people's chette...
...Given any normal respectable has the same sort of fear lest he fall among Catholics...
...New- learned vegetarianism from the Hindus, and so on...
...One of his sons will become a Social- religions...
...Protestant family, Anglican or Puritan, in England or Now he has no fear lest he should fall among CalAmerica, we shall find that Catholicism is actually for vinists...
...inflaming his lusts by contemplating an incorrect number of candles...
...Only...
...Among these annoying new religions, one view of the father, and even, in a sense, of the family, is rather an old religion...
...He, or annoyed...
...It is not a survival...
...They talk of the "advanced" party in the does not feel a faint, alarm lest the boy should fall Church of England...
...And he is only frightened of new religions...
...He had four, the second of which will appear in The Commonweal been wallowing in the sensual pleasure of Nones or of October 27...
...He is not against it, it is intruding on its own merits...
...It is not in that may dislike that doctrine...
Vol. 4 • October 1926 • No. 24
