The event is one that has occasioned the usual mistake in the Press. They have said with loud emphasis, 'Mr. Chesterton has joined the Catholic Church.' He has not; there is, unfortunately, no Catholic Church that he could have joined; what he has done is to be received into the Roman part of the Catholic Church.
This is a matter of importance to Chesterton; it is a matter of far greater importance to the Roman Catholics. If the Roman Church is wise she will not put her ban on Chesterton's writings—his intellect is far beyond the ken of the Pope; his utterances are of more import than all the Papal Bulls. She has secured, as her ally, one of the finest intellects of the day, one of the best Christian apologists.
If, then, we have further novels from the pen of Chesterton we shall expect them to have a Roman bias, but we shall hope that they will not bear any signs that Rome has dictated the policy that has made many of her best priests mere puppets, afraid, not of the Church, but of the Pope, who often enough in history has been a very ignorant man.
Of present-day novelists it is in no way fair to compare them to Chesterton; 'some contemporary novelists are better than he is, some are worse.' These are statements the writer of this book has often heard; they are entirely unfair. Chesterton, as I have said, stands apart; his works are for the most part symbolic. This is their difficulty: any of his books may be the symbol for several points of view with the exception of his religious position, which is always on the side of Christianity, and, I think, the Roman Catholic interpretation of it; his dialogue is worthy of Anthony Hope, his dramatic power is intense, his satire is never ill-natured, it is always cutting, his humour is gentle, pathos is rare in his novels, he has never described a woman, he is undoubtedly a philosopher, but he is not one who is academic, above all he is the genial writer of phantastic tales that are as wide as the universe.
Chapter Nine
CHESTERTON ON DIVORCE
It may be somewhat arbitrary to proceed straight away to nearly the end of Chesterton's 'Superstition of Divorce' to find an argument that shows that he doesn't quite understand what divorce aims at; but it is well, when taking note of a book on an alleged abuse of modern society, to also see that the writer has got hold of the right end of the stick. It is no doubt unfortunate that many marriages said to be made in heaven end in hell. Divorce may be a sign that men have no reverence for marriage, it may equally be an argument that they reverence it very much; but there is no good reason for attributing to divorce only very low motives and one of the lowest that can be found; consequently I have started in the middle of this book.
In a chapter on the tragedies of marriage, Chesterton remarks that 'the broad-minded are extremely bitter because a Christian, who wishes to have several wives when his own promise bound him to one, is not allowed to violate his vow at the same altar at which he made it.' What most people who wish for a divorce want is that they shall have, not several wives, but one, who shall prove that Christian marriage is not a horrible farce, that the words of the priest were not a miserable blasphemy. Chesterton has made a very big mistake if he thinks that the exponents of divorce wish the Church to be a party to polygamy; what they want is that the Church shall show a little common sense and not rely on the tradition of hotly disputed texts.
I think it is perfectly clear that Chesterton can see no good in divorce at all. I have said it may be a very good argument for those who wish to make marriage what it is said by the Church to be—a Divine institution. Many people seek divorce, not that, as Chesterton implies, they shall run away with the wife of the man across the square, but that, having been unlucky in a speculation, they wish quite naturally and quite rightly to try again, to the infinite satisfaction of all parties. If the Church does not agree that divorce is ever right, so much the worse for that Divine institution; if the Church is right in holding that marriages are made by God, then civil marriages are not marriages at all, and there is no need to worry about divorce, because the most ardent reformer does not imagine that man can undo the Divine decree; on the other hand, the Church never will face the fact that, if all marriages in a church by a priest are Divine, then it is rather strange that the result of them very often would be more consistent with a Satanic origin.