As I write this article, I am doing my level best to ignore the piles of clean laundry in the other room. There has, I am sorry to say, been a good deal of arguing amongst my brood today. And I am not quite sure what we will have for dinner. In fact, were Chesterton…
Category: Chesterton
Giorgia on my Mind
In late September 2022, shortly after the election of Giorgia Meloni as Italy’s presumptive new Prime Minister, a surprisingly loud fervor was caused by her mention of Chesterton in a speech. References to her speech and Chesterton reverberated through the main stream media, and caused quite a stir. Personally, I received many excited emails pointing…
Faith of our Fathers
My daughters and I made a trek up to Rochester, NY for the regional Chesterton Conference, and it did not disappoint. The Rochester NY Chesterton Society conference on the history of the Church in England was such a joy-filled and informative meeting. The talk by Ted Janiszewski, of St. Irenaeus Ministries was absolutely inspiring. Ted…
Lepanto
One of the best ways to introduce Chesterton to children is his poetry – and one of his best poems is Lepanto. Every October 7th, the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, the children and I listen to a recording of Lepanto like the one here: At the same time, we read the poem….
A Hope for the Decline of Civilization
Now, I’m not a Luddite, but will admit, as a mother of 7 boys, to have wished that technology might disappear, or at least be severely limited in my home. Playstation restrictions and rules do little to curb the attraction my boys have to the blinking lights, fast action, and endorphins generated by the infernal…
Chesterton’s Fence Part II
The alternative to the family is the individual. Within the family is mutual obligation. The parent cares for the child, and the child is then obligated to obey and care for the parent. Chesterton saw that as first the father and then the mother was removed from the home, the basic unit of society was…
Chesterton’s Fence, part I
The Drift from Domesticity, found in Chesterton’s book entitled “The Thing, Why I am a Catholic,” introduces the idea of Chesterton’s Fence. Basically, Chesterton claims that we should not tear down a fence unless we know why it was put there in the first place. We would certainly agree with him if there were a…
One Human Being upon a Larger Plan
In Chesterton’s Emancipation of Domesticity, he states that “there must be in every center of humanity one human being upon a larger plan; one who does not “give her best,” but gives her all.” What exactly did he mean by that, and how does it apply to our lives today? Chesterton clearly saw the home…
Education and the Domestic Life
Chesterton was clearly an advocate for both parental involvement in education and education in the home. His wife, Frances, was involved with Charlotte Mason, and Chesterton wrote at least two columns where he mentioned her by name, and many more where he discussed ideas related to her philosophy. Clearly, he knew that the mother had…
G.K. and Stephanie
Our ninth child, Stephanie, was born at home on St Valentine’s Day – a perfect love letter from God. As a geriatric mother, I had been poked, prodded, and tested, and I had discovered that she would likely be born with Down Syndrome, but that her heart and health checked out and we were safe…