The Size of Chesterton's Catholicism

David W. Fagerberg draws on Chesterton's theological writings - avoiding secondary sources so that the reader can encounter his thought as directly as possible - to show how Chesterton championed a Catholicism of great robustness accessible by a thousand doors.
Through these doors Fagerberg shows how Chesterton believed the Church to be a living institution that confounds its critics. He organizes Chesterton's material around seven themes, fashioning a mosaic from the illustrations and arguments found in these apologetical works. We see how Chesterton responded to accusations that the Church avoids the world with a defense of ordinary life, and to the allegation of blind obedience with a defense of doctrinal complexity. We explore his affinity with paganism and ritual and share his response to the objections of liberal Protestantism.
Chesterton is shown to be an apologist for a Catholic Catholicism and he saw in every heresy an effort to narrow the Church.
Fagerberg suggests that the ultimate apology Chesterton made for Catholicism is that it is capacious enough to accommodate the paradoxical combinations which reveal reality - that the Church is a trysting-place for all the truths in the world.

David W. Fagerberg is Associate Professor of Religion at Concordia College.