G.K. Chesterton: Brilliant Witness to the Truth

I've been reading my Sept/Oct edition of Gilbert, the Chesterton Society's magazine and came across this interesting statement in an interview with Shakespeare expert Fr. Peter Milward, S.J. The interviewer asked him, "As a Shakespearean scholar, what would you say is Chesterton's most interesting insight into Shakespeare?" His response:

Well, to begin with, Chesterton remarks in his book on Chaucer that the fact of Shakespeare's being a Catholic is "something that every Catholic by every sort of convergent common sense knows to be true." He proves this by emphasizing the indebtedness of the dramatist to Catholic tradition, or the ideal of Christendom, which was the very ideal of Chesterton shared with Belloc. Shakespeare isn't just himself alone, nor can he be understood by himself alone, as so many Shakespeare scholars try to do. He can only be understood in relation to the Christian past, and for him the Christian past was the Catholic past; there was no other.

I found this intriguing so I went to Joseph Pearce's book, The Quest for Shakespeare, to refresh my memory of what he says about Chesterton and Shakespeare. Chesterton believed there was a "chasm of difference" (Pearce's words) between Milton, the Protestant, and Shakespeare, the Catholic, and I think this emphasizes Fr. Milward's statement about the Catholic's connection to the past.  But let Chesterton explain:

Milton is possessed with what is, I suppose, the first and finest idea of Protestantism -- the idea of the individual soul actually testing and tasting all the truth there is, and calling that truth which it has not tested or tasted truth of a less valuable and vivid kind. But Shakespeare is possessed through and through with the feeling which is the first and finest idea of Catholicism that truth exists whether we like it or not, and that it is for us to accommodate ourselves to it....But I really do not know how this indescribable matter can be better described than by simply saying this; that Milton's religion was Milton's religion, and that Shakespeare's religion was not Shakespeare's.

Ah.....Catholics are connected to the truth from the very beginning -- the truths of the natural law from man's first footstep on the earth, through the search for truth by pagan philosophers like Socrates and the good doctor Hippocrates, through the chosen people of Israel, to the epitome of truth found in Jesus Christ and the Church he founded. We are not adrift on a sea of individualism, lost in our own egos, but are integrally connected to the truth throughout history as a baby is connected to his mother through the umbilical cord.

I thank God today for being a Catholic and for all my dear ancestors who passed on the faith so that I could rejoice in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament today. And thanks be to God for Catholic apologists like Chesterton who speaks as clearly as ever to our modern age if it cares to listen. He reminds us that truth, no matter how ancient, is ever new.