I have a few problems with what you are saying here.
1) I don't think Chesterton is just more difficult than Lewis - I think he is simply inaccesible to many people. That is ok - I don't think he was meaning to directly appeal to everybody or every situation, and I wouldn't insist that he did. A great many people are not bookish, and frankly they should not have to be to be Christians. Some people struggle with reading. Many people have little time for it, or are so tired when they are done with work and family that they can't concentrate on serious reading.
A lot more people could read serious literature, but there are a substantial number that really could not, or not in their present circumstances.
...
...while Chesterton did not, is because Chesterton was a bit more of a jerk and more likely to assert his own particular views on the congregation he joined. I can't help but wonder if he would have been convinced of Catholicism as much if he had had to attend a modern NO mass
.)
Hi, MK!
I'd start by asking for clarification on what is meant by "inaccessible". A literal understanding of the word translates to - it is impossible to reach him". I cannot see how a literate man or woman could possibly claim that.
I CAN (and did!) see that people have to think more and harder when they read Chesterton. The first few books of his I read at a snail's pace, scratching my head and working out what he meant. But this is because I myself - and all of us as a people - have been largely taught to think less. Thinking is a harder exercise for us, and I have said why. It is emphatically not our personal fault - unless/until we discover that we ought to make the effort and refuse to - and I have said how this came to be.
Next, when we read something, we either understand it, or do not. We can understand it to be nonsense, or sense. But if we do NOT understand it, it does not follow from that that it is nonsense. The second-grader does not understand Shakespeare or Einstein - but the fault does not lie in those geniuses, but in the second-grader. But that imperfect analogy does not completely apply to the adult, for he need not wait ten years to understand it - he can begin learning and trying to understand now. At the very least he can ask, "Why do you say this strange thing that I do not understand?" instead of taking the position that he does understand it and dismisses it as nonsense when in fact he simply does not understand it. The failure of making sense is then on his part.
Chesterton was a journalist - an internationally famous journalist, in his own time. That fact must be considered. A journalist, by definition, must be read by a large enough number of people to justify his circulation; he cannot write elitest books for a minority who can grasp him and achieve such broad fame and popularity. People flocked to his debates and lectures in large numbers - and he himself was subsequently reported on. The Pope met with him. And so on. The point is, he was read by a large number of people, not only by an intellectual elite. (This is where I recommend reading Masie Ward's biography).
That we now (including myself, when I first began to read him) have difficulty at first indicates that we have become literally less used to any reading that challenges us to think. When an intelligent person realizes this, they should accept the challenge to think, and discern/discover truth. A person may choose not to do so. But they cannot be considered intelligent in doing so. That a mass of ordinary people COULD read and understand Chesterton indicates that he was, indeed, "accessible". But I think the very word does him injustice, for it makes the fault appear to lie in him, when the weakness is OURS, and the appropriate adjective should be used to describe US, not him. It is we who are (insert descriptive adjective) for finding Chesterton difficult. Nor do I say a person must be literate in order to be a Christian, let alone "bookish". They can be Christian, humble, and silent and be quite godly. But I do say that they should, if they want to talk intelligently on intelligent things, be willing to
think seriously and at length, and this can be via listening or reading. It is when they say something, strive to teach or preach, that they must extend themselves to that mental activity, which, if it is on something deep and complex, cannot be limited to the short posts that most here prefer. Although Chesterton is "accessible" even to those attention spans (something we shouldn't be proud of or think normal or good) - his aphorisms, quotations number in the hundreds and thousands.
"We have learned to do a great many things. The next great task is to learn not to do them."
How is that either inaccessible or being a jerk? It says something is true, is full of common sense, and everyone who has that quality - something that is educated out of men without chests - can see that that is so.
When you say "people cannot read serious literature", that is tantamount to say that people are incapable of serious thought, for the one is the written expression of the other. In short, I completely deny the claim. That they might have gotten unused to it I readily grant. But it is now only a matter of being unwilling, not unable. Anyone who wishes to strive for intelligence should be willing to try to flex their muscles and do the mental exercise. The trouble in our time is in wanting to pretend to intelligence without doing so.
When you say "Chesterton was a jerk..." I think I understand why you might think so - and I would interpret it as shock at his really and seriously thinking himself to be right about something, and saying so - and why. I do the same thing, and so, probably, am also "a jerk". This is proved when you say "his views". He thought about the idea of views long before you and I were born, and spoke on it, and better than you or I could - or at least do.
At any street corner we may meet a man who utters the frantic and blasphemous statement that he may be wrong. Every day one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one. Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view. We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being a mere fancy of their own. Scoffers of old time were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced. The meek do inherit the earth; but the modern sceptics are too meek even to claim their inheritance. It is exactly this intellectual helplessness which is our second problem.
Is this, too, "inaccessible" or difficult to understand? I believe it is surprising and perhaps shocking to a people who have been trained, rather carefully, to think in terms of one's views being merely personal. But it cannot be difficult to understand and is obviously true about the philosophy of our time.
In any event, the posting and message-forum format is inimical to real thinking and examination of complex ideas. Some here have (falsely) accused Chesterton of excess verbosity. So might I accuse any academic at a university who is laying out a complex scheme and ideas. Belloc defended GKC against that charge wonderfully in his "On the Place of Gilbert Chesterton in English Letters", as good a synopsis of GKC as any - and better than the others.
If any complex truth can possibly be expressed at all, we must expect it to not simultaneously be simple, nor to be reduced to a one-sentence or paragraph statement that can
also satisfy and meet criticism.
People frequently charge Chesterton with arrogance. And yet the irony is that they themselves do not have the humility to admit that they have not thought deeply on a topic; that all of their thought hitherto may have been quite superficial. And his broad humility in regard to himself disproves the charge completely. he thinks himself to be very unimportant, even as he thinks his ideas important.
Lewis is another matter, requiring another post...
