30th Anniversary of the Chesterton Review.

Seton Hall--Exiled from St. Thomas More College in Saskatoon, Canada Father Ian Boyd, C.S.B. found a home for himself and his Chesterton Review at Seton Hall University, New Jersey some six years ago. It is a rare thing for a specialized journal such as this Review to last for ten years; this one has just celebrated its 30th anniversary with a special double number, 246 pages long, for Fall and Winter 2004.

It begins with a reprint of an essay Chesterton wrote a hundred years ago, on "The Patriotic Idea," treating a typical Chestertonian theme, "We must at all costs get back to small political entities, because we must at all costs get back to reality." The other essays in the volume are impressive and wide-ranging; there is a particularly Interesting one by Sheridan Gilley on "Chesterton and the English anti-Catholic Tradition."

The Review is published by the G.K. Chesterton Institute for Faith and Culture, and it soon becomes obvious that this body is plotting great things. Not only has it held conferences in England, the United States, and Canada, but it has also invaded continental Europe: the Notes and Comments section of the journal contains the accounts of a meeting at Vilnius, Lithuania. Moreover, there is an essay by Stratford Caldecott, European director of the Institute, on "Chesterton's strategy for evangelizing the culture." In other words, Father Boyd has gathered a group of Chesterton enthusiasts around him and given them the very ambitious task of redeeming our culture from its present deplorable state.

The Notes and Comments include high praise of Father Boyd, by Paul Likoudis of The Wanderer, for working tirelessly on both sides of the Atlantic in political, economic, religious, and social circles to advance the distributist vision--Chesterton's vision--in modern culture. Likoudis writes, "While EU politicians and bureaucrats stomp their socialist boots on small producers of beer, wine, bread, sausage, and cheese in the service of giant agribusiness, and the major media campaign endlessly against religion, Fr. Boyd has arranged important conferences across Eastern Europe where serious Catholic academics, economists, and politicians can explain the enduring relevance of Chesterton's and Belloc's social principles. These principles also happened to be those of every Holy Father from Leo XIII to John Paul II."

The Reviews section of this anniversary volume contains a lengthy discussion of Catholic Insight columnist Lianne Laurence's book on Joe Borowski; Joe Campbell calls it "a splendidly written book, well worth reading."