Dale Ahlquist

There are more surprises in the past than in the future. That’s because the past keeps filling up and the future is still empty. When we look back, we see a mountain of material to be discovered, contemplated, and learned from. When we look ahead there is only a vast unknown. As G.K. Chesterton says, […]

We believe there really is a peril. It is not so much in the actions as in the assumptions. It is not so much in the sins for which individual sinners are pilloried, as in the sins for which they are not pilloried; the sins that seem to be no longer regarded as sins at

When G.K. Chesterton celebrated his 100th birthday in 1974, he had been in his grave for nearly forty years. I, too, missed the birthday party, but I was still alive. I was a sophomore in high school, and I was a big fan of C.S. Lewis, something that would lead me to discovering Chesterton a

“I tell you …” he repeated, with wild eyes, “… they were full of men in masks!”  In G.K. Chesterton’s marvelous and mystical novel, The Man Who Was Thursday, there is one scene that is striking for its prophetic power.  The main character, a poet named Gabriel Syme, is recruited by a policeman to become

G.K.’s Weekly, Volume 15 March 12, 1932 – September 3, 1932  Normal people generally take normal things for granted; even when they are no longer there. (G.K.’s Weekly, Mar. 19, 1932)  The normal things are not there anymore. But the “new normal” is not normal. We have fallen into a complacent compliance with this abnormal

Nobody realizes (or anyhow admits) that our mechanical civilization is on the verge of the abyss. (G.K.’s Weekly, Jan. 7, 1928)  A friend of mine asked ChatGPT to write an essay listing the villains from G.K. Chesterton’s novels. I’m not sure why he thought this was an exercise worth undertaking, but in any case, he

We are nearly a quarter of the way into the 21st century. It might be a little too early to sum it up. But G.K. Chesterton was already trying to sum the 20th century when he was only a third of the way into it. And he found it no easy task, not because of

“Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.” It is one of G.K. Chesterton’s best lines. A perfect quotation: humorous and serious, light and profound, commanding the language to serve the idea, with the added and unlikely device of a pun. A masterpiece in one sentence. But what does it mean? As some of

Just as G.K. Chesterton says that every city is built over a volcano, it seems that every year is tumultuous. But 2022 somehow managed to end rather quietly, and it was fitting that it ended with the quiet death of the humble, holy man who once led the Catholic Church. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI closed