The Essential Belloc: A Prophet for Our Times
Edited by Scott Bloch, Rev. C. John McCloskey, and Brian
Robertson
(Saint Benedict Press, 270 Pages, $17.95)
As its title suggests, The Essential Belloc: A Prophet for
Our Times is a 270-page chrestomathy of Hilaire Belloc’s
writings. It is edited by three worthies: Scott Bloch, Rev. C. John
McCloskey, and Brian Robertson, and published by the Saint Benedict
Press. It pulls from more than threescore works by Belloc and
covers almost every subject imaginable with an extraordinary
jeu d’esprit, to say nothing of the joie de vivre
which underlies it all.
What can one say of a book that advises “Never warm Red wine”?
One simply embraces it. One takes it as an authority. One brings it
to restaurants to show to misguided sommeliers who serve
room-temperature cabernet or zinfandel that curdles in the glass at
75 degrees Fahrenheit. Belloc (1870-1953) was a prophet for our
time because he must have sensed this abuse of the grape as a
growing threat within the very heart of Western civilization. As a
well-balanced man, he also cautioned against over-chilling white
wine, as it kills the taste. However, lovers of Champagne will be
discomfited by his warning, “Never to drink what has been made and
sold since the Reformation.” At least this would get rid of rum
colas and other soft-drink pollutions.
There are other gustatory admonitions that deserve
consideration: “if you use processed salt you do so at your peril.”
Also, do not complain about hard Parmesan “rancid in bottles.” “You
think it is hard from birth? You are mistaken. It is the world that
hardens the Parmesan.” Or this very human touch: “Be content to
remember that those who can make omelettes properly can do nothing
else.”
But I am cheating here, succumbing to the temptation to keep
quoting from the book because what Belloc says is so delicious. One
wants to share it, which is why we should be so grateful to these
editors for doing just that. In the preface, Fr. James Schall
states that we are ineluctably charmed by Belloc, whom he calls the
greatest essayist in the English language, because he delights in
existence itself. That includes everything. And it is why
everything for him is an adventure-wine, food, people, history,
places, travel, God, and, generally, how the world works.
Few have written with such sweep and passion about the thrill of
Christian orthodoxy, because it is orthodoxy, Belloc says, that
sees things as they are, accepts them for what is. As he
wrote, “The Catholic Church is the exponent of Reality.”
What’s more, he states that “To-day, in the twentieth century,
Catholics are the only organized body consistently appealing to the
reason…” Belloc was the poet of reason in Christendom. His
orthodoxy sings. In these pages, there is much praise of
Christendom, and he energetically defends its defense, including
the Crusades.
How ought one to read this book? That depends. I thought I would
simply dip into it for occasional refreshment, a bon mot
or two, an aperçu here and there, but found myself
devouring whole sections at a sitting. This was especially so with
the chapter of selections on Islam. In it, Belloc earns the
subtitle’s description of him as prophetic. Read: “there are signs
enough in the political heavens today of what we may have to expect
from the revolt of Islam at some future date perhaps not far
distant.”
No one was as prescient in this matter as was Belloc, who also
correctly diagnosed the West’s main vulnerability: “Those who
direct us and from whom the tone of our policy is taken have no
major spiritual interest.… Islam has not suffered this spiritual
decline… and [in this] lies our peril.” I could not think of a
better description of the Obama administration than this, though I
admit failure in this regard is bipartisan. It is, unfortunately,
as Belloc feared, a sign of our declining civilization. Islam has
preserved its soul. We have not preserved ours.
As a champion of Christendom, Belloc is also wonderfully
politically incorrect. Consider his treatment of this touchy topic:
“In what measure Islam affected our science and our philosophy is
open to debate. Its effect has been, of course, heavily
exaggerated, because to exaggerate it was a form of attack upon
Catholicism.” Exactly.
Belloc also fights for the faith. One can only lament at the
impoverished discourse today between our nouveau atheists
and their opponents. Both sides could be vastly improved by
Belloc’s rhetoric. Consider what he accomplishes in these few
sentences: “For if God is not, then all falsehoods, though each
prove the rest false, are each true, and every evil is its own
good, and there is confusion everywhere. But if God is, then the
world can stand.” How is that for a two-sentence lesson in
apologetics?
IN THIS BROAD collection, there is something to delight or
irritate just about everyone. I for one would like to send every
libertarian I know Belloc’s remark that “A conversion to the
Catholic culture is necessary to the restoration of economic
freedom because economic freedom was the fruit of that culture in
the past.” Are you with me, Ron Paul?
Of course, Belloc was not perfect. He said some kind things
about Jean-Jacques Rousseau (though they are not included in this
volume) and the French Revolution. Across from my house, the county
park is deliberately kept in a state of disrepair, infested with
poison ivy and decaying trees, as a tribute to Rousseau’s
advancement of the “state of nature” as superior to man’s
molestation of it (meaning forestry). Good for organic matter and
bugs; bad for man (and my children).
But this is carping in comparison to the genius set forth in
this invaluable volume. In closing, I return to the subject of
adult beverages and succumb once again to quoting Belloc, who
undertook to advise an alcoholic that he should drink only wine and
mead. As a consequence, “all went well. He become a merry
companion, and began to write odes. His prose clarified and set,
that had before been very mixed and cloudy. He slept well; he
comprehended divine things.” Alas, this man drank again of
post-Reformation spirits, which he had forsworn, and had, as a
consequence, to give up all drink. He “became a spectacle
and a judgment, whereas if he had kept his exact word he might by
this time have been a happy man.” And so will be you if you buy and
abide by this book.
