Latest / CASTLcast / 6 | Is Chesterton Academy a Good Name?? - with Dr. Alexander Schimpf

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6 | Is Chesterton Academy a Good Name?? - with Dr. Alexander Schimpf · CASTLcast

• Jake: All right, welcome back to another episode of Castle Cast. I'm here again with our esteemed headmaster, Dr. Alex Schimpf. That's right today. Great. I'm happy to be back on my own podcast. I kicked myself off for a while. Yeah, I mean, we're for a good cause. For a good cause. Yes. I was covering some classes. I had a brief career as a freshman science teacher and freshman geometry teacher. And it was glorious, but it's return to Euclid. Our return to Euclid. I was telling them all the time that above Plato's Academy, it supposedly said, let no one ignorant of geometry enter here. Whoa. So geometry class kind of became an extension of philosophy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. With some great excitement. The geometry classroom was sometimes above the Faculty prep room. Yeah. We played an unfortunate review game. there was a game called Grudge Ball that I had never played before. And as I read about it, I thought, well, I have I never done this. Looks like this looks fun. Well, now I know. Well, I've never done it. Very little review took place. A a question would be asked, they would either answer it or not answer it correctly, and the other team would answer it. And then it involves if you've gotten the correct answer, you get to go erase points from the other team. So after each question, a massive argument would break out in the room. There was hard to get back under control of you need to erase them. No erase that team. So we we reviewed but mostly we screamed at each other. So but a good time was had by all appropriate for a Chesterton Academy. The joy is a hallmark of our education. That's right, that's right. So this is the best geometry Review ever. But that is, to bring it up, that's how I forced myself back into the podcast as I told you, I've got a good idea. Yeah. So let's hear it. We need to talk about why is our name Chesterton Academy. Why would an otherwise right thinking classical school with a bold Forward thinking headmaster named themselves Chesterton Academy. This is a great question. Yeah. So let's start it off with a question for you. As a new faculty member at the school, when you first heard about a Chesterton Academy opening up, I want to know your reaction. Did you think, yeah, right on, I love Chesterton? Or did you instead think, what's that? Why do that? So Yeah, okay. So good question. I guess I had heard It was kinda slow, right? So I guess slow slow slow reveal, I guess. But yeah, so I I personally like GK Chesterton. Okay. I yeah, read prior to even coming on board, read some of his short stories, his essays, some of his poetry. you know, so big fan. I don't think I knew until I got here to the extent of that the that the the educational pedagogy and like sort of the philosophy of the school was so classical. So I think that's probably where like if I would have known that, like hey, we're starting this school and like it's gonna be classical and everything that classical means okay. Prop I might have I might have like been more now that now that you bring it up it is kinda like, you know, these two things two things don't exactly go together. Why wouldn't you call it like Plato's Academy or Yeah, or some snooty word, Veritas Academy or Agape Academy, and some something in a foreign ancient foreign language usually does the trick. So what did you think then? Was your impression when you heard Chesterton Academy was was the Catholicism what jumped to the fore for you? Or did you think, ooh, writer school, or what what what do you associate with Chesterton? Yeah, I mean I have always associated Chesterton with full throttle, love the Catholic Church and everything that the Catholic Church has given us. Okay. And so I'm like, cool, great. So you yeah, you're the wrong audience. I I need someone who is upset about this, but you're just yeah, it's correctly named. End of the episode, sign off. So No, but it but it it's but I guess now we're talking about a classical school, okay. So Chesterton, for those that don't know, he was writing at the end of the ninth twentieth century, early twenty first century. No. Okay. Twentieth. Just end of the twentieth. End of the twentieth would have been like when I was born, like nineteen eighty. So no, even earlier. He's early early twentieth century. Yeah, I meant yeah, I meant End of the eighteen hundreds is what I was trying to say. You're testing me. Yeah. A little more faster fastball than that if you want to get it by the headmaster. Yeah, so he's yeah, he's he's definitely known as a writer. Anyone would know him as a writer. And if you've read any of his stuff, then you're typically gonna know him as a Catholic, although although He's not Catholic when he writes one of his big books, Orthodoxy, right? I hope I'm correct about that. If not, the members of the Chesterton Society will be dialing our hotline at this at this moment. So when I go to my favorite coffee shop that's in the basement of a nearby Lutheran church, they're really excited to hear Chesterton. Same thing. One morning I was working out with my F3 group and there was a guy there who is some kind of Protestant pastor. Yeah. And he asked him what I did. And I told him the headmaster of a Chesterton Academy. And he got very excited again because Chesterton is this Christian apologist. They think of him as the proto-C.S. Lewis. So I've enjoyed that aspect of it is it is even though for us it is full throttle Catholicism, with other people he's this kind of bridge figure that they're an ecumenical ecumenical figure. You get a chuckle out of it the The more you know about it. That is interesting. Yeah. So are you talking about orthodoxy? do you want me to talk about No, I when you said it's the most famous work, I would say it's orthodoxy and he wasn't. He was Anglican at the time. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. So yeah, but it's it's an open question in a few ways. So you're the wrong audience again because you like the name from the start. But it is possible to not like the name. Sure. So first of all, you think, okay, well, if it's really full-throttle Catholicism, why don't you name your school after a saint, right? Canonized Saint. Right, that would indicate some full throttle Catholicism. This guy's not canonized, not a blessed. In fact, part of the story is the bishop who would have had to open the cause for him declined to do so for various reasons. And if we want to go into the angry part of the podcast, I can give you my opinions on that. I like angry Dr. Ship. So someone could object, mm, not Catholic enough. You say it's gonna be a Catholic school, name it after a saint. There are there are ideals, our Platonic ideals in Catholicism. Yeah, do we did you run out? Come on, guys, what are you doing? So that would be one thing. And then you already brought up the kind of classical objection that well, name it something that's more overtly classical from the classical tradition or a classical figure. Chesterton It's it's fascinating. He went to a classical school. arguably one of the most famous sort of boarding schools in Britain, St. Paul's, I believe its name would have been, and he would have had a traditional liberal arts education there. But he himself was a terrible student. I mean it. Okay, okay. People don't know the details of this, but they they have instead of grades, they talk about forms. That's again one of the reasons we revolted against them and and won the war of independence. But anyway, they have yeah, these forms. And you have to achieve a certain level of mastery to be promoted to the next form. Well, Chesterton was always either the last in his form or near the The bottom. Terrible student, daydreamer, not real worried about doing well on assessments. And so he never even qualified to reach the sort of highest form at that school, which is why he formed at a certain point the junior debaters club. Because he was not in a high enough form to join the debaters club. Wow. So it's he's kind of an embarrassment as a student. And then does not go on to a traditional college or university. He goes on the art school doesn't even finish that. so no college degree, no art school degree. Wow. Okay. This is the guy you're choosing. Yeah. Yeah. The guy you're putting before your students, you know, for inspire them to be amazing scholars. It's also been pointed out to me and we narrowly avoided a fist fight over this, but that we're a jock school. At least fifty percent of our students in any given season are playing a sport. Even though they're not required to do so, there's no rule. But they just love hanging out with each other and yeah, because we're kind of a new school, it's kinda easy to make the team. This is my sales pitch. If there are any prospective students out there and you want to play varsity, talk to me. We can make that happen. But Chesterton not known as an athlete athletic man. In fact, there's A really famous story where during the war he was accosted by a man on the street, Why young man, why aren't you out at the front? And Chesterton pointed at his large belly and said, As you could see, I clearly am out at the front. he was a big man, but he was large in every respect. He was tall, he was wide. Yeah. So again, yeah. Is is he a good model for a jock school like us? Well so much there. Yeah, not quite. I guess you know, and then a final thing, and this is This is a cross in his life, we'll have to talk about. But if we're just talking about if your idea in naming a school, this is debatable. Okay. If your idea in naming the school is something to which everyone is gonna relate, well, Chesterton and his wife have no children. And we tend to have big families at our school. A lot of people pull up with these, I mean, they're basically the as close as you can get to a school bus without driving a school bus, these 13 passenger vans. That's not part of Chesterton's experience. Although I can defend him on this front. It was a cross, a cross of infertility. He loved children. But still, you know, if you're thinking you need to pick someone who's gonna match up with your community, right? What's the deal with this guy? I mean, I even in fact had one of our mothers who I like very much said, do our young ladies really need to be wearing a blazer with some dude's face on it? This is an actual quote. And if she's listening, I love you, you're my favorite parent. But again, if our idea is close match between what we are, a one-to-one match. Then he's an intriguing choice. Yeah. Yeah, no, it is interesting. So I'm building up the problem. It's the the tr the drama here. There's gotta be a an issue. Well just to add to it just a little bit. So as you said grade of grade of girth. So could you would you call him like a particularly virtuous man? The the pipe, the pint. Right. A good Yeah, what is this quote that a the the sign that there's a loving God is that he gave us, bread, ale and cheese or something like that. So yeah, it doesn't seem to be a very aesthetic man. I sometimes think when I'm afflicting our students during Lent, I go, How would he handle this? Would he what would he have done during this? So yeah, that's he's challenging. He's an interesting figure. Yeah. Okay. All right. So we're we're you're building quite a strong case of changing the name. This is becoming my trademark on this podcast. If you remember the Socratic Discussion episode, I started off with all these objections to it. So I I think this can just be my model as I'll every episode will start off with why this thing you love is terrible and you ought to be ashamed of yourself. And then there'll be just a dramatic rescue from the middle of it. The eukatastrophe. There you go. All right. So I do think too, there's a temptation we need to avoid here. Cause for You especially, you just got hired, but even for me as headmaster, this name predates us. I was hired to be the founding headmaster of Chesterton Academy of St. Louis. Sure. Done deal. Yeah. And even they can say, well predates us as well, because the idea is Dale Alquist and his friend decided they were gonna found a new high school for their children and they decided to name it Chesterton Academy and had a lot of success. And then when other schools wanted to do what they did, one of the rules was, Well, we're gonna have a Chesterton Schools Network. So you're going to be a Chesterton Academy, and then it can be named after a saint or a particular place, but still the name is given to you. Yeah. So the human temptation is the Pontius Pilate. I wash my hands of this. shucks, I, Mr. Jacob Ison, who everyone knows and loves, I wish I was teaching at Saint Holiness Academy. I you know, I would have done things differently, but nobody asked me. So just back off, man. It's okay. You know, and I I could do that too, like, hey, the name the name's the name, the board runs the show. What am I gonna do? Don't kill the messenger. Don't kill the messenger. But I think this is a temptation to be avoided. I think this is bad for us. Not just with this, but with everything. I think there they more. So it's my my big speech is it's overcoming requirements. That to be a human is daily, hourly. You are presented with things that are not of your choosing. That you would not have done it that way. You don't think this is the right course of action. And you have a choice, then what do I do? And so I think at the end of the day there are only two honorable options. One is if you are presented with something that is morally evil, you don't do it. Even when they threaten to hurt you, you don't do it. So every day we in school by reading the Roman Martyrology and this is the idea. you wanna have to burn a lot of incense to the Emperor. Just one little grain will do. In fact, we're just gonna kinda look over there, you just kinda flick it on the fire. No. Go let the animals eat me. Right. Cut off my head. Yeah. You know, send me into the flames. That's one of those yesterday's was particularly you know Just escalated, first they cut off the nose and then they after you know the ears or just like one thing after another. I'm glad you were listening. And I do try to select the entries on that basis. There could just be a Mr. Jacob Isson martyr confessor went to his return of a reward. But if I if I've got a kind of play by play, we're going for that. So but that's one option. If you're presented with something morally evil, don't do it. That's the only option. The other option is if the thing presented to you is not morally evil, but is can be reconciled with the faith and is presented by a legitimate authority, then you need to redeem it somehow. You need to, the way I say it is overcome the requirement. Meaning take the thing. And turn it to your advantage, see how it can be good or how it can be done in a way that is good. As opposed to what we normally like to do, which is to complain about it the whole time, to do a not very good job because we don't really agree with it. I don't want to clean the school. So I'm gonna kinda sweep over here and ignore the huge dust bunny over here and get out as fast as I can. But I'm not picking on the students because we all do this. You're you're making me teach this class. I don't wanna teach this class. I'm not gonna do a very good job so you don't Make me teach it ever again. Well, this is not honorable. So when it comes to anything that's given to us, either we refuse or we try to say, okay, is there a way in which this can be good? To connect it to Chesterton, this is a version of Chesterton's fence. You're walking along in the countryside, your mind in your own. It's Mr. Jacob Ison's day off, and you're walking down the road and some fool has put a fence across the road. and you think this is in the wrong place, I'm gonna kick it down. No, no, no, GKC says. First you need to look at that thing and think, is there is there any rationale for this? Why would a rational animal like me put a fence right across this road? So first you try to understand the thing. You try to think, is there a way in which it can be good? Quite often in the process of doing that, you'll realize, there is an answer. the road I'm on is not actually a road. This is going to someone's property and there's an angry bull on the other side of that fence. This fence is saving my life. Right. I think this works that way. The road ends and drop off. Right. So you don't destroy something until you first try to think, is there a way in which it is good? So I think that applies to all the requirements in our life. Is there a way in which this can be good? Yeah. Where I first got this is when I was a graduate student, I had to go to one of these professional development things with the other graduate students on making a good syllabus for my class. Which talk about an administrative requirement that everyone hated. It seemed like a complete waste of time. You know, anything that it's on there is gonna get messed up. You're gonna have to redo the schedule. So for most people, their idea was I'm gonna do the bare minimum as fast as I can. Because it doesn't matter and get this out to the students. I'm gonna just check that box. But that's that middle ground, right? You haven't really redeemed the thing. Right. You haven't done anything. So the guy presenting at the time, the professor, was talking about ways that you could, you should instead try to make your syllabus exciting, try to make it a syllabus to which you would want to return throughout the year as a teaching tool. So that's where I first got this idea, but I think it applies more broadly. When presented with something that is not of our choosing. We should first try to overcome the requirement. We should do our level best to overcome the requirement, which includes even praying to God for help in overcoming the requirement, and then see what happens. So that's our task with Chesterton Academy of St. Louis, is not to rage against the injustice of it or to send angry little letters to people, you know, and have a little pass a petition around your study hall to get a change. Like, no, first think, well, what could be good about this? Yeah. Despite all the problems I've mentioned. I like that a lot. Overcoming requirement requirements. Requirements are always externally imposed upon us. Right. So it's a very saying, hey, you have to do this. It's the opposite of Immanuel Kant, right? Immanuel Kant, the idea is I am the law giver, I give the moral law onto myself and this is fitting for someone with the free will. And yes, we do have free will. But our task as humans is to take our free will and freely choose what is actually good. Yeah. In some way. So yeah, a requirement is always gonna hurt because we are free. We don't like being bossed around. Mm-hmm. But we need it. And oftentimes it's the only path to get us to the good otherwise. Yeah. Yeah. So today in this episode, we're gonna get to the good of why Chesterton Academy of St. Louis, why we named Chesterton Academy after Gilbert Keith Chesterton, and you're gonna like it. I'm excited. I can't wait, can't wait to you you know dismantle the case you built against us. Dismantle my own case. Okay. Well let's start with your idea though. You brought you described and this is a direct quote from you earlier in the podcast, full throttle Catholicism. And now, like a teacher, I'm going to say to you, All right, Mr. Jacob Ison, what is your textual evidence for that? Why why do you say GK Chesterton indicates to people full throttle Catholicism? Wow. see now you you already kinda debunked me a little bit because I mistakenly assumed when he wrote O Orthodoxy that that he was a Catholic and he was defending everything that is good, true and beautiful about the the the truths that the the Catholic Church safeguards and has like handed down from, you know, day one of Pentecost. And so so you can't quote orthodoxy. So textual evidence. Well it doesn't have to be an actual text. That was a that was an analogy. But what is your what's your reasoning for saying full throttle Catholicism? S. Well, I g I guess right now I can only go back to something that is very much part of our school and what have you, which is that his demeanor towards what many, many people in this world unfortunately see as Church of Rules, et cetera. he is joyful about it. And and he and he he's excited about Catholicism. He's joy you know, he's he's he loves it. So I I I'm I'm feeling very convicted that I need to, you know, can't I need to have s some better sources. I need to cite my sources. Cite your sources. That's right. everything I try to do in my literature class with them, you know. The measure with which you measure will be meted out to you in heaven and here on earth in this podcast. This is a good contrapato. Well, my evidence I would cite is he was appointed is that the right word, a papal knight at the end of his life for his defense of the Catholic faith. So he certainly defends the faith. And I don't think you should feel bad about orthodoxy, because one of the interesting things about him is there's a kind of well. He delays for ten years. There's about ten years where he really likes the Catholic Church and does not formally convert. Interesting. So there are many sections of Orthodoxy. I mean most of the book where you as a Catholic, you're reading it and you're saying, Yeah, yeah, that's it. He gets it. Yeah. So it was recognized that even before he became a Catholic, certainly once he did become a Catholic, he was a great defender of the faith. And as you point out, not always necessarily in a apologetics ping pong gotcha kind of way. But this more Sideways, roundabout way of showing how it's a joyful thing, how it's it's life-giving in some way. My favorite quote of him comes from not one of those books, but from some essay where he talks about tradition. And he talks about how when you're a young man you think, these traditions are they're hemming me in, they're constraining my freedom, these are dead, lifeless things. I gotta get rid of them. And then he talks about how at a certain point though, his phrase is you feel the thing beat with life under your hand. So You start by doing this thing you think is a dead tradition, and all of a sudden you realize, no, this is a live tradition. This thing is a tradition because it is alive. Because it is alive, it cannot die. And that's how it has lived long enough to be a tradition. And that's how most of us feel about Catholicism. We don't, at our stage, experience it as a set of onerous rules, like, man, I've got to go to church this Sunday. We want to go to church because we know what happens there. We receive the Eucharist. I was talking with my son the other day, I said not receiving the Eucharist is like lifting weights and not drinking protein. Like we know to be spiritual athletes, we need the Eucharist. So that's how we experience it as a kind of life-giving approach to Catholicism. And he is rightly famous for that. Wow. Yeah. that's that's interesting. So kinda intellectually converted, but hadn't taken that step and took ten years to take the And another aspect of his intellectual conversion is it happens in writing almost. Something we try to explain to students at times is why do we make you write papers, especially when you could just type this prompt into Chat GPT or some other AI agent and it'll spit out a beautiful paper. Why do we make you handwrite drafts and work on paragraphs? Ultimately is because writing is a form of thought, right? The through the writing process we come to insights we would not So I think there is a sense in which this guy, he is a wildly prolific writer. Yeah. He writes himself into the Catholic Church eventually. And so that's something for our students to emulate. There's a strong defense of writing, and Chesterton would have written by hand, the same thing they complain about in their classes. So yeah, writing is a form of thought in route to his conversion. And of course he is a convert. Which you think, okay, that's not a good fit. Most of nearly all of our students come from Catholic families, yet we all experience when you're raised Catholic, for the vast majority of us, there's a kind of second conversion that needs to happen at some point. And it's not that you get rebaptized. This is a heresy-free zone on this podcast, but there's that moment where you respond to those graces that have been poured into you through baptism, through confirmation, through the Eucharist. And you say yes, I accept you as my savior, as my personal savior. And there's no altar call because we're not Protestants, but there is a sort of doubling down on this thing. Absolutely. And for some people that a lot of people that might happen in college, but there's no reason it can't happen in high school. And I think it needs to happen in high school in our culture before we send you into the lion's den of college, where there are not a lot of rules around. Yeah. So definitely The statistic the other day. It's we'd graduate about four hundred thousand students ever each year from Catholic high schools. And by the time they finish college, only about twenty percent of them will be still practicing the faith. No good. Not good enough. Yeah. So we need Well most of our students won't be converting from atheism to Protestant Christianity and then to Catholicism like he did, but they are gonna need to convert. Yeah. So what a great guy to have as a model. Someone who through careful thought and writing realizes the truth of the faith. Yeah. And very much makes it his own, which is something that we desire for all students. Yes. Yeah. That he doesn't just parrot back what he's heard. He thinks about it and expresses it in his own terms. Yeah. Very inspiring. Absolutely. I'm I'm starting to be convinced. I'm starting to be convinced. Well you better be convinced because in addition, you've spoken a lot about your role as a literature teacher. But you have another role at this school, do you not? Absolutely. What is your other role for the the audience? Sure, yeah, that I I'm lucky to get to support the drama program. And the way I think about it is in general, stage crew. building the sets of our glorious plays that we put on here. The sophomores start with comedies, the juniors with drama and then the the seniors with Shakespeare. And so we are been busy at work, drills and saws and hammers, building our sets. So it it is great. Yes. And this is one of the things that distinguishes us from other classical schools. 'Cause there's different ways to do classical like anything else, but we are an arts heavy classical program. And when Dale Alkwist set it up, that was very intentional. So you you are here to support the drama program in addition to your literature role. And that is fitting because we are an arts school. Our particular mode of classical school is arts heavy. Every student has four years of music, three years of drama. Four years of art, progressing from learning just basic drawing skills all the way to oil painting. And that was Chesterton. He was always drawing as a youth. In fact, his family presumed he was going to be an artist. Yeah. So no one was surprised when he went to art school. So that's that's fitting too, right? If you're gonna have a classical school with a heavy emphasis on the arts, you could do a lot worse than picking GK Chesterton as your patron. Yeah. I remember hearing that even in in his writing he would obviously be doodling off to the side. yeah. His doodles are great. I often include them as little pictures on my tester quizzes. Yeah. He was quite quite a good doodler, yeah. It's quite accomplished. So you should check it out sometime. His you can find online collections of his stuff. really? Okay, cool. Chesterton Doodles. Chesterton Doodles. So the way Dale Alquist talked about him though, if you ask Dale Alquist why Chesterton Academy, he would touch on that, but his way of saying it is that Chesterton is a complete thinker, meaning he's that artistic background is then coupled with what is obviously a naturally skilled analytical mind. And so he can approach things from a kind of philosophical, theological lens, but he can also just approach it from more aesthetic lens. artistic lens. So he's able to bring different perspectives to bear upon a problem. And that's something we feel is important to create in students for our world. Because it's sort of the The danger of freedom, the the curse of freedom, and that their path is not marked out for them. For most of our students, it is not going to be the case that, well, daddy was a blacksmith, so I'm gonna be a blacksmith. Yeah. No, instead we're asking them terrifying questions as sophomores. What do you want to be? What do you want to do? You can do anything. And we mean this to be encouraging, but it's horrifying. Yeah. Absolutely horrifying. Right. So Chesterton prepares you in that sense to think about things from different angles for a complex world. So good in that sense as well. Yeah. No, I like that. Although in some ways have we gotten away from overcoming the requirements of the family business? Well, I do. That's a good challenge. Chesterton would would say, yeah, you should become a blacksmith if your dad's a blacksmith, especially if Smith is your last name, right? Things need to make sense. So yeah, you do need to overcome requirements, but overcoming requirements usually demands a bit of intellectual dexterity, right? You have to be able to think past your initial revulsion at whatever the thing is, that I would have to do a syllabus, or that I would have to attend a school named after this dude, G.K. Chesterton, or that I would have to turn in a paper on such and such date. You have a kind of initial presentation from your intellect that this thing is bad. This is not good. And so you need to be able to approach the problem from different ways in order to perceive what is actually good about it. Yeah. So you might think, well, this is bad. The that guy up front is not letting me play my violin the way I want to play my violin. Bad, bad, bad. How insulting is that? But then that other aspect of your mind says, no, that's the conductor who's bringing these different instruments into a harmony so there can actually be a symphony as opposed to just my violin playing. Yeah. So that that authority, that requirement brings about a greater good. But it requires some thinking around the problem, I would say. Sure, sure. So you said that Cheswichin was a complete thinker, according to Dale Alquist. Is that the same thing as being like a big picture person? Or would you make a distinction there? Well, we'd have to have Dale on the show. Next time he's in town, you can get him on the podcast and he can dig into that. When I hear a complete thinker, I think of someone who can view a problem from multiple ways. Certainly being able to see both the big picture and the smaller details would be complete in a different sense. I don't know that I feel qualified to weigh in on that aspect of Chesterton's thoughts. Certainly with regard to the faith, I think you can make that claim that he can see both the big picture and the minutiae. In other ways, I'm not sure. Yeah, I I you could convince me that he could see both the trees and the forest. Okay. I would be I could be convinced. That could be another episode. Does he see the trees and the forest? You mentioned too that in terms of his Catholicism. he's particularly known for his joyfulness. Now this is a point where I think you do kind of have the one-to-one match because if you're thinking, who do I want to pair with high schoolers? The characteristic of young people is they are naturally joyful. That's their kind of default setting. In fact, I I joke often that my job is to make them more sad. I don't feel like I need to inject much joy into the school because they will find a way to have fun, given the slightest provocation. Even my quiet study halls, there are little eruptions of fun to happen. And I'm playing whack-a-mole to try to stop it, get back to work. So that again, the fact that this guy seemed to enjoy the fa the practice of the faith, enjoy life is a good model for our students. I agree with that. Yeah. And they they can definitely resonate with that when they understand him. Joy of life. Yeah, sure. Sure. Yeah. Again, he's he's a writer from what do we establish? The early twentieth century or even late eighteen hundreds. So they have to usually overcome an obstacle of language to understand him. But once they do, they get it. There's a there's a guy in Kentucky, I think he's part of the GK Chesterton Society. I think his last name is Northcut and he's does these modern day translations. And so I think on the back of orthodoxy, say, Why do you have to translate this one? Like, well He's speaking in a different language. Right, right. And there's two schools of thought on that. Some people think you do need to put in recognizable terms in Chesterton's works. So instead of Brighton, we put in Peoria or something like that. I enjoy the the strangeness of it myself. Yeah. It makes it more fun. But I'm not that's not the hill I die on. If you if you feel you gotta make it a little more manageable, I get it. You either have to do it in the text itself or in your teaching of it. One way or the other, you have to build a bit of a bridge. Sure. Yeah. Fair enough. So I guess my final defense of him, and this is really the first defense I ever made of him when I was first hired as headmaster, is to go back to he's not a saint. Now the Chesterton Society has proposed that we should open a cause for this guy's canonization. Obviously was trying to live the faith well. His writings have helped a lot of people, so why not? Now the the local ordinary declined to open up his case for various reasons. But the one that's funniest is he says, I can't discern a cult. Now cult is being used here in the Catholic term, not, we're we're drinking weird Kool-Aid and sh shaving our head and waiting for the end of days. But cult means a group of people devoted to this man asking for his intercession before God. So at the time at the ord at the time the ordinary said I can't discern a couple I don't I don't see there's no cult. And again, I'm ba that's what he perceived. But God has this sense of humor, right? So in my interpretation, God then said, that's hilarious. That's funny. So he reaches down And taps this little thing, this Chesterton Schools Network. Because at first there was only one Chesterton Academy, and then there were only a few. There were just three or four other schools doing this. It was a very low-key thing. But then COVID hits, and a lot of people got a glimpse into what was actually happening in schools, and they did not like what they saw. Right. So they started looking around and they found the Chesterton Schools Network. And it was like gasoline poured on a fire. So up to that point, the growth of the Chesterton Network. Chesterton Schools Network was just a steady little linear growth. And then post-COVID, it becomes an exponential curve. And I think that's part of God's response is okay, GK Chesterton needs a cult. Let me provide you with a cult. That's fascinating. And so and it it goes back to that serious issue I brought up earlier is that Chesterton and his wife were unable to have children. But we read in the gospels that if you give up things for the sake of Christ, you will be super abundantly rewarded, that you will receive far more than you ever had. So Mrs. Roman and I are both firm believers that these Chesterton Academy students are the children. Of GK and Francis Chesterton, that God rewarded them in that way and he does pray for us. So I think that's that's part of the story too. And and this is the beautiful sense of when you do overcome a requirement, often it takes you to a level you couldn't have gotten to before. I think it's at the end of the day, not really about what we think of the name. Sure. It's a About being part of something God is doing. That God decided I need to provide a cult for this guy who is my good and faithful servant. And I'm kind of interested in getting a whole bunch of high schoolers going to daily mass and studying the great works of our tradition, like Augustine's Confessions and things like that. And so he's given rise to this network of schools, and we're about a hundred strong at this point. And you think about becoming international. We're international, and you but you just Just think about all these young people having access to the sacraments right here when they are in the midst of the battle. When they are at their most vulnerable, when fallen angels are attacking them, they are brought to the Lord. Yeah. And so there's a sense in which I don't care what you name it, you could have named it Bozo Academy, but if it's going to be daily mass and we're gonna be reading the great works and we're gonna learn to defend our faith with joy, like sign me up. Yeah, nice, nice. Well, yeah, you're just making me think of yeah. You know the tree by its fruit. Exactly. And so if you look at the Cheswin Academies, say, Hey, like, okay. At least whatever this tree is called Doing good things. Exactly. And we're not saying all classical schools have to be like us. We're not saying all Catholic schools have to be like us. There's different modes, different things to g do. But this form clearly is bearing fruit. Yeah. And that's what we're really looking for. I tell people this often. I'm happy when our students go to college, but we're not college prep in the sense of that's not our primary goal. Our primary goal is to remedy that horrible stat you brought up earlier. I'm looking for five years down the road, our graduates are still practicing the Catholic faith. That's the stat that will interest me. Yeah. And then secondarily, we've also seen a lot of vocations from the Chesterton Schools Network. I think the first male graduate ever of a Chesterton Academy up there in Minnesota became a priest. So that's always been a part of it as well. But then fr flowing from that, most of our graduates will be laymen, lay women. And so G. K. Chesterton is an example of a virtuous layman. A layman who was able to articulate why he was Catholic, to defend it at his day and age, yet even have friendships with non-Catholics so he could influence them. Mm-hmm. Yeah, we talked about George Bernard Shaw and the episode versus real mind. That's right. Good friends. Yeah, absolutely. And that and that and very much I think the the the spirit of a really good, well formed layman. is secular and that goes hand in hand with overcoming the requirements to to not run away from the duties of our state in life but to run at them right and and find what is good in them and and to sanctify that. So that is like that is you Mary Chestertonian. Yes. He is in the public forum. He is writing for major newspapers. He is a major intellectual figure in his day, fighting for the faith. So beautiful. Nothing wrong with service for those who are called to it. Nothing wrong with being a hermit if the god God calls you to that particular vocation. But by the numbers, it's not most of us. Right. That's right. Yeah. Wow. I have one more really spicy one. This is probably the spiciest take of the whole episode. You already got me to 90% convinced here. So you can push it over a hundred. We'll see. This is this is the gamble. This is the one where some people should shut down the podcast at this point. But hear me out. Okay. Chesterton is patron of a co-ed school. there we go. Because because it is his wife who finally gets him to embrace the faith. Wow. He dr well, first of all, his wife is initially the practicing Christian. When young Gilbert meets her, she's Christian and he's not. Okay. And he's initially just kind of shocked. She that he doesn't know anyone in his circle who's really a practicing Christian. Like she she prays. It's weird. But you know, they they bring each other along, but eventually they're they've both become Anglicans. She converts to Catholicism before him and eventually gets him brought along. So he is he is an example of a man saved by a good woman, right? So if you're gonna have a co-ed school, right, and you're not gonna have a pair of married saints, which we wouldn't want, that would encourage too much dating and patrol and such. But Chesterton, right? And he is. A very strong defender of the Blessed Virgin Mary. And of I think he has an amazing outlook on femininity in general and the the wild excellence of motherhood. You're you're gonna be hard pressed to find a better better writer on motherhood than Chesterton. Yeah. So patron of a co-ed school. So yes, to go full circle, those young ladies need to have this dude's face on their blazer. That's it. Wrap up. Rhinos are real. We're done here. We'll see you next time here on Castle Cast, aka Rhino Radio.