The League of Bearded Catholics

25 thoughts on “The League of Bearded Catholics”

1. That looks beautiful.
   I think it’s quite appropriate to assume C.S. Lewis was bearded on the inside, since he had Screwtape say “We have made certain secondary characteristics of the male, such as the beard, disagreeable to nearly all the females…and there is more in that than you might think.”
   On the other hand, for another, anti-masculine and anti-human take on beards, see here and scroll down to the fifth paragraph.

2. Is there going to be a Ladies Auxiliary? Catholic Ladies for Beard Appreciation?
   Maybe if I were a card carrying member of the CLBA I could convince my fiance to give a beard a try!
   IDK re: Screwtape’s observation, though. Liking or disliking of beards seems to me to be a strictly cultural thing, not a universal. You can seem them go in and out of fashion over history, and be in fashion in one culture and out of it in another. And there are always some people who Just Like ‘Em or Just Hate ‘Em, without regard to what their culture values at the time.

3. But but… Lewis wasn’t Catholic. Honestly. To put a man who refused to become Catholic on the same league with someone like Chesterton perplexes me. Yet I see it happen on the Catholic blogosphere all the time. Oh well.
   As for the League, it sounds like a great idea. Keep on merrily being men.

4. “But but… Lewis wasn’t Catholic. Honestly.”

   And he didn’t have a beard. Neither factor prevents us bearded Catholics from claiming Lewis, not exactly as one of us, but certainly as a kindred spirit.
   He believed in purgatory; he had a comparatively high view of the Eucharist and the Blessed Virgin; above all, he loved the medieval worldview, the “discarded image” as he called it. See Christopher Derrick’s C. S. Lewis and the Church of Rome and Joseph Pearce’s C. S. Lewis and the Catholic Church for more.

5. Lewis was not bearded, was not Catholic, and was not a “kindred spirit.” He was an anti-Catholic who tried to talk Anglicans out of converting to Catholicism. Catholics ought not to read his books. There is too much great Catholic literature and too many great papal and Holy See documents going unread by Catholics who are wasting time reading Lewis.

6. “Catholics ought not to read his books. There is too much great Catholic literature and too many great papal and Holy See documents going unread by Catholics who are wasting time reading Lewis.”

   Pope Benedict seems to have read “the great British writer C.S. Lewis,” as he refers to him in Jesus of Nazareth, where he cites Lewis’ commentary (via Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, who evidently has also read Lewis) regarding the evidence for the historicity of the Gospels.
   Archbishop Chaput and Cardinal Dulles both cite Lewis’s moral argument for God in different works, IIRC. Catholic writers like Peter Kreeft, Scott Hahn, Mark Shea and our own Jimmy Akin have all used and benefited from Lewis.
   Many Catholic converts have found Lewis an invaluable help in strengthening their Christian faith and even in helping to prepare them for their eventual conversions to Rome. I should know; I’m one. Christians who knew Lewis personally and later became Catholic include Sheldon Vanauken, Walter Hooper and Christopher Derrick, who wrote C.S. Lewis and the Church of Rome.
   I don’t deny that Lewis had a definite anti-Catholic streak. I am not at all deterred by this from appreciating all that is good and valuable in his writings and from warming recommending them to others.

7. “But but… Lewis wasn’t Catholic. Honestly.”
   ….but with hope that he is now in Heaven…he has been disabused of any former misgivings.
   and he may be considering a beard in the Resurrection of the body! So there ya go.

8. Lewis’ anti-Catholicism, such as it may have been, does not seem to have surfaced much in his writing, and in fact, if not for his books I might not be a Catholic – or a Christian at all – today. I certainly could detect no obstacle to my entry into the Church in any of his writing.
   For an “anti-Catholic”, he sounds a great deal more like a Catholic than many who claim the title today. I expect his allergy to the Papacy was partly a vestige of his provincial upbringing which he was never able to overcome. Invincible ignorance, as they call it. At any rate, he certainly never wrote or spoke publicly (as far as I know) as any sort of anti-Catholic polemicist.
   For an unlettered twenty-something as I was when my reversion to Christianity began, Lewis’ work was lucid, convincing and above all, accessible. It was Lewis that led me eventually to Chesterton and other, meatier writers.
   I’ve heard the criticism from some evangelical protestants that Lewis is a positive danger to read because his thought is too amenable to Romish sympathies. Too cozy with Catholics.

9. He was an anti-Catholic who tried to talk Anglicans out of converting to Catholicism.

   
   If you are referring to the incident of Lewis trying to persuade his brother not to convert to Catholicism, that is an unsubstantiated rumor. What is not unsubstantiated, however, is that when a friend of his, an American woman, converted to Catholicism, he wrote to her: “I feel that though you have taken a way which is not for me I nevertheless feel I can congratulate you-I suppose because your faith and joy are so obviously increased.” (Letters to an American Lady)

   Lewis’ anti-Catholicism, such as it may have been, does not seem to have surfaced much in his writing.

   That is true. I think the case that he was strongly anti-Catholic can only be made by culling a very few statements from a very large oeuvre and putting them together out of context.
   

   There is too much great Catholic literature and too many great papal and Holy See documents going unread by Catholics who are wasting time reading Lewis.

   
   Lewis would respond to that by saying you’re confusing two different issues in contrasting him with Vatican documents, namely those of denomination and intellectual/authoritative level. Lewis was a popular writer and his theology was in an amateur capacity. The Catholic equivalent of Lewis is not anything from the Holy See, but rather someone like Tolkien or Waugh. (Of course, the equivalence is far from exact in either case.)
   So if you wanted to read about purgatory, say, you would go to a papal encyclical or something (I couldn’t say which one offhand) if you wanted top-notch, authoritative professional theology, and to The Great Divorce if you wanted an sound but imaginative popular introduction to the concept. Lewis’s book fills the second role as well as any Catholic book I know.

10. As a fan of C. S. Lewis, the question of his refusal to convert has always bothered me. He once responded to a questioner by saying, “You wouldn’t understand. You weren’t born in Belfast.”
    Cute, but on second thought it seems like he is saying he knows the Catholic Church is true, but he won’t join out of prejudice.
    That seems like a dangerous situation.

11. “ There is too much great Catholic literature and too many great papal and Holy See documents going unread by Catholics who are wasting time reading Lewis.”
    Taking this to its logical conclusion, we will ignore many great works of literature written by those not friendly to the faith, and also the founding documents of our nation. All that is good comes from God, however imperfect the vessel.

12. ” There is too much great Catholic literature and too many great papal and Holy See documents going unread by Catholics who are wasting time reading Lewis.”
    Taking this to its logical conclusion, we will ignore many great works of literature written by those not friendly to the faith, and also the founding documents of our nation. All that is good comes from God, however imperfect the vessel.
    —As St. Justin Martyr said “Everything good beautiful and true belongs to us” or something to that effect 🙂

13. The main source for Lewis’s alleged anti-Catholicism is Tolkien, who didn’t actually say Lewis was wholly anti-Catholic. What Tolkien said was that Lewis was unconsciously influenced by the anti-Catholicism of his upbringing. I don’t have Tolkien’s letters at hand, so I can only find part of his famous letter on the subject, via google. Here it is
    “hatred of our Church is after all the only real foundation of the C[hurch] of E[ngland]—so deep laid that it remains when all the superstructure seems removed (C.S.L. for example reveres the Blessed Sacrament and admires nuns!). Yet if a Lutheran is put in jail he is up in arms; but if Catholic priests are slaughtered—he disbelieves it (and I daresay really thinks they asked for it)” – Letters No 83
    He’s referring here to the Spanish Civil War. Lewis and Tolkien had spent an evening with someone just back from Spain, and Lewis had first affected disbelief at the stories of Republican atrocities against priests and religious, but was ultimately convinced.

14. I’ll add that I think Lewis’s attitude towards Catholicism matured over the years as he explored further his faith. I’d like to point readers here to Lewis’s Latin correspondence with a now-canonized Italian saint from 1947-1954.
    http://www.staugustine.net/latinletterspaper.html

15. SDG and others who rejected my argument did so in knee-jerk fashion, conveniently ignoring the KEY facet of my argument. I’ll repeat it now (with emphasis added), hoping that they can muster the humility needed to be able to admit that they were wrong:
    “There is too much great Catholic literature and too many great papal and Holy See documents GOING UNREAD by Catholics who are wasting time reading Lewis.”
    If only those who opposed me had taken a bit of time to really READ and REFLECT UPON what I wrote …
    (1) They would not have incorrectly accused me of stating that Lewis was always or mostly wrong or had nothing valuable to state. (I said nothing of the kind.)
    (2) They would have realized that I was right on my key point — namely, that most Catholics need to spend their time reading all the important CATHOLIC writings first, before turning to those of non-Catholics (not to mention anti-Catholics like Lewis).
    SDG and others tried in vain to prove me wrong by pointing out that Pope Benedict and other Catholic greats have admired some things that came from Lewis. But these folks made the error of ignoring the fact that the pope and others like him already HAVE READ all the great Catholic literature (plus the key papal and Holy See documents) — and can now use part of their free time to read the works of heretics/schismatics/anti-Catholics like Lewis et al.
    By contrast, the vast majority of Catholics (including probably all of us posting here) have NOT YET READ all of the great Catholic literature, plus everything important that has come from the Vatican, so we do not yet HAVE free time to spend on Lewis and his ilk.
    Finally, to answer Pachyderminator …
    I was not referring to a disputed case involving Lewis’s brother. I was referring to an indisputable first-person account about Lewis’s attempt to persuade an Anglican not to convert to Catholicism. The account was written by H. Lyman Stebbins, founder of “Catholics United for the Faith,” who chose to ignore Lewis’s efforts to stop him. Yes, it was a private effort by Lewis, but I never said that he was guilty of public efforts. We can reasonably assume that, while the facts about one private effort have been exposed, there were many other anti-Catholic efforts (i.e., the unfortunately “sucessful” ones) by Lewis that remain secret.

16. mmm,
    It is not your place to sit in judgment of whether other participants’ disagreement with you does or doesn’t reflect a lack of humility or reflection. Please don’t repeat this rudeness.
    I reject your argument, not because of a problem with my knees, but because I don’t see that the compelling case for the sort of literary hierarchy you seem to be proposing. Granted that papal encyclicals are authoritative and non-magisterial literature is not, I don’t see that no one should read Newman’s Essay or Chesterton’s Orthodoxy until he has read a given number of encyclicals (how many?). Nor do I see that Wodehouse and Jane Austin should wait until we have drunk deep of Evelyn Waugh and Flannery O’Connor, or that we ought to be sure to internalize Chesterton’s Father Brown mysteries before bothering with the detective fiction of Dorothy Sayers or Agatha Christie.
    Perhaps you aren’t suggesting what I think you are. In that case, please feel free to clarify the issue without gratuitous swipes at the failure of others to grasp the truth of your thesis. Thank you.

17. “Is there going to be a Ladies Auxiliary? Catholic Ladies for Beard Appreciation?”
    There has been some discussion of this over at the TLBC blog. Let me know what you think!
    http://timothyjones.typepad.com/tlbc/2009/11/this-ones-for-the-ladies.html

18. mmm,
    I will concede the point that Lewis tried to dissuade others from leaving Anglicanism for Rome. However, there is nothing personally blameworthy in trying to dissuade others from embracing what you consider false doctrine. If a Catholic whom I knew fairly well was considering becoming Anglican, I would certainly consider trying to talk him out of it, but I don’t consider myself anti-Anglican.

19. Hello? There’s like, 18 comments here and nobody has bothered to ask the question of why the logo for The League of Bearded Catholics includes a mustache, but not a beard?

20. “…a mustache, but not a beard?”
    A-HA! But there is a beard… look again with the eyes of the unshaven…
    “A false consistency…”, etc…
    😉

21. Dear Chris-2-4,
    Look at the shape beneath the mustache.
    The Chicken

22. The League of Bearded Catholics should only include those who are “Catholic” (Big C) and had facial hair.
    Lewis was a fine writer (one of the big reasons I am Catholic is thanks to his “Mere Christianity”) but he wasn’t Catholic so it does make the Blog seem ill-fated or at the least ill-named.
    Let us suggest a forth Catholic writer with facial hair skills:
    1) Orestes Brownson
    2) Ernest Hemingway
    3) Jimmy Akin

23. Lucien,
    Like you (and numerous others), Lewis’ writing played an important role in my reversion to faith in Christ.
    And neither Chesterton nor Tolkien was bearded, but they are included, as well.
    You’re taking the “rules” of The League far too seriously. I looked at Lewis and basically asked myself whether he ought to be excluded – say, turned away from one of our meetings – because he was an Anglican, or because he was clean shaven. The obvious answer was “Hell, no.”.
    I also found it tiresome to think of The League as some sort of Mens Club, or Men’s Ministry, or some such. There are such a great number of whip-smart, funny and faithful Catholic women that it doesn’t make any sense to exclude them, either. A few, I’m thinking, might also beat me in a fair fight, or maybe arm wrestling. Let them come, if they can stand our company! They just can’t get in without a beard.
    Part of the charm of The League, I hope, is a certain arbitrary playfulness… the freedom to zig when the world says to zag.
    It also turns out that Chesterton/Belloc and Tolkien/Lewis are two great examples of manly Christian friendship.

24. SDG,
    You wrote, “He believed in purgatory; he had a comparatively high view of the Eucharist and the Blessed Virgin;”
    What exactly did you mean by high view of the Eucharist and Mary? Could you elaborate on those two points a little more?
    I remember in “Mere Christianity” that he implied the bread and wine became the Body and Blood of Christ but always thought that Anglican’s didn’t actually have the Real Presence because of an invalid priesthood among other reasons.
    I never read anything with reverence to Mary from Lewis, any help would be appreciated.

25. By the way, I just remembered something. Lewis did have a beard at one point. When he had chicken pox as an adult, he wasn’t able to shave, “so,” he said, “I grew a beard, and though my hair is black one half of my beard was red and the other half white! You should have seen me.” (Letters to Children)
    If that means anything…

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