I’ve been to the mountain and back again.

That’s my report from the annual American Chesterton Society Conference.  That’s always my report.  The conference is a kind of Mount of Transfiguration where we see things more clearly than we do below; it is a place where lovers of Chesterton and lovers of the Lord he loved get together to socialize, share ideas, and celebrate something you don’t see much these days … Catholic Culture.  True, not every fan of Chesterton is Catholic, but the Culture that is his cultus is entirely Catholic and overflowing with health and joy.

A few things struck me at this year’s conference, held in Seattle, Washington.  The first was seeing people like authors Mark Shea, Rod Bennett, Dale Ahqluist and Chesterton bibliographer Geir Hasnes deliver compelling and fascinating lectures that were entirely orthodox.  We’ve come to think that intellectuals are narrow, selfish, cynical and despicable people.  On the contrary, the Chestertonians are true intellectuals, whose minds and hearts have been remade by faith.  These are men who sacrifice none of their intellects; indeed, their minds are all the more acute for being cured of the sickness of the culture of death.  True learning and scholarship is not what is on display at most of our colleges and universities; true learning and scholarship prepares us to receive the gifts of Understanding and Wisdom – gifts of the Holy Spirit – which bear the fruit of joy and exuberance.

I don’t think many of the Chestertonians at this year’s conference are joyful because they are successful in the eyes of the world.  Some of them may be published authors, but this does not usually translate into worldly riches.  In fact, many of them seem to be poor but happy.  It’s not the world that gives them joy; it’s their love for Chesterton and his love for Our Lord.  It’s a marvelous, brilliant group, and more astonishing than their joy is what God is working through them – and through me.

Somehow, despite much resistance and doubt on my part, the American Chesterton Society, with help from either me or my company, the Theater of the Word Incorporated, has managed to produce a full-length feature motion-picture, “Manalive”, from the novel by Gilbert Keith Chesterton, as well as a Father Brown episode in my upcoming EWTN series “The Theater of the Word”.  The Father Brown episode and an extended scene from “Manalive” premiered at the conference to rave reviews.  And though it was an easy audience to please, both the episode and the movie are going to be tremendous – both acting and production are entirely professional, and the writing, based on Chesterton, is unbeatable.

So as I returned from the conference awash with what God is doing via the intercession of our man Gilbert, I was also infused with a sense of this thing, this atmosphere, this nutrition we call Culture.

What is Catholic Culture?  Catholic Culture is not the music of Marty Haugen.  Catholic Culture is not banners and liturgical dance.  Catholic Culture is neither the mind games of the liberals nor the Puritan paranoias of the radical traditionalists.  Catholic Culture used to be what we see at the annual Chesterton Conference – a group of like-minded individuals whose gifts are ordered to Faith, Hope, and Love, expressed through writing, art, drama, music, and more.

One of the reasons so many of us are falling away from the Faith is the Faith can not exist in a vacuum.  If the Faith is not alive in a Culture, it is too easily perverted or ignored.  When the only culture we have is a culture of death, it is hard to imagine how things look upon the mountain top, how everything in life was coherent for Newman and Chesterton and Belloc, how the Body of Christ is not just Sunday gatherings and parish picnics and pot-lucks, but more than that – the Body of Christ is an entire culture, artistic, intellectual, aesthetic.  It is the family and the school, the life and the liturgy.  It is everything that makes us happy.  Or it should be.

Culture is like agriculture, it is the soil and the working of the soil that sustains us, the nutrients that surround us and that raise us up to grow and bear fruit.  May we all be servants of the true Catholic Culture, without which we may very well wither and blow away.