Canonize Chesterton?

William Oddie makes an intriguing suggestion :

. . . [I]t might now be time seriously to start thinking about an unavoidable question: after John Henry Newman, who next? My answer is that it can only be Gilbert Keith Chesterton.

The obvious objection to this is that Chesterton was nothing like our idea of how a saint should look or behave. He was greatly given to the pleasures of the table; he was enormously, sometimes riotously funny; he was the opposite of Newman in so many respects (though Newman also had a brilliant sense of humour). The late Cardinal Emmet Carter described him on the 50th anniversary of his death as one of those “holy lay persons” who “have exercised a truly prophetic role within the Church and the world”, but he did not then believe that it would be possible to introduce a Cause for his ultimate canonisation, since he did “not think that we are sufficiently emancipated from certain concepts of sanctity” – though later he change his mind.

The distinguished historian J J Scarisbrick, however, thought that his sanctity was so clear that the opening of his Cause should indeed be seriously contemplated. “We all know,” he responded, “that he was an enormously good man as well as an enormous one.

GKC is certainly one of my favorite (small-s) saints. Not being Catholic, I have no clue how seriously the powers that be would take the suggestion. I suspect, though, that Isaac Edward Leibowitz would have an easier time making it through the canonization process.

(Via: Insight Scoop )