BELLOC EXPLAINS CATHOLICISM

George Bernard Shaw, Hilaire Belloc, G.K. Chesterton

At a literary dinner party many years ago, one attended by a number of notable writers (among them George Bernard Shaw, I believe), the assorted guests were having much fun at the expense of Hilaire Belloc and his full-blooded Catholicism.

The tone was merry but not a little sarcastic and the various writers threw barbs and veiled insults at the Church in a fashion that was unrelenting.  It was attacked as a sickly, man-made religion devoid of any moral authority.  Belloc quietly listened, enjoyed his wine and his cigars while listening to all this, but at last he got up and addressed his fellow scribblers.

"The Catholic Church is an institution that I am bound to hold divine - but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight".