Denver, Colo., Aug 2, 2019 / 14:15 pm
A cause for the canonization of the pipe-smoking, plain-talking, mustachioed and beloved Catholic author Gilbert Keith (GK) Chesterton will not be opened, announced Bishop Peter Doyle of Northampton, the late Chesterton's home diocese.
Despite Chesterton's inspirational writings and his role in the Catholic revival in England during the early 20th century, several obstacles stand in the way of advancing the author's cause for canonization, Doyle said in a letter read to the opening session of the American GK Chesterton Society conference.
The three concerns cited by Doyle are that Chesterton lacks a "cult" of local devotion, the lack of a "pattern of personal spirituality" that could be discerned through his writing, and charges of anti-Semitism in his writing.
"I am very conscious of the devotion to GK Chesterton in many parts of the world and of his inspiring influence on so many people, and this makes it difficult to communicate the conclusion to which I have come," the bishop said, according to the Catholic Herald in the U.K.
Chesterton was born in 1874, and became a prolific writer and staunch Catholic apologist after his conversion to the faith. He is renowned for writing apologetic classics such as "Orthodoxy" and "The Everlasting Man", as well as for his fictional "Father Brown" series, among many other works. He died in 1936.