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The Superstition of Divorce

May 8th, 2008 | 1 min read

By Keith E. Buhler

Fat Chesterton

Check out this funny and frightening and challenging article By Dale Ahlquist:

"In 1918, Chesterton wrote a series of articles called "The Superstition of Divorce" for the New Witness. The essays were published as a collection under the same title in 1920. He said it wasn't supposed to be a book, but a pamphlet, and the object of a pamphlet is to be out of date as soon as possible. "It can only survive when it does not succeed."

Unfortunately, it survived. Chesterton's warnings about the rise of divorce have gone unheeded, warnings best summed up in his prophetic line: "The obvious effect of frivolous divorce will be frivolous marriage. If people can be separated for no reason they will feel it all the easier to be united for no reason."

But the modern world has begun to portray divorce as a freedom. This comes as no surprise to Chesterton. The modern world, he says, specializes in two forms of freedom: suicide and divorce. "In a dreary time we listen to two counsels of despair: the freedom from life and the freedom from love." In our society, he says, where every real freedom has been curtailed, the two doors of death and divorce stand open. But just as we should not accept a system that drives men to drown and shoot themselves, we should not accept a system that produces so many divorces. He insists that we admit that divorce is a failure and that it would be much better for us to find the cause and cure rather than allow divorce to complete its destructive effect."

Read the whole thing here.