The debate: Was Chesterton an anti-Semite?

YES

SAYS STEPHEN DAISLEY

Of all the writers won to Rome, GK Chesterton is among the most prized. The late convert was the happiest of Catholic warriors, an apologist whose epistles brimmed with cheerful pessimism and savoured the ironies of human fallibility. They also brimmed with anti-Semitism, one of the reasons recently given by the Bishop of Northampton for not opening a Cause for sainthood.

The decision has dismayed Chesterton’s vigorous disciples. Writing for Patheos, Mgr Eric Barr, a retired priest in the Diocese of Rockford, Illinois, deplores “the mediocrity of the British hierarchy” and their “attempt to assassinate the faith and integrity of a true saint of God”. American Chesterton Society president Dale Ahlquist insists his hero bore “not a wisp of hostility toward the Jews”, allowing only that some of his writings were “awkward by our modern standards of political correctness”.