Old Principles and the New Order

Description

Father Vincent has belonged always to that little group [of Distributists] led by G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc who began so many years ago to see and to show that our economic troubles cannot be solved merely by pitting a form of socialism called "Christian" against the obvious evil called Capitalism, that in fact both these systems have so much in common that both are forms of the Servile State: both must be fought and both replaced by a true Christian and Catholic sociology. "Father Vincent McNabb," wrote Chesterton in G.K.'s Weekly, "is one of the few great men of our time. He is a great deal too great to be of our time." In the series of three articles in which these words occur he also describes Father Vincent as being "one of the more drastic and dogmatic of our group." "In every movement," he wrote, "there are disputes; in every movement there is an Extreme Right and an Extreme Left: in every movement there are some uncompromising and some ready for compromise. But in our movement even unworldliness is double-edged: and the sword of the spirit cuts both ways." - From the Foreword by Masie Ward