Can we get round the mainstream media’s blockade of Christianity?

Sep 2, 2021 by

by Martin Davie, Christian Today:

I have long enjoyed reading G K Chesterton’s stories about the crime solving Roman Catholic priest Father Brown. I also enjoy watching the Father Brown programmes on television. However, whenever I watch the television programmes two things always strike me as odd.

The first is that in the programmes, unlike in Chesterton’s original stories, the English Reformation appears never to have happened. In the village where Father Brown is the parish priest the medieval parish church (in reality the Anglican parish church of St Peter and St Paul, Blockley in Gloucestershire), which everyone in the village appears to attend, is still Roman Catholic rather than Church of England, and this is something which nobody seems to find the least bit surprising.

The second is what I have called the strange death of Father Brown. What I mean by this is that in the television programmes the Father Brown who appears in the original stories appears to have been killed off and replaced by someone who has the same name, but who is not the same person.

The reason I say this is because in the original stories Father Brown solves the crimes he comes across on the basis of an understanding of the world and of human nature stemming from Roman Catholic theology and pastoral experience. For example, in the very first Father Brown story, ‘The Blue Cross,’ Father Brown solves the case because of his keen awareness of human evil based on years of listening to people’s sins in the confessional, and because he knows that the villain Flambeau is not really a priest since he has contravened Catholic theology by attacking reason whereas, says Father Brown, ‘the Church affirms that God himself is bound by reason.’

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