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 Joseph Pearce | From East London skinhead to internationally-known Catholic author Twenty years ago he was a radical activist, a skinhead, and the editor of two hate-filled, extremist magazines. Today, Joseph Pearce is the author of several critically acclaimed, best-selling biographies of great nineteenth- and twentieth-century Christian authors. He is also the co-founder and co-editor of an international magazine dedicated to reclaiming Catholic culture, and is writer-in-residence and assistant professor of literature at Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida. The Journey From Anger to Joy The journey from angry agnosticism to joyful Catholicism was long and often harrowing. Pearce was raised in a staunchly anti-Catholic, nominally Protestant home in East London. By the time he was a young teen in the  1970s,
he was an agnostic neo-fascist. "I was fanatical," he states matter-of-factly,
"and imbibed racism" due to his hatred of the Asians moving into
his neighborhood. Bitter about the economic inequality around him, Pearce
rebelled against globalism and neo-Marxism — the two popular alternatives
of the time — and devoted himself to the ideology of neo-fascism. By the time he reached his early twenties, Pearce had been imprisoned twice for editing magazines of the radical right wing group National Front. His love of reading was a light during this dark and turbulent time, a light that eventually led him out of the "Faustian pact" he had made with extremist politics. Convinced there existed an alternative to both capitalism and Marxism, Pearce stumbled across a book titled The Well and the Shallows, written by the renowned English journalist and Catholic apologist G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936). At the time, Pearce (still a non-believer) was a member of a Protestant secret society opposed to "papism." Despite his hatred of the Catholic Church, Pearce was fascinated by the economic system of distributism outlined by Chesterton in his essay "Reflections on a Rotten Apple." Distributism advocates private ownership, small communities, agrarianism, smaller government, and the equitable distribution of goods and services within a society. Two of its most famous proponents were Chesterton and his close friend Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953). Pearce was soon fascinated by Chesterton’s arguments and couldn’t find fault in his logic. Initially interested only in Chesterton’s views on politics and economics, Pearce eventually found himself reading Chesterton’s arguments on behalf of the Catholic Church and his defense of orthodox Christianity. "I fell in love with the personality and spirit of G. K. Chesterton," he explains, "I began to embrace his philosophy of gratitude. Reading his books, especially his novels, was part of a ten year healing process." One day, the nineteen-year old Pearce was visited by two Jehovah’s Witnesses. On a lark, he pretended to be a devout Catholic. Using Chesterton’s arguments, he befuddled the visitors and further awakened himself to the possibility of the truth of the Catholic faith. Arm Wrestling With the Truth The 1980s were "an arm wrestle" between Pearce’s political beliefs and his growing attraction to the Catholic Church. Catholicism would finally get the  "upper
hand" in the mid-80s. The turning point came in 1985 during his second
incarceration. "I was teetering on the brink," Pearce explains.
"When I was asked by the authorities what my religion was, I told them
I was Roman Catholic—even though I wasn’t. It was there in prison
that I began to attend Mass for the first time in my life. Someone sent
me a rosary and I found myself fumbling with it, unsure of how to pray the
rosary, but doing so despite my ignorance." Pearce’s only prior experience with Mass was attending a Catholic wedding as a nine-year-old. He had attended other weddings at Anglican churches, but those buildings had always struck him as "empty shells," despite being very beautiful and often superior architecturally to the Catholic churches. But the Catholic church he visited as a young boy was "different—there was something there. It was the Real Presence of the Eucharist working on me, even without my knowledge of it." The road to the Savior and His Church was filled with numerous obstacles, but Pearce came home safely. In 1989 he entered the Catholic Church of Our Lady, Mother of God, in Norfolk, north of London. Pearce’s affection for Chesterton and his frustration with the many attacks made on him by current day scholars led him to write Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G. K. Chesterton (Hodder and Stoughton, 1996 /Ignatius Press, 1997). Many reviews of the book by secular journalists were harsh and condescending, mostly due to a clear bias against the forthright Catholicism of both Pearce and his subject. Some reviewers scoffed at Pearce’s lack of scholarly credentials and his background in radical politics. But Chesterton scholars welcomed the book, and many, including Aidan Mackey of the Chesterton Study Centre, praised it as the finest biography of Chesterton since Maisie Ward’s Gilbert Keith Chesterton (Sheed and Ward, 1944). In an interview with Gilbert! magazine shortly after the book’s publication, Pearce stated, "Chesterton is by far the most important individual figure in my leaving behind bad and wrong ideas and in my approach to Christianity. He is by far the most important single figure in my conversion. . . . Through Chesterton I obviously developed an interest in religion and have subsequently read lots of other books by various people, but he was the initial person that sparked an interest, and throughout the whole period of about the decade it took from the reading of The Well and the Shallows in 1980 until I became a Catholic in 1989, it is Chesterton, his work, his writing, and his thoughts that accompanied me closest." The Birth of Best-Selling Catholic Literary Biographies  Although Wisdom and Innocence did not sell well in England, the response in America was very positive. Other biographies soon followed: Tolkien: Man and Myth, Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile, Old Thunder: A Life of Hillaire Belloc, and, most recently, The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde. In 2000, Pearce’s ambitious Literary Converts was published; it is a masterful work combining biography, literary history, and the stories of numerous conversions. It weaves together the lives of great Catholic and Anglo-Catholic writers such as Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh, C.S. Lewis, Ronald Knox, Malcolm Muggeridge, Graham Greene, Hilaire Belloc, Dorothy Sayers, T.S. Eliot, and Tolkien, and traces the influences and relationships among them. Other works include a novel, The Three Ys Men (1998), Small is Still Beautiful (2001), a reflection on the work of economist E. F. Schumacher, and Tolkien: A Celebration (2001), a collection of essays edited by Pearce. Another recent work is C.S. Lewis and the Catholic Church (2003), which examines the relationship between the famous Anglo-Catholic author and apologist and the Catholic Church. One of the goals of his work, Pearce emphasizes, is to show how the Christian beliefs of men such as Chesterton and Tolkien informed their views about everything: politics, social ills, literature, and family life. "Deconstructionism attempts to separate the lives and beliefs of these authors from their work. This is simply literary relativism." Pearce insists, "Tolkien couldn’t have written The Lord of the Flies, nor could William Golding have written Lord of the Rings. The Catholic dimension is a key part of my biographies." Whether readers realize it or not, books such as Lord of the Rings influence their view of Catholicism, God, and reality.  Pearce
is convinced that good literature must play a key role in the conversion
of individuals and the renewal of culture. "Any story told with a good
heart contains fragments of the truth, without consciously intending to
do so. Good literature gives us truth in beautiful language." While
most people won’t read books of theology and philosophy, almost everyone
loves a good story, especially when told with truth, beauty, and honesty.
"People will fall in love with the mood conveyed by a great writer,"
says Pearce. "We live in a world of mystery and we need to see the
world with fresh eyes. That is what great literature will do." This focus on literature as a force for cultural and religious renewal is evident in the international magazine Saint Austin Review (StAR), which Pearce co-edits. Published by Saint Austin Press, StAR features authors such as Fr. Aidan Nichols, Fr. James Schall, Fr. Benedict Groeschel, and Dr. Janet Smith. Dedicated to "reclaiming culture," each issue focuses on a specific theme; past topics include "Hollywood and the Culture War," "The Lord of the Rings," "Return to Aquinas," and "Decadence and Conversion." Pearce hopes that StAR can be a part of a Catholic literary and cultural revival similar to the "golden age" of Catholic literature that began with John Henry Newman in the 1840s and lasted until the 1960s. Considering where he was twenty years ago and what he has accomplished over the last decade, there’s little doubt that Joseph Pearce and his work will be reviving and reclaiming Catholic culture for many years to come. (This article has been modified from a piece that appeared in volume 6.5 of Envoy Magazine. Used with permission from Envoy Magazine.) Ignatius Press books by Joseph Pearce: • Flowers of Heaven: One Thousand Years of Christian Verse (editor) • Literary Giants, Literary Catholics • Tolkien: Man and Myth • Old Thunder: A Life of Hilaire Belloc • Literary Converts • Tolkien: A Celebration • C.S. Lewis and the Catholic Church • Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G. K. Chesterton • The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde Related IgnatiusInsight.com articles and resources: • Modern Art: Friend or Foe? | An excerpt from Literary Giants, Literary Catholics • The Power of Poetry | Interview with Joseph Pearce about Flowers of Heaven: One Thousand Years of Christian Verse | January 2006 • Escape From Puritania | An Excerpt from C. S. Lewis and the Catholic Church | December 2005 • The Measure of Literary Giants | An Interview with Joseph Pearce | June 2005 • Chesterton and Saint Francis | By Joseph Pearce | May 2005 • Evangelizing With Love, Beauty and Reason | An Interview with Joseph Pearce | May 2005 • The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde | An Interview with Joseph Pearce | July 2004 • Interview with ZENIT news agency (June 17, 2004) |
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