Most of Chesterton’s argumentation sets Catholic Christianity (which he, of course, understands as Latins are wont to do as inhering in the communion headed by the Pope of Rome) as against modernism, secularism and protestantism. As such, most of his argumentation does not really argue for being in communion with the Latin papacy and could equally well argue for adhering to Latin, Orthodox, or even Coptic Christianity, each advancing its own claim to catholicity.
There are reams of refutations provided by the Fathers of the Orthodox Church to the Latins’ claims on behalf of the papacy, defenses of the Orthodox position against the Latin on issues Chesterton, to my knowledge, never addressed, and strong historical arguments that the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church inhers in what is commonly called the Orthodox Church, the Latins’ self-proclaimation as “the Catholic Church” notwithstanding, but a thread about Gov. Palin’s affection for C.S. Lewis is not the place to review them.
Besides, she adopted Alaska as her home state, and Alaska was Christianized by us Orthodox. [:-)====
(If you don’t recognize it, that’s an Orthodox monastic smiley.)
Chesterton’s conversion from occultism to the Roman church is admirable. We applaud. He could have continued to conversion to the Orthodox Christian faith even if the physical Church was in captivity.
He did not. Sigh...