Looking for a Chesterton quote

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seventobe

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Somewhere (I think) Chesterton wrote something to the effect that even if the Church was empty it would still be the Church.

Does anyone know if he actually said this and where it can be found? I’ve been scouring his works and now I can’t find it!

Thank you.
 
My husband and I were just discussing this as an issue with Chesterton. His style of writing is extraordinarily indirect and subtle making him eminently unquoteable. Not that there aren’t good Chesterton quotes; just there is SO much more substance there, in his writings than may be derived through quotable lines.
 
So true. This sentiment of his wasn’t exactly one of those famous one-liners of his, but my husband just found what I was looking for so I thought I’d post it here for the curious:

‘THE Church is not a thing like the Athenaeum Club,’ he cried.’ If the Athenaeum Club lost all its members, the Athenaeum Club would dissolve and cease to exist. But when we belong to the Church we belong to something which is outside all of us which is outside everything you talk about, outside the Cardinals and the Pope. They belong to it, but it does not belong to them. If we all fell dead suddenly, the Church would still somehow exist in God.’

‘The Ball and the Cross.’
 
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