God's Dragnet

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea, which collects fish of every kind.” 

--Matthew 13:47

The older title of this parable is the Parable of the Dragnet, which has next to nothing to do with the crime drama of the same name dating back to the 1950s. I say next to nothing because for the one who has ears to hear, there is a link. As a term utilized by law enforcement, a ‘dragnet’ refers not to a physical net, but to the whole system of coordinated tactics used to catch criminals. In this sense, we see a link that would not be lost on Father Brown (Chesterton’s unassuming priest detective who gave rise to the whole genre including the Italian Don Matteo, the Polish Ojceiec Mateusz and the American, Fr. Dowling). By the way, while in Italy, I visited the picturesque town of Gubbio, famous not only for the vicious wolf that St. Francis pacified, but also as the setting of Don Matteo’s parish assignment, though in the newer episodes of the Italian TV series, he was transferred to Spoleto, which helped boost that town’s touristic profile!

St. Paul insists that “all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:29). Far from a beige sentimental claim, this is a bold affirmation that every circumstance can be directed by the Providence of God to the spiritual benefit of sinners. The dragnet that God uses for the work of gathering souls is very much like the inspector’s dragnet which uses coordinated measures to apprehend persons of interest.

Father Brown, in whose footsteps I also walked (a story for another time), knew that he was called to be a fisher of men: "Odd, isn't it," Fr. Brown said, "that a thief and a vagabond should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and frivolous, and without fruit for God or man? But [this is…] my province…Yes I caught him, with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world, and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread." (GK Chesterton, The Innocence of Fr. Brown, The Queer Feet). This final phrase was utilized memorably by the novelist Evelyn Waugh in what has been called one of the greatest English novels of all time, Brideshead Revisited.

This is as good of moment as any to clarify that the current BBC series is among the least faithful of all the many TV adaptations to Chesterton’s actual stories. Although it has helped to re-popularize a character, it is evident to anyone who compares the shows with the original stories that there are glaring differences and that the shows utterly pale in comparison with the genius and spiritual profundity of the originals. 

I conclude with a passage from St. Jerome which speaks of Baptism as God’s dragnet: “You have been lifted out of the dangerous waters of this world like so many little fish. In us the nature of things has been changed. Fish taken out of the sea die; but the apostles have fished for us and have taken us out of the sea of this world so we could be brought from death to life. As long as we were in the world, our eyes looked down into the abyss…After we were rescued from the waves, we began to look upon the sun and look up at the true light.” 

~Fr. Howe