The author’s great-great-great grandfather is a New Atheist hero, but she is a Catholic apologist
From the Catholic Herald (UK)
By Laura Keynes
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| A first edition of Charles Darwin's On the Origins of Species (PA) |
‘Are you related to the economist?” People sometimes ask when they
see my surname. I explain that, yes, John Maynard Keynes is my
great-great-uncle – his brother Geoffrey married Margaret Darwin, my
great-grandmother. “So you’re related to Darwin too?” Yes, he’s my
great-great-great grandfather. Eyes might fall on the cross around my
neck: “And you’re a Christian?” Yes, a Catholic. “How does a Darwin end
up Catholic?”
The question genuinely seems to puzzle people. After all, Darwin
ushered in a new era of doubt with his theory of evolution, and the
Bloomsbury Group, of which Keynes was a part, influenced modern
attitudes to feminism and sexuality. How can I be a product of this
culture, and yet Catholic? The implication is that simple exposure to my
ancestors’ life work should have shaken me out of my backwards error.
