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Contents © 2003
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

CONFESSIONS
May 2003

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WHAT CATHOLICS SHOULD READ

I recently had a rather unflattering look in the mirror. I was at a wedding. Somebody introduced me to someone he knew -- "He's into Catholic literature, like you." Oh, dread -- I hardly read enough to qualify as being "into" much of anything, though the few books I do own and reread tend to run to Catholics: Evelyn Waugh, Flannery O'Connor, J.F. Powers, Walker Percy, etc. So there I was with this fellow, and right away, I could smell the bile -- suddenly, he was down on Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop, and pious Catholic readers who couldn't take anything "stronger," like O'Connor. I said I needed to fill my glass, which was true, and did not return to the conversation.

My "strong" reader called up in me an ugly memory of my own urge to prick the parochial bubble. Years ago, a friend and I attempted to form a Catholic reading group. My friend invited a retired Latin teacher to join us. One evening, while my brother was visiting, our little group began discussing the question of What is Catholic Literature? To our Latin teacher, a very decent and no doubt intelligent man, Catholic Literature was edifying literature that dealt with Catholics, for Catholics, by Catholics. Chesterton's Father Brown and such.

My brother, who was visiting, disagreed with passion but not rudeness. He pointed to O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find," in particular, to the Misfit's eulogy for the grandmother: "She would of been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life." "See?" said my brother. "Only when she was facing death -- only in death - could she die to herself. That's what she needed -- to die. That was grace for her." The Latin teacher wasn't buying. I was irritated; I decided to force the issue. I went and fetched out Walker Percy's Lancelot, a dark book full of dark sentiments. I read a passage that was sexually frank, to put it mildly. It made sense in context, but what I did was simply crude and offensive. My reading it was a challenge, pure and simple. Can you take it? Can you take this Catholic literature? The Latin teacher, God bless him, did not wither under the blast of obscenity. "I don't see anything Catholic about that," he replied.

Mind you, I'm not saying that Lancelot isn't Catholic literature -- even if it's far from the best example. O'Connor described the Catholic novel as a novel by a Catholic mind looking at anything, and I think it a fine definition. But that encounter at the wedding and the memory it dredged up have left me wondering at the vehemence that "intellectual" Catholics sometimes display when confronted with their less "intellectual" fellows. Whence comes this rage, this desire to force open the eyes of others? It is as if one were scandalized by someone else's being scandalized.

In her essay "The Church and the Fiction Writer," O'Connor notes that "Catholic readers are constantly being offended and scandalized by novels that they don't have the fundamental equipment to read in the first place, and often these are works that are permeated with a Christian spirit." Score one for the "strong" readers. But she also says that "what leads the writer to his salvation may lead the reader into sin.... The business of protecting souls from dangerous literature belongs properly to the Church. All fiction, even when it satisfies the requirements of art, will not turn out to be suitable for everyone's consumption...." Score one for the scandalized.

Whence comes this rage? It's possible that the scandalized are lacking something the Catholic ought to possess. Perhaps it is the ability to look life -- with all its ugliness, horror, evil and offensiveness -- full in the face and affirm God's providence. Do we not, after all, have Christ on our side? Has He not given meaning to all this suffering and horror? Ought we not to be universally-minded and not parochial? Yes. But why get so angry about it?

I have shared that anger, without quite knowing its source -- self-justification, perhaps. But then, ah me, I think of my mother, who no longer reads short stories because they are sad. This from a woman with her Masters in English literature. I do not rage at her -- she's Mom -- so I have to consider her position. I know she knows suffering, and that she does not shy away from it. Perhaps the sadness she shies away from is rather despair. It's common enough in fiction, and not without reason, and there is certainly some value in its presentation. But thanks to Mom, I have a little more tolerance for those who choose to dwell on hope.

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