Guys,

This is an incredible article. It touches on a lot of things we have all been discussing over the past few months. It highlights some thinkers and writers we like and it talks about the influences on a Catholic writers. It is well worth your time to read. I loved it. It is about 4-5 pages typed but I couldn't email it because it wouldn't attach.

Enjoy.

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Catholic writers will have their emotions
as well as intellects shaped by regular, non-cynical exposure to the Christian heritage.

What Makes a Catholic writer?
By Robert F. Gotcher

• I was recently skimming the chapter in Walker Percy's The Message in the Bottle called "Symbol as Need." I was struck by the high level of discourse he was able to achieve. He speaks of Suzanne Langer and St. Thomas with a familiarity that belies his lack of formal philosophical training. From Pilgrim in the Ruins, which I read years ago, I know he spent the 1950s studying semiot­ics and aesthetics mostly on his own, but it is clear he wasn't a dilettante. I think this is why his novels are so good. He has thought deeply and systematically about the things he is try­ing to present in the novels-and from a faith perspective. It is amazing also how he can present these ideas for the popular reader not only in his novels but in, for instance, Lost in the Cosmos.
Percy was only one (and an isolated one at that) of an astounding cluster of great writers
and thinkers who graced the twentieth cen­tury. Between 1920 and 1960, after the first phase of the Modernist crisis was over, there was a Catholic intellectual revival, encom­passing the work of people ranging from Frank Sheed to Sigrid Undset. It is perplexing that with such a storehouse of genius, after the Council things went to heck in a hand basket, to the chagrin of many (but unfortunately not all) of those who were the main players in the revival. How does one explain (without refer­ring to Genesis 3, as one of my friends does when I ask him this kind of question) how such marvelous work bore so little obvious fruit in the dominant "intellectual" work after the Council? Perhaps we could blame it on bad ICEL translations. But then you'd have to explain how the ICEL translation could be so bad in the first place-and survive for 45 years! Romanitas, I guess.



Among the great names one associates with the pre-conciliar renaissance are, in alphabetical order: Karl Adam, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Hilaire Belloc, Robert Hugh Benson, George Bernanos, Maurice Blondel, Louis Bouyer, Odo Casel, G.K. Chesterton, Walter Ciszek, Paul Claudel, Yves Congar, Frederick Copleston, Jean Danielou, Henri Daniel-Rops, Christopher Dawson, Dorothy Day, Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Shusaku Endo, Josemaria Escriva, Paul Hardy Furfey, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Etienne Gilson, Aelred Graham, Leonce de Grandmaison, Graham Greene, Romano Guardini, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Caryll Houselander, Pope John XXIII, Johannes Jorgensen, Charles Journet, Russell Kirk, Ronald Knox, Maxi­milian Kolbe, Ignace Lepp, Henri de Lubac, Gabriel Marcel, Jacques Maritain, Raissa Maritain, Thomas Merton, John Courtney Murray, Flannery O'Connor, Pope Paul VI, Anton Pegis, Charles Peguy, Walker Percy, Josef Pieper, Johannes Quasten, Hugo Rah­ner, Karl Rahner, Max Scheler, Edith Stein, Karl Stem, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, J.R.R. Tolkien, Sigrid Undset, Maisie Ward, Eve­lyn Waugh, Frank Sheed, Fulton Sheen and Hubert von Zeller.

Since the Council there continue to be great names, some of whom began writing prior to the Council, such as: Mortimer Adler, Loren­zo Albacete, Jude Dougherty, Avery Dulles, Luigi Giussani, Mary Ann Glendon, Benedict Groeschel, James Hitchcock, Russell Hitting­er, John Hardon, Stanley Jaki, Pope John Paul II, Walter Kasper, Peter Kreeft, William May, Ralph Mclnerny, Marshall McLuhan, Mal­colm Muggeridge, Richard John Neuhaus, Aidan Nichols, Marie-Dominique Philippe, Miriam Pollard, Jessica Powers, Joseph Car­dinal Ratzinger (Benedict XV!), James Schall, David Schindler, Christoph Schonborn, E.F. Schumacher, Janet Smith, Robert Sokolowski, George Weigel, Robert Wilken and John C.H. Wu. However, many of these names are still from the older generation, formed before the Council. What about my generation? Where are the O'Connors and de Lubacs among us? Is our debut still to come?

Sometimes it seems that in the realms of fiction and non-fiction writing our genera­tion lacks the kind of clear, deep, rhetorically rich writing that we associate with the pre­conciliar revival. Often what we get is either simplistic apologetic, the kind of sentimen­tality that Flannery O'Connor decried, or an at least artistic, if not thematic, compromise with the nihilism of post-modernity-in the name of being mature in one's faith or engag­ing in dialogue with the world. This last one sometimes results in an imitation of acerbic, vicious, invective-laden "humor" that marks a world of discourse dominated by talk radio and cable news networks. Walker Percy has imitated that style himself, of course, in Lost in the Cosmos, but certainly he is satirizing the very approach and ultimately pointing to its inherent destructiveness. My question is: can the Church in America produce a Percy or Tolkien these days?


The answer to a certain extent depends on the kind of intellectual formation con­temporary Catholics receive or pursue. What influences from the Catholic experience, often lacking in post-conciliar Catholicism, contribute to that intangible quality that one notices in the work of Guardini, O'Connor, Newman, Houselander, etc.? What kind of intellectual formation do we need to empha­size, and is it perhaps now being emphasized in some sections of the home-school move­ment and some of the new Catholic colleges? I believe there are five important components to an intellectual formation that will foster a new springtime in literary Catholicism. I will also mention a sixth of a different sort at the end.

Sacred Scripture

Familiarity with Scripture, both Old Testa­ment and New, helps shape a writer's perspec­tive and worldview. For a truly Catholic writer this story is his story. Anything he writes will in some sense fit into the overarching biblical narrative. The very phrases and cadence of the psalms and the Gospels will be engraved in his memory and color how he writes, even when he is addressing non-religious subjects.

He will approach all reality from the per­spective of a biblical world view. When he writes about human passions, he will sound a Pauline note. When he writes about the rela­tionship between men and women, the reader will be abl~ to detect the very biblical theol­ogy of the body; when he writes about social justice, the moral evaluation will instinctively be that of the law and the prophets. Even when he writes about human sin, tragedy and failure there will be an unwritten "but" sensed by the reader pointing to redemption. This reflexive sensitivity can only be acquired by regular, deep meditation on the sacred text over many years. To the extent that a writer moves away from a grounding in Scripture, he runs the risk of losing the connection between his words and the Word.

Much of the Catholic familiarity with the Bible has come through participation in the liturgy. That is why the texts of the psalms have a great influence on Catholic literature. I believe it is harder to have a distinctive Cath­olic literary culture now that we don't have just one translation of the Bible. The Vulgate and the Douay-Rheims translation based on it served as a formation of the mind. Think of the many quotations from the Vulgate in the writings of Thomas Merton, mostly taken from the liturgy.

Latin

Knowledge of Latin, whether acquired through formal training or absorbed through exposure to the liturgy, shapes the way Catho­lic writers think and shapes their intellectual and aesthetic sensibilities. Latin, of course, has a myriad of values for any writer. Practi­cally, of course, it helps one immensely with English vocabulary and grammar. It also helps one think more clearly. Christopher Derrick, in Escape from Skepticism, says, "There is no better way of causing a schoolboy to attend to the exact meaning of a word or a sentence: there is no better education in the difference between saying what you mean and uttering vague sounds which more or less suggest the sort of thing you have in mind" (p. 93).
Derrick admits that Russian might also have this effect, as would Greek. Latin, how­ever, has the advantage of connecting the Catholic writer to the great stream of Western literature, both pagan and especially Chris­tian. It also is the language of Western theolo­gy and liturgy. At the very least, knowledge of Latin frees us from the oppression of dynamic equivalence because we can find out what the liturgical texts says ourselves. And there is the ability to read Cicero's masterpiece, De Amicitia in its original language!



St. Thomas

The modified realism of Aristotle is the ether of the Catholic literary universe, even if it was received indirectly through memoriza­tion of the Baltimore Catechism. But most of the greats had significant direct exposure to his thought, from Thomas Merton to Walker Percy to Jacques Maritain. What we gain from St. Thomas is a resounding, yet discern­ing affirmation of the value of the world-an incarnational, sacramental worldview. The cosmos is not just a shadow of something greater beyond, but in fact is itself the portal and eventual participant in what is to come. That is the biblical proposition that Aris­totelianism modified by the doctrine of the Creator helps us withstand against a Platonic denigration of matter and a modem Cartesian dualism.

Also, the doctrine of St. Thomas is at the heart of modem Catholic social teachings. It is no mistake that Leo XIll's two most impor­tant encyclicals are one on the renewal of studies of the Angelic Doctor (Aetemi patris) and one that inaugurates modern Catholic social teaching (Rerum novarum). The second would have been impossible without the ideas of the first.

Not that St. Thomas is the be-all and end- all of Catholic intellectual formation. The res­sourcement movement of the twentieth cen­tury reminded us about how important it is to know the Church fathers (Greek and Latin) in order to have a fully Catholic understanding of the faith. Yet, and I hesitate to say this, even though I know intellectually that the Eastern Church Fathers are every bit as Catholic as, say, Frank Sheed, I don'tfeel them as Catho­lic in the same way as I do St. Thomas. I'm especially struck by the impact that Aquinas (and scholasticism in general) has had on the texture, so to speak, of Western Christian literature. There is a post-Aquinas way of being Catholic that has the feel of an inno­vation of sorts. Both Dante and St. John of the Cross rely heavily on Thomistic cosmol­ogy and anthropology. I assume this is kind of a development, but I can understand to a certain extent how the Orthodox and Eastern Catholics would be suspicious. They prefer writers that still feel like the old guys. Maybe Henri de Lubac et alia were trying to recover that feel, but we should also remember that de Lubac considered himself a faithful disciple of St. Thomas-and considered St. Thomas faithful to the patristic witness, both Greek and Latin. I also think that the legacy of John Paul II will have the same kind of transforma­tional impact on the feel of Western Catholi­cism that Aquinas did. If I wrote this article in a hundred years I'd probably include his theology of the body as a sixth point.

The Liturgy

The rhythm, texture, images, phrases, themes and attitudes of the liturgy and the liturgical year give a Catholic writer an infi­nite well of inspiration. We can learn much from living again the Christmas Cycle and the Paschal Cycle, as well as the lives of the saints, especially the martyrs, and the Marian and Christo logical feasts.

It first of all helps the writer stay in tune with nature. This of course is truer in the Northern Hemisphere and was truer when cel­ebrations such as Ember Days and Rogation days were still in effect. It was also truer when fasting and abstinence were a significant way to enter into the liturgical life.

A Catholic writer, from Graham Greene to Teilhard de Chardin, is Eucharistic-attuned to the sacrificial nature of the cross and to the participation of the believer and ultimately all the world in that sacrifice. Who can say how significant it is for their humility and perspec­tive that so many Catholic writers spent so much time on their knees before the Blessed Sacrament-and that so many modern-day Catholics refuse to get on their knees before anyone or anything? Let us hope that once we pass this era of painful reform the renewed liturgy will continue to be such a factor in the formation of Catholic culture.

Two thousand years of cultural history

A Catholic writer needs not only his intel­lect to be formed, but also his affective fac­ulties. The best Catholic writers will have tasted widely and deeply of the fruits of artis­tic greats of the past, including spiritual clas­sics and theology as well as poetry, fiction, art, music and architecture. Has the modern Catholic writer drunk deeply of St. Bene­dict, Juliana of Norwich, Thomas a Kempis, chant, Palestrina, Mozart, the great basilicas and sculptures, Giotto and Byzantine icons, Dante, and Chaucer? Or is his artistic sensibil­ity being formed by [fill in your least favorite guitar-based "liturgical" music artist here) and the Bauhaus? Shakespeare himself may have been significantly Catholic in his approach to reality and therefor:e a worthy source of inspi­ration for a Catholic ethos, although Kenneth Clarke, who wrote Civilization, numbers him among the cynical pessimists of the late Renaissance. I'm sure great Catholic writing is possible without a lot of cultural familiarity, but it certainly is easier if one immerses him­self in the tradition. And that exposure has to be free of post-modem irony and cynicism.

Christopher Dawson, in The Crisis of Western Civilization, considered a retrieval of the Catholic cultural heritage a prerequi­site for the survival of what is good in Western Civilization. He advocated Catholic studies programs such as the one that flourishes at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn. Programs such as the School of Architecture at Notre Dame are attempting to retrieve the cultural tradition for contemporary projects, without sliding into archaism.

Catholic writers will have their emotions as well as intellects shaped by regular, non­cynical exposure to the Christian heritage of the past. Young writers who spend more time reading modern authors, watching movies dripping with post-modern ridicule and nihil­ism and listening to angry rock music than exploring the great spiritual and artistic past will stunt their ability to connect their work to the tradition.

The Blessed Virgin Mary

I am not numbering this one because I consider it a distinctive kind of point, a devo­tional as well as an intellectual one. Whatever their personal devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the great writers of the pre-conciliar revival grew up in an atmosphere of great Marian enthusiasm and were at least indirect­ly influenced by it. If von Balthasar and the Catechism of the Catholic Church are right­that the Marian dimension of the Church has priority over the Petrine-then the closer one unites oneself to Mary at the foot of the Cross, receiving the blood and water from the side of Christ, the more one's literary work will be connected with the great work of salvation. In Rosarium Virginis Mariae John Paul II points out that "among creatures no one knows Christ better than Mary; no one can introduceus to a profound knowledge of his mystery better than his Mother" (14). To be devoted to her and to meditate with her on the mysteries of her son cannot help but sharPen the intellect and fine-tune the affective faculties.

Many commentators have noted the pro­found influence that the image of Mary had on Tolkien's conception of women in the Lord of the Rings, especially Galadriel. One of the weaknesses of the movie, perhaps the result of being directed by a non-Catholic, is that Galadriel is turned from a "heavenly" mother into a kind of chthonic witch. When Thomas Merton died one of the objects in his posses­sion was a Holy Rosary. He attributed his vocation to Our Lady of Caridad del Cobre.

Many people will criticize modem Catho­lic educational institutions that are trying to ground young people in the things I mention above. They will accuse Thomas Aquinas Col­lege or the University of St. Thomas' Catholic studies program of being isolationist, elitist, sectarian or too monastic. A friend of mine who graduated from TAC makes the point that the modem academy itself is isolationist. That is, it is hermetically sealed against direct and non-dismissive exposure to the great Western, Catholic tradition. While dialogue with the world requires some knowledge and familiar­ity with the contemporary ways of the world, a clear and perceptive literary presentation of what is really going on requires one to have a fuller and broader worldview, one that is in accord with reality as such and that comes from a center outside of and healthier than our post-modem culture of death. This can best be acquired through a thorough grounding in the Catholic heritage.

I was once accused (sympathetically) of being hopelessly Catholic. I took it as the compliment that it was intended to be and attribute any value that such identification has in me to my familiarity and intentional immersion in the Bible, the Latin language, St. Thomas, the liturgy, two thousand years of cultural history and especially devotion to Mary learned at the grotto of the university named after her. The great Catholic writers are hopelessly Catholic, as well (although they are much better writers than I am). They can't help but infuse every sentence with the sensibility of the tradition as absorbed through exposure to scripture, language, phi­losophy, theology, liturgy, art and poetry .•

Dr. Robert F Gotcher is associate professor of systematic studies at Sacred Heart School of Theology in Hales Corner, Wis. He received his Ph.D. from Marquette University in 2002. He teaches introduction to theology, mystery of God, theological anthropology, life principles and human sexuality to seminarians at Sacred Heart. His publications focus on family issues, lay spirituality and the Second Vatican Council. He is involved in the secular Franciscan order.
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