Graham Greene's Catholic Imagination by Mark Bosco SJ

The sequence of interviews at The Fine Delight has convinced me that Catholicism and imaginative literature are inseparable. That might sound like an empty declaration--considering that I maintain this site and conduct the interviews--but I can assure you that my conceptions of this connection have only strengthened in the recent months. Surely Catholicism, its tenor and language, resides comfortably within the metaphorical, a world of "signs and wonders." The site has shown me that contemporary Catholic writers (of all varieties) are producing significant work: as Catholics, as doubters, during a conversation with tradition. For a Catholic audience, for a general audience.

I've been sharing the work of Catholic writers for some years now in the oral sense--but what I've learned is that such sharing is complicated, and not without the occasional problem. The world of Catholicism and literature is often connected by the world of scholarship--and that latter world is further split into the worlds of scriptural criticism and theology. One (of many) of many reasons for the existence of The Fine Delight is a desire to move reasoned discussions of Catholicism and literature into the mainstream, beyond solely the realm of quarterly journals of the discipline. The community and practice of peer-reviewed scholarship is essential, and yet it is dangerous when that world becomes insular, and the world of the Word is wrung. Certainly the work of those journals, that discipline, is good and necessary work--the type of work that trickles down to Mass--and invariably the best of such scholarship is passionate, organic, and world-aware, not merely academic.

Rev. James Martin is an example of a priest and writer who has done so much to broaden the scope of the intelligent Catholic cultural conversation. Here is another: Mark Bosco, also a Jesuit priest, is a savvy, brilliant commentator on the intersections between literature and the faith. Whereas Martin documents culture and Catholicism, and Mark Massa (another Jesuit!) investigates history and Catholicism, Bosco's particular talent is unpacking the Catholic identity of our greatest and best known Catholic writers. What I love about Bosco's work is that he is able to establish why, and how, the Catholicism of these writers is misunderstood--or perhaps even ignored.

How many teachers of Flannery O'Connor avoid discussions of her faith--or, to be less biographical, the violent and real faith within her fiction? A venial sin--yes, if ignorance of the faith is the reason. But a more common reason, perhaps, is the rejection of that faith as being provincial, or backward, or worse. Bosco's writing has shown that Catholicism IS the work and content of O'Connor, Greene, and others, and it would be nothing less than reductive to excise a discussion of faith from a discussion of their work.

In tomorrow's interview, Bosco will focus on why Greene's novel is a particularly apt Lenten choice for Catholic readers. For now, here are a few quotes from Bosco's essential Graham Greene's Catholic Imagination, in which Bosco establishes a schema, parameter, and context for a particularly "Catholic" fiction:

"[Greene] bemoaned the loss of the "religious sense" in the English novel . . . that sense became intimately tied to Catholicism, a faith tradition that could still evoke a metaphysical understanding of good and evil in the world and within an individual."

"The historical impact of endeavoring to read texts from such a "religious" perspective has meant that rarely if ever do the imaginative contours of Christian theology support or impinge upon literary interpretation."

"The Catholic novel in Europe originated in the neoromantic and decadent forms of French literature in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a reaction against the dominant discourse of Enlightenment philosophy and the antireligious doctrines of the French Revolution."

"Beginning with the novel Brideshead Revisited, published in 1944, [Waugh] attempted to use Catholicism not only to frame the issues and crises of modern society but also to offer Catholicism's vision and doctrine as an antidote to the present crisis in Western, and specifically English, civilization."