The trials of writing about Catholic fiction

Catholic 365 submission (books and culture section)

The trials of writing about Catholic fiction

By Mike Mastromatteo

About eight years ago, I came upon an opportunity to write about Catholic fiction for a major Catholic news organization. In many ways, it was the fulfillment of a longstanding dream of mine to discuss Catholic art and fiction at an accessible, non-academic level.

The idea originated in the mid-1980s when I was working as a news editor at Toronto’s Catholic Register newspaper. Over the news wire one day came an item about the death of “Catholic writer” Walker Percy. Although I had never heard of Percy, the news of his passing induced me to devour many of his novels, eagerly seeking the ingredients that made his novels, “Catholic novels.”

This in turn lead me to read, research and interview contemporary Catholic novelists, ranging from emerging writers such as Kirstin Valdes Quade and Phil Klay, to best-selling icons like Mary Higgin Clark, Nicholas Sparks and James Lee Burke.

Key to all my interviews with authors was two basic questions:  How has the Catholic faith influenced your fiction? and do you consider yourself a “Catholic writer” or a writer who happens to be Catholic?

Following some initial growing pains, the column eventually gained a measure of stability. The timing was fortuitous as well. Just as the column was taking shape, came lamentations from Catholics writers, poets and academics about the decline of Catholic influence in arts and literature in North America.

As Catholic poet and educator Dana Gioia Dana observed in his 2014 essay the Catholic Writer Today (Wiseblood Books) Catholicism enjoys “almost no positive presence” in American fine arts. Despite the Church’s overwhelming importance as inspiration for story, art and music for almost two millennia, by the mid-20th century, the Catholic voice in popular fiction had all but disappeared (Flannery O’Connor not withstanding).

That disappearance, coupled with a growing secularism and criticism of the Church for what might be called its “politically incorrect” stance on life and family issues, provided further inspiration for a columnist eager to discuss what makes Catholic writers tick.

Perhaps the most interesting observation arising from interviews with Catholic writers was that whatever their contemporary attitude toward the Church and its Magisterium, their attending Mass and learning their catechism became fertile ground for future storytelling  – especially with the most transcendent of themes.

Here is what author Alice McDermott (The Ninth Hour, Charming Billy, After This) said about the Catholic influence question: "A Catholic upbringing has played an essential role in my development as a writer because it has shaped the way I use words. Catholic prayers and Catholic hymns were in many ways my first poetry."

Even more liberal-minded Catholic writers, who today struggle with many of the Church’s teachings, said attending Mass and learning about the faith in their formative years was a boon to a writing career. As writer Mary Gordon (Final Payments, the Company of Women, Payback) revealed, "the most important thing about Catholicism for me is that it asks the large questions and faces them in large terms. The liturgy gives me an organic connection to those who have said the prayers in the past, (and) a window into Western culture because of the lives of the saints and the familiarity with Scripture."

The point was made more explicitly perhaps by younger writer J. Courtney Sullivan, whose first four novels included several references to growing up in a large Irish Catholic family.  Sullivan said there is nothing like a Catholic upbringing to make you fall in love with the power of story. “There is so much mystery to it all. It's an experience of religion that engages all your senses. I can still smell the votive candles and the incense at my childhood parish. I can still see the statue of the Virgin Mary that stood in the back of the church, and the stained-glass windows. I can remember going to Mass on a Sunday, hearing the Gospel read, coming to understand the fundamentals of storytelling in that way."

Emerging writer Phil Klay, author of Redeployment, Missionaries, and most recently, Uncertain Ground, told this author that Catholicism informs the questions he wants to ask in fiction and the aspects of literature most important to him.

As the Catholic writer project matured and (hopefully) grew more sophisticated, I came upon a book that forced me to sit up and take notice. Writer and educator Joshua Hren in 2021 released How to Read (and write) Like a Catholic. One can imagine the urgency a journalist developing the Catholic fiction “beat” would attach to a book of this nature.

Like Dana Gioia cited above, Hren noted a growing void in high quality Catholic art and fiction in the latter decades of the last century.  But Hren maintains a hopeful attitude for Catholic and other writers that despite humanity’s fallen state, there remains the possibility of redemption.  “Although at the deepest level the Catholic is obsessed with his character’s salvation or damnation,” Hren says, “he does not defy his faith by following some of his characters into hell. Dante [Alighieri] demonstrates that even told from hell, the Catholic writer’s story will refract the persisting promises of paradise in Christ.”

So what has more than seven years writing about Catholic fiction and poetry meant to this writer?  For one thing, there appears a strong willingness among inspired, creative Catholics to take a more visible place in the world of art and fiction. Writers are not as timid admitting their Catholicism, and they appear more confident in crafting their stories with references to such transcendental themes of the purpose of suffering, the presence of evil and the promise of redemption. They need not be theologians or preachers to imbue their stories with a sense of better things to come.

As Gioia noted almost ten years ago, “the Catholic writer must recover confidence in his or her own spiritual, cultural, and personal identity. A Catholic writer must also have hope. Hope in the possibilities of art and one’s own efforts. Hope in the Church’s historical ability to change as change as needed. The main barrier to the revival of Catholic writing and the rapprochement of faith and the arts is despair, or perhaps more accurately acedia, a torpid indifference among precisely those people could change the situation.”

(Mike Mastromatteo is a freelance book reviewer and columnist from Toronto).

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