Catholic Fiction, Then and Now

“A fairly large proportion of the distinguished novels of the last few decades have been written by Catholics and have even been describable as Catholic novels.”

So began a New Yorker book review , penned by a prominent and decidedly non-Catholic author. Needless to say, you’ll have to dig deep into the magazine’s archives to find it. The review goes on: “One reason for this [success] is that the conflict not only between this world and the next world but between sanctity and goodness is a fruitful theme of which the ordinary, unbelieving writer cannot make use.” The year?—1948. The reviewer?—George Orwell.

In the sixty years since George Orwell was reviewing Graham Greene’s novels, the phenomenon of the Catholic novel has shriveled into virtual nonexistence. I just returned to noisy New York after attending the third annual Southwell Institute creative writing workshop, and on the first evening Orwell’s observation was presented to a group of us young writers. “Who are the great Catholic novelists, poets, and playwrights of today?” we were challenged, and there was no quick response. As silence grew, the question was amended: If the human conflicts described by Orwell remain, and if art really can “hold a mirror up to nature”—showing us both good and evil, in all their power and glory—then why is “Catholic fiction” such a musty old phrase?

So much for the woes of modernity, at least for the moment. “The Church needs art,” wrote John Paul the Great in his 1999 Letter to Artists , and art isn’t made in a vacuum or bequeathed by a deus ex machina. It is created by creatures—creatures vibrantly and faithfully imaging their Creator. And who are these Christian artists? “All who are passionately dedicated,” the pope proposed, “to the search for new ‘epiphanies’ of beauty so that through their creative work as artists they may offer these as gifts to the world.”

George Orwell, I think, would agree.