Communication, Consecration and the Catholic Novel by Glenn Statile

I just found, online, a copy of an article on theology, philosophy and the Catholic novel by Prof. Glenn Statile, a member of the Philosophy faculty  of St. John’s University in Queens, NY, and a frequent contributor to the excellent Metanexus Insitute publication, The Global Spiral. The article, “Communication, Consecration and the Catholic Novel”, was originally presented at the 2008 Theocom Conference on Communications and Theology at St. John’s U and can be downloaded as a Word doc from Theocom.net.

The article may be of particular interest to those writers or readers of Catholic fiction who occasionally run into those theologically or apologetics-minded folk who for the life of them can’t understand what “use” novels might be in keeping or understanding or spreading the faith; who, like Plato (and Calvinists of old), equate fiction with lying and would therefore banish all such literature from their little Republics.

Here’s one paragraph, employing a sort of abusus non tollit usum argument:

Plato’s vision of mankind living in a just society grounded in eternal philosophical truths required an uncompromising retreat from the emotions.    Thus, if he were around today,  Plato might very well accuse me of begging the question when  making a distinction between so-called ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ Catholic novels.   As all, or at least most, novels are a composite of characterization as well as plot, they are therefore by Platonic definition besotted with the kind of emotional apparatus that make them unworthy vehicles for communicating ultimate truth.   My position is that the emotional component of great Catholic novels is an asset that facilitates learning about as well as being attracted to the faith,  despite any Platonic drawbacks that might militate against this.  After all, could a novel critical of the Catholic faith be any more scandalous than the clerical scandals of recent memory?  And yet we do not as a result desire that the existence of a flawed priesthood should lead to its dissolution, although today there are many who would tinker with the credentials of what it means and what it takes to be a priest.

…Great Catholic novels, such as those by Graham Greene, Walker Percy, and Francois Mauriac, for example, forge a powerful fusion of the rational and the emotional  that enables the reader to both experience an individual prayer-like encounter of the human spirit with the beyond as well as to more deeply understand the tenets of the faith.  Great Catholic novels provide us with food for thought and reasons to believe, while at the same time engaging the entire human person.   A dramatization of a crisis, such as that experienced by Abraham with Isaac, can be much more palpable and powerful than even the tightest of abstract reasoning.

Taking Fr. Robert E. Lauder’s working definition that “a Catholic novel is one whose main theme(s) is based upon some Catholic dogma, moral teaching or sacramental principle, and in which Catholicism on the whole is treated affirmatively, Prof. Statile goes on to discuss at some length three great Catholic novels, Kristin Lavransdatter, Brideshead Revisited, and Cry, the Beloved Country!

Well worth the read.