Approaching the world emblematically and with a sense of its mysterious depths, the Catholic artist, both as Catholic and artist, savors the riches of nature, including human nature, perceiving the imagination not as a source of distraction from God but, potentially at least, as a path to God. In this light all the things of the world become eligible symbols of divine largesse and hence of the discovery of the holy as well as the beautiful. — Ross Labrie, THE CATHOLIC IMAGINATION IN AMERICAN LITERATURE