{"id":3265,"date":"2008-02-01T11:08:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-01T11:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2008\/02\/the-catholic-writer-and-the-catholic-imagination.html"},"modified":"2008-02-01T11:08:00","modified_gmt":"2008-02-01T11:08:00","slug":"the-catholic-writer-and-the-catholic-imagination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/02\/the-catholic-writer-and-the-catholic-imagination.html","title":{"rendered":"The “Catholic” writer — and the “Catholic imagination”"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recent post about Catholic writers<\/a> prompted a reader to ask: <\/p>\n

What exactly is a Catholic writer? I prefer “Christian writer” who happens to be Catholic -and who is espoused to catholic dogma. No?<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s a good question — and I found one answer in this week’s Tablet<\/a>, the paper of my home diocese, Brooklyn, from Fr. Robert Lauder: <\/p>\n

There is so much I like in Peter Quinn\u2019s new book \u201cLooking for Jimmy: A Search for Irish America\u201d (The Overlook Press) that it is difficult to pick favorite sections but certainly one of my favorites is the chapter titled, \u201cThe Catholic Imagination.\u201d In that chapter, Quinn deals with questions and topics that have interested me for almost 50 years. Quinn brings insight and a wisdom to the questions and the topics that I envy.<\/p>\n

Early in the chapter, Peter notes that he has heard statements about what makes a Catholic artist that seem almost ludicrous to him. I have had the same type of experience. One example that he offers is a seminar he attended on \u201cReligion in the Movies\u201d in which Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s \u201cThe Wrong Man\u201d was described as the most \u201cCatholic film\u201d that Hitchcock made. <\/p>\n

Another example he offers is the frequent description of Martin Scorsese as a Catholic filmmaker. Peter confesses that the only thing Catholic he could see in \u201cThe Wrong Man\u201d was Henry Fonda fingering his beads during his trial and staring at a picture of the Sacred Heart when he was about to be proven innocent. <\/p>\n

Quinn also wonders if the rich texture of Scorsese\u2019s films, the color, movement and ritual might just as easily be attributed to Scorsese\u2019s love of opera as to his Catholicism. Though I probably could make a strong argument about some of Hitchcock\u2019s and Scorsese\u2019s films being Catholic, I understand and sympathize with Peter\u2019s complaint. If we are going to describe someone as a Catholic artist, we should say what we mean by that term. That is precisely what Peter does in his chapter \u201cThe Catholic Imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n

Noting that he cannot imagine a Catholic artist who rejects Christ\u2019s divinity and the basic tenets of the creed, Peter tries to be more specific about what he thinks is essential if someone is to be described as a Catholic artist, what is essential to a Catholic imagination. He writes:<\/p>\n

\u201cHere, in the first decade of the 21st Century, in a post-Holocaust, post-Cold War world, post-Vatican II Church and post-modern society \u2013 we seem to be in a post-everything era \u2013 let me suggest sin, holiness and mercy as three elements common to \u2018the Catholic imagination.\u2019 (Nota bene: I said \u2018common to,\u2019 not \u2018that define.\u2019 I\u2019ll leave that job to far more learned minds.) The first two elements \u2013 sin and holiness \u2013 probably seem obvious. The third \u2013 mercy \u2013 might seem less so but, for me, divine mercy, which runs so counter to the prevailing spirit of religious and secular fundamentalism, resonates at the very center of the Catholic imagination.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

I confess that I was one of those for whom sin and holiness would be obviously essential to a Catholic imagination but I wonder if I would have thought of mercy without Peter pointing it out to me. Claiming that the human experience as Catholicism sees it, is not split into neat distinct exclusive halves, the unsinful and the sinful, Peter reminds us that Catholic novelist Graham Greene prefaced his novel \u201cThe Heart of the Matter\u201d with a quote from poet Charles Peguy that insists the sinner is more a Christian than anybody with the exception of the saint. Peguy\u2019s point and Greene\u2019s also is that Christianity exists for the sinner and the sinner understands Christianity because the sinner knows the need for redemption and salvation. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are more fascinating thoughts on sin and the “Catholic imagination” at the link<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent post about Catholic writers prompted a reader to ask: What exactly is a Catholic writer? I prefer “Christian writer” who happens to be Catholic -and who is espoused to catholic dogma. No? 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Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3265\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}