The "Catholic" Author

...For myself, I blame the Puritan tradition, the Pharisaical "Thou shalt nots" so alien to Catholic humanism and culture, and of whose concrete evidences at least one great Irish-American city has become such an outstanding example...

...And when one bears in mind that these high school and college annuals are but the shock troops of a whole horde of aspiring lesser schools unable to afford or not issuing annuals, but possessing an equally fecund aggregation of writing talent—well, one wonders...

...Unconscious tricks of propinquity gave appalling visualization to utterly trite and insincere plots...

...intense idealists, warm with inspirations so exalted as to hurl them almost to "Excelsior" altitudes...

...As a guide toward that elusive thing called "form" he has the ever-recurrent drama of the Mass...

...It may pique us to remember that it was not a Catholic novelist who wrote Death Comes for the Archbishop, but we should take comfort from learning that Willa Cather has confirmed the Catholic novel in its tenure mainly by demonstration of its value and precise significance in American life...

...Being catholic he will accord to all vices and virtues their proper values in relation to the concerns of human life...

...poems with lines as authentic and bell-like as any line of Keats...

...It is impossible to insist too strongly that such evil well-wishers may have lost sight of the fact that the young writer in their midst may be a realist, perhaps, but also a gentleman...

...Insidious forces are denaturing sin so as to deceive even the elect...

...The baffled teachers must wonder, too...

...that Roman Mass which, as Fortescue truly remarks, embodies the classic procession and climactic perfection of Attic drama...

...Of course there are the usual inane percentages...

...The Catholic author is trained in symbolism, since his is a faith intensely symbolistic...

...Of course Catholics are not the lone offenders in craving such drivel...

...Deft handlings of situations gladdened my casual eye and ensured a feeling of suspense, all the more maddening since I knew there would be no further elucidation unless the young author were given the privilege of "Continued in our next...

...As soon as he refuses to believe in the doctrine of the Pollyannas and hesitates to concede that, since God's in His heaven, all is right in His world, the family conclaves begin...

...I fear the clergy (and the police...

...No author worthy of the name arrives at his pinnacle of achievement without enough refusal slips to paper the walls of his den...

...They are not to blame...

...And, if he must write, why concern himself with the dung-heap ? A beautiful heroine, a handsome hero, a chorus of smart and inane chatter—these would land him on the first train for Hollywood, with the family resting secure in shekelland and an adorable climate for the balance of their natural lives...

...Finis...

...But apart from the satisfaction which accrues from such an overwhelming accession to the kingdom of God upon earth, the fact is that the percentage of Catholic authors in proportion to the population is very low—lower than in any other country...

...In them the truly good did no wrong, and the awfully evil were adequately punished...

...And when we have closed his book with his exposition of the Catholic theory of life and truth we will concede that the work did warrant his bold handling of subjects not elevating in themselves, perhaps, but vital to the lights and shadows of a true portrayal of human nature...

...eerie bits of mysticism too rare and valuable to be let dissipate entirely into graduation ether...

...and my work gives me close access to a modern printing plant where Catholic high school and college annuals are set up and bound...

...They go into a huddle, pondering ways and means whereby they may best be shut of this distressing and distressful cuckoo...

...He will not harp exclusively upon the low manifestations of human instinct, of human nature...

...This strikes one beholder as curious, since for some years I have been enabled to appraise scholastic promise in writing—and my vantage has not been a pedagogue's chair...

...Shades of mother superiors I have known...

...They were squalls blowing toward the Catholic Church in the prevailing winds of the Reformation, and accorded with the beautiful and consoling doctrine of predestination...

...All they can do, these teachers, is lay the foundation, give the proper sense of direction...

...They have dealt with youth immature and in the making...

...The libido has been unchained, and we are illy fitted to cope with the Frankenstein it has become...

...There was one young idealist, I recall, whose short article was a plea for world understanding and brotherhood through a federation of the youth of all countries...

...If ever there was a time when we need Catholic writers to apprise us of the things of art and the spirit, that time is now...

...Such writing was not only dishonest, but immoral as well, because it cloaked hypocrisy with the mask of gentility...

...Their Catholic successors are like pilgrims admiring the portals of a magnificent cathedral, yet who dare not admit there may be confessionals inside...

...We may secure a whiff of the dung-hill, but in its proper relation to the flowers, the birds, the woods and meadows of life...

...What happens to throw this blight upon a rare talent, deaden its yeasty effervescence, dam it utterly with inhibitions...

...One closes one's note-book, hopeful of being able to refer to one of these names sometime with a proud "I knew him when . . ." But the years of test and experience pass, and nothing happens except more annuals...

...First, man is a free, if fallen, agent on trial in a place of probation allowed him by his Creator...

...Artist as he is, cognizant of form, he knows only too well that exclusive pedaling of the Freudian pedal not only is fallacy, but conduces to vapidity...

...All this is more important than it appears...

...One lets them pass, jotting down instead the names of the embryo authors who show most distinct promise: names of young authors whose work shows them enormously preoccupied with the ancient problems of good and evil...

...It argues a nasty sort of piety to hold that a sincere writer may not write the things apt to hurt the sensibilities of pious souls who have no desire to dissociate the true from the good, without conceding that the bulk of his work does give precedence to passages and people capable of awakening our love and admiration, and bringing us into greater intimacy with ourselves...

...The Puritans were undoubtedly a pious folk between what whiles they were murdering Indians...

...They had rather postulate a Helen Wills...

...Grammar, punctuation, spelling, all are beyond the average, and such as would do credit to many a veteran author, besides delighting the hard-worked compositor and printer's eye...

...Its premises are simple...

...As either, he is in direct line with the solid traditions of his faith...

...in their ability to devise sophisticated plot, conversation and action...

...We know the stories they would prefer our young authors to write...

...Not even a handful of exceptions arises to prove the rule: The serious novels which today are leaving their impress upon the American scene are not being written by Catholics...

...There are, of course, outstanding works by non-Catholic novelists which do not fall into this genre...

...They were 50 percent pollyannic and 50 percent sadistic and their sermonizing should have made the past generation and our own excessively moral...

...He has the measured cadence of Gregorian chant from the Proper of the Mass and Vespers—sound anchorages in an age of jazz...

...The life so short, the craft so long to learn" often postpones his success until maturity, if ever, and his development and mastery and power of expression are often tragically come by...

...In an era when ideals and formulas are tossed into the dust-bin the Catholic author has the sound foundations of good logic, and a philosophy almost absurdly elastic because so wholly free...

...Despite the occasional freaks of best sellers, few authors can hope to sustain life unless in addition to their writing talent, they make use of their common, every-day talent, and contact themselves with bread-and-butter through a regular job...

...I recall tales of startling appeal—although their handling may have been atrocious...

...For one thing, I have been blessed with a numerous progeny of nephews and nieces...

...natural celibates, enjoying a Calvinistic aura of sanctity because they denied even a lustful thought the right to rest in their queasy souls...

...But true development of the Catholic writer will not come hedging him about with inhibitions, by denying man's fallen state, by denying the truth of realism...

...As such they were fit pap for a pioneer and Protestant generation which must needs fly to the solace of a pious and happy ending as an antidote for self-righteousness that somehow failed to fit...

...After a pious and lingering adolescence, saccharinely and inadequately described in thirty-seven chapters, she enters the convent...

...We may well question if, on our side, the Catholic novelist has not a greater advantage of perspective to bring to his own contemplation of the American scene...

...If this is done we may feel sure the Catholic author will broaden and become truly catholic...

...The books which are making their intellectual and spiritual impress on our era are not being written by Catholics...

...The American tongue, even, has already undergone a process of development which secularizes the meanings of words, and makes them far different symbols to the minds of Catholics than our own logic indicates that they mean...

...Should the young Catholic author rebel thereat, and, realizing this is the age of realism, believe the realist carries his own justification in his writing, we may well beseech a kindly Maker to emancipate him from the enemies in his midst...

...and second, man's Creator, God, is a benevolent and merciful Father able and willing to help man achieve the destiny of a blessed hereafter...

...Or, under names which betoken Celtic or Slavic origin, one found stories that constituted real social documents...

...natural born novelists, so astoundingly naive (and yet how alarmingly skilful...

...The heroine is unbelievably beautiful and pious, and moves through her local color like meringue...

...Why, if the black sheep is become social-minded, does he not become a priest, and overwhelm them with the bliss and honor of having a priest in the family...

...Amateurs imposed grandeur and glamor upon the cliched, time-worn titles allotted them...

...It is unfortunate that it was left to an outsider of the household of the Faith to accomplish this, but the sortie upon our literary riches may be of value if we take from it a lesson in approach...

...The groundwork is there, as even the appearance of the manuscripts bears witness...

...The development of the Catholic writer into an American novelist who will be able to leave his mark on our literature can be accomplished, not by repression, not by loftily granting him the questionable and sterile freedom of a refusal of our recognition, but by according him wit and intelligence enough to mate his talent and art to the tolerably manageable plot-content of the novels his conception projects...

...These often possess a most elementary and direct perception of each character's dramatic significance, and however unconscious their own artistic purpose with regard to them, one must confess to appraising fictitous personages instinct with individualism and vitality, all enveloped in a subtle air of realism accentuated by the natural defects of the writers' inmaturity...

...It is true that Chaucer, that enfant terrible, was a Catholic, and that since his day our reading tastes have willy-nilly become of a less robust and more refined order...

...So they send their young hopefuls forth, hoping with all their hearts that some day will see the budding promises fulfilled, their hopefuls established proudly as the outstanding Catholic authors of their generation...

...therefrom he can draw the perceptive and almost clairvoyant faculty for assaying and appraising the symbolical portents in American life...

...Short of pointing out the duality of man's nature, the struggle of good and evil, they must be proverbially discreet...

...I have a whole book-shelf of such howlers bearing the solemn and ancient imprint of the American Tract Society...

...During our Catholic writers' forced silence the American novel has taken form, and alien forces have laid down the warp of what the critics are pleased to term our national literature...

...doubt whether we are...