Being a Catholic is such a tough gig these days that even the Pope has left his post. Centuries of abuse and scandals, leadership that is often out of touch with worldly realities, and divisive involvement in politics has made the Catholic Church a problematic source of guidance for many of its adherents. Yet leaving it all behind is complicated, too. Those who dissent and yet stick around can take comfort in the fact that throughout the church’s history, many who have sought to effect change from within have ended up having a lasting and meaningful influence.
A new collection of essays, “Not Less Than Everything: Catholic Writers on Heroes of Conscience, From Joan of Arc to Oscar Romero,” honors those who dissented. Minnesota writers Martha Stortz and Patricia Hampl are in the company of Tobias Wolff, Ann Patchett, Mary Gordon, Alice McDermott, Kathryn Harrison, and Colm Toibin, among others, Catholics all — or former Catholics, or sometimes Catholics, at least. It’s complicated.
Many of these writers recount their own testy relationship with the church as they explore the acts and inner lives of notable dissenters, heretics and outsiders. Post-modern theologian Tom Beaudoin grew up a good Christian boy but ended up finding a spiritual home in drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. But that’s not necessarily a contradiction; Beaudoin writes about the Jesuit founder Ignatius of Loyola, and imagines himself Ignatius’ “post-modern avatar, allowing me to keep my Catholic background and my Dionysian tendencies corralled in this man I could admire.”
Women in the church
The place of women in the Catholic Church comes up in many of these essays. Lisa Sowle Cahill writes about Mary Magdalene and the bum rap this contemporary of Jesus tends to get. Why she’s usually written off as a prostitute, Cahill points out that Mary, as a disciple and apostle, exemplifies women’s status as equal and partner in Jesus’ teachings and may have held a greater leadership role.
Another Mary, Mother Mary MacKillop, an Australian nun, also got the shaft by the church establishment in the 1870s when she protested the sexual abuse of children by a local priest. She was excommunicated for her trouble, writes Cathleen Kaveny, who tells MacKillop’s story to guide those who have trouble carrying on good works within a church riled by some leaders’ bad deeds.
Paul Mariani writes about Minnesota poet John Berryman, who dropped off the Washington Avenue bridge after failing to move past addiction and troubled relationships. “I like to think of John Berryman as the patron saint of purgatory,” he writes.
‘The father of the essay’
Patricia Hampl, University of Minnesota professor and author of “The Florist’s Daughter” and other books, contributes an essay about the writer and skeptic Michael Montaigne, who figures in a book she is currently working on, and whose work influences hers. “Montaigne is generally seen as the father of the essay and that is a form I practice and one I love and which I think is particularly lively in our times,” says Hampl, whose own essay finds her retracing Montaigne’s steps in Paris and his influence in creating what has turned out to be the quintessentially American voice, that of the first person.
Aside from importing Montaigne’s contribution to literary perspectives, Hampl doesn’t think Catholicism is overly influential on American literature, despite the voices in this book.
“I think American literature in modern times, at least, has been more powerfully influenced by Jewish writers,” she says. “I can’t say I feel special affinity with any Catholic writers as a group. I admire Mary Gordon, Ron Hansen, Robert Clark, Stuart Dybek and others writing today, but they hardly form a coherent group, and some were brought up Catholic but don’t consider themselves Catholic now. The Catholicism of mid-century (say a major writer like Graham Greene, or even Flannery O’Connor) is so culturally different from the life of a Catholic today that there’s no much connection.”
In this collection, connection comes from accepting the skeptics and heretics, as well as the saints. In their experiences, perhaps the real story of Catholicism comes through.
Event:
- Reading event with Charles Baxter, Martha Stortz and Patricia Hampl, March 27, 7 p.m. Common Good Books, St. Paul.
Walking out of the confessional…memoirs etc…
Growing up Catholic has obsessed more writers trying to reach some stage of realization Who-am-I. after how many years of walking out of those church-embraced confessionals?
The tie that binds: Protestants, walking out of church basements, are a rarer breed among the pen and ink crowd. Too often they go half-way and become humorists tickling the conscience of a few…Garrison K’s folk tales are embedded with past, protestantism laced with fundamentalism?
Then again there is Jack…” So in America when the sun goes down…and sense all the raw land that rolls…that road going, and the people dreaming…and tonight the stars are out, and don’t you know God is Pooh Bear…” Jack Kerouac On The Road.
Whatever the orthodoxy, wordsmiths, thinkers etc., were all too often initially, nave dwellers blinded by the light but in time, exposed to an honest appraisal or acceptance; critical or creative, in the remembering I suppose?
Sounds like an interesting book.
and a worthwhile event I’d like to attend. I agree with Patricia Hampl’s observation about the influence of Jewish writers. But I’m not convinced this has anything to do with religious faith. I don’t think of Saul Bellow, Philip Roth or Norman Mailer, to name a few, as having any faith, or being religious or their writing as having any religious tone. Especially when you think of the quiet but obvious role faith plays in Graham Green’s work. So it’s not just Catholicism which is excluded from modern literature. I think it’s faith and religious experience in general. Or maybe I should say “sectarian faith.” Much of literature today is about the emptiness in modern life and the difficulty of finding spirituality and faith or an experience of God which fills that emptiness.