Literature in the News: Top Five Catholic Novels

I should probably create a new category of Literature on the Internet, since this wasn’t in the news but a video clip for Taylor Marshall’s blog.  But for now I’ll blur the distinction between news and internet.  Dr. Taylor Marshall is a Catholic convert and theologian.  He was formerly an Episcopal priest but through his theological studies and radical changes that occurred in the Episcopal/Anglican churches brought him to Roman Catholicism.  You can read his bio.  He added this short video clip to one of his recent posts listing his top five Catholic novels not including J.R.R. Tolken’s Lord of the Rings.  I guess Lord of the Rings is among everyone’s favorite Catholic novels, though I bet most people don’t even realize the novel’s Catholic world view. 

Let me just list his five:

1. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh.

2. Helena by Evelyn Waugh.

3. Dracula by Bram Stoker.

4. Father Elijah by Michael O’Brien.

5. Father Brown Stories by G. K. Chesterton.

As Marshall states that the novel does not have to be written by a Catholic, but have a Catholic, sacramental world view.  Bram Stoker, who he includes, was not Roman Catholic.  And he also includes short stories, since the Father Brown series is not a novel but a collection of short works.

I too love Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and include it on my list, but I don't think I would include Lord of the Rings, even if I were allowed to.  It's a good novel, but I don't find it overwhelming.  Perhaps because it's in a Fantasy/Sci Fi genre, which there's nothing wrong with it, but it's not my cup of tea.

So let me give you my list, and like Marshall in no particular order.

1. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh.

2. The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene.

3. Silence by Shasaku Endo.

4. The Complete Short Stories of Flannery O’Connor.

5. The Sun Also Rises by Earnest Hemingway.

Honorable mentions:

My Antonia by Willa Cather.

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Light in August by William Faulkner.

Ulysses by James Joyce.

The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.

First, let me say that there is clearly a bias toward writers in English.  There are lots of great Catholic works by writers who wrote in a continental European language, but unfortunately I have not read many of them.  I tried to diversify my selections by including a Japanese writer (Endo), a Russian (Dostoyevsky), and an Italian (di Lampedusa).  Neither Cather, Dostoyevsky, or Faulkner are Catholic, but I think those works do have a sacramental world view, and I love all three works dearly.  James Joyce was Catholic, but certainly a lapsed one, but all his works come from a Catholic world view, even when he is rejecting his Catholicism.  Lampedusa’s The Leopard is not a novel that makes any list of Catholic novels, but it is deeply Catholic and I’m on a mission to show the world how great a work that is. 

Finally the lists are clearly biased toward the last hundred and fifty years.  One could have gone back to medieval and renaissance works such as Dante’s Divine Comedy, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, or Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, but that would too easy.

I should say a word on Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.  I bet that a lot of people don’t know that Earnest Hemingway was a Catholic convert.  Albeit, his biography does not appear to be that of a good Catholic, and I doubt he practiced much during his lifetime.  He converted in the 1920s while an expatriate in Europe, and he wrote The Sun Also Rises around the same time.  It’s probably the only one of his novels that has a Catholic, sacramental sensibility.  You hardly ever see it in the literary criticism, but one cannot fully get the novel or appreciate it without seeing the symbolism of Catholic sacraments throughout the work.

You can also see a list of Catholic novels (“100 Best”) at Catholic Online.  I’m amazed at how few of them I’ve actually read.

I would love to hear what your favorite Catholic novels are.