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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Authority that does not exist for liberty is not authority, but force. It has no sanction.
Lord ActonThe best analogue of a God who reveals himself in strange ways is the wayward imagination of man.
Anthony BurgessEnglish Catholic literature, invigorated by Celtic tributaries, has been of fast and luxuriant growth, rich in diversity and broad in achievement, contributing generously to the cultural mainstream. A torrent of poets, novelists, essayists, historians, journalists and spirituality writers have entertained, sustained, instructed, defended and promoted the Catholic community, and rendered it intriguing, even attractive, to outsiders by sharing their belief and their humanity. In so far as they are direct, Catholic writers reflect themselves in relation to Catholicism—their chief reference point. Lapsed writers are relevant if they continue to engage Catholicism in serious dialogue, or maintain Catholic values. Catholic writers can be spoken of as ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative': the liberal values community, freedom and relevance, respects independence of mind, and aspires to understanding and toleration; the conservative values order, law and traditional forms, respects power, and aspires to conformity and exclusivism.
Since 1850 non-Catholics have generally thought that Catholicism is inimical to intellect and creativity; and the Church has indeed liked to picture itself as united, uniform, unchanging, righteous,infallible and ideologically lucid to the point of being mechanistic; and consequently there appears to be a conflict between the god-like Church and the human realities in which writers deal, between inflexible ‘Law’ and the fact that literature is of life, with the wind blowing where it listeth.
1 Reference works in this field include: Calvert Alexander The Catholic Literary Revival (1935); J.R.Foster Modem Christian Literature (1963); Maurice Cowling Religion and Public Doctrine in Modem England Volume II: Assaults (1985); Thomas Woodman Faithful Fictions. The Catholic novel in British literature (1991). Pertinent background is available in Owen Chadwick The Victorian Church, and Adrian Hastings A History of English Christianity 1920‐1990; and see Bishops and Writers ed. Adrian Hastings.
2 ‘The Struggles of Catholic Literature The Rambler vol.IX (Apr. 1852) pp.255–7.Google Scholar
3 Stothert, J.A. Catholic Novelists The Rambler vol. XI (Mar. 1853) pp.251–3,261.Google Scholar
4 ‘The Catholic Press The Rambler vol.XI, N.S. (Feb. 1859) p.83.Google Scholar
5 See Woodman Faithful Fictions pp.6‐15. On general development of Catholic novelists see: Gains, Robert Lee Wolff and Losses Novels of Faith and Doubt in Victorian England (John Murray, 1977)Google Scholar especially pp.42, 72ff., 88ff., 91ff, 99ff, 106‐7, and Maison, Margaret M. Search Your Soul, Eustace: A Survey of the Religious Novel in the Victorian Age (Sheed & Ward, 1961)Google Scholar especially pp.149‐165.
6 Digby Compitum vol.III (1850) p. 189, and chapters VI, VII.Google Scholar
7 N.Fairchild, Hoxie Religious Trends in English Poetry vol.IV (Columbia UP., N.Y., 1957) p.275Google Scholar.
8 Birrell, Miscellanies (Elliot Stock, 1901) p.38Google Scholar, More, Obiter Dicta (William Heinemann, 1924) p.57Google Scholar.
9 Mathew, David Catholicism in England (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1955) p.228Google Scholar.
10 Abercrombie, Nigel The Life and Work of Edmund Bishop (Longmans, 1959) p.406Google Scholar.
11 Braybrooke, Some Catholic Novelists (Bums Oates & Washboume, 1931) pp.176, 229, 230Google Scholar.
12 Anstruther, George Elliot A Hundred Years of Catholic Progress (Burns & Oates, 1929) pp. 144‐5Google Scholar.
13 See Bedoyere, Michael de la ‘What is a Catholic Press?’The Month vol.CLXVI, No.857 (Nov. 1935) pp.397‐404Google Scholar, James, Stanley B. ‘Our Catholic Press: its Opportunity’The Month vol.CLXVH, No.863 (May 1936) pp.421‐5Google Scholar.
14 ‘The Circulation of Catholic Literature’The Month No.562, N.S. 172 (Apr.1911) pp.372‐82Google Scholar; cf. The Month Mar. 1908, pp.229‐46.
15 James, Stanley B. The Creation of a Catholic Literature' The Month vol.CLIII. No.777 (Mar. 1929)p.240.Google Scholar
16 For a survey see Leahy, Maurice An Anthology of Contemporary Catholic Poetry (Cecil Palmer, 1931)Google Scholar.
17 For impression of 1940s, 1950s see Braybrooke, Neville ‘A New Generation of Catholic Writers A Survey’Clergy Review vol.XLII, N.S. (1957) pp.668‐76Google Scholar.
18 See Whyte, J.H. ‘Historians of Nineteenth‐century English Catholicism’Clergy Review vol.LH, N.S. (1967) pp.791‐801Google Scholar.
19 Lodge TLS 12 Apr. 1991, p. 10; and see Bergonzi, Bernard The Month vol.CCXXIX, No. 1230 (Feb. 1970) pp. 108‐109Google Scholar, and ‘The decline and fall of the Catholic novel’ in Bergonzi The Myth of Modernism and Twentieth Century Literature (1986). J.C. Whitehouse similarly lamented death of Catholic novel: ‘Farewell to the Catholic Writer?’Priests and People vol. 1, No.2 (May 1987) pp.51‐3Google Scholar; and see Piers Paul Read ‘Decline and Fall of the Catholic Novel’The Times 29.3.1997, p.20.
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