From an article in The Catholic Herald:
Left-wing "social" Catholicism falsifies the Gospel and can promote
violence, according to Catholic novelist Piers Paul Read's new book.
The Death of a Pope, published in America on May 1 and available in Britain later in the year, intertwines real events with fiction, and is likely to be controversial for its attacks on secularism and liberal Catholicism, especially liberation theology.
Mr Read told the Herald: "The anti-hero is an aid worker, a Basque who was once a Jesuit in Salvador and left to join the guerrillas. He's now an aid worker.
"The themes are Catholic ones, you could say it's about the battle between liberal and conservative Catholics, a debate between the Tablet and The Catholic Herald. There is also a certain amount of satire."
Mr Read said the theme originated with a visit to El Salvador in 1990, where many Catholics supported the Communists.
"I wrote a piece for the Independent about the Jesuits at the University of Central America, and more broadly the Catholics who supported liberation theology. I was once a Catholic radical but El Salvador was a long, drawn-out disaster. I began to realise, as Pope Benedict XVI puts it in his encyclical Spe Salvi: 'Jesus was not Spartacus, he was not engaged in a fight for political liberation'."
In an interview on the website of Ignatius Press, the book's American publishers, Mr Read said: "When I was young I was a zealous exponent of liberation theology. As I grew older I like to think I grew wiser and came to see how 'social' Catholicism, however superficially appealing in the face of the suffering caused by poverty and injustice, in fact falsifies the teaching of the Gospels.
The Death of a Pope, published in America on May 1 and available in Britain later in the year, intertwines real events with fiction, and is likely to be controversial for its attacks on secularism and liberal Catholicism, especially liberation theology.
Mr Read told the Herald: "The anti-hero is an aid worker, a Basque who was once a Jesuit in Salvador and left to join the guerrillas. He's now an aid worker.
"The themes are Catholic ones, you could say it's about the battle between liberal and conservative Catholics, a debate between the Tablet and The Catholic Herald. There is also a certain amount of satire."
Mr Read said the theme originated with a visit to El Salvador in 1990, where many Catholics supported the Communists.
"I wrote a piece for the Independent about the Jesuits at the University of Central America, and more broadly the Catholics who supported liberation theology. I was once a Catholic radical but El Salvador was a long, drawn-out disaster. I began to realise, as Pope Benedict XVI puts it in his encyclical Spe Salvi: 'Jesus was not Spartacus, he was not engaged in a fight for political liberation'."
In an interview on the website of Ignatius Press, the book's American publishers, Mr Read said: "When I was young I was a zealous exponent of liberation theology. As I grew older I like to think I grew wiser and came to see how 'social' Catholicism, however superficially appealing in the face of the suffering caused by poverty and injustice, in fact falsifies the teaching of the Gospels.
Read the entire piece. Also read the entire Ignatius Press interview on the book's website.
He has a fine essay in Hell and Other Destinations about his experience in El Salvador. Well worth reading.
Posted by: John Herreid | Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 11:42 AM
And now available elsewhere on this blog, thanks to John!
Really, THE DEATH OF A POPE is very different from a lot of "religious fiction". In fact, I don't think it really qualifies as "religious fiction", although it does tell a story that makes a point in the telling, a point with spiritual implications.
On the other hand, the book isn't exactly your typical spy thriller, either. It's a bit "edgy", from both ends of the spectrum.
Catholics who think proponents of liberation theology can do no wrong should read this book. Unfortunately, some of what it depicts in that regard is anything but fiction.
Posted by: Mark Brumley | Wednesday, April 29, 2009 at 11:03 PM
Cultured, orthodox but weak in plot and execution. I gobbled it down in a day and was left thoroughly unsatisfied. Even John Zmirak's strange "The Grand Inquisitor" deals with the same tensions with more seriousness. "The Death of the Pope" employs convenient and flimsy plot contrivances, a (for all his suppossed sauvity) one-dimensional bad guy, and a disappointing denouement. I'll say it again, orthodoxy does not make up for mediocre writing.
Posted by: Frank Gibbons | Sunday, May 03, 2009 at 06:02 AM
Sorry - that's "suavity', not "sauvity".
Posted by: Frank Gibbons | Monday, May 04, 2009 at 08:50 AM