Damning with very faint, dissenting praise

Michael W. Higgins, the former president of St. Thomas University (New Brunswick, Canada), has written a review of sorts of Piers Paul Read's novel, The Death of a Pope (Ignatius, 2009) for The Telegraph-Journal. The headline—"A skilled storyteller but a slave to dogma"—captures the flavor of the review, which ultimately tells readers more about Higgins' dislike for orthodoxy than it does about Read's novel. It begins with relative subtlety:

Piers Paul Read's most popular and successful work is Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, a creative record of the aftermath of a plane crash involving an entire rugby team. It sold in the millions and was made into a film.

In addition, he has written other works of non-fiction, including a history of the Crusades and the authorized biography of the 20th-century's consummate thespian, Sir Alec Guinness.

But he has also tried his hand at television plays and novels, the most recent of which is The Death of a Pope. The politics involved with its publication - his British agent and publisher refused to consider it - are as interesting as its rather tired content and polemical overtones. It was published, eventually, in the United States by a professional, well-run but controversial Catholic publishing house: Ignatius Press.

The "but" in the last sentence is curious. Professional is good. Well-run is good. But controversial is not. Why? Being controversial is not inherently wrong; after all, Jesus, the Apostles, and countless Catholics down through time have been "controversial." You can state that Humanae vitae was "controversial" and that will mean something quite different to, say, the Catholics who have ignored and attacked the encyclical over the past four decades and to the Catholics who have defended and praised it. Pope John Paul II was controversial, Pope Benedict XVI has been labeled "controversial", and then there is the matter of one controversial pope supporting the canonization of an even more controversial pope.

So, why is Ignatius Press considered "controversial"? Apparently it is because both Ignatius Press and Read and simply too openly Catholic and unapologetically apologetic for Higgins:

Read is a self-confessed and robustly public Catholic writer. His fiction is often apologetic in theme and treatment. This distinguishes him from such British co-religionists as Evelyn Waugh, Muriel Spark, Graham Greene and David Lodge. Read allows his religion to subsume his art, rather than engaging in a subtle interweaving of theme and sensibility that speaks to the creative commingling of personal faith and literary craft that you see with Waugh, Greene and company.

Higgins actually brings up an important and compelling topic, which is—to put it rather simply—the proper relationship between apologetics and art. Or, the place of apologetics in art. But it's not as though Read is unaware of this issue, for he has said the following, in an interview about The Death of a Pope:

Do you think that today's artists are still connected with the urge to depict truth and beauty in art? And, as an aside, is it possible to depict beauty and truth without a sense of the eternal?

One of the most potent arguments against the secularist's belief in blanket progress is to look at the early Italian paintings in one of our national galleries, or to walk into a mediaeval cathedral. Compare the cathedral with an office-block or a shopping mall, or the depictions of the Virgin and Child with contemporary 'conceptual' works of art, and it becomes clear that art has indeed suffered from a loss of the sense of the eternal. But it would be unwise to suggest that only sacred art is good art, or that there cannot be genius in the profane. I have been charged by strict Catholics with offending the modesty of the reader in passages in some of my novels, and defend myself with Cardinal Newman's axiom that "one cannot have a sinless literature of sinful man". It is also true, as the French Catholic writer Julian Green wrote, that "no novel worthy of the name exists without a complicity between the author and his creatures, and more than complicity — a complete identification. I think that is why," he adds, "no one has ever heard of a saint writing a novel."

What is the duty of the Catholic writer, in your opinion?

Writing is a vocation and, as in any other calling, a writer should develop his talents for the greater glory of God. Novels should be neither homilies nor apologetics: the author's faith, and the grace he has received, will become apparent in his work even if it does not have Catholic characters or a Catholic theme. The question of "the complicity between the author and his characters" can sometimes pose a dilemma: a novelist might show more empathy for, say, Potiphar's wife, or the elders who spied on Susanna, than the devout might think proper. But it is important for the Catholic writer to demonstrate that he is fully human; that he does not flee from evil but confronts it and disarms it in his imagination with the help of that holy wisdom that comes from faith in Christ.

Get that? "Novels should be neither homilies nor apologetics." Yet Higgins insists that Read's novel "is often apologetic in theme and treatment." He also writes:

Read is, however, no Dan Brown. He actually knows Rome and gets it right. Mostly. But the grand scheme concocted in the feverish mind of the ex-Jesuit - a fanatical leftist whose Stalin-esque indifference to human suffering (at the same time as he is bravely compassionate) defies credibility - reminds us that when a writer becomes slave to dogma preaching supplants artistry.

Resolved to remake the College of Cardinals from the bottom up, the demented anti-hero fulminates: "Remember what you saw in Africa - the terrible suffering of the people with AIDS. Remember what we decided: that it was the stubborn dogmatism of those old men in Rome - Wojtyla, Ratzinger, Sodano, Arinze and a hundred more - which causes the suffering and death of thousands, tens of thousands, of innocent people. Can you really say that it would be wrong to end the lives of one hundred and twenty sacerdotes geriatricos [geriatric priests] who by their own lights will go straight to heaven if it means saving the lives of millions, now and in generations to come?"

This is a reactionary Catholic's recurring nightmare: a post-Second Vatican Council liberalism run amok. And it is the stuff of silly caricature.

Which is where I laughed aloud and exclaimed, "Ah ha!" And then, having found a review of Power and Peril: The Catholic Church at the Crossroads (2002), a book co-authored by Michael W. Higgins and Douglas R. Letson, I had another "Ah ha!" moment. The review, written by Fr. Leonard Kennedy for the July/August 2002 issue of Catholic Insight, documents the two authors' dissent from Church teaching on all of the usual issues taken up by the—(yawn)—usual dissenting crowd: support for contraception, homosexuality, and ordination of women to the priesthood, and rejection of Ex Corde Ecclesiae.

Higgins scoffs at the "reactionary Catholic's recurring nightmare" of "a post-Second Vatican Council liberalism run amok" and mocks it as "the stuff of silly caricature." Which can mean one of two things: he's a complete fool or a he supports and advocates post-Second Vatican Council liberalism running amok, but is coy about it. He is not a fool; he knows exactly what sort of "Catholicism" he hangs his hat on. It is the same sort of anti-papal, anti-Magisterial "Catholicism" touted and spouted by the late Hugo Young (who Read mentions in his interview), who wrote this sort of nonsense:

The disasters John Paul II has inflicted on the Catholic church over 20 years in the Vatican would be hard to exaggerate. His record is such an offence against elementary tenets of liberal decency that even a Catholic who has not entirely lost his ability to submit to the church's teaching finds certain particulars intolerable. This papacy has devoted itself to undoing much of the work of the Second Vatican Council, held in the 1960s, and reclaiming for the iron authority of Rome what the council, initiated by a much wiser pope, had begun to yield to wider discourse and less centralised decision. ("The Pope's record is dreadful but his conviction is heroic", The Guardian; April 17, 2001).

And, of course, there is always Hans Küng, who is the Poster Boy of long-winded, hysterical dissenters:

In the Catholic Church things are different. The mood is oppressive, the pile-up of reforms paralysing. After his almost four years in office many people see Pope Benedict XVI as another George W. Bush. It is no coincidence that the Pope celebrated his 81st birthday in the White House. Both Bush and Ratzinger are unteachable in matters of birth control and abortion, disinclined to implement any serious reforms, arrogant and without transparency in the way in which they exercise their office, restricting freedoms and human rights.

Endless examples could be added, but any Catholic who has gotten out of bed and paid the most minimal of attention during the past forty years knows how very real the "caricature" is. It is not silly, but it has been, for many Catholics, a nightmare.

Read explains how his novel was inspired directly by his own experience with and study of liberation theology, as well as current criticisms of Benedict XVI:

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. This is particularly true when it condones or even advocates the use of violence: 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". Yet this was precisely the message preached from the pulpits in Catholic parishes and taught in Catholic schools in the last decades of 20th century. The two visions of what charity demands of a Christian confront one another on the issue of the AIDS epidemic in Africa. It is this confrontation that gave me the idea for my novel.

Higgins concludes by admitting, rather bluntly, that the real issue for him is not that Read's novel might be too overtly apologetic in style and tone: "Read's novel, for all its preposterous assertions and whacky plot twists, is still an engaging yarn. Just beware the theology. It is not good for your health." Can orthodoxy really be so bad for you? Certainly—if you are committed to the sort of tired, empty post-Second Vatican Council liberalism that Higgins seeks to promote and protect (while denying its existence). Far, far better to be a willing servant of dogma ("Dogmas are lights along the path of faith," says the Catechism, "they illuminate it and make it secure"), then a slave of dissent living in denial.

Comments

[LJ]

This is hilarious in a way. Beware the theology! To me it sounds like sour grapes.

Read is walking on the dissenter's turf, using fiction to promote a particular theology, which is what dissenters routinely do (as well as many out-and-out anti-Catholics). How dare anyone use their own methods to promote orthodoxy!

[Ed Peters]

So, “controversial” is good if it slams the Church, a la Da Vinci Code, and it’s bad when it supports the Church, a la Ignatius Press.

[Sandra Miesel]

At least IP wasn't called "notorious."

[Bonumteesse.blogspot.com]

I'm not out to defend anti-Catholics, that much should be clear, but, for what it's worth, I think the reviewer here makes a point worth noting.

Particularly, while Read acknowledges his role as a Catholic author, it is worth nothing that writing "orthodox"ly does not necessarily make one a good Catholic author.

A Catholic author is in a unique position, for the truths about man have been made clear to him by the teachings of his Church. He needn't stumble upon them by chance or be a lifelong philosopher of human nature; rather he merely needs to pray and understand what he has already been taught and what he is being taught in Scripture and through the Church.

I would argue further that a Catholic author which can understand the truths of the faith vis-a-vis their role in creation/salvation and apart from their earthly source can be even more insightful in his writing. (Even I, a faithful and orthodox Catholic, grew tired by that bit of Read's work as quoted. It is overtly proselytizing.) For, since an author "writes what he knows," a Catholic author can compose remarkably insightful works that, as Read suggests, pays no attention to Catholicism, per se. Rather, a masterpiece work will present the truths about man in a way that everyone can understand--that illustrate man's sinfulness, his capacity for greatness, and his potential for redemption by our God.

Has Read's book succeeded in this respect? I do not know. But a criticism of the literature of Read's book, in short, can be well-justified. Higgin's point is not completely without merit.

[Carl E. Olson]

Higgin's point is not completely without merit.

Which is why I wrote, "Higgins actually brings up an important and compelling topic, which is—to put it rather simply—the proper relationship between apologetics and art." But it seems quite clear that Higgins uses this valid point as a means of misdirection, a Trojan Horse by which he actually attacks his real object of disdain: orthodoxy. How else to interpret his conclusion: "Just beware the theology. It is not good for your health"? If he was just concerned that Read's work was too apologetic or overtly "theological," he wouldn't have attacked "the theology," but would have stayed focused on the (allegedly) poor handling of theology within a work of literature. I've read quite a bit of poor or mediocre fiction/poetry written by very devout Catholics, and I've never been tempted to blame the flaws in their writing on their theological beliefs, but recognize that good Catholics can write bad fiction, just as bad Catholics can write good fiction. But, again, in the end that is not Higgins' primary concern. Oddly enough, Higgins actually commits a sin similar to what he accuses Read of committing: letting his ideological biases overshadow or skew his art (in this case, the art of the book review).

[Bonumteesse.blogspot.com]

Point well taken. Thank you for explicating that further.

[Carl E. Olson]

Point well taken. Thank you for explicating that further.

You're welcome. I don't disagree at all, by the way, with your first comment. Good Catholics are quite prone to pushing and praising literature and art that is second-rate (or even worse) simply because the author or artist is a serious Catholic with a good heart and fine intentions. But piety and good intentions don't produce great art, although they can help--if (a big "if") the author or artist has the skills necessary to create great art. For my money, Flannery O'Connor's book, Mystery and Manners, is one of the best things written about this issue.

[Dr John James]

Sometimes maybe not such "good Catholics" can also produce inspiring art. Though it was controversial, I have always thought Mel Gibson's film, The Passion of the Christ, sublime in its insights and presentation.
I have a real soft spot for Gibson, though I appreciate his personal situation is not ideal.
He spent a large part of his life living here in Sydney, and is a graduate of NIDA ( National Institue of Dramatic Art ). He has been very generous with NIDA and that has allowed other young Australian actors to pursue their dream.