The Catholic Imagination

Abstract

Excerpt

First of all, what this paper is not: This is not a paper that will analyze the works of Catholic writers. This journal is not the proper venue for that. Too, this is not a study of the doctrinal and propositional Church we call Catholic. Again, this journal is not the venue for that. Instead, I want to present a conceptual framework, an aesthetic theory, if you will, of a particular imagination I’d like to describe as Catholic. After this little “housecleaning,” I’d like to begin by diagnosing the illness of our secular society. (Later, I shall introduce an approach that I discovered—or rather re-discovered—which might allow us to heal the illness.) I use the metaphor of illness because I believe our secular society is sick. We need no special talent to be convinced of this condition. The symptoms of this sickness can be found everywhere. Every time you turn on the radio, or browse the newspapers, or flick on the TV set, you find yourself assaulted by a daily goulash of incestuous rapes, murders, drug-related crimes, fraternity-related violence, bombings, kidnappings, graft and corruption, and so on and so forth, the catalogue of abuses is legion. Every one of us is convinced that the planet is gravely ill and needs healing—on a grand scale. Few of us know exactly where the problem lies.