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The Power and the Glory Authority, Freedom and Literature: Part 1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
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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.
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- Copyright © 1998 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
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