From: hoosiers@carson.u.washington.edu (Mary Loveless)
Subject: Re: Catholic Lifestyle Book Recommendation
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 20:41:52 GMT

In article <1992Nov23.133111.9985@ms.uky.edu> fehr@ms.uky.edu (Jeff Davis) writes:
>Francis Muir writes:
>>Arne Adolphson writes:
>>
>>	Can anyone suggest a good book on the Roman Catholic lifestyle?
>>	I'm not a Catholic myself, and I have to say that the Catholic
>>	lifestyle is a real puzzler to me.  I'd like something light
>>	and frothy as I'm not real interested in theology.
>>
>>There is no American Literature of consequence -- chiefly
>>because nowadays to be a Catholic is not that vastly different from being
>>a Lutheran or whatever. 
>>
>True and not true. Blink and Walker Percy's Catholicism whisks by. And
>Flannery O'Connor used her Catholicism like a geiger counter. 
>But there's one writer whose name is lost in unused synapses who wrote
>extensively, almost exclusively, about priests. Not much useful there
>for what we mysterious RC laity do. Isn't Erma Bombeck Catholic? She sounds 
>Catholic to these ears, anyway. In that she sounds like my older
>sister. There was a National Lampoon style "Growing Up Catholic"
>book put out, but it turned out to be tamer than it could have been
>and not very funny. The John Hughes' movies give a good sense of 
>how far Catholicism has fallen.
>
>From the Gross Statistics I've seen, apart from gorgeous little girls
>in plaid skirts and white blouses, there isn't really much you can
>sift about the differences, as Francis has said. Catholic couples
>use birth control at the same rate as non-RCs. And, sadly, the 
>abortion rate is approimately the same. Meatless Fridays are relics,
>as are relics. And given they shortage of priests which has
>given rise to a de-emphasis on the use of the Confessional, even
>good old Catholic guilt is becoming something of a curiosity.
>I can't remember the last hellfire and brimstone sermon I've
>heard.
>-- 
>Jeff Davis <davis@keats.ca.uky.edu> 
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I can't think of any *literature*, but some light fiction:  I don't
remember the authors.

_Girls Together Brave and True_
_Patent Leather Shoes Reflect Up_

Mary Gordon, if I have the right author, writes dour and mildly depressing
books about Catholic families/communities in the U.S.  For more dour but
not depressing:   Sara Paretsky's mystery, _Killing Orders_ shows a rather
melodramatic slice of life in Italian and other segments of Catholic
society in Chicago.  Great fun.

Robertson Davies' _What's Bred in the Bone_ shows, among other things, the
conflict within a wealthy Scots/French Canadian RC family when a daughter
marries a man who insists the children be raised protestant.  Davies'
writing skates on the edge of being literature, if it hasn't rolled over. 
John Kenneth Galbraith calls him one of the "six best living writers."

Mary Loveless
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My opinions are thoroughly and smugly self-righteous and all my very own.

"Every man is a moon, and has a dark side, which he never shoes to
anybody."  Mark Twain.
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