Cathedrals of Bone: The Role of the Body in Contemporary Catholic Literature

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments Early conversations with Giles Gunn led me to reconsider and reorganize my thinking about the relationships between literature, religion, and denominational identity. A final reading of the manuscript by Susan Hill helped to make it a clearer text for, I hope, a wider audience. I thank them both. I am deeply indebted to three readers who spent considerable time with the book and improved its style, content, and argument. Joseph J. Waldmeir , Douglas O. Wathier, and Richard A. Rosengarten shared their wisdom and expertise with great patience and goodwill, and I only hope they know how much I appreciate their insights and detailed readings. My thanks to Loras College for its ongoing assistance. A 2004–5 appointment by the College to the John Cardinal O’Connor Chair for Catholic Thought provided me with essential time and resources for writing. Two presidents, John Kerrigan and James Collins, as well as Provost Cheryl Jacobsen , supported the project on its academic merit, a shared commitment that I deeply appreciate. Thomas Jewell-Vitale opened his remarkable portfolio of artwork and allowed me to select the piece that graces the cover. Finally, my colleagues within the Division of Philosophy, Religion and Theology—and others across the College—persisted in their interest and encouragement, making the otherwise lonely task of writing a much happier experience. ix We Catholics are very much given to the Instant Answer. Fiction doesn’t have any. It leaves us, like Job, with a renewed sense of mystery. St. Gregory wrote that every time the sacred text describes a fact, it reveals a mystery. This is what the fiction writer, on his lesser level, hopes to do. The danger for the writer who is spurred by the religious view of the world is that he will consider this to be two operations instead of one. He will try to enshrine the mystery without the fact, and there will follow a further set of separations which are inimical to art. Judgment will be separated from vision, nature from grace, and reason from imagination. —Flannery O’Connor ...