Casting a Cold Eye on Francis’ Letter on Literature: Part II, the Letter’s Sly Rhetoric

Cast a cold eye
On life, on death
Horseman, pass by! –epitaph: W.B. Yeats

So what’s not to like in the Pope Francis letter encouraging the cultivation of seminarians’ interest in literature?^[1] Apart, that is, from its zero recognition of a long-standing, oppositely pitched ethic in Catholic culture, one wherein the experiences of Jerome, Augustine, and Ignatius of Loyola are archetypal? To recall, at pivotal moments in each of those saints’ lives, each received from God a signal that he ought steer clear of secular literature.^[2]

Apart from Francis’ failure to promote Catholic writers,^[3] there is nothing in the letter that warrants an objection, says regrettably the warm reception that the missive has so far received in the print postings of the Catholic commentariat who have responded to it. Yes, putting aside for a day their otherwise dependably despairing regard for Bergoglio and his utterances, that bookish crowd of Vatican observers have, to a person, professed themselves pleased by what they’ve read in the Holy Father’s letter on literature. Among other things, they have thought

timely the Pontiff’s recommendation that novel reading might be employed as a remedy for the widespread isolation and alienation of souls that are two of electronic media’s more disastrous consequences;^[4]

smart his understanding of literature as that verbal art form in which palpable life, as opposed to its abstraction, is most effectively captured and communicated;^[5] 

discerning his recognition of literature’s ability to accelerate the psychological maturity of those who avail themselves of its riches;^[6]

enlightened his seeing in literature an invaluable gateway to Christian belief for those who don’t yet believe;^[7] and

irreproachable his reminder that the evangelization of any group requires of the evangelizer his or her first knowing and engaging that group’s culture.^[8]

Yet still, no, say I, there’s plenty to dislike in this document, beginning with the unpaternal, unpastoral, unPontifical cunning of the letter’s rhetoric. As I say this I’m thinking, in the first place, of the document’s familiar start—suggestive of the signatory’s plainspokenness—of its thirty-two footnotes—suggestive of his intellectual thoroughness—of its John Paul II citation—suggestive of his orthodoxy—and of its autobiographical inclusion—suggestive of his, the Pontiff’s, practiced approach to the question at hand, namely, whether or not to encourage the faithful in general, and seminarians in particular, to read secular literature. However, yet still more I’m thinking of the document’s overall rhetorical scheme, wherein, to summarize it, the letter first says this to the group of Vatican observers most inclined to be wary of its author (a group, like myself, whose academic origins are in many cases in literary studies): Your disciplinary focus is the predilect one. By way of it, one transcends the limits of ordinary knowledge. By way of it, some are even saved. Then, after a few more sentences of that sort of groundless puffery, it delivers these folks over to the two ideological places where they would otherwise, least likely find themselves, that is, in the encampments of the Pelagians and of the relativists. 

For, yes, how else, save as Pelagian, understand a definition of literature as preposterously Naturalist and aspirational as the one offered by this letter: “Literature is life, conscious of itself, that reaches its full self-expression through the use of all the conceptual resources of language”? And how else, too, save as Pelagian, characterize the letter’s never once stopping to reflect on the evil, as well as the good, that texts and authors thought to be significant have so often, over history’s long course, given life and shape to? So, too, relativism: The notion that moral truth is a function of context, that it is personal and that it is less than absolute—these are the most readily available, extra-literary takeaways of the letter’s claims that “literature engages our concrete existence,” that it “takes its cue from the realities of our daily life,” and that it places us in the position of “seeing through the eyes of others.”^[9]

In short, by way of this letter, Francis has brought over to his, the Pelagian / relativist / secularist, side of the perennial divide in Church culture between those who would wish the Church’s moral frameworks to bend and even dissolve in the face of secular society’s ethical pressures and those who would wish to see them hold firm. And therein we find the first two things not to like about this document, namely, its underlying agenda—which is, as I say, to bring over to the Francis side of the just-described ethical divide in the Church those who would prefer to stay on the other side—and its too clever rhetoric (unbecoming, if you ask me, of a Pope advising his flock). As for other things to object to in the document, yes, there’s plenty. However, the chief of the many are for me these three: 

the letter’s attempt at auto-hagiography in the autobiographical passage mentioned above,

its proposal of Francis as an alternative to Augustine in the history of the Church’s secularist/anti-secularist divide, and

the Holy Father’s wish to put into the hands of the Church’s yet unfledged clergy reading materials likely to attenuate/compromise their faith (assuming there is a difference between those two things). 

Wow! as per the third of those things, don’t you think? And, yet still, that’s the unsettling conclusion I reach when I consider the reading list for seminarians that Francis seems to be proposing in this letter. In any event, that and the other two complaints just listed shall be the subjects of my future postings on this matter. 

Today, however, I’d like to finish off this essay with an explanation of its epigraph. In other words, what’s that quote from W.B. Yeats doing at the top of this essay’s first page? It’s reminding my colleagues in the commentariat that the sentiment that induced them to support Francis in this letter—that of literature’s sure-fire exaltedness—is at best a stretch, and at worst nonsense. To be honest, this is a reality I could more colorfully illustrate for them by reminding them of all the ungodly books they’ve encountered in their working lives. For, if they’ve been in this game of literary studies for more than a half-minute, they have for sure noticed that a lot of questionable books make it to the top of the curricular charts. Then, too, on the scholarly front, there is the problem of loopy ideas sticking to even good books. I might colorfully remind them of that phenomenon also. But, no, they know these things already, and they don’t seem to have been much moved by them to abandon their preposterously high regard for literature. So I’ll offer them the verse from Yeats’ headstone, and invite them to recall the story behind it. The brief of that story goes like this:

Yeats was the English-language, Irish poet who many regard to have been the most gifted of the West’s many, many versifiers of the turn-of-the-century, modernist era. And, oh, in his lifetime’s course, how many big, big philosophical, societal and political problems didn’t he throw his poems at! Virtually all of them, inclusive most famously of love’s hard-to-come-by-edness. But, no, in the end, this poet who was not a believer in the Fatherly God that we know, was confessing to any who would listen that poems don’t much move the needle in life’s biggest issues. One hears that confession in the terse trio of lines that he directed be etched on his headstone. For what do those lines signify? Why this, of course: that if you’re looking to poetry or to any other of humankind’s verbal arts to transcend life or to beat death, you’re wasting your time.

Would that the poor guy had followed with a Praise Jesus!

^[1] Pope Francis. “Letter of His Holiness Pope Francis on the Role of Literature in Formation.” The Holy See. Dicastero per la Comunicazione – Libreria Editrice Vaticana. July 17, 2024. https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/letters/2024/documents/20240717-lettera-ruolo-letteratura-formazione.html.

^[2] Jerome, “Letter 22:  To Eustochium,” Letters of St. Jerome., Fathers of the Church, New Advent, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001022.htm. Accessed 15 Sept. 2024.

Augustine. The Confessions of St. Augustine. Translated and Edited by Albert Cook Outler (Mineola:  Dover Publications, 2002 [1955]), p. 148-150. 

Ignatius Loyola. The Autobiography of Saint Ignatius, edited by J.F.X. O’Connor, S.J. (New York, Cincinnati, Chicago: Benzinger Bros, 1900), pp. 7-8; http://stpatsott.phpwebhosting.com/pages/ebooks/St.%20Ignatius-The%20Autobiography%20of%20Ignatius.pdf.

^[3] Christopher J. Scalia. “Pope Francis’s Apologia for Literature.” The National Review, August 17, 2024, https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/08/pope-franciss-apologia-for-literature/.

^[4] Ibid.

^[5] Anthony Esolen. “A Flight into Reality.” Crisis:  Catholic Magazine, August 13, 2024, https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/a-flight-into-reality.

^[6] Isabella H. de Carvalho. “Unexpected request from Pope Francis:  Read Novels.” Aleteia, 8 Aug. 2024, https://aleteia.org/2024/08/08/unexpected-request-from-pope-francis-read-novels. 

^[7] Padre Mario Arroyo. “Francisco y la literature.” Teologia para Millennials. 15 August 2024. https://teologiaparamillennials.com/2024/08/15/francisco-y-la-literatura/.

^[8] Adolfo Torrecilla. “Papa Francisco:  la literature, una Puerta de entrada a la ‘polifonía de la Revelación.” Aceprensa, 16 August 2024. https://www.aceprensa.com/cultura/literatura/papa-francisco-la-literatura-una-puerta-de-entrada-a-la-polifonia-de-la-revelacion/#:~:text=Para%20el%20papa%20Francisco%2C%20la,la%20vida%20de%20personas%20concretas%E2%80%9D.

^[9] Pope Francis. “Letter of His Holiness Pope Francis on the Role of Literature in Formation.”