Catholic fiction books?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Caesar
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
C

Caesar

Guest
What are some good novels that deal with or have been inspired by Catholicism?
 
I highly recommend Michael O’Brien’s Children of the Last Days series, beginning with Father Elijah. Here a link to the book at Amazon.

The books are wonderful. Very Catholic, very well-written. Some of them are slower paced and more introspective. Others are really gripping. Some are just heartbreaking.

–Bill
 
My favorites:

Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited
Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair
Ralph McInerny’s mystery series featuring Father Dowling

'thann
 
“The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Ecco is really, really good.

It was actually made into a movie starring Sean Connery. The movie is pretty good, but it really pales in comparison to the book.

It’s basically about some mysterious murders going down in a 14th century Benedictine abbey. If you are interested in theology, philosophy, the Inquisition, historical heresies, and the interplay between Dominicans, Francisicans, Benedictines, and Papal legates, this is the book for you! 😃
 
MORTE D’URBAN by J.F.Powers - this is old, but most librarys may still have it. He also wrote short stories about priests of, in the pre-Vatican 2 days, with a great ironic sense of humor. Father Urban, the star preacher of a fuddy-duddy religious order, great golfer, who wants to make converts of rich people, is a very memorable character.

Jon Hassler is a fairly recent author who writes more of the common life, Catholics in the lay world. GRAND OPENING is about a man’s modest dream to open a grocery store, who picks a town where most are Lutheran, and loyal to their own storekeepers, so he has a very difficult time. Told a lot from the problems of his little boy getting along in the new school. Catholicism is so taken for granted that they go to Mass, confession, communion, without it being treated as an unusual event. He’s also written STAGGERFORD, about a momentus week in the life of a small town, THE GREEN JOURNEY, DEAR JAMES, one of which was made into a movie with Angela Lansbury, I forget its title.

Just after Vatican 2, a lot of novels about priests (usually ending up leaving) and in my opinion the best is THE PRIEST by Ralph McInnery, which gives a lot of detail about the day to day problems of a parish priest, especially in those days when there was a lot of pressure and confusion about what Vatical 2 would mean on the parish level, what to change and what not to.
 
Morris West - two of his books that come to mind are ‘the Shoes of the Fisherman’ (which was made into a good movie as well) and ‘The Devil’s Advocate’.
 
I’ve not read much by her, but Flannery O’Connor always gets mentioned when Catholic fiction is being discussed.
 
Mot_Juste said:
I highly recommend Michael O’Brien’s Children of the Last Days series, beginning with Father Elijah. Here a link to the book at Amazon.

The books are wonderful. Very Catholic, very well-written. Some of them are slower paced and more introspective. Others are really gripping. Some are just heartbreaking.

–Bill
Click to expand...
Seconded a billion times. Just finished Sophia House. Changed my life.
 
Shusaku Endo’s book Silence is wonderful. It’s about Catholic missionaries and Japanese converts in 17th-century Japan.

I second the Flannery O’Connor mention. Her short story Revelation is one of my favorites. I read her novel Wise Blood when I was in high school and remember liking it, but haven’t read it since.
 
drforjc said:
I’ve not read much by her, but Flannery O’Connor always gets mentioned when Catholic fiction is being discussed.
Click to expand...
She’s good. But the stories can get pretty gory–not graphic, just not real happy endings.
 
At one time, I loved all three of Bud Macfarlane’s books. Promoted them anytime I could and donated to Catholicity (I have a feeling this pervert is still connected to the organization). No more! Bud divorced his wife for no real reason and than had a court order to remove his children from his wife’s care because she was home schooling them. The man is a complete hypocrite in every way.
 
GK Chesterton. Period.

The Man Who Was Thursday, especially, but you’ll want to reread it about four times. Seriously, if that doesn’t blow your mind, you have no mind to blow. Napoleon of Notting Hill was apparently one of Gandhi’s favorite books, I imagine sans the fighting. And Manalive is probably GKC’s best.

Hilaire Belloc’s known for his apologetics and history writing, but he also wrote novels, most of them sadly out of print. They’re mostly satires of British society at the time; if you don’t like extreme sarcasm bordering on venom, you won’t like them, but they’re incredibly entertaining. Belloc was a man with an English heart, a Roman mind and a French tongue.
 
Death Comes for the ArchBishop–and the author’s name escapes me right now :confused:

A Canticle for Leibowitz–Walter M. Miller–post nuclear war science fiction, clearly pre Vatican 2 in content–probably the best catholic-content science fiction out there. Miller wrote a sequel before his death, I have not read it so can’t tell you the quality.
 
Lion_of_Narnia said:
A Canticle for Leibowitz–Walter M. Miller–post nuclear war science fiction, clearly pre Vatican 2 in content–probably the best catholic-content science fiction out there. Miller wrote a sequel before his death, I have not read it so can’t tell you the quality.
Click to expand...
This is my girlfriends favorite book (along with the Ecco book I mentioned above). I really want to read it 👍
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top