Who are the 5 Greatest Modern Catholic Authors?

[pnewton]

The OP is lookin at fiction only. That being said, Bl. John Paul did write plays.

I just finished the latest Odd Thomas book (Koontz). Near the end he stated that his deceased beloved, Stormy Llewyllen, was Catholic. The theme of the book reminded me very much of Bl. John Paul’s view on the dignity of Man.

I am going through Odd Hours. I read it a few years ago when it was new. I totally missed that there is Marian typology. Literature is full of images of Christ but I think this is the first time I have every come across a Mary-figure.

 

[sjangelini]

1. Flannery O’Conner
2. JRR Tolkien
3. Graham Greene
4. GK Chesterton
   5, Sheldon Van Auken

A lot of people mentioned Graham Greene. While he is a good writer, I have never understood the Catholic embrace of Graham Greene as one of their own. He was a very troubled person who lived a morally bankrupt and scandalous life and wasn’t even a practicing Catholic from the 1950s until his death in 1991. You can read his Wiki article here - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Greene, and in this article - dailymail.co.uk/news/article-539011/The-decadent-world-Graham-Greene–high-priest-darkness.html.

Someone who visited 47+ prostitutes and abandoned his wife and children (he referred to his books as his children), among other things, isn’t really a mind I want to spend time with.

 

[Arizona_Mike]

A lot of people mentioned Graham Greene. While he is a good writer, I have never understood the Catholic embrace of Graham Greene as one of their own. He was a very troubled person who lived a morally bankrupt and scandalous life and wasn’t even a practicing Catholic from the 1950s until his death in 1991. You can read his Wiki article here - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Greene, and in this article - dailymail.co.uk/news/article-539011/The-decadent-world-Graham-Greene–high-priest-darkness.html.

Someone who visited 47+ prostitutes and abandoned his wife and children (he referred to his books as his children), among other things, isn’t really a mind I want to spend time with.

Thanks for resurrecting this thread, sjangelini!

I began it back in 2012. After two years of reading Gene Wolfe, I would have to revise my list to include him. An absolutely amazing writer, whose Catholicism permeates his worldview. Among the best working writers today, in any genre.

I would also have to add the amazing R.A. Lafferty. His literary estate was recently sold (he had an enormous family, including a number of nuns and priests, and apparently it was difficult for the publishers to send checks out to everyone he named in his will, so the family negotiated a lump sum for all his works), and the first two collections of his short stories have just been published. He came out of nowhere in a literary sense (well, Tulsa, actually), and wrote with a style that combined Irish pub stories, the tall tales of Oklahoma, the rhythms of the Douay-Rheims Bible, an utterly bizarre sense of humor, and a love of the English language. He was a deeply orthodox and observant Catholic, as well as a brilliant man, and his works are starting to gain more public and literary attention (Bill Haider, the former Saturday Night Live comic, is a fan and recently wrote an appreciation of him for the NY Times, and more and more blogs devoted to his work are popping up.)

 

[empther]

Bishop Fulton Sheen was the greatest Catholic writer of the twentieth century.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_J._Sheen

Here are twenty of his sixty books!

God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy (1925, Longmans, Green and Co.)
The Seven Last Words (1933, The Century Co.)
Philosophy of Science (1934, Bruce Publishing Co.)
The Eternal Galilean (1934, Appleton-Century-Crofts)
Calvary and the Mass (1936, P. J. Kenedy & Sons)
The Cross and the Beatitudes (1937, P. J. Kenedy & Sons)
Seven Words of Jesus and Mary (1945, P. J. Kenedy & Sons)
Communism and the Conscience of the West (1948, Bobbs-Merrill)
Peace of Soul (1949, McGraw–Hill)[37]
Three to Get Married (1951, Appleton-Century-Crofts)
The World’s First Love (1952, McGraw-Hill)
Life Is Worth Living Series 1–5 (1953–1957, McGraw–Hill)
Way to Happiness (1953, Maco Magazine)
Way to Inner Peace (1955, Garden City Books)
Life of Christ (1958, McGraw–Hill)
Missions and the World Crisis (1963, Bruce Publishing Co.)
The Power of Love (1965, Simon & Schuster)
Footprints in a Darkened Forest (1967, Meredith Press)
Lenten and Easter Inspirations (1967, Maco Ecumenical Books)
Treasure in Clay: The Autobiography of Fulton J. Sheen (1980, Doubleday & Co.)

 

[Arizona_Mike]

Bishop Fulton Sheen was the greatest Catholic writer of the twentieth century.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_J._Sheen

empther, I bow to no man in my admiration for Fulton J. Sheen, and I know the OP was back in 2012, but the thread was actually created to cite the 5 best Catholic authors of fiction. My bad for not spelling it out in the original thread title, but:

Let me start by laying the ground rules for your choices:

1. English language only (as I’m mostly familiar with authors working in that language).

1. Fiction/Literature, not non-fiction.

1. Not authors who happen to be Catholic, but those whose Catholicism informs and permeates their work.

1. 20th/21st Century only

 

[empther]

empther, I bow to no man in my admiration for Fulton J. Sheen, and I know the OP was back in 2012, but the thread was actually created to cite the 5 best Catholic authors of fiction. My bad for not spelling it out in the original thread title, but:

etc etc

The thread was dormant from Sept 2012 until yesterday Jan 2014.
Apparently it had run its course and was lost somewhere off the page.

I could have started another thread for the single greatest writer,
but isn’t it better to keep all these Catholic writers’ names in one place for people’s convenience?

 

[lazuli]

Hemingway

Can’t really leave him out of any discussion about Modernist Catholic authors.