Why is Every Book Catholic?

Good question. Obviously not every author is Catholic. Some authors are vehemently against all religion, altogether. Are their books still Catholic? My view is yes, they are, because Catholicity is not about subjective intent. I also have come to believe that any attempt to engage in the creative act just can’t help but be Catholic, and creative efforts can only be understood through a Catholic lens. Everybody has a perspective. It is impossible to view the world except through the lens of our individual biases. It’s functionally impossible to remove those biases in their entirety. Our human limitations make us incapable of accessing pure objectivity. Some schools of philosophy hold that the truly objective point of view—unburdened by any distortions—doesn’t even exist. Instead they argue that objectivity is a necessary fiction, useful so that our individual attempts to know truth (such as via the scientific method) are worth anything. Objectivity is about utility, not truth. But as a Catholic, I believe and know that objective truth is real. Objectivity is God’s view of the world. His view does not contain any distortions or limitations. The One who made all knows all. He sent his Son to take on human flesh so that we could enter into the life of a human being who operates in perfect truth, who himself IS perfect truth. By becoming one with his body, we unite our limited human perspective to the one who is truth himself. That is what it means to me to see things from the Catholic lens. I am seeing through Jesus’ eyes. Plenty of people argue that the Christian worldview is just another subjective worldview like all the rest. Why elevate it over any other worldview? I used to believe this myself, before coming to the Lord. But today I understand that Christianity is about transcending all human worldviews. It’s not “one point of view.” It’s the God that supports individual intellects to have a viewpoint in the first place. No human philosophies or interpretive methodologies could exist if God was not the Creator of both the world we behold, as well as the Creator of our imaginative and intellectual capacities that we use to decide what we think about it. All artists are trying to say something true. Art is an earnest communication. And any attempt to say something true is an attempt to say something about God, since God IS the truth. Now of course some artists get closer to this truth than others, but all of it still contains something honest. Looking at it through a Catholic lens helps draw out that beauty. I have found this to be the case even when the artist is very openly and firmly against all things God-related. The very act of creating can’t help but have some beauty and seeds of redeemable qualities. The books and other art that we examine here are those that we believe are saying some very true things about God and man, and we find them spiritually nourishing. Just as Jesus Christ gave us every part of himself as spiritual food in the Eucharist, we gratefully seek his graces to transform art into intellectual and emotional food for our good. We’re so excited to create this book club to share this nourishment in communion with you, and we hope you join up and share with us!