Our project,  in collaboration with Dappled Things Journal, primarily consists of a thrice annual series of digital seminars for all thoughtful readers.  No prior exposure to Catholic literary voices is required.  Convening in the fall, spring, and summer, each seminar series traverses through one particular novel in four sessions.  Each session is led by a different specialist – scholars, translators, and novelists – with whom we examine the context, themes, characters, and plots of each novel.  Each series culminates in a final discussion where participants formulate their own reflections on the novel, what it meant for them, and how they think it might either fit within or expand the corpus of Catholic literature. 

While doing so we leave open the question of what makes literature ‘Catholic’ so that our scholars, writers, and students can sharpen and broaden their own understanding. In a sense, Catholic literature as a concept is a constellation of features rather than a distinct category. Some of these features include a focus on sacramental imagination, sin and sanctity, the possibility of redemption, the power of the sacraments, cultural and dogmatic features of the Church,  and the meaning of conversion. A global Catholic literature also includes themes such as colonialism, race and justice, the human family, and the tension of writing and living between cultures. In particular, this means thinking through questions of inculturation, and how that might shape different societies and the Church. 

Our seminars circulate around questions such as: What makes a piece of literature Catholic? How is this Catholicity expressed? Is the description ‘Catholic’ a primarily cultural or theological description? What adjustments do present global realities make to the shape and meaning of Catholic literature?  And, perhaps most centrally, how can a writer’s “Catholic sense” continue to resound in the modern soul and form our moral imagination today?