Global Catholic Literature
The term catholic always has defined the Church by its universal scope. And yet in 1900, 75% of Catholics lived in Europe and North America. Today, that ratio has flipped as we have entered into what theologian Karl Rahner called the era of the Global Church.
The Global Catholic Literature Project seeks to express both this new reality and age-old mission through seminars that explore probing Catholic writers, past and present, from all continents. In so doing, we seek to maintain, broaden, and deepen the global canon of Catholic literature, and make its spiritual treasury available for collective and personal appreciation.
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?
Coming Up Next
Poetry & Mysticism in Maritain, Mistral, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
The poet progresses toward the Word; the mystic tends toward Silence.
For the first time ever, the Global Catholic Literature series will ponder the paradoxes of poetry in Poetry & Mysticism in Maritain, Mistral, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Centuries before Latin America became known as the land of magical realism, she gave birth to the mysticism of St. Rose of Lima and the poetry of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the “Phoenix of the Americas,” whose poems about love and loss, the toils of women and the experience of God inspired generations of Latin American poets. Foremost among Sor Juana’s literary daughters was Gabriela Mistral, the Chilean poet and Nobel laureate deemed "the spiritual queen of all Latin America" by the Nobel Committee. Bearing all the marks of a mystic, Mistral grew from a young girl "deep in conversation with the birds and flowers of the garden" to a disconsolate young woman who "like Job...cried aloud to the skies." Formed by these experiences, Mistral's poems strike mystic chords and mournful strains.
These poems in turn caught the attention of Jacques and Raïssa Maritain, who formed a friendship with Mistral at the peak of her poetic powers. So deep was this friendship that Jacques Maritain came to Mistral's deathbed where the pair talked "like two Christian poets...about God, life, and death, all the religious questions that were so close to their hearts." In this summer season of Global Catholic Literature, we will read selections of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Mistral's poems paired with Raïssa Maritain's thought-provoking essays in Poetry and Mysticism published by Wiseblood Books.
June 2: Maritain’s Poetry & Mysticism: Facilitated by James Matthew Wilson (University of St. Thomas, Houston)
June 9: Mistral’s Mourning: Facilitated by Oso Guardiola (Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi)
June 16: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Mistral’s Literary Mother: Facilitated by Jane Clark Scharl (Plough)
• June 23: Mistral’s Mysticism: Facilitated by José Pérez-Benzo (Collegium Institute)
Registration:
Early Bird Registration: $65 through May 9
Regular Registration: $75 through May 26
To learn more and register, click the button below. Questions? Contact Joe Perez-Benzo (jperezbenzo@collegiuminstitute.org).
Collegium Institute will provide copies of the readings to all participants in the United States. International participants are welcome to join, but please note that we can't guarantee that we will be able to send you a copy of the texts if you live outside of the US.
Past Seminars
The American Ghosts of James Joyce
Join Collegium Institute and Dappled Things for our Spring 2025 online Global Catholic Literature seminar, “The American Ghosts of James Joyce: Resurrecting F. Scott Fitzgerald, J.F. Powers, Flannery O’Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, and Edward P. Jones through Joyce’s Dubliners.”
Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.
Far from fading with age, James Joyce’s influence on the literary world remains alive and well. Even before his death, James Joyce haunted great American writers with the beauty of his prose. In the latest Lenten season of Global Catholic Literature, we will discuss the literary afterlife of James Joyce’s celebrated short story collection Dubliners as it appears in the stories of five great American Catholic writers: F. Scott Fitzgerald, J.F. Powers, Flannery O’Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, and Edward P. Jones.
Dates: Mondays in March, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm. Via Zoom.
March 10: Facilitated by Joshua Hren (University of St. Thomas, Houston)
March 17: Facilitated by Joshua Hren (University of St. Thomas, Houston)
March 24: Facilitated by Farrell O’Gorman (Belmont Abbey College)
March 31: Facilitated by Katy Carl (University of St. Thomas, Houston)
Registration:
Early Bird Registration: $65 through February 10
Regular Registration: $75 through March 10
To learn more and register, click the button below. Questions? Contact Joe Perez-Benzo (jperezbenzo@collegiuminstitute.org).
Collegium Institute will provide copies of the readings to all participants in the United States. International participants are welcome to join, but please note that we can't guarantee that we will be able to send you a copy of the texts if you live outside of the US.
Liturgy, Culture, and Consciousness: Willa Cather’s
Shadows on the Rock
Join Collegium Institute and Dappled Things for our online Global Catholic Literature seminar, “Liturgy, Culture, and Consciousness: Willa Cather’s Shadows on the Rock.”
The Catholic intellectual and artistic tradition emphasizes a sacramental understanding of Creation in which the beauties of the created world and of loving human actions point beyond themselves to the God who made them. At the same time, a Catholic mystical tradition emphasizes consciousness and interiority, turning oneself inward in self-exploration to find God. How are these traditions related in Catholic literature? What is the connection between finding God in the world and finding Him within? And what sort of novel would bring both elements together?
Willa Cather’s Shadows on the Rock (1931) enables us to explore these questions. Set in 17th Century Quebec, this novel follows the life of a young French girl as she grows into her own in the new world. Working in a Modernist tradition that emphasizes consciousness and de-emphasizes plot, Cather re-creates a culture that is deeply structured around the Church’s liturgy and explores the intersection of liturgy, self-discovery, and moral choice.
Dates: Mondays in October, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm.
October 7 (Facilitated by Guy Reynolds, University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
October 14 (Facilitated by William Gonch, Ave Maria University)
October 21 (Facilitated by Natalie Morrill, Dappled Things)
October 28 (Facilitated by Collegium staff)
Registration:
Click the button below to register. Please direct any questions to Quinn Shepherd (qshepherd@collegiuminstitute.org).
Early Bird Registration: $65 through September 18
Regular Registration: $75 through October 4
Flannery O'Connor's Why Do the Heathen Rage?
"The letter in his hand was an invitation, a plea, a cry from the heart."
Collegium Institute and Dappled Things: A Quarterly of Ideas, Art, and Faith present this summer’s online Global Catholic Literature Seminar on Flannery O’Connor’s unfinished novel Why Do the Heathen Rage? In a daring act of criticism and literary archaeology, Jessica Hooten Wilson has spent the last decade compiling and analyzing O’Connor’s last, unfinished, unpublished novel and bringing it to print sixty years after the author’s untimely demise. This seminar will bring experts and enthusiasts together to reflect on O’Connor’s place in Catholic literature, and assess whether this incomplete novel adds to or detracts from her legacy. Does this novel deserve to stand among her great literary achievements in Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away? How should we read posthumously published works? Would O’Connor herself have wanted this draft to see the light of day? Can this mangled draft with an abrupt end, like the corpse of a bloody, bullet-ridden grandmother on the side of the road, shed light on the dark mysteries of grace?
Join Collegium Institute for our summer Global Catholic Literature Series on Flannery O’Connor’s Why Do the Heathen Rage?
Schedule:
We will meet on four Mondays in June, from 7-8:30pm:
June 3 (Presentation by Jessica Hooten Wilson, editor of Why Do the Heathen Rage?)
June 10 (Facilitated by Katy Carl, editor of Dappled Things and author of As Earth Without Water)
June 17 (Facilitated by Bill Gonch, Assistant Professor of Literature at Ave Maria University)
June 24
Sessions will be facilitated by Katy Carl, Editor-in-chief of Dappled Things, Randy Boyagoda, author of Dante's Indiana, and Jonathan Geltner, novelist and and essayist.
Registration:
Early Bird Registration: $65 through May 15
Regular Registration: $75 through May 24
