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It’s the weekend so I’m thinking that readers might be up for a longer read (below), or if you prefer to listen the podcast is at this link. If you enjoy curling up with a good book you might appreciate some of these thoughts.
In my first year at seminary, well over four decades ago now, I was fortunate to have many teachers who were wise, holy and experienced. I have written of some of them in past posts, men and women from our own country including the first women to teach in a New Zealand seminary, and a few of the pick of the diocesan priests of Aotearoa.
There were also several Jesuits on the seminary staff through my time (five in my first year) and I am deeply grateful to them for my attraction to sound catholic (universal) education and for encouraging me to think laterally, creatively and fearlessly.
One of these Jesuits, Bernard O’Brien – a New Zealander by birth, (1907-1982) was (in Germany in the 1930’s) a study companion of some who became notable names during and following the Second Vatican Council including Rahner (Karl) and von Balthazar.
By the time I arrived at Holy Cross in Mosgiel in 1980 Fr. O’Brien was suffering from significant dementia. However the rector (Tom Liddy) was keen to keep him teaching whatever he could teach without stress. I remain grateful to Tom and to God that we fifteen first-year seminarians were assigned to Fr. O’Brien for two hours each week, one for Music Appreciation and one for English Literature.
In the music class Fr. O’Brien would begin by speaking perhaps for five or ten minutes about a composer or a genre of classical music before inviting us to prepare ourselves to listen with every sense, hearing, tasting even seeing the music to enable our minds and our souls to be fully engaged. Then he would reach into his custom-built cabinet shelves of several hundred Long Playing records, take one LP and place it on the turntable, gently lower the needle to the vinyl, and our adventure would begin.
His method in each English class was similarly simple. First, a few moments introducing an author, a chapter, or a short story. Then he would read to us. His gentle, rich and cultured voice was – well – delicious, and as we listened the text he held would leap to life, lively and colourful, engaging and personal, certainly formative, and in moments – life-changing.
I will never forget his rendering of Katherine Mansfield’s The Dolls House, a simple story cleverly revealing the crime of the injustice of class distinctions in our own land. I recall holding it together through his powerful reading, but being moved to tears at his empathetic delivery of little Else’s little line: “I seen the little lamp.”
Unfortunately Fr. O’Brien’s health deteriorated over that year until the day when he needed to move from the seminary in Mosgiel to Christchurch Nazareth House care.
What were we to do without our weekly diet of literature and music?
To the rescue came Auckland Sister of Mercy Pauline Engel who had opted to spend her sabbatical studying with us at Holy Cross. Pauline landed at the seminary like a pillar of fire quickly earning her the nickname she loved: the dragon. I’m not sure how it came about but I imagine her knocking on the rector’s door demanding that he give her the seminarians for an hour each week. Tom was a wise man who knew never to argue with a creature who could breath fire and so Pauline became our English Literature professor.
She began our first class by asking “what are you guys reading?” We responded listing our theology texts before she interrupted “No! What are you really reading…books, novels, literature?” We were blank then excusing ourselves with “we don’t have the time.”
Pauline (and readers who knew her will understand this), Pauline erupted. Dropping in an expletive or two and shouting at us she let us have it explaining that while we (relatively sheltered youngish males) couldn’t experience everything in life first-hand, we should not be allowed near people as priest-pastors unless through good literature we had entered and felt the joys, hopes, griefs and anxieties of the complex lives of others.
In a comment in Pauline’s 2017 obituary I wrote “In her months with us she was both mentor and friend encouraging us to read good fiction with the reasoning: ‘you guys can’t experience everything in life. You will never know what it’s like to be an unmarried pregnant teenager, but by savouring fiction you get a glimpse of the reality of the lives of others and so can yourselves become more empathetic and loving.'”
While I was a bit of a reader before this point and had studied some prose and poetry as a high-school student, my love for literature fiction, poetry and reading really took off at this point. A few years later as a young priest serving on the West Coast of the South Island I taught Year 13 English for two-years while enrolled in distance-learning English papers at Massey University, then with another Sister of Mercy Leonie O’Neill I took some diploma courses through Trinity College in London.
All that by way of introduction to the delight I experienced one morning a few days ago here in Italy when I arrived at breakfast to find one of my Italian hosts Meg excited about a letter Pope Francis had just published. The letter opens:
“I had originally chosen to give this letter a title referring to priestly formation. On further reflection, however, this subject also applies to the formation of all those engaged in pastoral work, indeed of all Christians. What I would like to address here is the value of reading novels and poems as part of one’s path to personal maturity.”
In his brief letter Francis rues the loss of literature in contemporary formation of priests.
“Regrettably, however, a sufficient grounding in literature is not generally part of programmes of formation for the ordained ministry. Literature is often considered merely a form of entertainment, a “minor art” that need not belong to the education of future priests and their preparation for pastoral ministry. With few exceptions, literature is considered non-essential.”
Francis continues:
“I consider it important to insist that such an approach is unhealthy. It can lead to the serious intellectual and spiritual impoverishment of future priests, who will be deprived of that privileged access which literature grants to the very heart of human culture and, more specifically, to the heart of every individual. With this Letter, I would like to propose a radical change of course…. [since] literature has to do, in one way or another, with our deepest desires in this life, for on a profound level literature engages our concrete existence, with its innate tensions, desires and meaningful experiences.”
I’ll attach below a link to the pope’s 15 minute read, but you’ll get a sense of his tone and emphasis in the sub-titles he uses in the letter. Francis reflects on faith, culture, an embodied Christ, the great good, learning to listen to others and seeing through the eyes of others, learning to be truly discerning, paying attention and digesting what is nutritious . In short Francis is writing of the spiritual power of literature.
Many of the same points were powerfully made last month in a NZ Listener article (6-12 July) entitled “Welcome to the Danger Zone.” New Zealand novelist Kirsty Gunn suggests that:
“all literature might come with a warning on its cover, like on a packet of cigarettes” [because] “all kinds of people live inside fiction’s world, with all kinds of lives – some appealing, some stomach-churningly unpleasant. Literature has us think about nice things, sometimes, as well as difficult and ghastly things that might take us into the darkest part of our own psyches, temperaments and prejudices.” How exciting it is to think that what I read might shame me into thinking differently. Behaving differently. For shame, that most acute form of self-consciousness, can only bring in its wake humility, and then kindness, care and awareness of others its most lovely and generous affect.
As Francis concludes, in a line which would have delighted Bernard O’Brien, Pauline Engel, Kirsty Gunn and the many wonderful readers I know:
“The literary word is a word that sets language in motion, liberates and purifies it. Ultimately, it opens that word to even greater expressive and expansive vistas. It opens our human words to welcome the Word that is already present in human speech, not when it sees itself as knowledge that is already full, definitive and complete, but when it becomes a listening and expectation of the One who comes to make all things new.”
Find the complete text
of Pope Francis’ Letter on the role of literature in formation
at this link.
These words really opened my mind Fr John. Readers always learn about others- some who experience challenges beyond our own sheltered lives thanks for sharing through the eyes of a priest!!
An inspiring reflection so beautifully delivered, thank you John. I’m thinking of how the best books I’ve read have provided powerful insights – and alas how lack-lustre and dissatisfying some of my current bedtime reading is – and how it is time to upgrade to
‘literature’ again. Open to your and others’ recommendations!
A wonderful and informative read Father – thank you.
I can tell you Kate that in ‘The Post’, Friday August 2, 2024, on a page number missing from my photocopy, the following appeared in an article by Stephanie Merry:
Classic books that can go: The Catcher in the Rye; The Great Gatsby; Ulysses; Everything by Ernest Hemingway; and The Scarlet Letter, among others.
The replacement classics: A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles; A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith; The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin; Everything by Percival Everett; plus a few others.
Has anyone read any of the replacement classics?.
Hi John. Thanks for the wonderful insight into literature! We cannot experience everything in life, particularly the joys, happiness and success of others but also the sufferings, setbacks and trials that they encounter. Literature is such a wonderful source of understanding other people. Thanks so much.
I really enjoyed reading this.
Now back to my novel!
Kind regards.
Mike.
As someone who always has a novel on the go, it’s great to get the encouragement that it helps to broaden your knowledge and experience of how people live.
You don’t know how much the Holy Spirit is behind this post John!
For years now I have been denying myself my passion for reading books that are not of a Spiritual nature, and struggling to decipher dry tomes written in purely academic language that I cannot fulfil fully understand.
Recently I have snuck in a fictional novel or 2 and thoroughly enjoyed them, and been delighted to find myself learning from them.
So from the bottom of my heart I thank you and Pope Francis for this beautiful revelation.
Enjoy your last few weeks in Italy, and find a good book for the journey home!
Blessings as always
I enjoyed seeing the thread of Fr Tom Liddy through this post. I greatly appreciated his wisdom and kindness to me as an Anglican student attending lectures at Holy Cross College in the late 1970s. I still have the beautiful letter he sent me when I was ordained.
Try “SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE” only 114 pages but ……..
Thank you John for bringing Sr Pauline back to life for me. A formidable woman, fun and feisty who left her mark on many young women.
Welcome home Father John. and thank you for continuing your Food for Faith contributions while you were away.