As a lapsed Catholic I found your post and the learning of the Pope's letter so fascinating! And hopeful. I don't follow Catholic news so I was surprised to hear of the letter's recommendation for reading literature. My hope is that the global congregation will take heed of his words. And that in doing so we can more easily reach across the table with one another. Thank you, Tara for sharing.
Paulette, We continue to find more things in common. :-) I was also raised Catholic. I was fortunate to be exposed to the scholastic, intellectual, and artistic traditions as much as the rest of it, and I appreciate that influence. I certainly hope this helps with reaching across the table, as you say. Thank you for dropping by.
Thank you, Julie! Glad you enjoyed it. The letter is encouraging enough for me to print it out and reread it, even at this busy time of year with plenty to read. Thank you for commenting!
Yes - I found much in the letter that spoke to me as a writer and reader. The more the religious leaders find common human ground, the more I appreciate them as leaders.
When we throw up our hands in dismay and retreat from our politics, we let evil triumph as we become the "good men who do nothing." One person's opinion.
David, This is such a good point that I'm considering a whole post about it. I do agree with you that throwing up our hands is not the answer, but the *desire* to throw up hands and the reasons for it in Dee's post are widely spoken, at least here in the rural western states. I am particularly concerned to hear young voters - college students - expressing overwhelm and resignation about politics. We all deserve to cast our first presidential vote as soon as we're able, and to do it with hope. I designed a course project around the 2020 election and will do the same this year. One of my challenges is to meet students exactly where they are, not dismiss their concerns, and lure them into seeing politics with more hope. I could say a lot more about this, and maybe I will when the first weeks of the semester settle down. Thanks for your comment. It may be that I need to clarify why I think it's important to meet people where they are, but necessarily to remain there.
Yes, I appreciate that this letter about literature speaks both from the Pope's Catholic Christian perspective and also beyond any particular sect or denomination or belief. It doesn't take much to believe in books. :-)
I didn't have this at my fingertips last night, but I've got it now. FWIW, some of the quotations from Francis reminded me of a line I use from C. S. Lewis when I sometimes teach a little 1-credit seminar on world lit in English translation. I put this at the beginning of that syllabus:
"In his book An Experiment in Criticism, C. S. Lewis wonders why we should bother to read books that deal with places we will never go, experiences we will never have, people who have never existed, emotions we might not even want to feel in real life. He writes, 'The nearest I have yet got to an answer is that we seek an enlargement of our being. We want to be more than ourselves. Each of us by nature sees the whole world from one point of view with a perspective and a selectiveness peculiar to himself.... We want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts as well as with our own....'" I've always liked that.
Just noticed that Francis quotes this Lewis volume twice--one of the instances might even be the same passage, if it has gone through a translation process (a reference to "seeing with the eyes of others"). How about that.
Dare I say "Great minds ..." ? 😉 I saw that Lewis was in the notes but didn't linger on my first reading to see what Francis was citing. Maybe it's a sign that one or both of you are onto something good. :-) (Tried to post the same comment twice. There. This one took.)
I will do what I can to help its impact along by bringing it up with colleagues and students. You bet my senior capstone students will get a copy to discuss. :-)
I continued following your advice to swap out the word Christians with *everybody* and especially liked this line: "If his readers think they are already doing Christianity pretty well, his letter says: Read some novels and get back to me."
Setting aside the irony that the letter demands reading, I'll hope, as you say, that its message will seep into the culture nonetheless.
Also, I just last week used the word polyphony in a sentence for the first time, and here (hear) we are again. Beautiful music!
Methinks a polyphony is getting going over at Sarah Fay's place! 😂
I think one of my favorite things to do is read passages of wisdom from traditions not my own and hear how they speak to me. I sometimes forget that others do not have this habit, and are even apprehensive hearing from faith traditions not their own. I swap a lot of words with "everybody." ;-)
Thanks, Tara. A timely caution in these days of technology supreme. Reading literature is such an important part of thinking and finding our way, or considering other paths and ways.
Thank you, Bonnie. Technology seems very much on Pope Francis's mind at the beginning of the letter. He started with a word to future priests, and then realized he was talking to a wider audience. I love that he shared that bit of writing process and inspiration.
"Finding our way" with literary help - Yes! Like Dante meeting Virgil before descending into the Inferno. We all need a Virgil or two.
This is the first of your newsletters I’ve read in detail. I had to read it twice and then sit for a while. Here we go.
I’m no fan of the papacy and it’s checkered history but let’s take this letter at face value.
Unconditional love sits at the core of all that is good and where love is lost only awful things result.
Why literature? Fiction for me is a form of play and practise for our heart and minds. In that arena we absorb situations and characters that trigger all our emotions, test our morals and values, and catalyse our creativity and analysis.
We perform these emotional and intellectual somersaults within the safe space of our hearts and minds. If we give ourselves permission to indulge and engage, the experience can be almost as tangible and intense as the real world.
Without this practise we have to roll with the punches of the real world unprepared and with no ‘indoor voice’.
We suppress or diminish the role of fiction at our collective peril.
In many areas of our world people are living an Orwellian existence. Why? Because these regimes suppressed the publication of authors like Orwell.
Unconditional love does not mean rolling over beneath an oppressor, or a troll. It can mean tough love or resistance.
I'm glad this post landed with you, and I appreciate your thoughtful rereading and response. Religion and religious figures are very personal to people, for better and for worse. Despite the potential minefield of such topics, I am fascinated by the kernels of wisdom that transcend sects and histories.
As someone who teaches literature, I find this a powerful and welcome endorsement from outside our little guild.
I love seeing fiction as a bottomless vessel of truth and a rehearsal space for the difficult encounters of life. Nice to meet a like-minded thinker - at least on that point. (I won't presume about others.) Thank you for taking time to comment.
"Time spent reading may well open up new interior spaces that help us to avoid becoming trapped by a few obsessive thoughts that can stand in the way of our personal growth."
"A book demands greater personal engagement on the part of its reader. Readers in some sense rewrite a text, enlarging its scope through their imagination, creating a whole world by bringing into play their skills, their memory, their dreams and their personal history, with all its drama and symbolism. In this way, what emerges is a text quite different from the one the author intended to write."
Could it be that a deep and contemplative reading of literature, and poetry, provides a sort of 'calling-forth' to that part of oneself that would otherwise become inundated and drowned out by all the noise and the clutter? Is one's truth, or perhaps all truth, buried somewhere deep in the imagination waiting for the right story, or the right words, in order to blossom forth?
Isn't it a wonderful letter? I was struck by how experienced the pope shows himself to be as a reader, and by what a lovely writer he is. (Or someone is, if this was written by a team.) He not only tells us why to read, but he models it with passages like the ones you point out.
Then again, your own paragraph shows the wisdom and experience of much reading, too. :-)
Empathy, you say. I have a dog in that fight. Nice that it’s being talked about amongst upper management.
I might have a slightly different opinion on reading only that which appeals to me and which goes down easily. For that there is TikTok and Instagram. I chose as a kid to push deeper and develop a discipline that allowed me to approach more demanding books. But starting somewhere is much better than not starting at all.
The best part is that almost everything of enduring value is available with a few clicks and a download. The wisdom, knowledge, and art of the ages is at our fingertips. What a great time to be alive.
I like "upper management." :-) I agree that it's amazing what we can reach online. As for the dogfight, do you think if we read to them, the dogs will give up the fighting and shake paws?
Tara, thank you for this. I have heard a bit about the Pope's letter but have not yet had a chance to read it. (I'd even thought of writing about it, but you've beaten me to the punch!) It's certainly nice to have such a prominent voice speak up in favor of the value of literature. I need to read exactly what he says, but I always think there is a fine line between recognizing that value and over-promising. Newman is very good (in The Idea of a University) on noting that the liberal arts' ability to sharpen our mind does not necessarily translate into sharpening our character. But I think the passages you quote from Francis right beneath your "Why is this a big deal?" subheading, especially the line about appreciating others' stories, appropriately capture what literature can do for us in terms of broadening our understanding of and appreciation for the full breadth of human experience. (And the "polyphony of divine revelation" is very nice.) Enjoyed reading this.
Peter, There is plenty left to write about, and I hope you do it. I didn't even get into the motive for the letter (which he addresses a little at the beginning) or even a whole overview of the contents. Newman has a good point. I'd agree that there is much more to character than time with the liberal arts. It will be interesting to hear your take on this letter. One thing that struck me - and I didn't address it directly, though the polyphony quotation offers a clue - is that Pope Francis shows himself (or his staff) to be a fine writer. The passages he selects from other sources are also very direct and apt for his purpose. It's a fine piece of writing, and not overly long. I'd like to know more about how many people help him with the research and writing, and how involved is he in writing in languages he knows, like English. One can't tell how many "writers" are to be praised. I'd love to hear a documentary about which languages this pope thinks and writes in. But that's a bit of a rabbit hole. :-)
Thanks, Tara. I guess I'll see if I have anything more to say after I've read it! : )
I've always wondered how much of their writing the various do themselves. I would imagine that the previous two, having already written quite a bit as, respectively, a philosopher and a theologian, probably did most of their own writing. I don't know enough about Francis to hazard a guess. I've always assumed that they probably wrote in whichever language they were most comfortable in and then let the Vatican translation service produce the official versions in other languages. But I'm just guessing. Thanks again for helping to draw attention to this document.
I think one thing I love about this letter is that it feels like this pope did write it. There are signs of his spirit all over, unique as he is (I think) in the upper levels of the Catholic Church. See what you think. :-)
As a lapsed Catholic I found your post and the learning of the Pope's letter so fascinating! And hopeful. I don't follow Catholic news so I was surprised to hear of the letter's recommendation for reading literature. My hope is that the global congregation will take heed of his words. And that in doing so we can more easily reach across the table with one another. Thank you, Tara for sharing.
Paulette, We continue to find more things in common. :-) I was also raised Catholic. I was fortunate to be exposed to the scholastic, intellectual, and artistic traditions as much as the rest of it, and I appreciate that influence. I certainly hope this helps with reaching across the table, as you say. Thank you for dropping by.
This is a wonderful read. I am excited and encouraged to keep writing. I appreciate you for sharing ...
Thank you, Julie! Glad you enjoyed it. The letter is encouraging enough for me to print it out and reread it, even at this busy time of year with plenty to read. Thank you for commenting!
love this. Had no idea, hadn't heard - thank you for sharing!! And yes, I agree with your conclusions. Team Pope!
Haha! That's two of us, at least. 😂 Hooray for bookish leaders!
Lovely that he encourages writers to express their experience.
Yes - I found much in the letter that spoke to me as a writer and reader. The more the religious leaders find common human ground, the more I appreciate them as leaders.
Tara,
When we throw up our hands in dismay and retreat from our politics, we let evil triumph as we become the "good men who do nothing." One person's opinion.
David, This is such a good point that I'm considering a whole post about it. I do agree with you that throwing up our hands is not the answer, but the *desire* to throw up hands and the reasons for it in Dee's post are widely spoken, at least here in the rural western states. I am particularly concerned to hear young voters - college students - expressing overwhelm and resignation about politics. We all deserve to cast our first presidential vote as soon as we're able, and to do it with hope. I designed a course project around the 2020 election and will do the same this year. One of my challenges is to meet students exactly where they are, not dismiss their concerns, and lure them into seeing politics with more hope. I could say a lot more about this, and maybe I will when the first weeks of the semester settle down. Thanks for your comment. It may be that I need to clarify why I think it's important to meet people where they are, but necessarily to remain there.
I remember watching the news being struck by the excitement of young people during Pope John Paul II's visit to the United States.
Yes. I never saw him in person, but he must have had quite a presence. I knew people who spoke of him with great affection and reverence.
Hooray, indeed. Who woulda thought? More on this soon ... xx
Poetry in our pocket, that and more that this essay does, no matter your faith or lack of it.
Yes, I appreciate that this letter about literature speaks both from the Pope's Catholic Christian perspective and also beyond any particular sect or denomination or belief. It doesn't take much to believe in books. :-)
Thank you for sharing! 🙏
I didn't have this at my fingertips last night, but I've got it now. FWIW, some of the quotations from Francis reminded me of a line I use from C. S. Lewis when I sometimes teach a little 1-credit seminar on world lit in English translation. I put this at the beginning of that syllabus:
"In his book An Experiment in Criticism, C. S. Lewis wonders why we should bother to read books that deal with places we will never go, experiences we will never have, people who have never existed, emotions we might not even want to feel in real life. He writes, 'The nearest I have yet got to an answer is that we seek an enlargement of our being. We want to be more than ourselves. Each of us by nature sees the whole world from one point of view with a perspective and a selectiveness peculiar to himself.... We want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts as well as with our own....'" I've always liked that.
Yes! Thank you for finding and sharing that. How apt for a syllabus.
Just noticed that Francis quotes this Lewis volume twice--one of the instances might even be the same passage, if it has gone through a translation process (a reference to "seeing with the eyes of others"). How about that.
Dare I say "Great minds ..." ? 😉
Aw, shucks.
Dare I say "Great minds ..." ? 😉 I saw that Lewis was in the notes but didn't linger on my first reading to see what Francis was citing. Maybe it's a sign that one or both of you are onto something good. :-) (Tried to post the same comment twice. There. This one took.)
This is the first I've heard of the Pope's letter. Interesting to contemplate its impact!
I will do what I can to help its impact along by bringing it up with colleagues and students. You bet my senior capstone students will get a copy to discuss. :-)
I continued following your advice to swap out the word Christians with *everybody* and especially liked this line: "If his readers think they are already doing Christianity pretty well, his letter says: Read some novels and get back to me."
Setting aside the irony that the letter demands reading, I'll hope, as you say, that its message will seep into the culture nonetheless.
Also, I just last week used the word polyphony in a sentence for the first time, and here (hear) we are again. Beautiful music!
Methinks a polyphony is getting going over at Sarah Fay's place! 😂
I think one of my favorite things to do is read passages of wisdom from traditions not my own and hear how they speak to me. I sometimes forget that others do not have this habit, and are even apprehensive hearing from faith traditions not their own. I swap a lot of words with "everybody." ;-)
Thanks, Tara. A timely caution in these days of technology supreme. Reading literature is such an important part of thinking and finding our way, or considering other paths and ways.
Thank you, Bonnie. Technology seems very much on Pope Francis's mind at the beginning of the letter. He started with a word to future priests, and then realized he was talking to a wider audience. I love that he shared that bit of writing process and inspiration.
"Finding our way" with literary help - Yes! Like Dante meeting Virgil before descending into the Inferno. We all need a Virgil or two.
Tara,
This is the first of your newsletters I’ve read in detail. I had to read it twice and then sit for a while. Here we go.
I’m no fan of the papacy and it’s checkered history but let’s take this letter at face value.
Unconditional love sits at the core of all that is good and where love is lost only awful things result.
Why literature? Fiction for me is a form of play and practise for our heart and minds. In that arena we absorb situations and characters that trigger all our emotions, test our morals and values, and catalyse our creativity and analysis.
We perform these emotional and intellectual somersaults within the safe space of our hearts and minds. If we give ourselves permission to indulge and engage, the experience can be almost as tangible and intense as the real world.
Without this practise we have to roll with the punches of the real world unprepared and with no ‘indoor voice’.
We suppress or diminish the role of fiction at our collective peril.
In many areas of our world people are living an Orwellian existence. Why? Because these regimes suppressed the publication of authors like Orwell.
Unconditional love does not mean rolling over beneath an oppressor, or a troll. It can mean tough love or resistance.
Fiction holds within it every human truth.
Dear Gary,
I'm glad this post landed with you, and I appreciate your thoughtful rereading and response. Religion and religious figures are very personal to people, for better and for worse. Despite the potential minefield of such topics, I am fascinated by the kernels of wisdom that transcend sects and histories.
As someone who teaches literature, I find this a powerful and welcome endorsement from outside our little guild.
I love seeing fiction as a bottomless vessel of truth and a rehearsal space for the difficult encounters of life. Nice to meet a like-minded thinker - at least on that point. (I won't presume about others.) Thank you for taking time to comment.
This is lovely, Tara.
Two excerpts that struck me:
"Time spent reading may well open up new interior spaces that help us to avoid becoming trapped by a few obsessive thoughts that can stand in the way of our personal growth."
"A book demands greater personal engagement on the part of its reader. Readers in some sense rewrite a text, enlarging its scope through their imagination, creating a whole world by bringing into play their skills, their memory, their dreams and their personal history, with all its drama and symbolism. In this way, what emerges is a text quite different from the one the author intended to write."
Could it be that a deep and contemplative reading of literature, and poetry, provides a sort of 'calling-forth' to that part of oneself that would otherwise become inundated and drowned out by all the noise and the clutter? Is one's truth, or perhaps all truth, buried somewhere deep in the imagination waiting for the right story, or the right words, in order to blossom forth?
Isn't it a wonderful letter? I was struck by how experienced the pope shows himself to be as a reader, and by what a lovely writer he is. (Or someone is, if this was written by a team.) He not only tells us why to read, but he models it with passages like the ones you point out.
Then again, your own paragraph shows the wisdom and experience of much reading, too. :-)
Very welcome, Tara!
Empathy, you say. I have a dog in that fight. Nice that it’s being talked about amongst upper management.
I might have a slightly different opinion on reading only that which appeals to me and which goes down easily. For that there is TikTok and Instagram. I chose as a kid to push deeper and develop a discipline that allowed me to approach more demanding books. But starting somewhere is much better than not starting at all.
The best part is that almost everything of enduring value is available with a few clicks and a download. The wisdom, knowledge, and art of the ages is at our fingertips. What a great time to be alive.
I like "upper management." :-) I agree that it's amazing what we can reach online. As for the dogfight, do you think if we read to them, the dogs will give up the fighting and shake paws?
That is the whole point of empathy. I wonder if we could ever do it in this country?
“Ever” is a long time. You’d think we’d figure it out by then. 🤞🏼
Tara, thank you for this. I have heard a bit about the Pope's letter but have not yet had a chance to read it. (I'd even thought of writing about it, but you've beaten me to the punch!) It's certainly nice to have such a prominent voice speak up in favor of the value of literature. I need to read exactly what he says, but I always think there is a fine line between recognizing that value and over-promising. Newman is very good (in The Idea of a University) on noting that the liberal arts' ability to sharpen our mind does not necessarily translate into sharpening our character. But I think the passages you quote from Francis right beneath your "Why is this a big deal?" subheading, especially the line about appreciating others' stories, appropriately capture what literature can do for us in terms of broadening our understanding of and appreciation for the full breadth of human experience. (And the "polyphony of divine revelation" is very nice.) Enjoyed reading this.
Peter, There is plenty left to write about, and I hope you do it. I didn't even get into the motive for the letter (which he addresses a little at the beginning) or even a whole overview of the contents. Newman has a good point. I'd agree that there is much more to character than time with the liberal arts. It will be interesting to hear your take on this letter. One thing that struck me - and I didn't address it directly, though the polyphony quotation offers a clue - is that Pope Francis shows himself (or his staff) to be a fine writer. The passages he selects from other sources are also very direct and apt for his purpose. It's a fine piece of writing, and not overly long. I'd like to know more about how many people help him with the research and writing, and how involved is he in writing in languages he knows, like English. One can't tell how many "writers" are to be praised. I'd love to hear a documentary about which languages this pope thinks and writes in. But that's a bit of a rabbit hole. :-)
Thanks, Tara. I guess I'll see if I have anything more to say after I've read it! : )
I've always wondered how much of their writing the various do themselves. I would imagine that the previous two, having already written quite a bit as, respectively, a philosopher and a theologian, probably did most of their own writing. I don't know enough about Francis to hazard a guess. I've always assumed that they probably wrote in whichever language they were most comfortable in and then let the Vatican translation service produce the official versions in other languages. But I'm just guessing. Thanks again for helping to draw attention to this document.
I think one thing I love about this letter is that it feels like this pope did write it. There are signs of his spirit all over, unique as he is (I think) in the upper levels of the Catholic Church. See what you think. :-)