What is the Catholic imagination?

Seatbelts, everyone!

I was walking through the stacks on the 12th floor of the Hesburgh Library looking for materials for a term paper when a title on a book spine literally stopped me in my tracks: The Catholic Imagination. Curious, I pulled the book off the shelf and flipped it open. 

“Catholics live in an enchanted world,” Fr. Andrew Greeley writes in the introduction to his book. “A world full of statues and holy water, stained glass and votive candles, saints and religious medals, rosary beads and holy pictures. But these Catholic paraphernalia are mere hints of a deeper and more pervasive religious sensibility which inclines Catholics to see the Holy lurking in creation. As Catholics, we find our houses and our world haunted by a sense that the objects, events, and persons of daily life are revelations of grace.”¹

Forgetting my term paper, I took the book back to my desk and (for the first time in my life) sat down to read theology for fun. 

This phrase – the Catholic imagination – felt like coming home. It finally gave me words to describe something I had been experiencing for years. Ever since I encountered God myself and took ownership of my Catholic faith as a teenager, I felt like He was showing up everywhere: in the smell of the air just before it snows, in the taste of my favorite home-cooked meal, in the sound of the first few bars of my favorite song. The only problem? I also felt like I was the only one who could see Him. 

Since then, I have seen many people use the phrase “the Catholic imagination” to define a small canon of Catholic authors and artists. I have no problem with that and have found it helpful when researching in academic databases and scrolling on social media alike. 

But here, I want to use “the Catholic imagination” more broadly. I want the authors and the artists. But I also want the architects, the songwriters, the actors, and the artisans who create the things that move us to think about God. I want the classical examples of Good Catholic Art, and I want the things that people are making right now to express themselves and point to God, whether they intend to do that or not. 

Years after my first encounter with “the Catholic imagination” in the Hesburgh Library, I was re-watching my favorite episode of The Magic School Bus with my daughter (Season 1, Episode 9: “Inside the Haunted House”) when I came across this concept again. Or rather, I saw a visual metaphor for it. (I’m pretty sure Walkerville Elementary school is not a Catholic school–the liability insurance alone!) 

In the episode, the class visits the local sound museum. As they explore the supposedly haunted mansion, Ms. Frizzle distributes magic glasses that allow her students to see sound. The animators illustrate sound vibrations as neon ripples that emanate from their source. As the class wears the glasses and experiments with different sounds, they are able to reach a deeper understanding of how sound works. 

(If you don’t know what I’m talking about, click here and start at 16:05.)

This is what it feels like to experience the world with a Catholic imagination: it’s like figuratively putting on a pair of glasses from Ms. Frizzle. Suddenly you can see things that you have only ever felt before. You can experience and interact with the world in a way that other people don’t. 

In this newsletter, I want to share some of the things I’ve been seeing with my Catholic imagination lately. Most of it will be literature — there are few things I love more than getting lost in a good book. But there will be some architecture, art, and music, too, although I’m certainly not an expert in any of those fields. Most importantly, I hope reading this newsletter will be like handing you a pair of magic glasses. Come, see what I see. It’s a wild ride.

1. Greeley, Andrew. The Catholic Imagination. University of California Press, 2001, p. 1.