In this third session, we consider the Catholic influence on two of the great American authors: F Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Fitzgerald strayed far from the Catholic faith of his youth, while Hemingway converted as an adult and remained a "bad" Catholic throughout his life. The Catholic foundation of these two authors is far too overlooked.
We also comment on Cormac McCarthy, another lapsed Catholic.
Listen online[here]!
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Catholic Literature of the USA
The Catholic Influence on American Literature
Session 3, Popular Lapsed-Catholic American Authors
Don’t read good books, or else you won’t have time for the great books! (Fr Raymond Nyquist)
I. Course Outline
May 19th - Introduction, and the Importance of Great Literature
May 26th - Catholic Themes in Non-Catholic American authors: Henry James and Willa Cather
June 2nd - Popular Lapsed-Catholic American Authors: Ernest Hemingway, F Scott Fitzgerald, and Cormac McCarthy
June 9th - Profoundly Catholic American Authors: Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, Walter Miller jr, “Michael Kent”
June 16th - Spiritual Writers of the USA: Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Walter Ciszek
II. Some recommendations for reading more from a few American authors
(In Fr Ryan’s recommended order of reading for each author)
Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, and The Marble Faun (which has explicitly Catholic elements).
Edgar Allan Poe: Be sure to read more than just his scary stories and poems! In addition to the famous stories/poems (Tell Tale Heart, Fall of the House of Usher, Mask of the Red Death, Cask of the Amontillado, The Black Cat, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Raven, etc), also read his detective stories (The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Gold-Bud, The Purloined Letter) and his sci-fi (The Unparalleled Adventures of one Hans Pfaal). All of Poe’s fiction works should be read!
Henry James: The Turn of the Screw (novella), The Portrait of a Lady, What Maisie Knew, The Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl, The Ambassadors.
Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Life on the Mississippi
Willa Cather: Death Comes for the Archbishop, My Antonia, Shadows on the Rock, O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark
F. Scott Fitgerald: The Great Gatsby, This Side of Paradise, Tender is the Night
William Faulkner: Light in August, As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, Absalom Absalom!, A Rose for Emily (a short story)
Ernest Hemingway: Farewell to Arms, The Old Man and the Sea (novella), The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls
John Steinbeck: Of Mice and Men (novella), The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden
Cormac McCarthy: All the Pretty Horses, Blood Meridian, The Sunset Limited (a play, made into a word-for-word movie with Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L Jackson), The Road, Suttree (very different from his others)
Flannery O’Connor: All her short stories (next week, we will give more recommendations on which to start with), and also her two novels Wise Blood and The Violent Bear it Away
Walker Percy: The Moviegoer, Love in the Ruins, The Last Gentleman, The Second Coming
* Note that there are some American authors who have really only one great book, like Harper Lee.
III. F Scott Fitgerald (1896 - 1940)
F. Scott Fitzgerald's Catholicism played a significant but often conflicted role in his life and writing. Raised in a Catholic family in St. Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald attended Catholic schools and was deeply influenced by Catholic teachings on morality, sin, guilt, and redemption. Although he was not always a devout practicing Catholic as an adult, Catholic ideas remained embedded in his worldview. His personal struggles with wealth, ambition, alcohol, and relationships often reflected the tension between spiritual ideals and worldly desires that Catholicism emphasizes. He was married in the Church (to Zelda), but was denied a Catholic burial because of his controversial lifestyle and writings (seeming too secular and immoral). Later, he was reinterred in a Catholic cemetery in 1975.
This influence can be seen throughout Fitzgerald's fiction, particularly in his portrayal of characters who pursue material success but experience moral and spiritual emptiness. In The Great Gatsby, for example, the pursuit of wealth and status ultimately leads to disappointment and tragedy, suggesting a critique of a society that values materialism over deeper moral principles. Fitzgerald's recurring themes of guilt, sacrifice, and the possibility of redemption reflect his Catholic background, even when his characters fail to achieve salvation. As a result, Catholicism serves as an important lens for understanding both Fitzgerald's personal life and the moral concerns that shape his literary works.
Is is particularly interesting to note the short story Absolution was originally going to be a prologue to open The Great Gatsby. In Absolution we follow a sensitive and imaginative eleven year old Catholic boy (Rudolph Miller) who struggles with guilt and fear after telling lies and committing minor sins. Terrified of confession and punishment, Rudolph becomes overwhelmed by his own conscience and the strict moral expectations placed upon him. His anxiety leads him to question the nature of sin, truth, and religious authority. Seeking guidance, Rudolph meets Father Schwartz, a Catholic priest who is experiencing his own spiritual crisis. Through their conversation, the priest encourages Rudolph to embrace imagination and beauty rather than becoming consumed by guilt. The story explores themes of innocence, religious faith, moral responsibility, and the tension between idealism and reality.
The fact that F Scott Fitzgerald originally intended Jay Gatsby to be a Catholic who had struggled with his faith in his childhood (specifically opening with reflections on confession, sin and forgiveness), might make us approach The Great Gatsby in a new light.
Also, in The Great Gatsby, the eyes on the billboard (for glasses and eye exams) symbolize the eyes of God looking down upon all the sin and hurt and betrayal that occurs in the world - but seemingly doing nothing but watching.
IV. Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961)
“I have never wanted to be known as a Catholic writer because I know the importance of setting an example — and I have never set a good example.” — Ernest Hemingway to Father Vincent Donavan, in an unpublished letter dated December 1927.
“If I am anything I am a Catholic . . . I cannot imagine taking any other religion seriously.”
"Politics and religion are two things I never discuss. If my books don't make it clear how I feel about both, then I've failed in my life's work."
Many who knew Hemingway testify that his religion came mainly from the apparitions of the Virgin Mary…. “He told me several times that if there was no Bible, was no man-made church laws, the apparitions proved beyond any doubt that the Catholic church was the true church. Hemingway knew all the apparitions. The ones at Pontmain, Pellivoisin, Allyrod greatly impressed him. He told me that he believed that the Virgin was more or less the listening post of this world for Jesus and God.”
Hemingway also donated his Nobel Prize medal to the Virgin of Cobre, Cuba’s national saint.
He had first “become Catholic” when wounded in World War I - having been conditionally baptized and anointed by a priest. He did consider himself somewhat a “Catholic” at that point and there is record that he attended Church and practiced as a Catholic to some degree. He formally converted when he met his second wife, a Catholic, and married her in the Church. However, Hemingway’s life is filled with much pain and loss - he was unfaithful to his wife, he was an alcoholic and also struggled with great depression. Married and divorced multiple times, he finally committed suicide to end his life.
The Sun Also Rises is Hemingway’s most obviously Catholic novel. Catholic themes play an important role in this novel, particularly through the novel’s exploration of guilt, morality, and the search for meaning in a postwar world. Jake Barnes, the protagonist, identifies as a Catholic and often reflects on his faith, even though he struggles to live according to its teachings. His unfulfilled love for Brett Ashley highlights themes of sacrifice and suffering, as he accepts a situation that causes him emotional pain. Throughout the novel, characters engage in excessive drinking, casual relationships, and aimless travel, revealing a moral emptiness that contrasts with Catholic values. Hemingway uses Jake’s religious beliefs to suggest that faith may offer a source of stability and purpose, even in a world marked by disillusionment and spiritual uncertainty.
The title of the book is taken from Ecclesiastes 1:5, "The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose." Originally, the book was going to be called Fiesta, but he desired to more clearly communicate the religious reflection of the book with this new title.
On the other hand, A Farewell to Arms is semi-autobiographical, based especially on the time in Hemingway’s life when he was injured in World War I - and this is precisely the time when Hemingway “became Catholic” for the first time (although this is not present in the novel).
Other works also have Catholic references, like the old man in The Old Man and the Sea praying the Hail Mary, asking that all will go well for his fishing trip. The fisherman, Santiago—named for the Spanish pilgrimage destination of Santiago de Compostela that Hemingway loved—is chasing a marlin that is being hunted by sharks; Santiago claims he is not religious but “proceeds to pray one Hail Mary after another, adding, ‘Blessed Virgin, pray for the death of this fish. Wonderful though he is.’”
For Whom the Bell Tolls contains a violet scene of the massacre of people in a Catholic Church, including the local priest - but set in a way that expresses the evils of war, and the priest is something of a martyr.
The Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote a poem the day after Hemingway killed himself titled “An Elegy for Ernest Hemingway.” It contains the lines: “You pass briefly through our midst. Your books and writings have not been consulted.” In other words, as I read it, the gifts he gave us are, for the most part, still unreceived.
From The Sun Also Rises:
At the end of the street I saw the cathedral and walked up toward it. The first time I ever saw it I thought the façade was ugly but I liked it now. I went inside. It was dim and dark and the pillars went high up, and there were people praying, and it smelt
of incense, and there were some wonderful big windows. I knelt and started to pray and prayed for everybody I thought of, Brett and Mike and Bill and Robert Cohn and myself, and all the bull-fighters, separately for the ones I liked, and lumping all the rest, then I prayed for myself again, and while I was praying for myself I found I was getting sleepy, so I prayed that the bull-fights would be good, and that it would be a fine fiesta, and that we would get some fishing. I wondered if there was anything else I might pray for, and I thought I would like to have some money, so I prayed that I would make a lot of money, and then I started to think how I would make it, and thinking of making money reminded me of the count, and I started wondering about where he was, and regretting I hadn’t seen him since that night in Montmartre, and about something funny Brett told me about him, and as all the time I was kneeling with my forehead on the wood in front of me, and was thinking of myself as praying, I was a little ashamed, and regretted that I was such a rotten Catholic, but realized there was nothing I could do about it, at least for a while, and maybe never, but that anyway it was a grand religion, and I only wished I felt religious and maybe I would the next time; and then I was out in the hot sun on the steps of the cathedral, and the forefingers and the thumb of my right hand were still damp, and I felt them dry in the sun. The sunlight was hot and hard, and I crossed over beside some buildings, and walked back along side-streets to the hotel.
From Farewell to Arms
“You love the Abruzzi!”
“Yes, I love it very much.”
“You ought to go there then.”
“I would be too happy. If I could live there and love God and serve Him.”
“And be respected,” I said.
“Yes and be respected. Why not?”
“No reason not. You should be respected.”
“It does not matter. But there in my country it is understood that a man may love God. It is not a dirty joke.”
“I understand.”
He looked at me and smiled.
“You understand but you do not love God.”
“No.”
“You do not love Him at all?” he asked.
“I am afraid of him in the night sometimes.”
“You should love Him.”
“I don’t love much.”
“Yes,” he said. “You do. What you tell me about in the nights. That is not love. That is only passion and lust. When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve.”
“I don’t love.”
“You will. I know you will. Then you will be happy.”
“I’m happy. I’ve always been happy.”
“It is another thing. You cannot know about it unless you have it.”
“Well,” I said. “If I ever get it I will tell you.”
“I stay too long and talk too much.” He was worried that he really did.
“No. Don’t go. How about loving women? If I really loved some woman would it be like that?”
“I don’t know about that. I never loved any woman.”
“What about your mother?”
“Yes, I must have loved my mother.”
“Did you always love God?”
“Ever since I was a little boy.”
“Well,” I said. I did not know what to say. “You are a fine boy,” I said.
“I am a boy,” he said. “But you call me father.”
“That’s politeness.”
He smiled.
“I must go, really,” he said. “You do not want me for anything?” he asked hopefully.
“No. Just to talk.”
“I will take your greetings to the mess.”
“Thank you for the many fine presents.”
“Nothing.”
“Come and see me again.”
“Yes. Good-by,” he patted my hand.
“So long,” I said in dialect.
“Ciaou,” he repeated.
V. Cormac McCarthy (1933 - 2023)
“This is a thirsty country. The blood of a thousand Christs. Nothing.” From Blood Meridian.
Blood Meridian can scarcely be understood without knowing the Catholic Faith. “The Judge” (one of the most evil characters in all of literature, a little behind Heathcliff) is presented as an anti-Christ specifically in relation to the rituals of the Catholic Mass and the Last Supper.
The Sunset Limited is McCarthy’s most explicit reflection upon the question of God and faith, and whether there is any meaning in life.
VI. A couple others: Toni Morrison (1931 - 2019) and Don DeLillo (1936 - present)