Question of Faith
A weekly question of faith answered by Cleveland Catholics. Fr. Damian Ference, Vicar of Evangelization and Deacon Mike Hayes Director of Young Adult Ministry in the Diocese of Cleveland co-host with frequent guests from the Diocesan Office who join in the conversation.
Question of Faith
Why Does Pope Francis Want Us to Read Literature?
Can literature enrich your spirit and humanity? Pope Francis thinks so, and in this episode, we explore his profound letter on the subject. Join us as we uncover how literature can be a powerful tool for all Catholics, not just those in priestly formation, to deepen their spirituality amidst our screen-dominated culture. Through personal tales of solace found in books during times of weariness and distress, we highlight the calming effect of good literature and its role in aiding prayerful reflection.
Journey with us through the rich landscape of literature and human experience. We share an English major's newfound love for plays and short stories and delve into the profound insights offered by Russian literature, especially “Anna Karenina.” Hear our reflections on the emotional resonance of books like “Native Son” and the gritty, tangible nature of authors like Flannery O'Connor. By exploring these works, we gain diverse perspectives on struggles such as marital fidelity and racial dynamics, highlighting literature's unique ability to mirror our human condition and societal challenges.
In Church Search: Celebrate the 175-year legacy of St. John the Evangelist Cathedral in Cleveland with us. We'll discuss its fascinating history, daily confession times, and the spiritual discipline of frequent confession, inspired by Pope Francis.
This week's scripture: Focuses on the Gospel passage from Mark and consider our human tendencies to prioritize less important matters over profound truths.
Theology on Tap West starts tonight at Forest City Brewery
Book Study: From Christendom to Apostolic Mission.
On today's Question of Faith. Why does Pope Francis want us to read literature? Hey everybody, this is Question of Faith. I am Deacon Mike Hayes. I'm the Young Adult Ministry Director here in the Diocese of Cleveland.
Speaker 2:And I'm Fr Damian Ferencz, the Vicar for Evangelization.
Speaker 1:Hey, the algae on tap's back tonight. Just wanted to start out with that before we get into the Pope and literature here.
Speaker 2:I can't wait. Seven o'clock Forest City Brewery over there in Duck Island.
Speaker 1:Interviewing four of our wonderful young adults who do various things around the diocese. So it'll be fun. It should be cool. Hopefully people will come out. Yeah, yeah, it's always good. Nice location too. I mean, we've been working with them for a while, but we really like Forest City Brewery brewery.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my godmother lives literally around the corner. And then my baptismal parish is right down the street and they're kind enough to offer parking. So, at St Wendland, if you want to park at the church and walk down, feel free, Yep.
Speaker 1:And so, when you're not over at Theology on Tap reading, according to the Pope, is a good way to engage with life itself, right With prayer, and he put out this wonderful letter that you're all about.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, it was a bit of a surprise. Oftentimes, when Pope Francis makes the headline in news, it's something controversial, which, of course, is expected, because that's what many in the news want is some sort of headline that turns your head.
Speaker 1:So it gets covered, yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, but this one did not get too much coverage, which is why we're covering it. So on July 17th the Holy Father wrote a letter. It's called the Letter of His Holiness Pope Francis on the Role of Literature in Formation, and it's a short letter. I think it's 12 pages total, including footnotes. I think he wrote the whole thing and probably had some, you know, some help with some minor edits and maybe putting in some citations, but it's from the heart and it's very beautiful.
Speaker 2:And he says that he wrote it initially for those who were in priestly formation and he wanted to talk about the importance of reading good literature. You know so short stories and novels, poetry, even in priestly formation. But the more he thought about it, you know so short stories and novels, poetry, even in priestly formation, but the more he thought about it, he said on further reflection, however, the subject also applies to the formation of all those engaged in pastoral work, indeed of all Christians. So just yesterday we had our monthly formation meeting for Parish Life we have 10 offices down there plus administrators and specialists and we read this document together because the Holy Father says it's good for all those engaged in pastoral work. And I love it because, first of all, he brings a focus on the importance of reading, which we're losing quickly in our culture.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2:And then secondly, how reading affects one's spirituality and one's humanity. And because we're both body and soul, both those things are important. So paragraph two he writes this Often, during periods of boredom, on holiday, in the heat and quiet of some deserted neighborhood, finding a good book to read can provide an oasis that keeps us from other choices that are less wholesome. And that's true. Yeah, you get bored. You can easily do things that help you veg out, and that's not good because it's not soul satisfying, or you could find yourself doing things that actually can harm your soul.
Speaker 2:And he says likewise in moments of weariness, anger, disappointment or failure, when prayer itself does not help us find inner serenity, a good book can help us weather the storm until we find peace of mind. And I think that's so beautiful, because sometimes for people it's really hard to slow down and pray and then when you start praying, your mind goes nuts and you don't know what to do. And the Holy Father is suggesting pick up a good book that can calm your soul down, to get you to that place of peace, that will help you then enter into prayer. That's a very human approach and my guess is he knows that from his own experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to say and this certainly comes from his experience of working with people in poverty, right, you know where? There's so few resources around, so few things to do, so few opportunities. But there are books.
Speaker 2:There are books and he mentions not only of his time working with the poor, but in paragraph seven, as a young teacher. I discovered this with my students Between 1964 and 1965, at the age of 28, and he goes through a little bit of that, so he knows this as a priest working with the poor. He knows this as a Jesuit regent I think is what they call them Correct, a scholastic who is taking a year to teach. And, yeah, he taught literature, which I think is really great. And we live in a world today that is saturated with screens and it happens that for a lot of people, what they read are X posts or look at pictures on Instagram or read Facebook, and not that there's anything wrong per se with those things, but if that's all we read, then there are problems, because a great art form is narrative art is literature, and to ignore that or say that that's as he says in here, it's non-essential, is highly problematic.
Speaker 1:I was kind of surprised when the Kindle came out and all these Kindle out, that reading didn't. I mean, maybe reading has increased, I don't really know this, but I'm surprised that that didn't kind of take more precedence, because, you know, books are more readily available digitally and they could read more. I don't find myself reading more on the kindle, though, so you know I should take my own advice. I mean, you know I did. Yeah, I'd rather read a book, I think yeah, and attention are shorter.
Speaker 2:And now I know the Kindle is different from a regular screen or an iPad. Yeah, but I argue, and I do this with my students I think there's nothing like an actual book, because the book can't distract you, it's just a book. Yeah, that's true, and it smells nice and it's nice to turn the pages and it's nice to read and complete a book and hold on to it. So there's a lot that he has here, so I don't know if you had any highlights I would like to start with.
Speaker 2:In paragraph four he says I very much appreciate the fact that at least some seminaries have reacted to the obsession with screens and with toxic, superficial, violent fake news by devoting time and attention to literature. And I can testify that our seminaries here in Cleveland do that, especially during this propodutic year. Fr Mark Ott is the new director of the propodutic year, which is basically an avicet for diocesan priests, and he has me coming in in February to read some Flannery O'Connor and discuss literature with the guys. So I know that they're doing that and I also know that our guys do screen fasts. They are only allowed to use their phones on Sundays, which is pretty wild if you've been raised with one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, yeah, so you feel like you have to catch up, but yeah, but then after a while and I found that this was true in retreat. So when we would go on the Kairos retreat, we would take people's phones from them voluntarily they would have to give it in and we'd say look from them voluntarily, you know they would have to give it in and we said look, you'll get them back, don't worry, it'd just be good without to be without the screen for the weekend. No one ever asked for their phone back at the end of the weekend. They would. They were just perfectly capable of, you know, existing without it for a long time. And all of a sudden we would say oh yeah, by the way, your phones are over here if you want them. They're like oh yeah, oh right, my phone.
Speaker 1:And so that kind of thing I think is really good just to kind of take a break and leave them aside. I try to do a couple of hours every day without it now and just leave it aside.
Speaker 2:It will be there when I get back. It's fine when I read, and I really do enjoy reading, and I mentioned this with the staff yesterday that it's one of the few things that actually really genuinely calms me down and rests my heart, and so I love to read. I have my little reading chair, which sometimes I use this as my prayer chair in my room too. I prefer to pray in the chapel in the morning, but it's not always possible across the street, but I leave my phone on my desk, so it's not by me, and if I have to go answer a call or something comes in then I have to get up, and a lot of times I'll just no. I'm reading now and I enjoy it very much, so I read fiction.
Speaker 2:Right now I'm reading Anacarnina by Tolstoy. Yeah, a friend had recommended it, and so I'm in a little book club on that and that's enjoyable. I just got through part three. It's 800 pages long, so I'm about 360 in. The nice thing about having a PhD in philosophy is I've read so much philosophy that novels I could read pretty quickly. Wow, that's good. See, that's my problem?
Speaker 1:My problem is I read very slowly. You probably read carefully, though I do, you're right. That's the thing is. You know, I want to make sure I understand what I'm reading, so it's, you know, the comprehension part is key for me, and so you know, now, right now.
Speaker 1:I'm mostly reading you know, theology stuff Because program. So Maria Enti writes a book on Paul, which he writes like a novel, which was nice, but you don't get it the first time. Sometimes he's pretty deep so I have to read it over a few times. But in general for me, because I read slow, I try to read shorter stuff sometimes because I feel like I've accomplished something. I think the last book I read just for enjoyment was a book about the 9-11 firefighters I'm trying to remember the name of it, but it was a David Halberstam book that I enjoy. But that was a short book. It was only about maybe 180 pages or something like that, and I read that very quickly, which was good For me too. The other thing that I noticed.
Speaker 1:So I was an English major as an undergrad, so I'd read 10 novels a semester easy and but one of the things that and I, and I noticed even then that while I enjoyed reading the novels, it was hard for me to get the novels read in the amount of time we had during the semester. Right, and this is a man I wish. I wish we had a whole year to do this, then I could really do this. Well, so I did a little trick. I took a class on plays, because plays are shorter.
Speaker 1:I took a class on short stories because, short stories are shorter Right, and I kind of grew for a love of plays in particular. So we talked about that and some of the things that we've liked to read over the time. But you had something else, I think.
Speaker 2:Well, first I wanted to say like Anakar and Yenya, which is 800 pages long, can be daunting, but one of the things that was so refreshing, it's short chapters and a lot of action and way more enjoyable than I thought. I read Lolita by Nabokov, I've read portions of Dostoevsky, but I really haven't gotten into the Russian writers until now, and you know why not now. One of the things the Holy Father says here is paragraph six. Literature thus has to do in one way or another with our deepest desires in this life. True, For on a profound level, literature engages our concrete existence with its innate tensions, desires and meaningful experiences, with its innate tensions, desires and meaningful experiences. And I wrote there true amen, because what you ought to encounter in literature is you can never experience anything, everything as a human being. So what you get is slices of other people's life. And he says a little later on how you're able to know what people are experiencing when they're struggling with this particular issue or that, Like, for instance, in Anakaran Yenya.
Speaker 2:Right now, Anakaran Yenya struggles with fidelity in her marriage. So I'm not married, I'm not a woman. How do I understand that from the inside by reading this novel? And that's not the only struggle or conflict within the novel, but that's one certainly that I'm learning a perspective that I did not have before. The other guy is Lennon, who's kind of trying to figure out how best to run a political agricultural community and somewhere between socialism and the feudal system and trying to find a Christian way in there, and that's fascinating to me too especially since this is happening like late 19th century.
Speaker 2:So interesting stuff. There's another line in here too. He says in weeping for the fate of their characters, if you're crying with the characters in the book, we are essentially weeping for ourselves, for our own emptiness, shortcomings and loneliness. Yeah, it's true, I mean good art resonates with your experience of humanity and allows you a better understanding of what the human condition is. And then, a little later on, why is that so important? Because he has a section called Never a Disembodied Christ, and sometimes theology and philosophy can come off as abstract or not concrete enough, Not earthy enough, not earthy enough not gritty enough, not incarnational enough, and what you find in literature is just that, and I like that.
Speaker 2:He has this great line this is not the mystery of some abstract humanity, that is Christianity, and so fiction helps a lot like that. He has this great line this is not the mystery of some abstract humanity, that is Christianity, and so fiction helps a lot with that, and I think that's one of the reasons I love Flannery O'Connor so much is her work is so concrete, it is so gritty, it's so tangible and you can feel it.
Speaker 1:It's really nice For me. When I was in high school, one of the books I read that was really important to me was Richard Wright's Native Son. I don't know if you've read that. I've heard of it. I don't think I've read it. It's a movie too, but the book is much better, as it usually is. Right, yeah, but I grew up in a mixed neighborhood, like you.
Speaker 1:This is a book about sort of someone other than me. It's about a black man who's kind of in a white world. Pretty much. I was a white kid in a mixed black and Hispanic neighborhood growing up, so I kind of knew what it was like to be different, but I didn't know what it was like for people of color to feel difference.
Speaker 1:And the book's all about this guy who ends up befriending this family that he's working for. He befriends the daughter and then people start to talk about this black man being seen with a white woman and he doesn't want to ever be caught alone with her and the girl goes out and she gets drunk and then I don't want to ruin the book for people, but the way the salvo for the rest of the book is that he picks her up out of the car. He's the limo driver, right. He picks her up out of the car and brings her into her room because she's passed out drunk. And then the mother comes in, but the mother's blind and he doesn't want to get caught with her in the room because a black man in a white woman's bedroom, right.
Speaker 1:And so he's hiding in the corner. But she's about to wake up and she's ready to say something, and he's in the room, and so he stifles her but, when he stifles her, he smothers her to death. So now he's killed her, and now it's a black man who's killed a white woman. What to do? And then the rest of the story sort of goes from there spoiler alert or no? No, there's much more.
Speaker 1:It's much more gruesome too as the book goes on. But then the rest of the book is sort of like him and the lamb, you know and trying to figure out how he can sort of re-assimilate himself back into society.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the great thing about literature is you are given perspectives and experiences that you would never have in your own given plot in life. I mean, O'Connor has done that for me in terms of the South. One of the places where, admittedly, she failed was getting in the minds of her black characters. She tried, but as a white woman, yeah, it's hard and that's why in her third novel, Jessica Hooten Wilson, who produced, kind of tried to finish it. She said maybe one of the reasons O'Connor didn't finish it and left it was because she couldn't get in those minds. She tried but it seemed like caricatures. But Ernest Gaines is a black author that I like very much and there's actually a stamp the US Postal Service puts out and I've used it quite a bit. But he's helped me understand perspectives that I wouldn't have had otherwise. Yeah, this is really important stuff.
Speaker 2:Or like the power and the glory by graham green trying to figure out what this revolution was like and what it was like to live there.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's true, yeah, so historical fiction is really nice too. Fences is the other play that I really like. It's august wilson um. You know he wrote a series of plays about pittsburgh and they're every 10 years, so one one plays about the 20s, one plays about 30s, one plays about 40s, on and on.
Speaker 1:But Fence is about a guy who was a Negro League baseball player and his son now is a big athlete and he thinks that he can get a scholarship to college. And so the father's caught between wanting what's best for his son and his son living out his actual dreams and aspirations, and he doesn't quite know what to do with it. So it's sort of like you know, do I live vicariously through my son or do I try to protect my son because I think that no one's really going to give?
Speaker 1:him a chance because he's a black kid trying to make it into a white sports world. One of the funnier lines in there is he said you're never going to make it in those sports. Why don't you go down there and build yourself up in the A&P?
Speaker 2:which is the supermarket.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure he was working as a bag boy at the supermarket. The whole place just laughs. You go and build yourself up in the A&P yeah, okay, or he can go to college.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the things that's great about literature is it embodies things. So you're not saying what's the right thing to do. Well, give me a situation yeah, that's right. Give me characters, give me a context, and then we can talk through it. When I used to teach the ethics course at the seminary, I would have the guys read four or five short stories throughout the semester so that we could take the theory whether it was Aristotle or Thomas or Kant or John Stuart Miller or whatever and then try to apply and see how it is that you navigate certain situations. And it's I mean, jesus would tell parables too.
Speaker 2:He's telling stories you know, like man had two sons, all this kind of business. There's a great line in here, paragraph 29. In reading a novel or a work of poetry, the reader actually experiences being read by the words that he or she is reading which is what you're talking about too.
Speaker 2:It's that the good book reads you and helps you understand yourself better. And then this whole notion that reading itself is good because it allows us leisure and it's a human activity and can rejuvenate us and give us rest, and I think that's wonderful. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Kind of an escape in some way for us from maybe even our own everyday problems is kind of reading about someone else, and so I put help you kind of put some things together. I like what he said in the same paragraph you were just reading before. He says reading is an act of discernment. It directly involves the reader as both the subject he reads and the object of what is being read. And reading a novel or work of poetry the reader actually experiences, as you said, being read. But I like the part about discernment. It's like, oh yeah, this does kind of help me see one way or the other. What does the character do here? He has two choices to make.
Speaker 1:He has four choices to make. Has he picked the best choice from? All those things Interesting, and again, that was kind of surprising for him to read, since he wrote this in general for priestly formation. How has literature helped you prepare for homilies and things along those lines?
Speaker 2:You know, when I read I make my own indexes at the beginning of my books. So if there's a theme and I'll mark it through that way From time to time I'll bring up maybe a character. I know, father Bednar, who used to be at the seminary. Every homily would start with a reference to literature.
Speaker 1:Oh interesting.
Speaker 2:I just think reading and understanding and empathizing which is what the Pope talks about in here when you, when you read about people's heartbreak and their despair and their, their, their desire for redemption, it helps you better understand who you're preaching to. And, uh, and I just find it so helpful and I think the best, the best preachers are the best readers. I think that those things do go hand in hand, for the most part.
Speaker 1:For the most part. Yeah, if you can't read, you can't write. That's the way I always look at it. If you're not reading, you probably aren't going to write well, because you're not reading anybody else who writes well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah and I think for me too, I think it's sort of similar. It's that you kind of get to understand people's longings. Well, okay, I have to preach to this particular group of people. What are they like and what would be some of their struggles. Do I know all of their struggles? Probably not, but I've read about them now because I've read these pieces of fiction or whatever, and that maybe that gives you a little bit more insight into whoever they are and what's the word that you might have to preach to them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and even simply taking the time to read again slows me down, helps my heart be more contemplative and therefore I can share the fruits of my contemplation.
Speaker 1:So on a human level.
Speaker 2:I just think it's good for me to read. When I'm not reading, I'm not good. Prayer, exercise, reading, friendship, like those are my big four.
Speaker 1:And a lot of times I think like this past weekend's a good example. So I was in New York, I preached at St Paul the Apostle it was my home, new York parish, if you would and I was struggling. I was struggling to come up with something and at some point I said you know what? I just have to put this away and go and read something else now. And I sat down and I just read a couple of things that really speak to me in general.
Speaker 2:And then I was able to go back and finish what I had to write for the homily and it came out well. I told a friend recently it would be interesting for someone who knows me well and can follow me through the week to see how everything that I've experienced in the week shows up in the weekend. Homily because, it is. I'm always preaching out of that because, I'm preaching to myself first.
Speaker 1:Or at least out of past experiences for me. I tend to say, okay, where did I learn something? Yeah, where did I learn something? Where can I sort of be a little self-deprecating about myself in the story, that I was too dense to see this, but here's how it came to light for me. Now, what about you? That's kind of the motif that happens often for me in preaching.
Speaker 2:This last weekend was on suffering servant from Isaiah, and then, of course, jesus explained to Peter yeah, okay, I'm the Christ, but guess what? I'm going to have to suffer now and he wants to keep him from it.
Speaker 2:So I talked about suffering and you can hear a pin drop when you talk about suffering in a church If you're talking about it out of your own pain and your own grief and own experience of it and, hopefully, redemption of it, and because people want to know what to do with it. And I think that's something we can really help people with, because I think there's a lot of people who don't come to church or who have abandoned church because they think, because they've suffered, god has abandoned them, and we'll probably get into that with our reading reflections this weekend.
Speaker 1:But first a church, a church, yeah. So the cathedral, big celebration, right yeah, the cathedral.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the cathedral big celebration, right? Yeah, the cathedral of the Diocese of Cleveland, st John's Cathedral. You might not believe this. It's 175 years old Now. The bones of it are 175 years old. Their transepts have been expanded, the aisle has been expanded, but the original structure the walls are still there from 175 years ago. And East 9th Street at one time was known as Erie Street. So if you don't believe me, when you next time you go to a ball game at Progressive Field, when you walk out, there's a cemetery there and it says Erie Street Cemetery, not 9th Street. Before they had numbers, they were names.
Speaker 1:I've always wondered that. Thank you for enlightening me.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So come down, visit our cathedral. There's a lot to see. We do have the bones of early martyr St Christina over in the crypt where all the bishops are buried. That's something to check out. Also, if you say, man, I haven't been to confession in a while, I should go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, good place to go Every day from 6.30 to I think it's 7.15, and then every day from 11.30 to 12.30, monday through Friday, and then on Saturday. There's confessions times too. So if you're looking and you say, man, my parish doesn't offer confessions, often come to the cathedral, yep that's where I go.
Speaker 1:I pick a day.
Speaker 2:It's not where I go I go to my spiritual director every month, and sometimes more often than that if I need it.
Speaker 1:Got it, yeah, and I go. I try to go every 14 days, speaking of Pope Francis. So Pope Francis inspired me to go every 14 days. That's how often he goes.
Speaker 2:That was the same with John Paul. I wonder if Benedict did that. I wonder if that's a Pope thing.
Speaker 1:Maybe? Yeah, it could be. Keeps you out of trouble? It does, yeah, it keeps you right on the straight and narrow. Well, speaking of things that keep you on the week and the Gospel of Mark.
Speaker 1:On this 25th Sunday at Norian time, they came to Capernaum and once inside the house he began to ask them what were you arguing about on the way? But they remained silent. They had been discussing among themselves on the way who was the greatest. Then he sat down, called the twelve and said to them If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all. Taking a child, he placed it in their midst and putting his arms around it, he said to them whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me. And whoever receives me receives not me but the one who sent me. You know, in movies oftentimes you see a guy drive up and there's just a random parking space right there there's pulling. Jerry Seinfeld used to say I got my Jack Lemmon parking space. In Jack Lemmon movies there was always a parking space. A child just randomly appears in the gospel. Isn't that convenient for Jesus? But yeah, I do like this gospel this weekend and you know whoever is the greatest needs to be the servant of all.
Speaker 1:You know, and probably not always a lot of fun being the servant.
Speaker 2:No, it's also funny that before that section, Jesus says the Son of man is to be handed over to men. They will kill him. Three days after his death, the Son of man will rise. So they didn't understand it. So then, and they're afraid to ask him questions. So then they start arguing who's going to be the best in the kingdom? Why not ask him to explain that a little bit more? Like wait, the Son of man is going to have to die, so does that mean if we're going to follow him, we have to die too? Rather, they're like oh, who can be the best? But of, of course, this is who we are as human beings. We often worry about the things we ought not worry about and then forget the things that we ought to worry about.
Speaker 1:so it's a good reminder, or even, like you know, I can't understand that, so let me try to understand this right yeah, that makes me uncomfortable.
Speaker 2:How about let's talk about me?
Speaker 1:yeah, okay it was funny, though the play qed was like that was. A physicist comes in, he's he's getting his Nobel Prize in physics. So he's talking to the queen. He says well, what are you getting your Nobel in? He says it's experimental physics. And she goes well, we can't talk about that, no one knows anything about that. And he says, no, no, no, we know a lot about that.
Speaker 1:He goes we don't know anything about poverty or injustice or things like that, because those are the things we should be talking about, and so I was like that's about, right, yeah, same kind of thing. Anyway, so read a book.
Speaker 2:Read a book and if you want to read a book with people, it's not literature, but our Marriage and Family Office and. Theology of the Body. Cleveland are reading that Christendom in the Apostolic Age book and we could put those show notes in there.
Speaker 1:Also.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you saw it, but I was interviewed by the Pillar magazine about this letter from the Holy Father, and it just came out today, so you could read that too, if you want. That was fun, it was cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a lot of people had a lot of good things to say about that letter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a good letter and read the Pope for that matter.
Speaker 1:We'll link it. We'll put that in the show notes. Cool, all right. So read a book, have fun, and we'll see you again next time here on Question of Fame.
