The most recommended books about the Catholic Church

Tim Powers is an acknowledged modern master of the preternatural, but many readers probably don’t know he’s also a practicing Catholic. In Hide Me Among the Graves, his passion for the Romantic poets brings poor Christina Rossetti, her family, and others both historical and fictional under the sway of her vampire-uncle John Polidori, author of The Vampyre. Powers’s wild imagination casts the Thames River as Purgatory, songbirds as soul-catchers, and vampires as the ancient Biblical Nephilim. It’s a kitchen sink approach to fantasy that will keep readers guessing until the end.

The more I learnt about Mary of Guise, mother of Mary Queen of Scots, the more I admired this inspiring woman whose life is overshadowed by that of her more famous daughter. The French widow who spurned Henry VIII’s advances in favour of James V proved to be a wise, sharp-witted politician ruling as regent for Mary. Despite suffering great personal sorrow–the loss of two husbands and four sons–she held her daughter’s throne against opposition from the Scots lords until her premature death in 1560.

I often wonder how Mary’s life would have turned out had she been brought up by her shrewd and politically astute de Guise mother.

This is more a sketch than a full-length portrait but, like all Dr. Marshall’s studies, offers a wealth of information and telling details.

I read this book the summer I became dean. 

I wanted to get a sense of the recent history of American Catholic higher education, and this book offered a comprehensive intellectual and institutional history of American Catholic higher education—just what I was looking for and felt I needed as an administrator at a Catholic university.

Gah! Virgins! I should mention that this book was actually written in the 80s and flashes back to the 50s, but in the spirit of this list (and simply because I flipping love it), I’m including it here. Peggy and Sean are two good little Catholic teens navigating their senior year of high school. Sean is slated to enter the priesthood upon graduation, testing the limits of the pair’s carnal restraint in the final days of their relationship. I don’t think there’s a book in the world that has influenced my storytelling more than this one. It’s hot, hilarious, and heartbreaking… and pretty much serves as the blueprint for my own book. Highly recommend.

There’s a paradox at the heart of The Lord of The Rings. Tolkien wrote that it is “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work,” yet Middle-earth is pre-Christian and has little-to-no trace of religion evident within it. So how to reconcile the two? In The Battle for Middle-earth, Rutledge, a priest, brings his own knowledge and understanding of scripture to bear on The Lord of the Rings, to reveal how Tolkien’s plots, themes, and characters can be understood from a Catholic perspective. One thing shines clear from this book: just what a great storyteller Tolkien is. He never seeks to dictate or persuade (unlike C.S. Lewis in his Narnia series), but allows each reader to discover for themselves the treasures within his stories. 

I noticed when I was interviewing prominent contemporary artists for my book that many of them had a Catholic childhood. Eleanor Heartney noticed the same thing when she began to research the art and artists who became a focus in the culture wars of the 1990s. This is a dimension of the art history of the modern era that has not been told. Heartney explores the influence of an “Incarnational consciousness” in works that transgress boundaries. Beyond that, she frames artistic manifestations of the “Catholic imagination,” tracing the influence of “the beauty of religious art, music, and literature and the slippage in sacramental rituals between the carnal and the spiritual.” Her final chapter is on “Knowledge Through the Body: The Female Perspective.”

Who would have thought Catholic Italy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries would have tolerated widespread abortion? John Christopoulos brilliantly shows that, despite the moral proscription and legal prohibition of abortion from church and state leadership, women across the social spectrum from elites to peasants practiced abortion with the tacit or explicit support of key people in their communities. Compelling mini-narratives about individual women’s abortion stories are interwoven with an expert analysis of the legal, religious, and scientific knowledge and attitudes.

Flannery O’Connor’s saturnine stories of the American South are jewels of American literature.

They are laced with humor and violence but are at the same time deeply spiritual. In fact, the Catholic Church banned her work until it was discovered that her stories were written to show Grace in the lives of her parochial characters.

In Everything That Rises Must Converge, a story from A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories published in 1955, O'Connor writes about Julian, a young college-educated writer who lives with his mother in a decadent neighborhood that lost its prominence as the Old South faded.

His mother who believes she must uphold the dignity of her family's antebellum name insists on "keeping up appearances." For instance, she likes to tell folks that Jason's first job as a writer "selling typewriters" was a good sign because "Rome wasn't built in a day."

She… show more.

DeMello was a Jesuit priest and a psychologist.

His workshops were legendary and had a deep impact on thousands. His books have touched millions. He was eclectic and open-minded and readily acknowledged the power of spiritual practices from traditions outside the Church.

For this, his books were removed from Catholic bookstores and a warning issued that his writings could mislead young minds. He was passionate about truth and cavalier about dogma.

If you’re older, you probably read O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” for one or more lit classes; if you’re younger, you may have never heard of her as she is now “problematic” according to the unfunny woke-on-steroids crowd. I love O’Connor because I love characters with moral failings, I love mordant humor, and I love the possibility that even the most irredeemable among us can experience moments of grace. The brief details in her stories do such heavy lifting in terms of irony, for example when a Wellesley undergrad hits Mrs. Turpin in the head with a copy of Human Development in the short story “Revelation.” The action itself – a privileged white college student from an elite school inflicting violence upon a rural white woman – also speaks to our ongoing culture wars.