In an extensive article written for Adoremus, Joseph O’Brien examines the life and work of Daniel Mitsui. “Taking the Second Council of Nicea as his north star, Mitsui refers to himself as ‘a Spirit of Nicea II Catholic.’ ‘That is a joke,’ he says. ‘Its point being that I keep that ecumenical council at the forefront of my mind, living as I do in a time similar to the iconoclastic crises. I do not seek to interpret its doctrine regarding art and tradition beyond what its words actually say; indeed, what they actually say is bold enough.’”
Patheos has a list of Five Sacramentally Scary Books you can read for Halloween, if you are looking to get in the mood. (What, no Dean Koontz?) “My favorite stories have what I call a ‘sacramental horror’ flavor. That is, they use the Seen world in their stories to suggest something about the Unseen world. And, piercing the Veil doesn’t always bring pleasant or beautiful results.”
Over at The Christian Century Francis Spufford asks, How do novelists write about faith in a culture that’s moving past it? One might ask if it is not possibly the task of a novelist to help draw the world back to the Faith, but that is a discussion for another time. “The third kind of fiction in my rapidly assembled and ad hoc taxonomy seems likely to become most important of all. The kind, that is, that can speak communicatively of faith to readers beyond the bounds of experienced familiarity with it, and beyond the bounds of conscious assent to it, because, rather than exploring the (social) relations of Christians with each other, or showing forth the theological patterning of experience, it takes as at least part of its subject the relationship of Christians with God.”
