Ralph McInerny’s Writer Profiles
“Being a Catholic writer is not a falling away from an ideal; it is the way to fulfill the ideal completely—to see human acts in terms of the ultimate stakes of life.” —Ralph McInerny, “On Being a Catholic Writer”
As Notre Dame’s own Ralph McInerny explains, Western culture “is inconceivable apart from the faith of those who produced it.” The Catholic writer, conscious of “the ultimate stakes of life,” uses the language of poetry, myth, symbol, and drama to explore the depths and richness of human action and experience. Enjoy McInerny’s profiles of some of these Catholic writers and their works. (Bolded authors have been featured in the Center’s Catholic Literature Series. See videos of those lectures here.)
- Maurice Baring
- Hilaire Belloc
- Robert Hugh Benson
- Georges Bernanos
- Anthony Burgess
- Willa Cather
- Gilbert Keith Chesterton
- Kate Chopin
- Paul Claudel
- Baron Corvo
- Francis Marion Crawford
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Ford Madox Ford
- Etienne Gilson
- Graham Greene
- Paul Horgan
- James Joyce
- George A. Kelley
- Jacques Maritain
- Raissa Maritain
- François Mauriac
- Thomas Merton
- Brian Moore
- Edwin O'Connor
- Flannery O'Connor
- Frank O'Malley
- Charles Peguy
- Walker Percy
- Josef Pieper
- J. F. Powers
- Piers Paul Read
- Fulton J. Sheen
- Muriel Spark
- Edith Stein
- Evelyn Waugh