Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 2011 Pax Ecclesia: Globalization and Catholic Literary Modernism Christopher Wachal Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the Literature in English, North America Commons Recommended Citation Wachal, Christopher, "Pax Ecclesia: Globalization and Catholic Literary Modernism" (2011). Dissertations. 181. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/181 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 2011 Christopher Wachal LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO PAX ECCLESIA: GLOBALIZATION AND CATHOLIC LITERARY MODERNISM A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY PROGRAM IN ENGLISH BY CHRISTOPHER B. WACHAL CHICAGO, IL MAY 2011 Copyright by Christopher B. Wachal, 2011 All rights reserved. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Nothing big worth undertaking is undertaken alone. It would certainly be dishonest for me to claim that the intellectual journey of which this text is the fruition has been propelled forward solely by my own energy and momentum. There have been many who have contributed to its completion – too many, perhaps, to be done justice in so short a space as this. Nonetheless, I would like to extend my sincere thanks to some of those whose assistance I most appreciate. My dissertation director, Fr. Mark Bosco, has been both a guide and an inspiration throughout my time at Loyola University Chicago. His words, whether critical or supportive, have always assured me that what I was doing mattered. His enthusiasm for the work of literary criticism and commitment to teaching model the life of the scholar-teacher all who seek to join his professional ranks should emulate. For his help and encouragement, I am exceedingly grateful. I have also been fortunate enough to have two very thorough and attentive readers on my committee. Dr. Mary Reichardt’s contributions helped shape the tone of this project and reminded me of the larger community of scholars to whom I am always responsible. Though we have been separated by distance, I am thankful that this project has brought us into the same world. Dr. Paul Jay has guided this project long before I could imagine it. By introducing me to new ways of imagining the world and literature, he inculcated in me new habits of thought I never would have dreamed possible. For his contributions throughout my professional development, I thank him. iii I would also like to thank those in Loyola’s English Department whose support made this work possible. Dr. Pamela Caughie, graduate program director, has helped navigate the difficult administrative terrain all graduate students must traverse, and she has always done so cheerfully and sympathetically. Dr. Joyce Wexler, department chair, served on the exam committee out of which this project was born. For being simultaneously demanding and supportive, I am in her debt. Dr. Vicky Anderson has been incredibly helpful, mentoring me as a first-time instructor and accommodating my interest in the classroom. To all my graduate colleagues, who have been both sounding board and crying shoulder (sometimes simultaneously), I express my deepest thanks. I should also like to thank my many students over the last five years. They’re interest and commitment push me to improve as a scholar and teacher. A special word of thanks is due to Dina Berger and Jessica Horowitz, whose “boot camp” approach to dissertation writing ensured this project would be completed in a reasonable time frame. It would be inappropriate to thank those who have contributed to this project without acknowledging its origins at Creighton University. I owe a special debt to Drs. Greg Zacharias and Bridget Keegan for guiding my academic interests and encouraging me to see them through. Drs. Eileen Burke-Sullivan and William O. Stephens showed me friendship and hospitality, demonstrating that there could be life worth living beyond doctoral study. Of course, I must thank my closest friends – Pat Phillips, Adam Young, Josh Herigon, and Sean Burke – whose company and good humor I have always treasured. iv I must also thank my family, who has always supported my academic career, even if they didn’t always understand it. None of this would have been possible without them. Most importantly, to my companion and confidante throughout this entire journey: Jennie, you make me want to do big things. You make all the other things worthwhile. Thank you for undertaking this with me. v Here Comes Everybody. — James Joyce TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii ABSTRACT viii CHAPTER ONE: GLOBAL NEGOTIATIONS, AN INTRODUCTION 1 Catholic. Literary. Modern. 7 Turning Over Nationalism 16 Pax Ecclesia 26 CHAPTER TWO: ANCIENT TRADITIONS, ALTERNATIVE FUTURES 32 Symbols and Globalization 33 Catholic Responses and Representations 53 Reading Forward 64 CHAPTER THREE: GRAHAM GREENE AND THE VIRTUE OF DISLOYALTY 73 A Herd of Criminals 81 Policing God’s Borders 97 CHAPTER FOUR: FLANNERY O’CONNOR’S TRUE COUNTRY 113 A Soldier of his True Country 127 The Signs of Foreign Places 137 Tremendous Frontiers 144 CHAPTER FIVE: SHUSAKU ENDO’S MANY FACES 154 That Man’s Face 170 God Has Many Faces 186 EPILOGUE: THE GLOBAL PRESENT 204 BIBLIOGRAPHY 213 VITA 222 vii ABSTRACT The transnational turn in literary studies has brought new rubrics and critical vocabularies to the study of cultures experiencing the destabilizing effects of globalization. It gives special attention to the ways cultural forms, including literature, must be reformulated in the absence of the coherence of the nation-state. Often unremarked upon, however, is the role of religion in providing other channels of affinity around which to cohere. Many writers in the 20th century respond to the shocks of globalizing modernity by writing in light of particular faith traditions, especially the aesthetic strategies and thematic concerns that characterize the Catholic literary tradition. This project examines three authors who identify with this tradition but repurpose it for literary visions of the global future that arise from particular locations and interests. It argues for Graham Greene’s concern with expansive moral horizons in two novels from his early “Catholic cycle,” The Power and the Glory and The Heart of the Matter. It examines the ways global forces invade and transform Flannery O’Connor’s American South in ways that demand new vision. Finally, the project argues that the novels Silence and Deep River by Japanese author Shusaku Endo present visions of religious practice across cultural and national boundaries. The works examined here evince the principles that animate Catholic literary modernism while presenting sometimes competing, sometimes complementary visions of the responsibilities those principles demand in a globalizing era. viii CHAPTER ONE GLOBAL NEGOTIATIONS, AN INTRODUCTION The most universal and most human works of art are those which bear most openly the mark of their country. – Jacque Maritain, “Art and Morality” So far as I am concerned as a novelist, a bomb on Hiroshima affects my judgment of life in rural Georgia, and this is not the result of taking a relative view and judging one thing by another, but of taking an absolute view and judging all things together. – Flannery O‟Connor, “The Teaching of Literature” When the American Catholic writer Flannery O‟Connor died in 1964, her passing was mourned by members of the literati in her native South, throughout the United States, and across the globe. Following a solemn ceremony at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, where O‟Connor and her mother attended daily mass, a funeral procession moved toward Memory Hill Cemetery in the center of Milledgeville, Georgia. Many mourners left town following the burial (Beauchamp & Matchen 84). Those who traveled north out of Milledgeville along US 441 or toward the O‟Connor family farm at Andalusia passed a large barn like those common in that part of Georgia. Attached to the side of this barn, however, was a bright white sign displaying freshly painted red letters. Its message was as clearly discernible as the red letters against the white backdrop: “GET US OUT OF THE UNITED NATIONS!” (McKenzie 7) The journey traversed by these particular mourners reflects in significant ways the developing identity of 20th century writers like O‟Connor whose aesthetic and 1 2 creative vision grow from their Catholic faith. The development of this Catholic literary identity begins with a commitment to the sacramental nature of reality, inspired through the ages by both Catholicism‟s philosophical and theological traditions and the experience of Catholic writers who attempted to live their faith in an intellectual culture often at odds with religious claims of meaning. These artists seek to portray in literature a Catholic habit of mind and being, as well as a Catholic vision of the created world. The 20th century writer who claims to be Catholic is identifying with both a religious tradition and a tradition of aesthetic practice. That is not to say, however, that the Catholic writer in the 20th century is bound solely to the concerns that animated previous generations of Catholic artists. Indeed, as the painted barn outside Milledgeville would attest, there are new dynamics in the 20th century to which all writers, Catholic or otherwise, must give attention. Beginning in earnest in the Inter-War period (though with sporadic antecedents), artists and writers begin wrestling with the complexity of an increasingly interconnected globe. What begins with the decline of imperialism initiated by the First World War, develops through the Cold War internationalism of the middle of the century, before accelerating in new and unpredictable ways with globalization, the dominant economic and political paradigm of the final decades of the century.