American Catholic literature emerged in the early 1900s as its own genre.[1] Catholic literature is not exclusively literature written by Catholic authors or about Catholic things, but rather Catholic literature is "defined [...] by a particular Catholic perspective applied to its subject matter."[2]
According to editor Joshua Hren, "Catholic writers tend to see humanity struggling in a fallen world. They combine a longing for grace and redemption with a deep sense of human imperfection and sin. Evil exists, but the physical world is not evil. Nature is sacramental, shimmering with signs of sacred things. Indeed, all reality is mysteriously charged with the invisible presence of God. Catholics perceive suffering as redemptive, at least when borne in emulation of Christ’s passion and death."[3]
In the years after the American Civil War, there was a young priest by the name of Fr. Isaac Hecker. A convert to the Catholic faith, he went around giving lectures with the aim of evangelizing the Catholic faith to both Catholics and non-Catholics alike. In 1865, Fr. Heckler started a periodical which he named the Catholic World and in 1867 he founded the Catholic Publication Society to help publish and distribute them on a national level.[1]
In 1927, there was a growing curiosity toward the Catholic culture among the faith community. As Catholic literature was more readily accepted, more and more pieces of literature with Catholic themes and subjects were published.[4]
J. F. Powers was an American novelist and short-story writer whose work has long been admired for its gentle satire and its ability to recreate with a few words the insular but gradually changing world of post-World War II American Catholicism. He is known for having captured a "clerical idiom" in postwar North America. His story "The Valiant Woman" received the O. Henry Award in 1947. His first novel was Morte d'Urban (1962), which won the 1963 National Book Award for Fiction[5] Evelyn Waugh, Walker Percy, and Frank O'Connor admired his work.[6]