Religious Fiction: Preaching and Preaching

Recently, I finished reading "The Masterful Monk" by Owen Francis Dudley. You might say that it belongs to rare genre of "religious fiction."

In truth, the writer of religious fiction is in quite a tight spot. No matter what he does, he will be accused of preaching. Few people read fiction for edification, and even among these, few expect the message to be blatant. Peter Kreeft even goes so far as to suggest that the moral theme of a work always be hidden, so that it can better pass the watchful dragons of our suspicious conscious mind.

But those who would use this as a criticism of religious fiction, which would include (in addition to The Masterful Monk) such diverse works as "Come Rack! Come Rope!" by Robert Hugh Benson and "Father Elijah" by...I can't remember :(, are missing a significant element of the genre. Aside from the psychological debate about whether obvious moralizing in a book is good, the main thing that sets religious fiction apart from other genres of fiction is that, unlike works with a hidden moral, in religious fiction, the subject of the moralizing is equivalent to the plot material and the source of drama. In the Masterful Monk, the storyline centers around a wavering Catholic attracted by a Margaret-Sanger style eugenicist and her lover, a man attracted to the Catholic Church who converts to Catholicism in the middle of the story. Take out the obvious religious element, and the story goes with it.

Contrast this with a genuinely preachy story, such as my ill-fated "An Old-Fashioned Guy." In such a work, the moralizing is obvious in a way out of proportion to the role it plays in the plot. Remove all the references to Hegel in the story, and the characters still get thrown in jail and tell stupid (but funny) jokes.

Once a reader can make the distinction between preachy and obviously religious in a literarily necessary manner, they can read religious fiction without being repulsed by its imagined preachieness.

Republic (Plato), Aesthetics of

Most scholars agree that the writings of Plato have two periods: the first is where he is merely repeating the words of Socrates, and the second is where he is expounding his own views. Most also agree that the Republic is in this second category.

Plato begins with the assumption that the purpose of art is to help in the training of the philosopher-kings of the ideal state. Rightfully, he excludes things such as indecency and erroneous depictions of God from art. There are also some more doubtful exclusions.

Exclusion: Reason

Anthropomorphism God is not anthropomorphic.

Laments/Comedies/Drinking songs These things are not conducive
to the training of leaders;
they are irrational/dangerous.

Imitation/Pantomime By imitating a thing, one becomes like it.

Perhaps others that I cannot remember.

Plato's fallacy is the assumption that just becuause these things are what they are, that they will have the psycological effect he thinks they will have or becuause they are dangerous/useless, they should not be. But no child ever really became more like a dog because they pretended they were. And the sorts of things that he forbids are all legitimate human activities: Crying, laughing, drinking, etc. Their absence could be worse than what is prevented by their absence, an aspect Plato never even imagines.

Plato's other repbulican aesthetical views, however, are very sensible. They consist in the fact that that beauty and truth and goodness are allied, and that by seeing beautiful things, one can learn to recognize what beauty is, and that this is conducive to goodness.