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In addition to laying out a general groundwork for the Catholic imagination as a critical lens—and suggesting a variety of ways that the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar aids critics in articulating such a theological vision—the chapter also attempts to locate the particular phenomena of postmodernism and deconstruction within the intersection of theology and narrative art. Balthasar anticipates the tendency of current critical theory to privilege and emphasize the amorphous breadth of both linguistic and cultural expression; and he anticipates the critical tension between those who read Catholicism as theological truth and those that might read Catholicism as a “fluctuating signifier,” as a cultural and/or literary text. Under this general theme, a dialog is opened with such diverse critics as William Lynch, Paul Giles, Michel De Certeau, and Jacques Derrida. Like them, Balthasar's theology plots a route for appreciating the aesthetic complexity and theological possibility of a broadly canvassed intertextuality and interdisciplinarity. However, Balthasar's program also defends the critical uniqueness of certain theological commitments (e.g., the transcendentals, the Incarnation, and the trinitarian structure of being) and looks to the arts to demonstrate the formal expression and aesthetic span of these phenomena. The chapter concludes with the proposition that it is the recognition of these essential questions that both challenge and aid the articulation of a Catholic imagination and that a turn to representative work in literature, poetry, and film will aid in such an articulation.

The chapter serves both as a brief biography of Balthasar and a protracted bibliography of his work. The consideration of Balthasar's monumental opus (The Glory of the Lord, Theo‐drama, and Theo‐logic) provides a critical “system” in which to read texts and begins to illustrate Balthasar's unique contribution to current discussions about the intersection between theology, history, philosophy, and narrative art. The chapter demonstrates that not only is Balthasar one of the most important Catholic theologians of the twentieth century, but also his work has practical contributions to make to discourses in critical theory. Like critical theory, Balthasar's work is theological, literary, anthropological, philosophical, psychological, political, and historical, which are critical theory's main components. In the spirit of the ressourcement theology that shaped him, Balthasar is primarily interested in renewing attention to older sources in order to critique the idealistic excesses of modernity. In this sense, Balthasar reveals a postmodern temperament: he too is concerned with issues of language and difference, with aporia, with plurality, with surplus, and with horizons of meaning, to name a few. The difference between Balthasar and the majority of critical theorists resides in ontological and theological orientation: it is therefore a difference of imagination and of grammar. The chapter elaborates on these and other dynamic relationships.

Chapter 4 isolates several essential aspects of Balthasar's theodramatic theory and discusses how they “play” in and through Lars von Trier's dramatic film Breaking the Waves (1996), the first installment of his Golden Heart trilogy. It is no coincidence that Balthasar places his theodramatic program precisely between his Aesthetics and Logic in order to emphasize the spatial centrality of God's dramatic action in, with, and through the world. In addition to examining theological mysteries (such as kenosis and the “events” of Holy Saturday), the chapter demonstrates more acutely the many contributions that Balthasar provides the contemporary religious critic. The chapter finds that the retrieval of this powerful relationship between theology and narrative art—between theological rhetoric and dramatic representation—is a main topic of Balthasar's Theodrama and that a serious study of the implications of his theodramatics bears ripe fruit for theorists of contemporary literature.

Chapter 3 focuses on Balthasar's theological aesthetics as a well‐articulated critical methodology. Balthasar's fusion of aesthetics with history forges both a Christology and an analogy of being that is developed in light of that Christology. Balthasar urges us to “see the form [of Christ]” in all manner of being and experience—human activities, natural phenomena, and especially human works of art. “Seeing the form” becomes a central critical and theological hermeneutic; and the chapter cultivates a parallel between “seeing the form” and interpreting, broadly, the “word(s)” of narrative art. The first three sections of the chapter develop an aesthetics of a representative word (in this case, the term “hierarchy”); the last section is an application of what is gleaned from the first three upon Flannery O'Connor's “Revelation.” While a close reading of O'Connor's text serves as a literary exemplum of a Catholic imagination, other poets and authors who demonstrate a similar theological aesthetic are considered in order round out the discussion.

Chapter 6 provides a short synthesis of the book. Balthasar's program challenges us to first “see the form” in the world, but also to see the Beautiful, the Good, and the True at work in a broad variety of narrative art. The book finds that, while Balthasar presents us with some practical directives that aid in elucidating the presence and veracity of such a vision, the Catholic imagination proposed does not have a monopoly on such tendencies. At minimum, the examination of the Catholic imagination helps recover the legitimate place of a “theological imagination” in the critical study of literary and narrative art. One conclusion posited is that the careful restoration of the theological imagination to discourses in meaning will aid in reestablishing “a theology of criticism,” that is, the kind of criticism that cultivates a more inclusive array of epistemologies. Another conclusion is that many aspects of postmodern critical thought are helping develop a more grounded—and interdisciplinary—theology of language.

Chapter 5 presents a reading of David Lodge's novel Therapy (1995) in light of Balthasar's Theo‐logic. Lodge does well to illustrate that the erasure of God that preoccupies postmodern consciousness significantly affects contemporary conceptions about “subject formation” and “people in relation.” Lodge develops these themes by constructing a narrative that mirrors both the theological trajectory of Balthasar's tripartite program and the existential progression identified by the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard—namely, the aesthetic, ethical, and religious “stages” of human experience. Importantly, a close consideration of Kierkegaard's stages reveals a direct analogy with the transcendentals, which, in turn, illuminates one of the many reasons why Balthasar admired Kierkegaard and why Lodge's novel is a fertile literary example of Balthasar's Theologic. By a close consideration of the triadic structure of being presented by a variety of sources, the chapter begins to discern how God's logic—how human logic—exists in a trinitarian dynamic.

This chapter uses the analytical model of the Catholic social imagination developed in Chapter 2 to examine and analyze how the various groups focused on the social justice mission of the Church function in a national context and form the basis for a U.S. Catholic social justice milieu, particularly at the grassroots level where social justice is experienced. In particular, it highlights how their use of the community-organizing model initiated by Saul Alinsky has transformed it into a distinctive faith-based community-organizing model consonant with key principles of Catholic social teaching. Once a pre-Vatican II countercultural institution facilitating ethnic and immigrant socialization into U.S. life, the U.S. Catholic Church as an institution now works to facilitate long-term social justice in public life. The post-Vatican II U.S. Catholic Church has created a social imagination steeped in many of the principles of the social doctrine, as well as the civic values and principles of U.S. political culture.

What are some hallmarks of Catholic vision that might allow readers to identify a Catholic imagination at work when they encounter one? Is it possible to identify lines of continuity among writers whose work is original and entirely unique to that person? And, finally, in what way can seeing—and representing—the world Catholicly bear the stamp of truth for non-Catholics as well as Catholics? This chapter deals with sacramental qualities and themes found among poets and novelists whose works constitute a kind of canon of the Catholic literary imagination. From the nineteenth-century English Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins to the mid-twentieth-century French novelist Georges Bernanos and American writer Flannery O'Connor, the chapter examines a spiritual aesthetic best conveyed perhaps in the words of a character dying young in Bernanos's celebrated novel The Diary of a Country Priest. The chapter is particularly attuned to the subtle interplay of language and spirit.

This chapter demonstrates how the “Catholic imagination” mode of interpretation might better serve what the philosopher Charles Taylor calls the “social imaginary.” It suggests that the prevailing Catholic “imaginary” has failed to fully engage the range of social injustices found in places like the author's native Philadelphia. The author's account of Philadelphia's 2,800 wall murals—and her own engagement with these murals as sites of theological reflection and liberation praxis—represents a mode of Catholic Studies that both draws on the approaches described in this volume and models a new kind of Catholic humanism. The author's project is radically interdisciplinary as the work of a Christian ethicist drawn to works of visual art whose presence demands interpretive responses beyond the limits of “Catholic imagination” precedent, yet rooted in unfulfilled yearnings of Catholic activists in the tradition of the Catholic Worker movement, the liturgical movement, and the Catholic interracial apostolate, each of which sought an integration of faith, culture, community, and the work of social justice.

This chapter suggests that vestiges of a Catholic imagination may be discerned in classic works of American literature authored by Protestants, and in particular, the most canonical novel of all, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. It enlists the intercession of Robert A. Orsi, perhaps the most influential figure in the field of American Catholic Studies, who in his own work has treated the interior religiosity and public devotional lives of urban Italian Americans—to provide a kind of Catholic Studies rereading of The Scarlet Letter. The playful quality of this exercise only enhances the sense that American Studies has been “Catholicized” via works of Orsi, the author himself, and others who explicitly treat issues that historically bedeviled Protestants, such as the body in its various guises and (in)capacities and the interplay of suffering, erotic desire, and spirituality.

The author demonstrates how the Mexican Catholic imagination is not fixed but is always evolving as women experience life and as their Catholic faith and devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe grows deeper. It is argued that the women’s Catholic devotion is fluid and moves and is shaped by their lived experience. They come in contact with the sacred through touch, the smell of fresh flowers, the taste of special foods, the holy images at home, all reminding them that they are not alone but in communion with saints. As a result, as the women mature, the way they relate to La Virgen de Guadalupe becomes more holistic and complex.

The author contends that because Catholic Mexican-origin women learn to think of Our Lady of Guadalupe as an ever-present and all-accepting heavenly mother, they also see her as nonjudgmental. This ultimately allows the participants to continue to identify as Catholic, to retain the aspects of Catholicism they find life-giving, and to transgress some traditional limiting notions of what a good Catholic woman should be. The chapter also raises the question of what feminism means to the three cohorts of Las Damas, Las Madres, and Las Mujeres, and how they think of La Virgen de Guadalupe in relation to their definitions of feminism.

Obedience and respect are typically defined as a positive (both at the level of feeling and as action) toward another person or entity. However, while engaging in this type of behavior may be perceived as positive, this does not necessarily mean that it is a positive experience for women. The performance of obedience and respect can also be actions exercised by a girl who, out of free will or obligation, is moved to not disrupt the status quo imposed by a given culture, society, and religion. The author argues that the Catholic culture in which the mothers socialized the participants also provides the parameters within which they learn how to be good girls in ways that reduces a girl’s agency to rubble.

Chapter 1 offers readers a more general understanding of the significance of Our Lady of Guadalupe in México and the United States. It introduces the traditional story, dating back to the 16th century, when Our Lady of Guadalupe is said to have appeared to a Nahua man by the name of Juan Diego and charged him with the task of asking the local Catholic bishop to build a hermitage in her honor. The author follows with a general overview of Our Lady of Guadalupe in history, theology, US politics and the entertainment industry, Chicana feminist thought, and her influence in Latina/o communities in the United States today.

This chapter argues that religious commitments are often articulated by Santaneros as a sense of ongoing communication with divine and spiritual entities. This particular pattern signals commonality between Catholics and evangelicals in that members of both groups emphasize seeking spiritual guidance through their choices of religious commitments. Though Catholics and evangelicals differ in some of their respective practices related to communicating with spiritual entities, the expectations of divine guidance are similar. I argue that notions of spiritual dialogue are especially helpful to Santaneros as they evaluate the diverse religious options at their disposal. Santaneros concretize and affirm their religious commitments through practices of divine conversation. In navigating the ethnic space of Santa Ana, divine dialogue imbues the urban landscape with a sense of supernaturalism.