Conference series highlights why the Catholic imagination matters

Anyone hopeful for a stronger Catholic presence in contemporary arts and letters can only be heartened in the aftermath of the recent Catholic Imagination Conference at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana.

The Oct. 31-Nov. 2 conference featured some 175 presenters and more than 1,200 registered participants who discoursed on Catholic imagination as guided by the theme "Ever Ancient, Ever New."

The biennial Catholic Imagination Conference debuted in 2015, and has since been repeated at Fordham University in New York in 2017, at the University of Loyola in Chicago in 2019, and at the University of Dallas in 2022.

The CIC mission is to promote a Catholic voice in fiction, poetry and the fine arts, which its founders believe has faded from wider public consciousness since the mid-20th century. This loss of presence, coupled with a latent anti-Catholic sentiment in academia and contemporary secular culture, inspired a small group of poets, writers and educators to build a network of committed Catholic artists throughout North America, and eventually in South America, Europe and Asia.

This year's conference was held in conjunction with the University of Notre Dame's de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture, which has long pursued the promotion of Catholic moral and ethical traditions across various disciplines. Although the Catholic Imagination Conference is devoted primarily to the literary arts, the de Nicola Center's involvement helped to broaden the scope of the 2024 event to new subject areas, such as extending a Catholic mindset to the realms of healthcare, civil discourse, polarized communities and artificial intelligence.

Angela Alaimo-O'Donnell, an English literature professor at Fordham University in New York and a poet and author in her own right, said the first two conferences had a deliberate literary focus, but they have since grown to include workshop topics from a broad range of interests and disciplines.

"Our offerings, speakers, and panel discussions have become more diverse," she said in an interview following the conference, "and we are open to new genres, including crime novels, graphic novels, works of visual art, music and experimental film. And we are certainly interested in bringing in Catholic writers and artists from around the world, not just North America."

Women authors featured more prominently at this year's event, with readings from Latina poets Sarah Cortez of the Catholic Literary Arts program in Houston, Natalia Treviño of Northwest Vista College in San Antonio, Gina Franco of Knox College in Illinois, and Adela Najarro of the Círculo de Poetas and Writers.

In addition to a workshop on 20th-century women writers -- Muriel Spark, Sigrid Undset and Willa Cather -- the conference featured a discussion of lesser known but influential Catholic women writers of the late 19th century.

Although most of the conference discussion was more meaningful to writers, creative artists in various media and academics, there was abundant food for thought for ordinary Catholics. One workshop, for example, focused on the Catholic imagination and disabilities, and it included ways to accommodate people with autism or Down syndrome more fully into sacramental life.

The conference keynote address was given by Judith Wolfe, professor of philosophical theology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and author of a new work "The Theological Imagination," released just this year by Cambridge University Press.

Wolfe said while the human imagination will never fully comprehend transcendence and divine mysteries, certain forms of art can provide a glimpse of what awaits the human soul. "Poetry and art cannot guarantee the fulfillment of our glimpses of wholeness but they can awaken the courage to hope for it," she said in her address.

In many ways, the Catholic Imagination Conference is the brainchild of poet and educator Dana Gioia of Los Angeles. A one-time poet laureate for the state of California, Gioia is the author of seven poetry collections as well as anthologies and literary criticism.

In his 2014 booklet "The Catholic Writer Today" (Wiseblood Books), Gioia outlined the importance of Catholic artists and writers in fostering a Catholic sensibility in the wider public square.

"Despite its proclamations of diversity and multiculturalism, contemporary American letters has little use for Catholicism, and Catholics have retreated from mainstream cultural life," Gioia wrote. "What absorbs the Catholic intellectual media is politics, conducted mostly in secular terms -- a dreary battle of Right versus Left for the soul of the American Church. If the soul of Roman Catholicism is to be found in partisan politics, then it's time to shutter up the chapel."

Gioia elaborated on the need to utilize Catholic artists' literary and creative skills to keep a Catholic consciousness alive in contemporary public affairs. In his closing address at the conference, Gioia suggested Catholic creatives step back from the prevailing secular zeitgeist to ponder more essential truths.

"If you want to be a writer, don't meet the world on the world's terms," he said. "Being a real writer and a real Catholic is an odd and anomalous thing. Sooner or later, you have to break from the world, so quit, hide, work and wander as your destiny dictates."

"The church is reformed and revitalized not by its institutions, but by its saints," he added. "Without the saints, we would be lost. And that's why the secular press will mock anyone who is saintly. They will even attack Mother Teresa. We look to the saints for heroic virtue."