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But in addition to what we might technically consider “spiritual” reading, I would like to offer some recommendations of a rather different kind of book. Many people are not fully aware of the depth and breadth of Christian literature covering two millennia and every genre of writing.

Of course, Christian literature goes back to the Scriptures and the first centuries of the Faith. A lot of that is well enough known or at least appreciated. My emphasis here is on recommendations from Catholic poetry and fiction, including great novels from all over the world that are generally available in translation and easily accessible via your iPad or Kindle. Some of these may even be gathering dust in your attic or basement, just waiting to be rediscovered.

Blessed John Henry Newman gave a classic justification for paying attention to such works. In his lectures to the students at the Catholic university that he founded in Dublin in the mid-1800s (later published as The Idea of the University), he discusses the meaning and purpose of Catholic literature. And he draws very interesting distinctions – and lessons from them:

When a “Catholic Literature in the English tongue” is spoken of as a desideratum, no reasonable person will mean by “Catholic works” much more than the “works of Catholics.” The phrase does not mean a religious literature. “Religious Literature” indeed would mean much more than “the Literature of religious men;” it means over and above this, that the subject-matter of the Literature is religious; but by “Catholic Literature” is not to be understood a literature which treats exclusively or primarily of Catholic matters, of Catholic doctrine, controversy, history, persons, or politics; but it includes all subjects of literature whatever, treated as a Catholic would treat them, and as he only can treat them.