I recently discovered Loyola Press Catholic Classics series. These were reprints started in 2005 of several dozen classic novels from the 20th century, from great authors like Rumer Godden (In This House of Brede), Edwin O'Connor (The Edge of Sadness) and A.J. Cronin (The Keys of the Kingdom). There are also books I don't like as much, such as Mr. Blue by Myles Connolly, but lots of people I love and respect like that one, so there is something for everyone in the series. A new discovery for me was John R. Powers' The Last Catholic in America. This is a very bittersweet novel, a young man, a "fallen-away Catholic," as the novel reveals slowly, travels back to the south side of Chicago to revisit his parish neighborhood, and reminisces about growing up in pre-Vatican II Catholic America. At one point, the narrator recounts his first confession and one soon after as a 2nd grader when he thinks he has committed a mortal sin, and a later confession:
What a fantastic feeling! To come back from the spiritually dead. To be free from sin! free from sin! free from sin! As I walked through the neighborhood, brown igloos of raked leaves smoldered lazily, scening the air with their familiar fall fragrance. The world fit so comfortably around me that everything I saw and heard seemed as if it had just been given, as I had, a brand-new shot at life.....
And I remember the last one. Kneeling in a confessional in some city's cathedral. When the priest asked me if I was sorry for my sins, in a moment of indifference, I gave him an honest answer. He shouted. I left. By then, there was more than a darkened window separating us.
Down the steps of the cathedral knowing, no, hoping in my mind that I was right, yet realizing I was never again to feel that resurgence of faith in my own and the world's immortality. Never again to experience the exhilaration of rising from the spiritually dead. Never again to be free from sin, free from sin, free from sin.
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