A CATHOLIC CANON.

Dante to Dead Man Walking
One Reader's Journey through the Christian Classics
Raymond A. Schroth, S.J.
Loyola Press, $19.95, 242 pp.

One Sunday last summer, while driving to the beach, I came upon a book sale on the side of the road. A local library was selling off some of its underused stock. I pulled over, mapped out a strategy--hardcovers first, then paperbacks--and set to work. An hour later, I crawled into my car with an armful of books and a sunburn.

Looking at my findings later, I noticed that I had picked a disproportionate number of Catholic authors. (My harvest included a battered copy of Brideshead Revisited and an early edition of The Wheat That Springeth Green.) Was this merely a reflection of my idiosyncratic taste? Or was this library purging itself of Catholic authors? I imagined a bespectacled librarian discarding Waugh in favor of someone nicer and not so religious.

I was just having some fun, of course, but I do sometimes wonder what's become of the great Catholic books. I spent twelve years in Catholic schools and never read Greene, Waugh, Powers, Mauriac...the list goes on. That could be a sign of a Catholic educational philosophy that favors books of obvious political or spiritual import (read: Merton) over dated, vaguely religious novels. Or it could be a sign of my own delinquency. Either way, it's encouraging to see Raymond Schroth revisit the old masters in Dante to Dead Man Walking: One Reader's Journey through the Christian Classics.

As the subtitle suggests, Schroth, a Jesuit priest and former Commonweal editor, has compiled a greatest hits of the Christian oeuvre. Here are Dante and Merton, The Diary of a Country Priest and The Divine Milieu. Schroth paints a thumbnail sketch of each author, gives a brief summary of the work in question, and then wraps it up with some thoughts of his own.

Some of the selections are predictable. You can't write a book like this without The Confessions, I suppose. Others reflect the spirit of the times mentioned above: Gustavo Gutierrez's A Theology of Liberation and Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza's In Memory of Her both make the cut. Not all the writers are Catholic, though most are. Happily, there are some surprises. Rebecca Mead and Henry Adams, for instance, are both welcome additions.

Reading Schroth, I was struck once again by the sheer catholicity of the Catholic tradition. What other faith could sustain figures as diverse as Waugh, Teilhard, and Fiorenza? The tradition spoke to each of these writers in a different way, and in turn, their work appealed to different sorts of believers. It's a shame that a number of them aren't read anymore. One hopes that Schroth's book will find its way onto the shelves of those charged with compiling reading lists.

Schroth does a nice job introducing--or reintroducing--these works to the reader. Each chapter is informative and accessible. He weaves in reviews or telling biographical details when appropriate, and the plot summary is enough to whet the appetite without spoiling the meal. His prose is sharp and tight, and he has a good eye for detail.

I particularly enjoyed Schroth's recollections of when and where he first read the book in question. As a child he discovered Death Comes for the Archbishop on his family's library shelf: "I would read the title almost daily and wonder who the archbishop was and how and why he died." In the seminary, his classmates took Kristin Lavransdatter to their room with them at night for romantic thrills. Charming stuff.

Schroth sometimes falters in his eagerness to explain the continuing relevance of his selections. He, understandably, wants to show why these books are still vital. But at times the way he goes about it is troubling. Consider his chapter on The Power and the Glory. After a compelling description of the book's final scene, he writes: "So where do these priests live and die today? We usually find their stories on the pages of the National Catholic Reporter...murdered by death squads for criticizing the state." Look, Schroth seems to be saying, the book is still pertinent. It speaks to the current social and political milieu. He may be right, but what if it didn't? Would it still be worth reading? Isn't Greene's complex portrait of the whiskey priest enough to make it a classic? I think Schroth would agree with me on this point, which makes his aside--and others like it--all the more puzzling.

But Schroth's digressions are brief. Soon enough, he returns to form. He shows us Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited, walking the streets of Morocco, in search of Sebastian, and Gabriel Conroy from Joyce's "The Dead" at his bedroom window, watching the snow "falling faintly" and "faintly falling." Schroth's inspiring conclusion is well earned: "If we read deeply enough and allow the author and the character he or she creates to break through our distractions and defenses, that encounter can be the moral equivalent of a confrontation with a living person. No, it does not achieve the sensation of the friend's living embrace or the shock of a fraternal admonition. But it is real and true."

Maurice Timothy Reidy is a reporter for the Hartford Courant.