AN INTERVIEW WITH DANA GIOIA on the Christian retreat from American culture:

Although Catholics are now the largest religious denomination in the United States, representing at least a quarter of the U.S. population—they have a huge financial and social position in this country, they have actually almost disappeared in a cultural sense in a positive way. If you go back 60 years ago there was a vibrant, rich, cultural presence in all the arts. In literature, Catholics were everywhere: Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, Thomas Burton, Ernest Hemingway, et cetera. . . .

I think what we’ve seen is this very strange retreat the church has made—both internally less confident about itself, less presence in culture, which represents a complete historical turnaround for the Catholic church which was seen as the natural home for artists; I mean the glory of Catholicism has been its presence in material culture: architecture, paintings, sculpture, literary, music. But it’s become a rather generic and anonymous cultural presence now. . . .

The cultural situation for Catholics is very similar to all Christian faiths in the United States right now. . . .

The stories, the songs, the images by which we represent reality have an enormous influence on society and on the future. And when some of the largest groups—Catholics, all Christians—no longer have their stories, their songs, their images, their representations of reality available to the general culture, the culture is impoverished.