Wounded Angel

Paul Lakeland is the Aloysius P. Kelley, SJ, Professor of Catholic Studies and founding director of the Center for Catholic Studies at Fairfield University, a Jesuit institution in Connecticut. Educated at Heythrop Pontifical Athenaeum, Oxford University, the University of London, and Vanderbilt University, he has taught at Fairfield since 1981. He is the author of nine previous books, the most recent of which is A Council That Will Never End: Lumen Gentium and the Church Today (Liturgical Press, 2013). Lakeland is a member of the American Academy of Religion, the American Theological Society, the College Theology Society, and the Catholic Theological Society of America. He blogs occasionally and reviews fiction for Commonweal, a Catholic journal of opinion.

"The Wounded Angel considers the uses of so-called secular literature to convey illuminations of mystery, the unsayable, the hidden otherness, the Holy One. Saint Ignatius urged us to find God in all things, and Paul Lakeland demonstrates how that's theologically possible in fictions whose authors had no spiritual or religious intentions. A fine and much-needed reflection."Ron Hansen, Santa Clara University

• Contents  Introduction  Part One: The Act of Faith and the Act of ReadingChapter One: What Is the Act of Faith? Chapter Two: Faith in the Modern World Chapter Three: Faith and Fiction  Part Two: Religion and LiteratureChapter Four: The Crisis of Faith and the Promise of Grace Chapter Five: Secular Mysticism Chapter Six: What’s Catholicism Got to Do with It?  Part Three: The Wounded AngelChapter Seven: The Sacred and the Secular Chapter Eight: The Communion of Saints Chapter Nine: Saving Stories  Index of Names