Catholicism has always found expression in art – and art has derived much of its character from Catholicism. A religion that has at its heart the idea of the sacramental – things that you can touch and see expressing and becoming things that you can neither touch nor see – gets right to what art is about. And the doctrine that words can effect change – from bread and wine to the body and blood of Christ – gives words life-changing potency.
This survey of top Catholic artists and writers in the English-speaking world since 1921 is to mark 100 years of the writing of a large part of The Waste Land by TS Eliot (that committed Anglican). Evelyn Waugh used Eliot’s line “I will show you fear in a handful of dust” as the title of his bleak 1934 novel of the same name, written four years after his conversion. It would have to rank in any list of best Catholic novels of the 20th century.
