a Catholic novelist

...Catholic means universal, and a Catholic novelist is one whose mise-en-scene is the universe--not that bit of it which lies immediately under his nose, which he sees in the daylight and trips over in the dark--but the whole of it with all its parts and all its inhabitants. The secular novelist sees what's visible. The Catholic novelist sees what's there. He may or may not bring God and the angels as characters into his story, but they are always *factors* in his story (just as a painter cannot paint the wind and cannot paint the air but would produce a poor landscape without them). This is not to say that the Catholic is the better novelist. He may lack genius or art or even ordinary talent, so that he merely potters about on his universal stage while the secular novelist works magic with the little bit of universe which is all he has. But if by chance the Catholic has genius, then his novel cannot but be revelation. - F.J. Sheed in "Gertrud von le Fort", published in Sidelights on the Catholic Revival (Sheed & Ward, New York: 1940) & brought to my attention by Debra Murphy