Sitting in the darkened chapel here at OSV, watching the flame of the sanctuary candle flicker, my thoughts turn often to the two greatest Catholic novelists of the 20th century (at least in my estimation): Evelyn Waugh and Walker Percy.
In Waugh’s case, the sanctuary candle calls to my mind the opening and closing chapters of “Brideshead Revisited.” In Walker Percy’s case, his entire body of work — novels, short fiction, and nonfiction — seems more relevant today than at any point in my lifetime. As a trained psychiatrist, a convert to Catholicism, a novelist and a victim of poor physical and (at times) mental health, Percy was fascinated by the way in which people reacted to dire situations — war, hurricanes, epidemics.