Amid fresh discussion over the nature of Catholicism sparked by the new Pope, Adam Gopnik spots a chance to revive appreciation for J.F. Powers, a Catholic author who “accepted the necessity of the divine institution, without unduly sanctifying its officials”:
The [new] collection of letters reveals that he spent the war years as a conscientious objector, and as a sympathizer with the Detachers—a Catholic movement, never officially approved, but apparently tolerated, that insisted that American materialism and militarism were both evils to be avoided at all costs by good Catholics. The idea of an American Catholicism whose central purpose was to stop the national-security state and the supermarket—in those days, supermarkets were seen as Wal-Mart is now—is alien to us, and Powers’s immersion in the often self-defeating politics of left-Catholic activism, with its glamorized poverty, is fascinating to follow from letter to letter.
The Dish 