“We Need Faith, Not Dogma”

Nick Ripatrazone warns against “devotional fiction” that “feels too insular, too ‘finished,’ too contingent upon assumptions of shared dogma”:

We probably wouldn’t have many Catholics if identification required living one’s entire life–every moment–according to the Catechism. Hopefully good Catholics are shooting for everything, but we slip up. We need faith, not dogma. And the point is that God is watching us, but there’s not someone there with a chart, checking yes or no to each decision. The responsibility is on us. In the same way, characters in great Catholic or religious fiction need that free will.

Dana Gioia, a Catholic poet, makes a similar point:

I don’t think most people come to God (or most other core beliefs) through rational argumentation. They usually do the reasoning afterwards to explain to themselves and others why they believe. We experience faith, as we do almost everything else in life, holistically. We feel it with our emotions, intuition, and imagination as much as with our intellect. We even experience with our physical bodies.

The power of art is that it speaks to us in the fullness of our humanity. When the Church loses that capacity, it loses [its] ability to speak to most of humanity in its natural language. Theological arguments don’t even convince theologians to change their minds on a topic.