Description: Deep Down Things explores common threads that characterize Catholicism. The contributors look successively at Catholic culture and everyday life, Catholic culture and the imaginative life, and Catholic culture and postmodern life-where individual conscience, skepticism, and re...
Brief description: Ron Hansen's novels include Desperadoes, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Mariette in Ecstasy, and Atticus, a finalist for the National Book Award. He teaches at Santa Clara University in Northern California.
Review Quotes:
"Written within the broad spectrum that is called the Catholic intellectual tradition, this collection of essays, initially delivered as lectures at the Thomas More Center for the Study of Catholic Thought and Culture at Rockhurst University, demonstrates the impact of the Catholic faith on the culture, from worship and things pertaining to worship to morality and literature. It shows clearly, as the secular culture of the West gives ground to alien forces, that the Church remains a beacon and not a weathervane." --Jude P. Dougherty, Catholic University of America
"Deep Down Things takes us back to Gerard Manley Hopkins as a variant of 'First Things' or 'First Principles' of the 'Highest Things.' However we look at it or name it, we pursue, as Augustine did, that which is true and that which is beautiful, beginning with the reality before us. The contributing authors show us many ways to find our own way to 'what is, ' to what our lives are about." --Rev. James V. Schall S.J., Georgetown University