A Catholic View of Reading, and My Agnostic, Buddhist Response
Mar. 28th, 2026 10:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labingi(Reposted from my Substack)
I recently attended a Trinity Lecture Series lecture, "Knowing What We Don’t Know: Cultivating Intellectual Humility Through Imaginative Literature" with Dr. Jessica Hooten Wilson. It was a very good lecture by a Catholic for an audience assumed to be entirely Catholic. As an agnostic Buddhist, I was a cultural guest, and it was the first time in a long time I have been a guest in discourse community that assumes everyone is an insider. Such an experience is a gift, even—perhaps especially—when it causes discomfort. Moreover, it was an apt gift to receive in a lecture about cultivating humility and knowing what we don’t know. I tried to follow Professor Hooten Wilson’s (hereafter JHW) advice to listen openly and think deeply. Here are some of my impressions.
I am fully onboard with her advice to read a wide range of fiction with openness and, if those works don’t initially connect with us, to start with the thought, “Maybe I missed something.” I’m not great at that. I’m a judgmental reader of fiction, especially if it’s recent. So this is something I can and should strive to improve on.
A key aspect of her advice was to read texts widely known to be great works of high morality in order to cultivate “taste.” By developing a taste for such works, we can gravitate to them and increase our exposure to good role models and lessons, while decreasing the amount of time we spend engaging with harmful inputs. I agree with a lot of this. “Taste” is not the word I would personally use because, to me, “taste” is a relatively amoral word; it refers to entertainment (or food, etc.) that one enjoys regardless of one’s underlying morals. For example, one may have a “taste” for horror movies without thinking people should terrorize each other in real life. JHW, however, ties “taste” strongly to moral rectitude, which is lexically alien to me.
I agree, however, that morality is deeply entangled with fiction. I agree that what we like generally says something about our values—or at least this is true for me. I agree that this is important and deserves consideration. I might call it something different: discernment, judgment? I personally would leave a greater philosophical space for enjoying works without morally agreeing with them.
But I agree that surrounding oneself with beneficial inputs is beneficial. Reading great works helps the heart and mind in ways that reading trash doesn’t. I have certainly absorbed ill effects from works with some kind of “harmful” message. The most harmful to me personally has been the message that women have to have a romantic partner to be anything other than a failure. This was culturally louder in my formative years than it is now, and it followed me from Disney to Jane Austen to every pop fantasy novel to every Shakespearean comedy, and so on.
But this is tricky because harmful messages can be in great works that also have good messages. Pride and Prejudice is a good novel; Much Ado about Nothing is a good play. I’m glad I’ve read both. On balance, I agree with my parents (and I think JHW agrees too) that reading broadly is a decent way to sort through different kinds of messaging. I doubt that it’s possible not to get psychologically hurt (at least for someone, like myself, who absorbs a lot of life through literature), but it certainly is possible to cultivate a practice of reading works that are thoughtful, well crafted, and conscientious in their various ways.
Where JHW’s discourse threw me was not in its basic points about reading but in its (Catholic) stance on humanity. She opened by asserting that we (humans) tend to think only about our successes and see our lives as a continuous rise through accomplishments. I thought, what universe does she inhabit? I thought, my default perspective is better summed up by an interchange in the Monk movie, where Monk says something offensive, and a bystander says, “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” And Monk says, “Yes, every day. All the time.” (Quote may not be exact.)( Read more... )
I recently attended a Trinity Lecture Series lecture, "Knowing What We Don’t Know: Cultivating Intellectual Humility Through Imaginative Literature" with Dr. Jessica Hooten Wilson. It was a very good lecture by a Catholic for an audience assumed to be entirely Catholic. As an agnostic Buddhist, I was a cultural guest, and it was the first time in a long time I have been a guest in discourse community that assumes everyone is an insider. Such an experience is a gift, even—perhaps especially—when it causes discomfort. Moreover, it was an apt gift to receive in a lecture about cultivating humility and knowing what we don’t know. I tried to follow Professor Hooten Wilson’s (hereafter JHW) advice to listen openly and think deeply. Here are some of my impressions.
I am fully onboard with her advice to read a wide range of fiction with openness and, if those works don’t initially connect with us, to start with the thought, “Maybe I missed something.” I’m not great at that. I’m a judgmental reader of fiction, especially if it’s recent. So this is something I can and should strive to improve on.
A key aspect of her advice was to read texts widely known to be great works of high morality in order to cultivate “taste.” By developing a taste for such works, we can gravitate to them and increase our exposure to good role models and lessons, while decreasing the amount of time we spend engaging with harmful inputs. I agree with a lot of this. “Taste” is not the word I would personally use because, to me, “taste” is a relatively amoral word; it refers to entertainment (or food, etc.) that one enjoys regardless of one’s underlying morals. For example, one may have a “taste” for horror movies without thinking people should terrorize each other in real life. JHW, however, ties “taste” strongly to moral rectitude, which is lexically alien to me.
I agree, however, that morality is deeply entangled with fiction. I agree that what we like generally says something about our values—or at least this is true for me. I agree that this is important and deserves consideration. I might call it something different: discernment, judgment? I personally would leave a greater philosophical space for enjoying works without morally agreeing with them.
But I agree that surrounding oneself with beneficial inputs is beneficial. Reading great works helps the heart and mind in ways that reading trash doesn’t. I have certainly absorbed ill effects from works with some kind of “harmful” message. The most harmful to me personally has been the message that women have to have a romantic partner to be anything other than a failure. This was culturally louder in my formative years than it is now, and it followed me from Disney to Jane Austen to every pop fantasy novel to every Shakespearean comedy, and so on.
But this is tricky because harmful messages can be in great works that also have good messages. Pride and Prejudice is a good novel; Much Ado about Nothing is a good play. I’m glad I’ve read both. On balance, I agree with my parents (and I think JHW agrees too) that reading broadly is a decent way to sort through different kinds of messaging. I doubt that it’s possible not to get psychologically hurt (at least for someone, like myself, who absorbs a lot of life through literature), but it certainly is possible to cultivate a practice of reading works that are thoughtful, well crafted, and conscientious in their various ways.
Where JHW’s discourse threw me was not in its basic points about reading but in its (Catholic) stance on humanity. She opened by asserting that we (humans) tend to think only about our successes and see our lives as a continuous rise through accomplishments. I thought, what universe does she inhabit? I thought, my default perspective is better summed up by an interchange in the Monk movie, where Monk says something offensive, and a bystander says, “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” And Monk says, “Yes, every day. All the time.” (Quote may not be exact.)( Read more... )
