"If Catholic literature has a central theme, it is the difficult journey of the sinner toward redemption" (14). - Dana Gioia

Tradition is not, as post-modernists maintain, a library or museum the artist plunders. It is the endless conversation between the living and the dead. Young artists enter into this conversation passionately — not merely intellectually, though study and analysis play a part. They live and breathe it. Tradition is not a public building. It is a love affair.

"A New York leftist and an Alabama Pentecostal may not agree on much, but too often they share a dislike of Catholics" (22).

Money. You don't know where it's been,
but you put it where your mouth is.
And it talks.