I’ve been thinking about a couple of the publishing-related comments, which seemed to imply that it’s really unrealistic to think that Catholic writing and publishing can reach the masses, that the hardcore customers of St. Cyprians are what we should be happy with, and that publishing in is the dumps anyway.

Well, publishing is certainly in transition, and absolutely no one can predict where it’s going, but I just can’t accept that writing and publishing for one-quarter of the population of the US should be happy with being a niche market.

Because, you know, reading Catholics do buy books and read them. 40% of customers in “Christian” bookstores are Catholic. Catholics are reading Rick Warren, Joyce Meyer and Left Behind. They’re looking for Bible studies. They’re reading “Christian” fiction and picking up VeggieTales for their kids.

The question is of “Catholic” writing….quo vadis?

The issue, it seems to me, is not only quality, but ideology. The energy of the Roman Catholic community of the past four decades has been inexorably driven to internal, naval-gazing, ideological concerns, and that’s reflected in publishing, which is rather fractured along ideological lines. It’s why there are two large book trade organizations that include Catholics…some publishers (like OSV) straddle both, others aren’t normally seen at one or the other (TAN and Ignatius have normally skip RBTE…except for this year which was very, very interesting, and let’s just say Paulist, for example, would not be at the Catholic Marketing Network).

So you have publishers who cater mostly to the “conservative”, and those that direct their efforts towards the more “liberal” (and longtime readers know why I put those in quotation marks). Some bookstores will be truly catholic, carrying all kinds, but in some…they won’t. Same with the gatekeepers, as I call them – the Catholic establishment of DRE’s, diocesan personnel, clergy and so on, which, up until the very recent past, would more happily buy a title from the local Buddhist publisher than they would from Ignatius, or anything written by anyone associated with the two most obscene words to that crowd: “apologetics” or “Steubenville.” (I’ve been in the meetings. I’ve heard them.)

So…are there Catholic writers crossing the lines and getting people of all sides to read and talk to each other? It’s obviously what I’m trying to do. There are others, too, but the landscape is predominantly still ideologically divided.

And we haven’t even gotten to the secular publishers and Catholic writing…your local Diocesan Director of Religious Ed may not like Scott Hahn, but Doubleday sure loves him. What does that say? There are good Catholic writers writing for secular publishers (and not included here are those in the “seeker” genre) – some ideological in nature (Garry Wills), others not – Bert Ghezzi….etc.

More later. Joseph slept rather late (after attending the rather exciting, late-running Fort Wayne Wizards game in which the home team came back from something like a five-run deficit in the ninth to beat the Lansing Lugnuts, on the final hit, ultimately of Fernando Valenzuela – son, not father), and there’s no way he’s going to nap this afternoon unless he’s marched around the zoo.

So, we’re off.