Letters to a Young Catholic

Letters to a Young Catholic is a 2004 “spiritual memoir-cum-travelogue” (Publishers’ Weekly) by American author and social activist George Weigel. The book comprises a series of essays on Catholic thought and practice, aimed at an intelligent teenage or young adult reader with some existing knowledge of Catholicism.

Weigel argues that an important part of Catholicism is the experience of Catholic places, both sacred sites and everyday places in the lives of ordinary Catholics. For this reason, each of the book’s essays is rooted in a particular geographical place, or in some cases two places. In a conversational style, Weigel gives detailed descriptions of each place before turning to an area of Catholic belief or practice that for him is embodied in that place. Each essay is interlaced with stories, some of them about prominent Catholic figures, and others drawn from Weigel’s own life as a practicing Catholic. Each essay concludes by considering the Biblical teaching of Jesus.

The first essay opens with a description of Weigel’s childhood in a predominantly Catholic area of Baltimore. He argues that the Catholic places and people of his youth not only encouraged him to have faith in a particular set of beliefs, but also shaped his “optic,” his way of viewing the world. He suggests that the Catholic “optic” might be the same thing as the Catholic “habit of being,” described by American writer Flannery O’Connor. Next, Weigel visits Milledgeville, O’Connor’s hometown. There he discusses O’Connor’s Catholicism (quoting at length from her writing) and considers what makes the Catholic “habit of being” unique and irreplaceable. This question provides the topic of the remaining essays.



His next destination is St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome, specifically the “Scavi,” the necropolis beneath the Cathedral where St. Peter is presumed to be buried. Weigel uses this site as a launchpad to discuss what he calls the “grittiness” of Catholicism, its willingness to deal with bones and relics and the harder truths of life more generally.

The third essay takes us to two Biblical sites. The first is Mount Sinai, where Moses receives the Ten Commandments. Weigel visits nearby St. Catherine’s Monastery, an Eastern Orthodox site, which provides Weigel an opportunity to introduce small “c” catholicism and inter-denominational affairs. He explores this topic further at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, believed to be built on the site of Jesus’s tomb, which is shared by monks and priests of many different denominations. The fourth essay also takes its inspiration from a Biblical site. According to local tradition, the Dormition Abbey outside Jerusalem is the site where the Virgin Mary ended her time on earth. From this starting point, Weigel discusses Catholicism’s focus on devotion to Mary. He considers Mary as a model for Christian “discipleship.”

At the Oratory in Birmingham, Weigel devotes his fifth essay to John Henry Newman, the nineteenth-century Anglican priest who converted to Catholicism. As well as telling the story of Newman’s life, Weigel takes the controversy over Newman’s conversion as an opportunity to consider the pitfalls of “liberal” theology. The sixth and seventh essays also take English places as their starting points. The Olde Cheshire Cheese is the London pub frequented by Christian apologist G.K. Chesterton: quoting Chesterton at length, Weigel discusses his ideas, particularly his conception of a “sacramental world,” which Weigel sees as a key part of the Catholic “optic.” At Castle Howard, where a film adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s romantic novel Brideshead Revisited was filmed, Weigel discusses Waugh’s Catholicism and the “ladder of love,” the idea originating with the philosopher Plato that spiritual love is a higher, more developed form of interpersonal love.



Next Weigel returns to Rome, this time to the Sistine Chapel, where he extols the value of Catholic sacred art, focusing on the work of Michelangelo and Fra Angelico. The ninth essay is a discussion of prayer, unfolding at St. Mary’s Church in Greenville, South Carolina. At Catholic sites in Warsaw and Kraków, Weigel tells the story of the Catholic martyr and anti-Communist activist Father Jerzy Popieuszko. More broadly, he explores ways in which religious vocations have had world-historical effects. In essay eleven, Weigel considers Catholic beliefs about suffering and mortality at the mausoleum of the Pontifical North American College in Rome. He argues that through Christ’s suffering, “suffering itself is redeemed.”

The final three essays take place in three cathedrals: Chartres, Baltimore, and Kraków. In each place, Weigel outlines one of the core aspects of the Catholic “habit of being.” In Chartres, he discusses Catholicism’s openness to beauty of all kinds, and the spiritual lessons to be learned from beauty. In Baltimore, he argues that religious faith is necessary for true personal freedom. In Krakow, he affirms that Christians are defined by their experience of not being alone in the world.

Publishers’ Weekly described Letters to a Young Catholic as a “first-rate” follow-up to Weigel’s widely acclaimed biography of Pope John Paul II, Witness to Hope.