Pope Francis wants us to read more books

Every summer, my family would make a highly anticipated weekly trip to the local public library to check in on our progress for the summer reading program. The librarians would open a treasure box of prizes to reward us for the hours we spent reading the previous week, always leading up to end-of-summer prizes like free ice cream or tickets to the local minor league baseball team.

Whether you have fond memories of achieving reading goals in order to earn a personal-sized pizza or are working with your children now to read 1,000 books before kindergarten, initiatives to foster a love of reading in children have long been a part of the lives of Americans. Especially in our current age of shortened attention spans, the sheer discipline to be able to sit down and read a book is virtuous in itself.

In a letter released on Sunday, Aug. 4, Pope Francis addressed those involved in priestly formation in a particular way, but also more widely all Christians, to encourage us to read more literature and poetry and to include them in formation programs.

Pope Francis writes that based on his own experience as a literature teacher, it is natural to think that Christians need to primarily read the classics in order to have a refined sense of what is true and beautiful. And while these are important, he says, we need not read only Homer or “Hamlet” in our Christian formation.

The Holy Father encourages us to engage with contemporary literature as a way of being a Church that is in dialogue with our culture. He repeats his message that we need to be Christians who understand our brothers and sisters who may not hold the same moral values as us, but who are Christ’s beloved just the same.

As I read Pope Francis’s short letter, it resonated deeply with me. As a reader and a writer, I have enjoyed writing reviews of secular books from a Catholic perspective, not just to provide content warnings or to glean Christian messages from new releases, but also to see where authors are vulnerable enough to reveal the cry of the human heart.

Reading books by authors that hold different values or perspectives from our own is a relatively spiritually safe way of learning the workings of a secular culture. Unlike entering a crowded night club on a Saturday night or even following people we disagree with on social media, there is no immediate need to act. We don’t have to worry about saying the wrong thing to someone or be concerned that our silence might be interpreted as assent.

When we read, we can be a listening Church without the need to immediately respond. As we hear the cry of humanity found in literature, we can allow our hearts to be moved, just like Jesus’s heart when he saw that the crowds “were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36).

We can hear the cry of the poor and those affected by the opioid crisis as in Barbara Kingsolver’s “Demon Copperhead,” see the effects of our own media usage by reading a child star’s memoir like “The Woman in Me” by Britney Spears or “I’m Glad My Mom Died” by Jennette McCurdy, or understand more deeply the pain and desperation of migrants fleeing violence in books like “Solito” by Javier Zamora.

Literature gives us the freedom to discern how we will respond, not in mere words or posts, but with the way we live our lives and how we love our brothers and sisters. In ways that may never be possible otherwise, books give us insight into complex situations and suffering, the places where God’s presence can often be seen most clearly.

Of course, we always need to be prudent with any media usage, and books are no exception. There is no need to read books that are pornographic or may be near occasions of sin for us, a boundary that each individual needs to honestly discern for himself. For example, I enjoy reading thrillers, but personally try to stay away from books that involve supernatural elements because I’ve discerned that they disturb my inner peace. Another person may be disturbed by the violence in some of the books that I read, but which are merely elements in a story for me. Asking the Holy Spirit to guide us is always a good idea, and choosing what media we consume is no exception.

I am grateful for the Holy Father’s recent letter encouraging us to incorporate literature into our Christian formation, which includes a reminder that books have a defined beginning and end, unlike social media which can consume our time endlessly. Whether it’s a hardback, an eBook, or an audiobook, pick up a book today. You might be surprised at what you find.