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Making Room For Two In One: The Conflictive Relationship Between American And Catholic Identities In American Literature, Kimberly Anne Humphrey

Denison Journal of Religion

This article considers the manner in which co-existing Catholic and American identities are represented in Andrew Greeley's Cardinal Sins, Edwin O'Connor's The Edge of Sadness, Walker Percy's Love in Ruins: The Behavior of a Bad Catholic at the Time Near the End of the World, and J.F. Powers's Morte d'Urban. In each novel, there is a conflict or difficulty in reconciling various identities, in particular Catholic and American identities. While the ways in which these two interact and, occasionally, conflict varies in each novel, there is always some attempt to work out a reconciliation between the two. Humphrey concludes her …