Reading With a Second Friend: Pope Francis on Literature

For all the benefits of literature, what is missing from this letter, despite the language of “discernment” that permeates it, is the recognition that there can be dangers to literature. There is a softening of the edges that have been there in earlier writers. There is no doubt that, as the pope quotes from Basil of Caesarea, the advantages of pagan classical literature (and, by extension, other non-Christian literature) are many. But Jerome’s famous worries about his attachment to the classical authors were not simply the result of a dyspeptic nature. If literature has power for good, it certainly has power for evil.