As you can see, this issue is late. I actually had it ready in November, but my back-up failed to copy it (along with a lot of other work, including my Catholic SF novel), and now I'm scrambling to catch up. I had worked so hard to be ahead this year, too!

At least I'm getting it out before the registration ends for the Catholic Writers Conference Online. Last issue, I told you how wonderful the live conference was; the online one is even better! Lots of excellent speakers, several major publishers seeking pitches, forum-based critique workshops... and it's all FREE. (Not Catholic? You may still attend, but you must respect our beliefs.We have several non-Catholic presenters, and are thankful for thier expertise and generosity.)

This year is bringing some changes to our family again. We'll be moving; I'll have two in high school and one in middle school, and my writing demands have increased. I also have come to realize that it's really not fair to ask for articles gratis when I personally don't want to write stories for no pay, either.

Thus, I ask you: Is this newsletter worth keeping--and paying my contributors for? I am establishing a hit counter to see how many people read it, but whether or not I continue will depend on reader feedback. You can do this in two ways: Take this poll or contact me with your opinion..

Guest Columnist

Backsliding to Heaven

By G.K. Fields (aka Walt Staples)

Are your characters true?

In my own case, my characters being rounded (I hope) comes to a degree from their religious thought. Looking at them, I’m reminded of the old WW II song: “Bless ‘em all, bless ‘em all, the long and the short and the tall…” One thing that helps me crawl inside these folks is, in a lot of cases, I’ve already been in their skins.

I think most of us sort of stumble through life. Those few I‘ve met who maintained they were never sidetracked seemed to be either trying to kid me or were monomaniacs. I was born to a Southern Baptist and a Pentecostal, neither generally held up by their preachers as a model (something to do with cigarettes and a couple beers every week). I learned religion was things you didn’t do. You didn’t smoke or drink if you were a Protestant, you didn’t eat meat on Friday or get divorced if you were a Catholic, and you didn’t work on Saturday or eat pork if you were Jewish. I was pretty lucky about religious prejudice growing up. There were the 1,001 Pope jokes and Jew jokes (as I learned, they had their 1,001 about us), but it tended not to be mean-spirited. One thing that helped is we all had Protestants, Catholics and Jews in our families. The people we hung out with were mixed. And biggest of all, we really didn’t know a dang thing about the real tenets of our religions. It was for the religious professionals and the self-professed saints to drawn blood with their sniping.

Television in the 50s was actually an aid to ecumenism. Sunday morning, the only thing on were religious shows. The half-hour shows were packed cheek-to-jowl with no commercials (maybe station managers thought it would have been redundant) and no kind of order. The Jewish show was on at 07:00, a couple of Protestant shows followed, then a Catholic one, followed by another bunch of Protestant shows of all stripes.

Later, hanging around with Marines and Sailors, I met more religions. Being armed, everyone tended to be respectful of everyone else’s religious beliefs – we kidded everybody constantly. The only things verboten was their mother, sweetheart, kids and religious leader, usually. I remember it took a civilian and fellow Christian to tell me my newborn was damned to hell because I didn’t belong to his church. Apparently, Heaven is going to echo a bit because, according to him, only about sixty people are going to get in. Thanks, but I’ll take my chances with Jesus judging me – he grades on a curve.

How this comes out in my own characters, is that most are cultural whatevers. They don’t really think that deeply about their beliefs. This changes when they are hit in the face with a situation in which these suddenly really matter. In my historical mystery, Chained Dogs, the young Watson begins to explore his beliefs for the first time. The older sleuth has been through this experience perhaps twenty years before. He realizes you can’t do it for someone else, but you can stand by to help pick up the pieces if necessary.

Some Russian said, “write what you know.”  So most of my characters, like the people I’ve known, are just trying to get through life. As long as I keep this in mind, they’ll be believable..

G.K. Fields is the author of Chained Dogs, part of the Conrad Ritter historical mystery cycle. Also in the works is A Shenandoah Farewell, a contemporary police procedural. When not tangled in the naughty doings of imaginary people, he does freelance copyediting. He's the new President of the Catholic Writers Guild, for which he has my profound gratitude.

Writing Tips

Morality in Fiction

By D. G. Davidson

Morality in Fiction D. G. D. Davidson Previously, this space featured an essay by Robert Florez on morality in comics. Florez argues that the comic creator should show as little sexual or violent content as possible in order to avoid giving the reader an occasion of sin. Florez's desire to create wholesome literature is admirable, but I suggest he starts from the wrong place and fails to give useful guidelines. Although an author or comic creator should be conscious of the possibility of giving a reader occasion to sin, his first concerns should be with producing good art and promoting human dignity.

Florez proposes that the lack of detail in some biblical narratives is evidence of the biblical writers' circumspection and good taste. He builds his argument entirely on what he does not find in scripture. Says Florez: "God could have detailed this slaughter [of the levitical priests by Doeg in 1 Samuel 22.18ff] with realistic details--puddles of blood, severed limbs, screams of agony, violence--more accurately. But these details are missing from the narrative."

Florez proposes that the biblical writers avoid explicit details to avoid giving an occasion of sin to the readers. This suffers the weakness of any argument from negative evidence; he draws larger inferences from the biblical text than the text can support, working from the assumption that absence from scripture implies a moral prohibition. This argument would fail to convince a skeptic, and it arguably proves too much: a great many mundane things do not appear in the Bible, and yet no one would claim that representing them in fiction is sinful.

Furthermore, Florez's essay does not consider a few important points about the biblical narratives. First, the biblical writers did not have access to the language and techniques of the modern novelist. Ancient Mesopotamian texts dealing with violence and sex are also sparse on details by modern standards, though Florez would not argue that those texts are God-breathed. The biblical writers did not write purple prose at least partly because they did not have the techniques or vocabulary. The passages of scripture dealing with sex and violence are not particularly graphic, but the passages dealing with other subjects are not graphic either.

Second, Florez ignores some of the more descriptive passages in scripture. He does not address Ezekiel 23, which presents a serious problem for his theory. Although Ezekiel 23 is not graphic in the manner of a modern novel, it does not hold back on detail. Anyone approaching this text with the wrong mindset could find it an occasion of sin, yet God still saw fit to include it in scripture.

If absence of biblical detail does not indicate what constitutes appropriate content in fiction, what does? I believe the best answer is to start from a different place: Instead of first considering what might tempt a reader, the author should first consider what accords with human dignity and good art, a topic I will take up in part 2 of this article.

D. G. D. Davidson is a science fiction enthusiast and former archaeologist currently studying philosophy at a Catholic seminary. His novelette "Dragonsaint" appeared in the magazine MindFlights. He runs a science fiction blog, The Sci Fi Catholic at www.scificatholic.com.

Religion Research

The Bahá’í Faith — a Primer for Writers — Part 3

By Maya Bohnhoff

The Bahá’í Faith is not a sect of Islam, though you occasionally still see it called that. There are, after all, those who still consider Christianity a sect of Judaism.

The Faith was born in Persia (Iran) at the peak of the millennial fervor in 1844 during which religious groups worldwide expected a Return—whether of Christ, Buddha or another divine Figure. One of a group of Muslim students scouring Persia for the promised Prophet, met a young man in Shiraz who claimed to be the One. After the young man, who called Himself the Báb (the Gate), produced all the proofs the student required, the first disciple left his new Master, sworn to secrecy. Seventeen other disciples must find the Báb unaided before He would begin His mission—to prepare the way for another Prophet who would lay the foundations of world unity and peace as foretold in the Holy Books of the revealed religions.

When the last disciple found him two weeks later, the Báb went to Mecca and publicly announced Himself. People flocked to Him, and with thousands of people embracing this new faith, the Islamic clergy struck back. They killed 20,000 Báb’is, all told, in a variety of horrific ways. On July 9th of 1850, the Báb was publicly executed in Tabriz and persecution increased.

Among the imprisoned Báb’is was a young nobleman named Husayn-Ali-i-Nur’i, later known as Bahá’u’lláh (the Glory of God). Chained in the Black Pit of Tehran, He received a revelation that He was the One the Báb had foretold. The revelation came through a visitation by the Holy Spirit in the form of what Bahá’u’lláh called “The Maid of Heaven.”

After four months in prison, Bahá’u’lláh was exiled to Baghdad. From there He was sent to Constantinople, to Adrianople, and at last, the remote prison city of Akka, Palestine.

During these exiles, He wrote His teachings and laid out His administrative order, appointing Mount Carmel as its world center. He asked that the Báb’s remains, which had been kept hidden for about 50 years, be brought to Mount Carmel for burial. They are now buried beneath the Shrine of the Báb at the Bahá’í World Center.

Much of the history of this time—from the advent of the Báb to Bahá’u’lláh’s public announcement of His mission—is chronicled by one of His disciples, Nabil-i-Zandari in The Dawnbreakers. (http://www.bahai-library.org/books/dawnbreakers/)

This is a mere sliver of Bahá’í history, obviously. For the writer, the detailed accounts offer a window on events that accompany the birth of every faith: acceptance and rejection; heroism and betrayal (as Jesus had Judas, and Buddha had Devadatta, Bahá’u’lláh had His half-brother Yahya); the spirit of sacrifice and hope that drove the early disciples to spread the message under constant threat of death; the birth of a new faith community; the persecutions and cruelties that failed to destroy it. .

Next: Bahá’í history 101B--More recent history.