Francie’s Catholicism in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith: An Extract
Betty Smith’s great classic , A Tree Grows in Brooklyn , is one of my favourite books, and I read it practically every year. It’s really quite an anti-Catholic book, but in this passage she describes the beauty of Catholicism exquisitely: “Francie believed with all her heart that the altar was Calvary and that again Jesus was offered up as a sacrifice. As she listened to the consecrations, one for His Body and one for His Blood, she believed that the words of the priest were a sword which mystically separated the Blood from the Body. And she knew, without knowing how to explain why, that Jesus was entirely present, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the wine in the golden chalice and in the bread on the golden plate. "It's a beautiful religion," she mused, "and I wish I understood it more. No. I don't want to understand it all. It's beautiful because it's always a mystery, like God Himself is a mystery. Sometimes I...
