Oscar Wilde and the Catholic Church

The English press is reporting on an article in L'Osservatore Romano praising Oscar Wilde, the flamboyantly homosexual playwright and author who converted to Catholicism on his deathbed. The Telegraph called the move "a surprise act of reconciliation" in which "the Holy See's official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, praised the poet as a 'lucid analyst of the modern world'." The implication is that approving of the playwright's accurate views about the world means the Church approves of his homosexual behavior.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Catholic Church is filled with sinners, hopefully repentant sinners who over and over confess their sins and make a firm purpose of amendment and, in the process, move away from sin and closer to God. Oscar Wilde is an example of the 11th hour penitent; he became a Catholic two days before he died in 1900.

I think Wilde was an honest sinner who recognized his own weakness. Like St. Augustine who prayed, "Give me chastity, but not yet," he clung to his ambition and his lust. He once said, "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars" and his life clearly illustrated that. His novel, The Portrait of Dorian Gray, depicted the destructive nature of sin (the "gutter" so to speak), and, according to Wilde, its characters represented himself. He obviously knew firsthand the ugliness of sin even when it hides behind a beautiful facade.

Last year I wrote about Oscar Wilde in the Les Femmes newsletter in an article about good books. Here's what I said then:
Another “Catholic” writer is Oscar Wilde who converted on his deathbed. He once quipped that Catholicism was the only religion worth dying in and he managed to do it.

His life illustrates the parable of the vineyard with Wilde squeaking in at the eleventh hour. Despite his sinful life (he served two years at hard labor for sodomy) he had a Catholic mind. You don’t see it much in his farcical plays, but it’s obvious in his one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, whose characters, Wilde said, reflected himself. It gets to the heart of what sin does to the soul even if the body retains its beauty. His children’s stories, The Selfish Giant and The Happy Prince among others, are charming tales of love, sacrifice, and conversion. Wilde’s jail time was probably a blessing. He read Augustine, Dante, and Newman which, perhaps, germinated as the seed of his later conversion. Interestingly, many of his other sinful associates converted to the Catholic faith as well. Wilde’s life illustrates the capacity of grace to overcome sin. A fascinating essay, The Long Conversion of Oscar Wilde, is definitely worth reading.


The secular press has a hard time understanding how the Catholic Church can see the bad and good in a person at the same time. But the fact is that we are all like that, trapped in the human condition by original sin, constantly called to conversion, constantly striving for a return to original integrity. That explains why Catholics like C.K. Chesterton could remain friends with people like the notorious secularist George Bernard Shaw. Mature Catholics know that we are all in need of conversion and who needs conversion the most, saints or sinners? If we refuse to witness to and befriend those most in need, our charity is cold indeed. How we do that in prudence is the subject of another day.


Info:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/5844870/Vatican-reconciles-with-Oscar-Wilde.html


http://www.lesfemmes-thetruth.org/v12_4kitchen.htm