The Hallowed House and the Secular World

From Catholic World-

Thomas Howard is one of the most erudite and literate Catholic authors in recent history. He was raised in a prominent Evangelical home (his sister is well-known author and former missionary Elisabeth Elliot), became Episcopalian in his mid-20s, then entered the Catholic Church in 1985, at the age of 50. Dr. Howard was a highly regarded professor of English and literature for more than 30 years and is the author of numerous books, including Dove Descending: T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets,” Evangelical Is Not Enough, Chance or the Dance?, Lead Kindly Light, On Being Catholic, and The Secret of New York Revealed. He recently was interviewed, by email, by Carl E. Olson, editor of Catholic World Report, about the new edition of his book Hallowed Be This House: Finding Signs of Heaven in  Your Home (Ignatius Press, 2012), as well as the state of American culture, secularism, Anglicanism, and great literature.

CWR: How did the idea for Hallowed Be This House originally come about? Do you think there is an even greater need today for a sense of the hallowed and the sacred than there was when you first wrote the book in the 1970s? 

Thomas Howard: I think the original idea for the book came to me gradually. It must have been the fruit of a lifetime of reading and teaching Western literature, where one finds, up until at least the Enlightenment, the assumption of an ordered, hierarchical, and blissful Universe. Even the pagans assume this. But in my young adulthood, I found myself moving from the very faithful and good Protestant Evangelicalism of my family into the Anglican Church, where at least the notions of hierarchy, sacrament, and liturgy are remembered. Also, of course, I became soaked in the works of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and their friend Charles Williams. In all of these writers, one finds the ordinary stuff of quotidian life treated as though that stuff bespeaks—what shall we say? Glory? Ultimacy? The Truth of things? Splendor? Yes—all of that. The ordinary is not ordinary. It trumpets joy, freedom, and virtue to us mortals if we will pay attention.

More here-

http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/1805/the_hallowed_house_and_the_secular_world.aspx