Hmm …

… Confessions of a Catholic Novelist | The New Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

If I understand this, Giraldi seems to think that being a novelist and Catholic are somehow incompatible. But I can't why see that should be, anymore than being a gardener and Catholic would be incompatible. Here is something else from Flannery O'Connor: “Dear God, tonight ... you have given me a story. Don’t let me ever think ... that I was anything but the instrument for Your story — just like the typewriter was mine. Please let the story, dear God, in its revisions, be made too clear for any false & low interpretation. ... I wish you would take care of making it a sound story because I don’t know how, just like I didn’t know how to write it but it came.”

That is pretty much how I understand the connection between art and faith. A lived faith is reflected in the work because the faith shapes the identity of the artist. Giraldi doesn't seem to have progressed very far as a Catholic. I am also a cradle Catholic, but my faith is not in a set of propositions (though I duly recite the Creed). As William A. Luijpen, O. S. A.,  put it, "when the believer calls, shouts or whispers the name 'God,' he expresses the mystery of his existence." Giraldi might try looking into that.