Hemingway’s Catholicism? Deeper than you might have THOUGHT
By Craig Mindrum
An analysis based on Morris Buske’s essay, “Hemingway Faces God,” “The Hemingway Review,” Vol. 22, No. 1, Fall 2002. Copyright © 2002 The Ernest Hemingway Foundation. Published by the University of Idaho Press, Moscow, Idaho.
A presumption held by many is that Ernest Hemingway became a nominal Catholic only as a requirement before his marriage to Pauline Pfeiffer, his second wife. This turns out not to be true by a long shot.
Hemingway embraced Catholicism while recovering from his wounds suffered when he served with the Red Cross at Fossalta di Piave, Italy. Through the influence of a Catholic priest named Father Bianchi, Hemingway turned to Catholicism while recovering at a religious retreat. Though he may not have “become a Catholic” officially, he saw in Catholicism an answer to his spiritual needs.
In spite of the brave front he adopted about his wounding, Hemingway had suffered great trauma in Italy. According to Buske, “The depth of his spiritual need is reflected in his immediate and wholehearted embrace of Catholicism. H.R. Stoneback quotes him as saying to Thomas Welsh: ‘In first war. . . really scared after wounded and very devout at the end. Belief in personal salvation or maybe just preservation through prayers for intercession of Our Lady and various saints that prayed to with almost tribal faith.’”
Stonebeck also assembled convincing evidence that Hemingway had frequently attended Catholic church services while in Italy. The nurse with whom he fell in love in Italy remembered that, when he was in the hospital, he asked her to go to church with him. As Buske writes, “H. R. Stoneback has assembled overwhelming evidence of Hemingway’s frequent attendance at church services, beginning when he was first in Italy, well before his marriage to Pauline Pfeiffer in 1927. Stoneback effectively dismisses characterization of Hemingway as a ‘nominal’ Catholic “who joined the Church [only] because of pressure from Pauline.”
Hemingway had turned away from the stern Protestantism of his father—its punitive God and its cold and (to him) unsatisfying faith. “While kneeling at Mass or at Confession, contrite,” Buske writes, “he could receive through a Father the promise not of swift punishment but of absolution and redemption.” (His father used severe physical punishment as his primary means of disciplining his young children as they grew.)
Veneration of the Virgin Mary was especially important to Hemingway. Buske quotes Stonebeck again:
George Herter wrote to Stoneback that Hemingway’s religion came mainly from the apparitions of the Virgin Mary…. He told me several times that if there was no Bible, was no man-made church laws, the apparitions proved beyond any doubt that the Catholic church was the true church. Hemingway knew all the apparitions. The ones at Pontmain, Pellivoisin, Allyrod greatly impressed him. He told me that he believed that the Virgin was more or less the listening post of this world for Jesus and God.
Hemingway also donated his Nobel Prize medal to the Virgin of Cobre, Cuba’s national saint.
The harshness and judgmentalism of his parents’ religion was replaced in his adult devotion by a Blessed Mother who offered unbounded love and help. When his troubled father died through suicide, Hemingway had Masses said for him.
As Buske concludes, Hemingway “was free to form a faith which met his spiritual needs and gave shelter from the psychological demons that pursued him.”
Morris Buske was born and educated in Wisconsin where he studied toward a Ph.D. in history. In 1940 he began teaching at Oak Park and River Forest High School, where several colleagues had taught Ernest Hemingway. His many writings include The Record of Mankind (D.C. Heath and Co., 1965) and various articles on Hemingway. The holder of fellowships at Stanford, Wisconsin, and Columbia, he was the founding chairman of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park.
Craig Mindrum, Ph.D., is a member of the Board of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park. He received his doctorate in an interdisciplinary field of ethics, theology, and literature from the University of Chicago. He is a writer and business consultant.