ABSTRACT
The beauty and the real blessing of A Christmas Carol do not lie in its mechanical plot of the repentance of Scrooge; they lie in the great furnace of real happiness that finally glows through Scrooge and everything around him—the heart of Dickens. Whether the Christmas visions would or would not convert Scrooge, they convert us. Fellow writer and Catholic convert G. K. Chesterton once described Dickens as being “at heart a Catholic.” Dickens may well have desired to be Catholic, following the visionary encounter he had with the Blessed Virgin Mary while vacationing in the richly Roman Catholic environment of Genoa, Italy. In a letter to his friend John Foster, he conveyed that he had had a mystical experience. Still, Dickens is typically known for his dislike of evangelicalism and Roman Catholicism. Rather than debate Dickens’ denominational allegiances, this chapter promotes his location as “a Christian of the broadest kind” while aligning him with a small “c” catholicism (derived from the Greek word καθόλου [katholou] meaning “universal”). Within the context of the universal nature and appeal of Dickensian writings, a spiritual narrative such as A Christmas Carol can be illuminated by unveiling its embedded catholicity as reflected by the evolutionary conversion of Ebenezer Scrooge. While Scrooge is typically associated with the Protestant-centered spiritual journeys of the main protagonists in The Somonyng of Everyman (1510) and The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), a compelling case can be made for a Jesuitical interpretation of his transformational trajectory via the structured outline of the “weeks” and “internal movements” of the Catholic-derived Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola (written by the founder of the Society of Jesus [Jesuits] in 1548).
