The Last Catholic
in America
By John R. Powers

312 Pages • $12.95

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
AND REFLECTION

The Last Catholic in America
By John R. Powers (click here to learn more about this author)

[Open a pdf version]

Use the following questions as guides to deeper individual understanding of the novel or for group discussion.

1. What are your general impressions of the world John Powers describes in this novel? Is it a world you recognize? What about it is familiar? What about it is unfamiliar?

2. Powers describes the threat of the “Permanent Record” in chapter 2 as a theme of childhood formation of the period. How does the “Permanent Record” reflect Powers’s description of Catholicism in general?

3. What do you think of Powers’s characterization of religious women? Is it consistent with your experience? Why or why not?

4. Reflect on Powers’s explanation of the role of sin and forgiveness in Eddie Ryan’s childhood. What were the flaws in what Eddie was taught? What were the strengths?

5. What is the meaning of the adult Eddie Ryan’s experience of his last confession? (p. 61)

6. “Mortal sin was where the action was.” (p. 48) What do you think this expresses about human experience?

7. What was Eddie Ryan’s experience of Lent? How does it compare to your experience of Lent today?

8. What do you think of the “Catholic ghetto” in which Eddie Ryan grew up? What is the value of a Catholic neighborhood and community? What are the negative aspects of it?

9. What was the content of the sexuality education Eddie Ryan received? In what ways did this resonate with the realities of life in the world? In what ways was it ­disconnected?

10. What were the priests and religious in Eddie Ryan’s world trying
to do for those in their care? What do you think the consequences
(both positive and negative) of this style of formation were?

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