This Article Has Two Parts. The first is-for lack of a better Word--theoretical and concentrates on Hans Urs von Balthasar and his work as it illuminates the intellectual heritage and confronts, or enters into dialogue with an increasingly secular heritage. The second part is an application of those insights to a work by each of three twentieth-century writers: the novelist Jon Hassler, the playwright Brian Friel, and the poet Denise Levertov. Two amazing things about the intellectual heritage: it is more than intellectual, and it is Catholic--with both the small and capital C. Catholic with a small c means universal. Catholicism is not only multinational but multiethnic and multidisciplinary. It is more than the biblical coat of many colors. It is more than a rainbow. Catholicism is the richness of life itself. As the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes asserts--alluding to the Roman playwright Terence--nothing that is genuinely human fails to find an echo in the hearts of the followers of Christ. (1) Because of the Incarnation, because God became a human being in the person of Jesus, all that belongs to human life was given profound, inestimable value. Catholicism and the doctrine of the Incarnation gave not only value to the world but an attitude toward it--no Platonic aloofness hankering for a world of forms, Roman stoicism, Norse or Teutonic fatalism toward the world. Though Catholicism has engaged and been transformed by all those forces-and many more besides-it continues to be a unique and dynamic living heritage. The portion of the intellectual heritage I shall consider in this article is the intellectual heritage of the West. Maligned by multiculturalists and postcolonialists (to name just a few of its critics), it is the heritage that many of us were born into and within which we live and breathe. It is a birthright, a treasure, a limitation, something of a scandal, and an obligation. Therefore, except for a brief glance or two, I must overlook the East and Africa and Catholicism in parts of the world. A brief aside on my emphasizing the Western tradition: When I think of western-European Catholicism, I often think of the Western priests in Shusaku Endo's novel, Silence, arriving in Japan. I also think of the Jesuit missionary in the film The Mission; actor Jeremy Irons climbing (what is really the Iguazu Falls in Argentina) to the Paraguayan plateau. In each work, the priests enter a new and other world, bringing only themselves, a book or two, and their faith. As western Catholics embodying this heritage, we also go forth--wherever we are sent--to meet and engage all cultures. But to engage all cultures, we must first be imbued with our own. In this article I hope to provide a perspective on that heritage that will help us better understand ourselves within that Western intellectual tradition of Catholicism. The doctrine of the Incarnation is what distinguishes the and Christian faiths from all religions of the world. It could be argued that of all the Christian religions, it is only Catholicism that takes the Incarnation with full seriousness. Whenever a religion is inclined to denigrate the body, earthly life, or fundamental human desires, it is in danger of moving away from the central fact of the Incarnation. God gave his only Son to become human and in that way ennobled--and in fact redeemed and thereby exalted--all of human and earthly life. In an apparent contradiction, the French poet and dramatist Paul Claudel is said to passionately desire the world, not as Christians, but only as pagans before him did. And still Claudel is passionate for the world because he is a Christian. (2) The passage continues: No earthly value can be disdained out of arrogance or resentment, every good is necessary to the Catholic; [the Catholic--WE--] cannot permit ... the smallest no . …