Livre d'Or

The Catholicism portrayed in A Canticle for Leibowitz is very pre-Vatican II. I think it's a really impressive portrayal, but in strongly and accurately portraying the Catholic Church it is also driving home some of the things I very much don't like about it, particularly the emphasis on humankind's fallen nature and the triage scene near the end. I've always found the first novella a lot stronger than the last two, but that may just be me.

Oh, and I strongly advise against reading St. Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, which is a novel Terry Bisson assembled from fragments Miller had been wrestling with for years after Miller died, set roughly contemporary with the second novella; it is neither necessary nor good.