I am writing this column a few days before heading off to vacation, or “villa,” as Jesuit lingo has it. I plan to spend a large chunk of that time enjoying one of the finest pleasures August has to offer, reading on the beach.

While “beach read” often connotes less-than-serious material, I have taken all kinds of books to the beach, from literary novels to science fiction to books of essays. Last summer I read most of Czech priest Tomas Halik’s The Afternoon of Christianity while on the Jersey Shore. Once it was Marilynne Robinson’s The Death of Adam.

The beauty of reading on vacation, whether the material is pulp or poetry, whether the site is the beach or the porch or sometimes even an airplane, is that the reading is uninterrupted, an oasis of real attention in a desert of what is otherwise just “content.”

The cover story of the August issue of The Atlantic this month was Rose Horowitch’s “The End of Reading Is Here,” documenting the transition into what some are calling a postliterate age. You should (ahem) read the whole article, but one way of summarizing it might be to say that the skill of literacy may survive even if the deeper practice of reading atrophies. Reading, at least in a form sustained beyond a few paragraphs, may come to seem elite and archaic, a prose equivalent of churning butter at home: practiced by some for enjoyment or as an affectation, and arguably yielding a superior end result, but not required in any real sense.

America’s James T. Keane, who among other distinctions manages our book review section, responded to the Atlantic piece with an exploration of how the practice of reading has shaped Catholic faith. He argues that reading is “not essential, mind you—let us not pretend we are more faithful or faith-filled than our illiterate ancestors—but central, at least in our time.” The interiority that develops in a deep encounter with the written word becomes holy ground for the encounter with God.

That article ran online with the title “No one reads anymore. But you should if you want to be a good Catholic.” And you should. You can consider this column an invitation to do so.

In fact, if you Google “reading and America magazine,” you’ll see that America’s editors have long been concerned with sustaining the practice of reading. Of course, part of that motive may simply be the self-interest of writers needing readers, but it also reflects the fact that any good writer begins as a passionate reader and remains grateful for the reading that sustains one’s own writing.