TORONTO (CNS) -- Catholic writer Philip Caputo shot to literary prominence in 1977 with release of his Vietnam war memoir, "A Rumor of War."

The no-holds-barred soldier's account of the horror, brutality, demoralization and pointlessness of combat in an ideologically murky war was one of the first notes of doubt and dissent about America's foreign policy objectives in that turbulent time.

After his discharge from the military, Caputo joined the staff of the Chicago Tribune, where he wrote about local and international events, culminating with his sharing of the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for reporting for reporting on Chicago city politics.

Caputo left journalism to begin a new career as a novelist and writer. By 2017, he had written 16 novels, memoirs, a travelogue and countless magazine and op-ed pieces in U.S. journals.

His latest novel, "Some Rise by Sin" (2017) may have more resonance with Catholic readers. It tells the story of American Franciscan Father Timothy Riordan serving as pastor of rural parish in the Sinaloa state, a rugged area dominated by the Sierra Madre Mountains that run along Mexico's West Coast. It's one of the areas rocked by the ongoing drug wars involving cartel leaders, local vigilantes and hard-pressed military and police forces who make little distinction between the innocent and the guilty.

While struggling to remain true to his vocation as a shepherd of the flock, Father Riordan is coerced into acting as an informer, thereby compromising much of his priestly ministry.

"All my literary work -- as opposed to my journalism -- has been about God and the devil and people having to make hard moral choices in places or circumstances where the handbook for decent behavior is out of print, leaving them to search their own depths for a moral standard," Caputo told CNS in a recent interview. "'Some Rise by Sin' is, however, my first book with an overtly Catholic protagonist."

Father Riordan is redeemed by the end, but it does not come without significant hardship and loss, and, in its own way, it echoes the musings earlier raised by "A Rumor of War."

Describing some of the carnage he witnessed as a U.S. Marine in 1965, Caputo wrote in "A Rumor of War":

"The sight of mutilation did more than cause me physical revulsion; it burst the religious myths of my Catholic boyhood. I could not look at those (dead) men and still believe their souls had 'passed on' to another existence, or that they had souls in the first place. ... There were other doubts which had made a mockery of all the Catholic theology the Dominican and Jesuit priests had preached to me in high school and college. Man's body is the temple of the Holy Spirit; man is created in the image and likeness of God; have respect for the dead."

Caputo's witnessing of such grotesqueries, both as a soldier and as a foreign correspondent covering international hot spots in the 1970s and '80s, further shaped his outlook on the capricious nature of human life and where, in fact, the Spirit resides.

"I'm sure my Jesuit education had a lot to do with the themes that run through most of my literary work," Caputo said. "A former president of Loyola University in Chicago once told me that I was a very 'Catholic' writer, not only in the sense of being concerned with moral questions and dilemmas, but also in the sense that my mind seemed to hark back to an ancient, or at any rate a pre-modern, mode of thought."

But where some writers might turn their backs on faith and belief after witnessing war, brutality, corruption and incomprehensible suffering, Caputo is hanging on to core belief.

"Sustaining any kind of faith is a struggle, but faith, I think, is a sine qua non for survival, emotional and psychological," he told CNS. "What I mean is, without the conviction that the human race has a purpose, that each of our lives has a purpose, granted by God, life becomes unbearable -- the sound and fury signifying nothing."

Caputo suggested his own view is like his character, Father Riordan in "Some Rise by Sin."

"As there can be no true courage without fear, so can there be no faith without doubt. Blind faith, as we see with the jihadists, leads to fanaticism and, paradoxically, ungodly acts. Faith requires us to question it."

Compare the above with the words of fictional Father Riordan on his decision to quit the informer role and return to his priestly integrity, even to his peril: "Grace is given to the undeserving," he thought. "But once it is, your actions have to show that you've received it."

Careful readers of Caputo's work will no doubt pick up his journalism experience as a source for lively, relevant storytelling. Two previous novels, "Crossers" (2009) and "Acts of Faith" (2005) fictionalize contemporary issues in social justice, illegal border crossings and humanitarian relief work in the Third World.

"Being a reporter has been very important in writing fiction," Caputo said. "The skills I acquired in journalism -- digging into facts, interviewing people ... have been a great help in my research."

After an impressive body of work in fiction and journalism, Caputo could be forgiven for looking to slow down and enjoy the fruits of his literary labor. He retains two homes: in Norwalk, Connecticut, where he attends St. Mary's Parish, and Patagonia, Arizona, where he attends St. Therese of Lisieux Church.

But as a self-described "hack," Caputo isn't quite ready to put away the writing tools away. He is working on a number of new writing projects, "hoping to find which one will work."

As for his ongoing faith influence, Caputo seems prepared to stick it out with the church he grew up with and never quite abandoned.

"Catholicism is the faith I grew up with and is the one in which I feel I belong, even if some of my views would not be approved by its theologians," he said. "The sheer beauty of the Latin High Mass, for example, transports me out of the grubby, everyday world into a state of mind in which I perceive, dimly but perceive nonetheless, the divine."

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(Mike Mastromatteo is a Toronto-based writer and editor).