Sigrid Undset ga i 1927 ut en samling essayer hun kalte «Etapper», som ble utgitt på engelsk i 1934 under navnet «Stages on the Road». Elizabeth Scalia skriver nå i First Things om disse tekstene: «(It) remains a thumping good read that is truly relevant to our era and more than validates her re-emergence in the 21st Century as an energetic, passionate and intellectual Catholic voice — one that urges the faithful onward, and onward still, through brambles of history and passing modern trends, toward a Truth that is startlingly alive.» Og senere i artikkelen skriver Scalia:
In Stages on the Road we encounter Undset writing in her prime, just a few years after her conversion to Catholicism, and putting her great gift for storytelling at the service of these “friends” who had first served her through the public living-out of their faith … Author Bruce Bawer called Undset, “half Viking, half Christian—torn between bold adventure and stark self-denial,” and we see that quality again where Undset writes on social issues, as she does here in an excerpted letter to a parish priest:
We must try to make this clear to ourselves—we have no right to assume that any part of European tradition, cultural values, moral ideas, emotional wealth, which has its origin in the dogmatically defined Christianity of the Catholic Church, will continue to live a “natural” life, if the people of Europe reject Christianity and refuse to accept God’s supernatural grace. One might just as well believe that a tree whose roots were severed should continue to bear leaves and blossoms and fruit . . . It must be remembered that in a democratic community the general public always lives on ideas which twenty or thirty years ago were the peculiar property of a few “advanced minds”—and which the most “advanced” people of the moment have discarded as unserviceable working hypotheses.