Thursday, May 16, 2013

Since we're on the topic of Walker Percy

Chris Blogger posted this conversation with Walker Percy a few years back. I like it for two reasons: 1) Percy's sentiments match mine, and 2) reminds me of Dylan interviews where the interviewer is looking for the wrong answers and keeps getting the right ones.

Q: What kind of Catholic are you?
A: Bad.
Q: No, I mean are you liberal or conservative?
A: I no longer know what those words mean.
Q: Are you a dogmatic Catholic or an open-minded Catholic?
A: I don’t know what that means, either. Do you mean I believe the dogma that the Catholic Church proposes for belief?
Q: Yes.
A: Yes.
Q: How is such a belief possible in this day and age?
A: What else is there?
Q: What do you mean, what else is there? There is humanism, atheism, agnosticism, Marxism, behavioralism, materialism, Buddhism, Muhammadanism, Sufism, astrology, occultism, theosophy.
A: That’s what I mean.
Q: To say nothing of Judaism or Protestantism.
A: Well, I would include them along with the Catholic Church in the whole peculiar Jewish-Christian thing.
Q: I don’t understand. Would you exclude, for example, scientific humanism as a rational and honorable alternative?
A: Yes.
Q: Why?
A: It’s not good enough.
Q: Why not?
A: This life is too much trouble, far too strange, to arrive at the end of it and then to be asked what you make of it and have to answer, “Scientific humanism.” That won’t do. A poor show. Life is a mystery, love is a delight. Therefore I take it as axiomatic that one should settle for nothing less than the infinite mystery and the infinite delight, i.e., God. In fact, I demand it. I refuse to settle for anything less.

Emphases mine. Percy was a true Catholic convert. Of course he wouldn't settle for anything less. As a convert to Catholicism myself, I considered Eastern Orthodoxy, but ultimately chose against it, even though I admire their traditions. Why? Because it's less than Catholicism.

3 comments:

  1. Yep. Says it all, Dreher, once again, is a doofus.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I like this Walker Percy guy. Sounds like he (and you, Pauli) traveled a similar conversion path as I have.

    Catholicism answers the difficult, and fundamental, questions for me that my childhood faith (Lutheran) didn't. And I, too, pray for the continued strength to refuse to settle for less, even if I have to change my ways.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Walker: Life is a mystery, love is a delight. Therefore I take it as axiomatic that one should settle for nothing less than the infinite mystery and the infinite delight, i.e., God. In fact, I demand it. I refuse to settle for anything less.

    I tried reading "Lost in the Cosmos." At the time, I didn't get very far. Then I read about Walker in "The Life You Save May be Your Own", where he is discussed with other writers. I didn't come away all that impressed. But the above quote makes me think I should give him some reconsideration.

    ReplyDelete