Walker Percy 2

Walker Percy gave hundreds of interviews in his day and was constantly being asked questions regarding his Catholic faith and how it played into his writing. Catholic interviewers couldn't get enough of him (understandably) and the agnostics couldn't figure him out. One gets the sense that they didn't understand how someone so "cool" could actually believe.

In this mock interview "Questions They Never Asked Me" from a collection of writings entitled Signposts in a Strange Land, Percy makes up his own questions and answers them accordingly. The following excerpt is very good:

But aren't you a Catholic?
Yes.

Do you regard yourself as a Catholic novelist?
Since I am a Catholic and a novelist, it would seem to follow that I am a Catholic novelist.

What kind of Catholic are you?
Bad.

No. I mean, are you liberal or conservative?
I no longer know what those words mean.

Are you a dogmatic Catholic or an open-minded Catholic?
I don't know what that means, either. Do you mean do I believe in the dogma that the Catholic Church proposes to believe?

Yes.
Yes.

How is such belief possible in this day and age?
What else is there?

What do you mean, what else is there? There is humanism, atheism, agnosticism, Marxism, behaviorism, materialism, Buddhism, Mohammadanism, Sufism, astrology, occultism, theosophy.
That's what I mean.

To say nothing of Judaism and Protestantism.
Well, I would include them along with the Catholic Church in the whole peculiar Jewish-Christian thing.

I don't understand. Would you excluded, for example, scientific humanism as a rational and honorable alternative?
Yes.

Why?
It's not good enough.

Why not?
This life is too much trouble, far too strange, to arrive at the end of it and then 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. I don't see why anyone should settle for less than Jacob, who actually grabbed aholt of God and wouldn't let go until God identified himself and blessed him.

Grabbed aholt?
A Louisiana expression.