From his piece “Questions They Never Asked Me,” collected in Conversations with Walker Percy. Those who read the whole thing will be rewarded:
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 do 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, behaviorism, materialism, Buddhism, Muhammadanism, Sufism, astrology, occultism, theosophy.
A: That’s what I mean.
Q: To say nothing of Judaism and 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. I don’t see why anyone should settle for less than Jacob, who actually grabbed aholt of God and would not let go until God identified himself and blessed him.
Q: Grabbed aholt?
A: A Louisiana expression.
Q: But isn’t the Catholic Church in a mess these days, badly split, its liturgy barbarized, vocations declining?
A: Sure. That’s a sign of its divine origins, that it survives these periodic disasters.
Q: You don’t act or talk like a Christian. Aren’t they supposed to love one another and do good works?
A: Yes.
Q: You don’t seem to have much use for your fellowman or do many good works.
A: That’s true. I haven’t done a good work in years.
Q: In fact, if I may be frank, you strike me as being rather negative in your attitude, cold-blooded, aloof, derisive, self-indulgent, more fond of the beautiful things of this world than of God.
A: That’s true.
Q: You even seem to take certain satisfaction in the disasters of the twentieth-century and to savor the imminence of world catastrophe rather than world peace, which all religions seek.
A: That’s true.
Q: You don’t seem to have much use for your fellow Christians, to say nothing of Ku Kluxers, ACLU’ers, northerners, southerners, fem-libbers, anti-fem-libbers, homosexuals, anti-homosexuals, Republicans, Democrats, hippies, anti-hippies, senior citizens.
A: That’s true – though taken as individuals they turn out to be more or less like oneself, i.e., sinners, and we get along fine.
Q: Even Ku Kluxers?
A: Sure.
Q: How do you account for your belief?
A: I can only account for it as a gift from God.
Q: Why would God make you such a gift when there are others who seem more deserving, that is, serve their fellowman?
A: I don’t know. God does strange things. For example, he picked as one of his saints a fellow in northern Syria, a local nut, who stood on top of a pole for thirty-seven years.
Q: We are not talking about saints.
A: That’s true.
Q: We are talking about what you call a gift.
A: You want me to explain it? How would I know? The only answer I can give is that I asked for it, in fact demanded it. I took it as an intolerable state of affairs to have found myself in this life and in this age, which is a disaster by any calculation, without demanding a gift commensurate with the offense. So I demanded it. No doubt other people feel differently.
Q: But shouldn’t faith bear some relation to the truth, facts?
A: Yes. That’s what attracted me, Christianity’s rather insolent claim to be true, with the implication that other religions are more or less false.
Q: You believe that?
A: Of course.
Q: I see. Moving right along now –
As an added bonus, we have a special Percy-related giveaway! Whoever comments first will receive a free review e-copy of Percy’s National Book Award-winning novel The Moviegoer courtesy of the good people at Open Road Media, who have recently made the great writer’s work available for the first time, electronically.
23 comments
Clay Crouch says:
May 4, 2011
Thank God for Catholic writers of the southern persuasion.
Kristy says:
May 4, 2011
Is it me? Am I first?
DZ says:
May 4, 2011
Sorry, Kristy! Clay jumped first… Hopefully we’ll have another contest before long.
Ken says:
May 4, 2011
Funny and wise, that’s Walker Percy, alright. But when he writes
Q: You don’t seem to have much use for your fellowman or do many good works.
A: That’s true. I haven’t done a good work in years.
he leaves unmentioned all his civil rights and education work.
David Gaston says:
May 4, 2011
Great insight Ken. I wonder if by skipping over such good works Percy is hinting that those works might not have been necessary altruistic to be shuffled into the “Good Works” category. I can certainly find deep, deep seams of self-service in the geology of any supposedly good work in which I boast. As such, he may be passively reciting a bit of Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation. Or, maybe he just forgot.
Bryan J. says:
May 4, 2011
Love this! Forwarding it to my favorite English professors right now!
bls says:
May 4, 2011
What a wonderful “interview”! I love the thing about not knowing what certain words mean. I love the total confusion about everything, in fact. So real.
And I really love his flat statement of belief, because nothing else is good enough. It’s all too true….
Zach says:
May 4, 2011
great ‘interview’… just recently got introduced his writings… haven’t read any yet, but looking forward to reading the moviegoer, love in the ruins, the thanatos syndrome, etc…
Ken says:
May 4, 2011
David, I think you’re quite right. I imagine Percy chuckling as he wrote that, and elsewhere – again with humor I think – he called himself mean and lazy. I get the impression he wasn’t any too impressed with himself.
And yeah, absolutely, good works are rarely if ever only good works. I’m fascinated by how God uses us in our self-centeredness, and gradually (I hope in my case) purifies our hearts.
MargaretE says:
May 4, 2011
Simply delicious. This made my day! Thanks, DZ.
Colton says:
May 4, 2011
Thanks DZ. Great stuff.
Tracy Stephen Altman says:
May 4, 2011
I think I re-read this interview every year; I always laugh out loud. Probably my favorite interview, of anyone, ever.
Steve in Toronto says:
May 4, 2011
My sister gave me the Moviegoer after she was assigned to read it at Wheaton. It was not to her taste but I adored it. I never met the man but I did speak briefly to him on the phone (his wife was a friend of a friend) a true gentleman and a truly wise man
Tricia says:
Jul 10, 2011
Late to the party here but I like to pretend to have my own conversations with WP. He’s the best imaginary friend I could ask for. Thanks
Laura Funk says:
May 28, 2014
I’m a big Percy fan. I’m forwarding this to Peter Kreeft (fan of him too) because it reminds me of the self-interviews he does on occasion. Thanks MBird!
John Majka says:
Feb 27, 2015
Nice to get back into WP’s world!
Greg says:
Apr 17, 2015
“I, for example, am a Roman Catholic, albeit a bad one. I believe in the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church, in God the Father, in the election of the Jews, in Jesus Christ His Son Our Lord, who founded the Church on Peter his first vicar, which will last until the end of the world. . . . I believe in God and the whole business but I love women best, music and science next, whiskey next, God fourth, and my fellowman hardly at all. Generally I do as I please. A man, wrote John, who says he believes in God and does not keep his commandments is a liar. If John is right, then I am a liar. Nevertheless, I still believe.”
Brilliant.
David Valencia says:
Apr 27, 2015
Has anybody read Lost in the Cosmos and at the same time read the Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis?
…….it’s like an introduction to the sobering presuppositions that run the world in 2015….you will know everything you need to know to know what you really need to know about everybody you know.
….Did you know that you don’t know until you know that you don’t know?
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