Dear
Misfits,
We
are about to begin our 12th year of reading the great books of our shared Catholic
literary tradition. What a journey it has been. We have read so
many great books together. It is exciting to realize that there are so
many more to be read!
When
we took our annual summer break we hadn't decided the book we would read
next. So I've chosen one I've long wanted to read...and I hope you will
all agree that it is a good choice; lets read Walker Percy's classic, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book. To quote:
"Walker Percy's mordantly funny and wholly original contribution to the
self-help book craze deals with the Western mind's tendency toward heavy
abstraction. This favorite of Percy fans continues to charm and beguile readers
of all tastes and backgrounds. Lost in the Cosmos invites us to think
about how we communicate with our world....Walker Percy (1916-1990) was
one of the most prominent American writers of the twentieth century. Born in
Birmingham, Alabama, he was the oldest of three brothers in an established
Southern family that contained both a Civil War hero and a U.S. senator.
Acclaimed for his poetic style and moving depictions of the alienation of
modern American culture, Percy was the bestselling author of six fiction
titles--including the classic novel The Moviegoer (1961), winner of
the National Book Award--and fifteen works of nonfiction. In 2005, Time
magazine named The Moviegoer one of the best English-language books
published since 1923." (The Misfits read The Moviegoer in
May, 2003)
. . .
Shown
below is a short interview given by Walker Percy on his Faith as a
Catholic. (I think he perhaps speaks for all of us Misfits!)
With
warmest regards,
Misfit
Buzz
*****************************************************************
Walker Percy on his Faith (From Magnificat Magazine)
Q: What kind of Catholic are
you?
A. Bad.
Q: Are you a dogmatic Catholic or an
open-minded Catholic?
A: I don’t know what that means . . . . 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: 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. . .
.
Q: But shouldn’t one’s 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.
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