Spiritual readings _ that's what attracted me


That's what attracted me  
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.  
WALTER PERCY
Q: What kind of Catholic 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, behaviourism, materialism, Buddhism, Islam, 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 honourable 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 demanded it. I refuse to settle for anything less. I don't see why any one should settle for less than Jacob, who actually grabbed a holt of God and would not let go until God identified himself and blessed him.
Q: Grabbed a holt?
A: A Louisiana expression....
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 fellow man?
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.
WALTER PERCY
Walter Percy (d. 1990) was a Catholic convert, novelist, and essayist.