| I did not know Percy, though I was forty-one years old when he died and consider myself a pretty devoted acolyte. I agree with Marcus that Percy ought not to be regarded as a doctrinal touchstone for Catholicism, for one very important reason, which is why/how Percy came to Catholicism. There are lots of answers to this why/how question. I am a cradle Catholic; no one in my family can ever remember a time, stretching over multitudes of years and two continents, when we were not all Catholics. We were not all virtuous, we were not all observant, but we were all Catholic. That is one way to be Catholic. Converts come to the Church for a variety of reasons. Some marry a Catholic and convert for reasons of family unity and peace. Some are attracted by the history of the Church, the continuity, the hospitals, orphanages, universities. Some are intellectual converts, convinced by apologetics and doctrine. Some are sacramental converts, influenced by the encounter which those signs effect. Percy is as different. I am, in this plague year, away from my books and therefore unable to offer exact citations, but Percy was what we might call an anthropological convert. He looked at what the Church has learned in two thousand years, at how the Church reflected the reasonable view of humanity, and he latched on. He said once that he was a Catholic not because he agreed with the Church’s views on abortion, but because the Church agreed with his views on abortion. This is a far cry from the “omnia et singula” Catholicism of the cradle Catholic or the apologetics Catholic. I am not suggesting that Percy had no feelings for the Church or for Catholic tradition—he once took Shelby Foote to a Solemn High Mass with Gregorian Chant and incense—but that he was much more likely, as Marcus seems to hint, to filter the Church’s perspective through his own than vice versa. Chuck Lowry Brooklyn, New York Sent from my iPhone On Jul 23, 2020, at 11:40 AM, Marcus Smith <marcus AT loyno.edu> wrote:
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