Signposts in a Strange Land

by Walker Percy

  There are only two signs in the post-modern age which cannot be encompassed by theory.

  One sign is one’s self. No matter how powerful the theory, whether psychological or political, one’s self is always a leftover. Indeed, the self may be defined as that portion of the person which cannot be encompassed by theory, not even a theory of the self. This is so because, even if one agrees with the theory, what does one do then? Accordingly, the self finds itself ever more conspicuously without a place in the modern world, which is perfectly understood by theorizing. The face of the self in the very age which was itself designed for the self’s understanding of all things and to please the self through the consumption of goods and services—the face of the self is the face of fear and sadness, because it does not know who it is or where it belongs.

  The only other sign in the world which cannot be encompassed by theory is the Jews, their unique history, their suffering and achievements, what they started (both Judaism and Christianity), and their presence in the here-and-now.

  The Jews are a stumbling block to theory. They cannot be subsumed under any social or political theory. Even Arnold Toynbee, whose theory of history encompassed all other people, looked foolish when he tried to encompass the Jews. The Jews are both a sign and a stumbling block. That is why they are hated by theorists like Hitler and Stalin. The Jews cannot be gotten around. The great paradox of the Western world is that even though it was in the Judeo-Christian West that modern science arose and flourished, it is Judeo-Christianity which the present-day scientific set of mind finds the most offensive among the world’s religions. Judaism is offensive because it claims that God entered into a covenant with a single tribe, with it and no other.

  Christianity is doubly offensive because it claims not only this but also that God became one man, He and no other.

  One cannot imagine any statement more offensive to the present-day scientific set of mind. Accordingly, Hinduism and Buddhism, which have no scientific tradition but whose claims are limited to the self, its existence or nonexistence, which are far less offensive to the present-day scientific set of mind, are in fact quite compatible.

  The paradox can be resolved in only two ways.

  One is that both the Jewish and the Christian claims are untrue, are in fact nonsense, and that the scientific mind-set is correct.

  The other is that the scientific method is correct as far as it goes, but the theoretical mind-set, which assigns significance to single things and events only insofar as they are exemplars of theory or items for consumption, is in fact an inflation of a method of knowing and is unwarranted.

  Now that I have been invited to think of it, the reasons for my conversion to the Catholic Church, this side of grace, can be described as Roman, Arthurian, Semitic, and semiotic.

  Semitic? Arthurian? This is funny, because what could be more un-Jewish than the chivalric legend of Arthur? And who could be more un-English than the Old Testament Jews?

  Or are they? Or could it in fact have been otherwise? My first hero and the hero of the South for a hundred years was Richard I of Ivanhoe, who with his English knights in the First Crusade stormed the gates of Acre to rescue the holy places from the Infidel. But, earlier than that, there was the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. If one wished to depict the beau ideal of the South, it would not be the crucified Christ but rather the stoic knight at parade rest, both hands folded on the hilt of his broadsword, his face as grave and impassive as the Emperor’s. In the South, of course, he came to be, not the Emperor or Richard, but R. E. Lee, the two in one.

  Bad though much of Southern romanticism may be, with Christianity and Judaism and Roman valor seen through the eyes of Sir Walter Scott, how could it have been otherwise with me? After all, the pagans converted by St. Paul did not cease to be what they were. One does not cease to be Roman, Arthurian, Alabamian. One did, however, begin to realize a few things. The holy places which Richard rescued, and whether he thought about it or not, were, after all, Jewish, and he probably did not think about it, because his crusaders killed Jews every which way on the way to the Holy Land. Yet Scott succeeded in romanticizing even the Jews in Ivanhoe. But did the European knight with his broadsword at Mont-St.-Michel make any sense without the crucified Jew above him? A modern Pope said it: “Whatever else we are, we are first of all spiritual Semites.” Salvation, the Lord said, comes from the Jews.

  In a word, thanks to the Jews, one can emerge from the enchanted mists of the mythical past, the Roman and Arthurian and Confederate past, lovely as it is. For, whatever else the Jews are, they are not mythical. Myths are stories which did not happen. But the Jews were there then and are here now.

  Semitic? Semiotic? Jews and the science of signs? Yes, because in this age of the lost self, lost in the desert of theory and consumption, nothing of significance remains but signs. And only two signs are of significance in a world where all theoretical cats are gray. One is oneself and the other is the Jews. But for the self that finds itself lost in the desert of theory and consumption, there is nothing to do but set out as a pilgrim in the desert in search of a sign. In this desert, that of theory and consumption, there remains only one sign, the Jews. By “the Jews” I mean not only Israel, the exclusive people of God, but the worldwide ecclesia instituted by one of them, God-become-man, a Jew.

  It is for this reason that the present age is better than Christendom. In the old Christendom, everyone was a Christian and hardly anyone thought twice about it. But in the present age the survivor of theory and consumption becomes a wayfarer in the desert, like St. Anthony; which is to say, open to signs.

  I do not feel obliged to set forth the particular religious reasons for my choosing among the Jewish-Christian religions. There are times when it is better not to name God. One reason is that most of the denizens of the present age are too intoxicated by the theories and goods of the age to be aware of the catastrophe already upon us.

  How and why I chose the Catholic Church—this side of grace, which leaves one unclear about who does the choosing—from among the Judeo-Christian religions, Judaism, Protestantism, the Catholic Church, pertains to old family quarrels among these faiths and as such is not of much interest, I would suppose, to the denizens of this age. As for them, the other members of the family, the Jews and the Protestants, they are already all too familiar with the Catholic claim for me to have to repeat it here. It would be a waste of their time and mine. Anyhow, I do not have the authority to bear good news or to proclaim a teaching.

  1990

  A “Cranky Novelist” Reflects on the Church

  LET ME EXPRESS MY pleasure at being at St. Joseph College Seminary and congratulate you for successfully completing your college seminary years. I envy you your four years in a Benedictine community. There is my own satisfaction in having a Benedictine abbey near the small Southern town where I live. I’ve heard more than one diocesan priest say affectionately that their four years at St. Ben’s were among the happiest in their lives.

  My understanding is that you are bound for a major seminary, perhaps at Notre Dame, and, one hopes, for Holy Orders. As a Catholic layman, I can only wish you well, for your own sake and for our sake, and express the hope, for good and selfish reasons, that it works out. We need you. I notice there are not many of you. We are all familiar with the famous shortage of vocations. The statistics are dire. The last numbers I saw were that the average age of a Catholic priest in the United States is presently fifty-six and that at the present rate of vocations it will be seventy-three in the year 2000.

  This is all the more critical in view of the concomitant steady increase in the Catholic laity. There has been much talk, especially in the secular press, about the bare ruined choirs and the imminent dissolution of the Church, an end which has been regularly predicted for 1,900 years. A recent article in Newsweek spoke of worried bishops and even offered some suggestions for relaxing the standards of the priesthood, standards of education, the rule of celibacy, ordaining women, and so on
. Since everyone is free with his expert opinion, let me put in my own two-cents worth. My own feeling is that the diagnosis is not all that difficult. One doesn’t have to look beyond the values of a society which is ever more consumer-oriented, ever more inclined to view man as an immanent organism in an environment; therefore, a view of man which is in subtle ways not so much hostile but rather indifferent to Christ’s radical injunction to his first priests: To follow me, go your way carrying neither purse nor scrip nor shoes. Hostility is no stranger to the Church; she often thrives under it: witness Poland. But there is a species of bland indifference which is all but invincible. The diagnosis, I say, is not hard to come by, but the solution is more difficult. I make bold to suggest one dimension of it. My own impression, from talking to some of you and your generation, is that the one place where the answer is not to be found is in the relaxation of the standards of the priesthood. It seems to me that with the best of you it is exactly the other way around, that far from it being the case that you might have been attracted by this or that fringe benefit—like the college graduates you used to hear about who, when they were interviewed by General Motors or Dupont, would first off inquire about the retirement plan. The best of your generation—perhaps of any generation—want something else. Aside from the supernatural dimension of your vocation—that it is God and not the fringe benefits who calls one and whose summons must be dealt with by each man in his own way—my impression is that your generation is less and less impressed by the easy pitch and more and more exhilarated by the singular challenge.

  The very smallness of your number puts me in mind of a rather commonplace military metaphor. It is the recruiting policy of the Marine Corps. I notice that at the very time that the Army, Navy, and Air Force are advertising this or that benefit, good base pay, educational opportunities, the glamour of world travel, early retirement, the Marine Corps says in effect: “We’re only the best, you are free to apply, you probably won’t make it, there are not many of us and it’s a tough life, but if you think you’re good enough we’ll take a look at you.”

  If this sounds like I’m comparing you to an elite corps, a chosen few, it’s because I am.

  Surely it is the high calling, the challenge, the very difficulties to be surmounted which attract one. There are also the peculiar difficulties and the challenge of a vocation in a world which never needed it more, yet which in a strange and unprecedented way is incapacitated, has ears and cannot hear, is both blind and unheeding.

  But let me just say a word about some unnecessary difficulties, some areas where we laymen and lay women may have been at fault and have added inadvertently to the rigors of a vocation which, Lord knows, is difficult enough. I am speaking in particular of the vocation of the parish priest. In my book he is one of the heroes of this age. There is one positive good which may come to pass from the present crisis in vocations and the coming scarcity of priests, and it is this: the time may come when we, the Catholic laity, may come to value the very person we have taken for granted all these years. What we took and take for granted is the parish priest. Father was always there, is there, and is expected to be there, something like CLECO and Ma Bell. So natural did it seem that Father was always there that we took it as a matter of course when he was an extraordinarily good and faithful pastor and we were accordingly quick to criticize him when we detected a human failing.

  We Catholics have a way of taking things for granted, the very sort of things which other people find extraordinary. I’ll give you one example. The other day I happened to read a short review of a book in a magazine. The book was a new edition of the Rule of St. Benedict, published to celebrate the sesquimillenium of the saint’s birth. Do you know what a sesquimillenium is? I had to look it up. It is 1,500 years. Now, that is remarkable. What struck me as even more remarkable is that no one seemed to find this remarkable. Yet every day we hear about this or that anniversary celebration: five hundred years since Luther’s birth, two hundred years since Goethe’s birth, seventy-five years since the Wright brothers’ flight, a stamp commemorating James Audubon or Joe Louis. This is all very well. But here is a man who was born 1,500 years ago, who lived in a critical, disorderly time with certain resemblances to our own, who devised a rule for living in a community, a practical, moderate, yet holy rule which apparently is quite as useful now as it was 1,500 years ago. 1,500 years. I call that remarkable. Yet very few people seem to find it remarkable—very few Catholics. Maybe the Benedictines do, but they don’t say much about it, and the Jesuits practically nothing.

  And so a favorite recreation among some is either to take the parish priest for granted or to complain about him. Father did so-and-so. Father is always asking for money. The roof of the church is leaking; why doesn’t he get it fixed? Why is Father always asking for money? Father’s sermon was too long. Father didn’t give a sermon. Father read a letter from the Archbishop instead of giving a sermon. Father read a letter from the Archbishop and then gave a sermon. Father so-and-so in the next parish has a better sense of humor, so we go over there. Or: Do you know what that priest said to me when I told him I wanted to get my girlfriend fitted with an IUD? And so on.

  I have written a couple of science-fiction novels about the future. But one doesn’t have to be a prophet to guess what may happen if the present trend continues. Instead of Father always being there at the rectory to answer this or that complaint, the time may come when Father shows up once a month to say Mass, perform baptisms, and hear confessions—or maybe arrives in a jeep once a year, as he does in some parishes in South America. Then we may be as happy to see Father as is a Brazilian Indian.

  The point is that the time may come when the Catholic Church and the Catholic people, both priests and laymen, will have become a remnant, a saving remnant, and that will be both bad news and good news. The bad news is that the familiar comfort of the parish in which the Church was taken to be more or less co-extensive with the society in which we lived is probably going or gone. The good news is that in becoming a minority in all countries, a remnant, the Church also becomes a world church in the true sense, bound to no culture, not even to the West of the old Christendom, by no means triumphant but rather a pilgrim church witnessing to a world in travail and yet a world to which it will appear ever stranger and more outlandish. It, the Church, will be seen increasingly as what it was in the beginning, a saving remnant, a sign of contradiction, a stumbling block, a transcultural phenomenon, a pilgrim church.

  There is no more Christendom and it may be just as well. Thus, it may very well come to pass that you, graduates of St. Joseph’s, if you should become parish priests, will be practicing your ministry in a world very different from the one we grew up in. You are less apt to be seen as a familiar artifact of the culture, a recognizable familiar figure, like the priest in movies who dresses like a priest—“Here’s the padre”—“Hi, Father”—says things priests say, and is treated with a kind of unseeing deference.

  This is not to say that Father Mike, in order to break out of the old cultural tableaux in which he felt perceived as a static figure, must necessarily shed his Roman collar for a T-shirt and designer jeans in order to appear as a man among men—or that Sister Scholastica has to shed both her name and her habit (in which I always thought she looked great, to tell you the truth) for a J. C. Penney pants suit in which she does not look so great, and takes back her old name of Debbie or Carol Jean, which I always thought she did well to get rid of.

  There was a great deal to be said for the traditional role of the Church in which it was more or less co-extensive with the culture in which it found itself. One might have lived, for example, in the thirteenth century in a Catholic culture in which the culture itself was informed by the sacramental order of the Church. Or perhaps in Puritan New England or Irish-Catholic Boston, where one’s church was as familiar and all-pervasive as the furniture of one’s house. And even as a minority church, as a tiny beleaguered community, which the Catholic Church was and still is in m
uch of the South, it was as a miniature culture that it survived, a small besieged enclave in which Father said such-and-such, Sister said so-and-so, and, besieged or not, it was the Catholic-ethnic culture which made one feel comfortable and at home, redolent as it was with incense and candlewax and all the vivid parochial particulars. It was beloved for the same reason it was detested. When a Catholic writer rebels against his faith and his past, as he seems so often compelled to do nowadays, it is really the whole cultural complex he is kicking out.

  It is to be hoped, by the way, that American Catholic novelists and playwrights will someday achieve sufficient maturity that they can put their heritage to some better use than ridiculing their own tradition: noting some unfortunate nun who gave him a whack, probably deserved, in the third grade, some weary priest who bruised his feelings in the confessional. No more of that, says a certain sort of writer, and walks out of the Church forever, a free spirit he thinks now, except that it turns out he is not free after all and that he can only get steamed up by doing the same old number on the priest and sisters back at St. Aloysius.

  I look forward to the time when the Catholic writer comes of age, as American Jewish writers have come of age in the last generation, and produces a comparable literature of affection and celebration.

  I suspect that these writers are rebelling not against God and the Church, the priest, and the nun, the man and woman who have given up his and her life to serve God and the people of God—but rather against the cultural furniture of their own past, the wax-and-varnish smell of St. Aloysius’s, Father Mike’s peculiarities, Sister Scholastica’s bad temper, under the romantic delusion that only if one can escape the particularities and constraints of the past can one breathe the pure air of art and freedom, when in truth what the truly Catholic writer knows, a writer like Flannery O’Connor, that it is only through the particularities of place, time, and history—even when it is, as the poet Gerard Hopkins said, “seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; / And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell”—it is only then that the writer achieves his art and all of us achieve humanity.