I know what you mean about being repulsed by the
Church when you have only the Jansenist-Mechanical Catholic to judge it by. I
think that the reason such Catholics are so repulsive is that they don't really
have faith but a kind of false certainty. They operate by the slide rule and
the Church for them is not the body of Christ but the poor man's insurance
system. It's never hard for them to believe because actually they never think
about it. Faith has to take in all the other possibilities it can. Anyhow, I
don't think it's a matter of wanting miracles. The miracles seem in fact to be
the great embarrassment to the modern man, a kind of scandal. If the miracles
could be argued away and Christ reduced to the status of a teacher,
domesticated and fallible, then there'd be no problem. Anyway, to discover the
Church you have to set out by yourself. The French Catholic novelists were a hero
to me in this—Bloy, Bernanos, Mauriac. In philosophy, Gilson, Maritain and
Gabriel Marcel, an Existentialist. They all seemed to be French for a while and
then I discovered the Germans—Max Picard, Romano Guardini and Karl Adam. The
Americans seem just to be producing pamphlets for the back of the Church (to be
avoided at all costs) and installing heating systems . . . This spring I went
to lecture at Notre Dame and met some very intelligent people. In any case,
discovering the Church is apt to be a slow procedure but it can only take place
if you have a free mind and no vested interest in disbelief.
—Flannery
O'Connor
