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PARTISAN REVIEW
something about it. I don't remember if it really was a wet after–
noon, but that's figuratively speaking.
SF: Did you see it as something that was the inevitable result of your
development over a certain number of years?
MS:
No, you know, I didn't
want
to become a Catholic, simply
because there are a lot of things about the Catholic Church that I
don't like. Most of it has to do with popular Catholicism: those terri–
ble bleeding hearts, the saints, the Pope, priests-I don't like
priests, for instance . I go to church but I go after the sermons,
because the sermons are so bad I couldn't possibly listen to them.
But that has absolutely nothing to do with the Church as a repository
of the faith, which represents many of the truths we hold to be most
important. I think everybody realizes that, even today . It has an ef–
fect. All the trimmings and carryings-on just for the masses-it's
just like anything else. When the Pope goes around he might just as
well be a football match, he draws enormous crowds, but the impor–
tant thing is that people do feel that there's something here to honor.
It's not the Pope himself, but there's something in what he
represents that expresses their hopes, their aspirations-I don't
think the Ayatollah Khomeini going around would draw crowds like
that, except perhaps in Persia.
SF:
Do you consider yourself a Catholic writer in the same sense
that, say, Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene are Catholic writers?
MS:
No. Graham Greene is a different type of Catholic writer. I
haven't discussed it with him so I'm not sure, but I have the impres–
sion that he's always on the verge of disbelief, and so he's constantly
faced with a conflict. I don't have that conflict, because I can't
not
believe: I
couldn't
not believe.
SF:
Is that an intellectual decision on your part?
MS:
No, it's a total feeling. Belief is not intellectual; you believe
something the way you say that's your mother, or that's your sister:
it's a fact. It's something I've recognized, which
is.
So it's not a
question of making any intellectual decision, but of coming to an
understanding of this fact that is. Waugh, I believe, was a Catholic
more by political commitment, and-I think-he absolutely believ–
ed in doctrines and dogmas. Graham Greene, I sense, has more of a
feeling for the dramatic quality of good and evil, of belief and non–
belief, salvation and damnation: I think he really feels all this. I get a
sense that he has a conflict, which is terribly interesting.
SF:
Do you think there's anything contradictory about being a
Catholic and being a novelist?
