Rob Sheffield recalls a joke told by comedian George Carlin, who was raised a Catholic: “If you ask us any really tough questions, we’ll just shrug and say, ‘Hey, it’s a mystery!’”
The critic continues, “I love that joke. To me, that’s part of the great experience of being Catholic. You learn to live surrounded by mysteries and you don’t wait for the mysteries to go away or clear up. You don’t put off your spiritual life until after you have the answers; you just surge onward through the fog. There’s something deeply Catholic about that reverence for mystery, and it means a lot to me.”
— A Rock Critic Talks Faith, by James Breig, St. Anthony Messenger magazine, Jan. 12