So Rex was sent to Farm Street to Father Mowbray, a priest renowned for his triumphs with obdurate catechumens. After the third interview he came to tea with Lady Machmain.

"Well, how do you find my future son-in-law?"

"He's the most difficult convert I have ever met."

"Oh dear, I thought he was going to make it so easy."

"That's exactly it. I can't get anywhere near him. He doesn't seem to have the least intellectual curiosity or natural piety.

"The first day I wanted to find out what sort of religious life he had till now, so I asked him what he meant by prayer. He said: 'I don't mean anything. You tell me.'  I tried to, in a  few words, and he said: 'Right. So much for prayer. What's the next thing?' I gave him the catechism to take away. Yesterday I asked him whether Our Lord had more than one nature. He said: 'Just as many as you say, Father.'

"Then again I asked him: 'Supposing the Pope looked up and saw a cloud and said "It's going to rain," would that be bound to happen?' 'Oh, yes, Father.' 'But supposing it didn't?' He thought a moment and said, 'I suppose it would be sort of raining spiritually, only we were too sinful to see it."

-Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh

[Note: Rex Mottram in this scene is *not* a model for Catholics. lol. But this is a humorous passage, so I wanted to post it.]

Without supernatural aid...

Once, when he had behaved with particular rudeness to a young French intellectual at a dinner party in Paris at the home of Nancy Mitford, Miss Mitford, angry at his social brutality, asked him how he could behave so meanly and yet consider himself a believing and practicing Catholic.

"You have no idea," Waugh returned, "how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being."

-Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes (quoting a story about Evelyn Waugh related by Joseph Epstein)

[Something to remember when we see Christians not acting so Christlike is that perhaps they are still much, much better than they otherwise would be if they had not God's grace working in their lives so much.]