To Matthew Hoehn
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. August 10, 1939
Dear Father Hoehn,
I was christened in the Church and profess no other religion, so that from the point of view of the census-taker I am unmistakably a Catholic. My Protestant and Jewish critics also discover a good deal of Catholicism in my writings; but I have never been a practising Catholic, and my views in philosophy and history are incompatible with belief in any revelation. It would therefore be wholly misleading to classify me among “Catholic Authors”.
This is a sufficient answer to your inquiry, for the purpose of your book of biographies, in which I ought not to be included. Yet I may add, in case you are at all interested in my real relation to the Faith, that a well-grounded Catholic student might find my philosophy useful (like that of some of the ancients) in defending the moral, political and mystical doctrines of the Church. I think that all religious ideas are merely symbolical; but I think the same of the ideas of science and even of the senses: so that the way is cleared for faith, in deciding which set of symbols one will trust.
Sincerely yours,
G Santayana
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Six, 1937-1940. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: Unknown.