Losing Bill Buckley's religion

From a NYT Magazine interview with Christopher Buckley:

As an only child, did you find one of your parents easier to talk to than the other? My mother. She got it. He often didn't get it.

What didn't he get? Religion.

He was a practicing Catholic. What are you? I am post-Catholic.

As opposed to a lapsed Catholic? I am probably more of a collapsed Catholic.

Do you believe in the afterlife? Alas, no. But I find myself wondering at the oddest times: So, Pup, are you in heaven? Is it true after all? If he is there, I hope he is debating with St. Peter about letting me in when my time comes, and I hope he is winning.

I hope so too. I find this so touching and sad. I worry from time to time about my children losing their faith. I would consider that just about the worst thing that could happen to them.

That his son had lost his faith must have been a terrible burden for a Christian like Bill Buckley to bear -- especially because his wife, by their son's testimony, had no faith either. I wonder if she ever did. I couldn't imagine going through life married to someone who had no faith, or who didn't share my faith. Before I met Julie, I once had a mad crush on a Jewish girl in my office. She was smart, lively, funny, beautiful, and interested in me. But she didn't have faith, and even if she had, it wouldn't have been my faith, nor mine hers, obviously. My faith is the most important thing to me; it defines who I am. I couldn't have entered into that loneliness within a marriage, nor put her into that loneliness, to say nothing of confusing our children. I read somewhere not long ago that children of mixed-faith marriages are disproportionately likely to become adults who have no faith. I believe it.

Understand, I'm not saying it's impossible to have a loving marriage without a shared faith. Pat and Bill Buckley disprove that thesis, and I personally know at least one other example. Nor, I hope it's obvious, am I saying that a father and son cannot love each other if one believes in God and the other doesn't. I would love my adult children not one speck less if any were to become atheists; in fact, there's a part of me that would actively love them more, because I would worry so much about them, and want them to know and to love and to serve God. Still, reading that part of the Chris Buckley interview made me sad for him and for his sweet and noble father, who, I hope, is able now to intercede for divine mercy on us all, especially those who struggle to see more clearly through this darkened glass of mortality.