Different variations of this question, pertaining to his religious beliefs, preoccupied people when he was alive; but Catholics particularly seem to be interested in it, and he is still referred to occasionally as a “Catholic philosopher.” Santayana suggested to biographer Bruno Lind that he wanted to avoid “replacing Aristotle as the accepted pagan philosopher for Catholics” (The Letters of George Santayana: Book Eight, 3 October 1951). In 1930 Santayana wrote “Like my parents, I have always set myself down officially as a Catholic: but this is a matter of sympathy and traditional allegiance, not of philosophy” (“A Brief History of My Opinions” in Lyon 1968, Santayana on America, 7). He continues, “I have never had any unquestioning faith in any dogma and have never been what is called a practicing Catholic.”