[percy-l] Retaining My Amateur Status
marcus at loyno.edu
marcus at loyno.edu
Sun Feb 15 07:24:38 EST 2004
Chuck,
That's a good question! You at least deserve to reclassify
yourself into semi-pro status!
I want to think about it for a couple of days before
venturing any thought out answers. Also, I'd like to hear
some responses from others with other information. But I do
not recall WP ever being scornful about any V2 changes.
Also, I'm not sure what a "true" V2 Catholic is, anymore
than I am sure what a "true" pre-V2 Catholic was.
Percy might have said he was a "bad Catholic" before V2 and
remained a "bad Catholic" afterwards, meaning both
ironically, of course, as a sidestep into a peculiar act of
personal humility, and then, if it happened to be a Friday,
head over to a restaurant on the Lake in Mandeville for a
Jack Daniel's followed by some salad, good bread, and a
plate of Trout Almondine.
But this is all speculation.
Marcus Smith
----- Original Message Follows -----
From: chaslow53 at aol.com
To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [percy-l] Retaining My Amateur Status
Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 22:51:07 EST
>
>
>
> Unlike many of you on this list, I neither knew Walker
> Percy nor am able to study his work for extended periods
> in an academic setting. I am what Kieran Quinlan
> characterized in The Last Catholic Novelist as a
> nettlesome amateur, or what the Victorians more kindly
> called a "general reader."
>
> Here is my observation, which leads to a question: WP
> obviously was an advocate of a pre-Vatican II theology,
> both in terms of the articles of belief themselves and in
> the way that those articles were taught and held. He
> makes that clear in essay after essay directly, and in
> the novels indirectly. His views on dissenting clergy,
> liberation theology, etc., expressed in the decades after
> the Vatican Council, could just as easily have been
> regarded as common before the Council.
>
> The question, then, is this: is there any indication of
> what he thought of some of the day-to-day changes made
> following the Council? Was he sorry to see the Latin
> Mass go? Did he rush to trade fish for hamburgers on
> Friday? Did he abandon the Rosary or any other of those
> devotional elements that were widespread at the time of
> his conversion but which are now much rarer?
>
> Father Samway, in his biography, makes the very specific
> assertion that WP was a true Vatican II Catholic. I just
> haven't seen much evidence of it, and I thought that
> maybe others on the list could offer insight.
>
> Thanks. I would be grateful for any insight forwarded to
> the list or any private responses. Apologies to any on
> the list who are not particularly interested in this type
> of question.
>
> Chuck Lowry
> Brooklyn, New York
>
>
> --
>
> An archive of all list discussion is available at
> http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy/hypermail
>
> Visit the Walker Percy Project at
> http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy
>
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