[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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