[percy-l] Walker Percy, Sir Thomas More and Tom More

Steve Petrica steve.petrica at gmail.com
Sat May 2 14:04:58 EDT 2015


On Sat, May 2, 2015 at 12:37 PM, Lauren Stacy Berdy <
lauren.stacy.berdy at gmail.com> wrote:

Now  Dr. Tom More narrating "Love in the Ruins" says these days of "Christ
> forgetting, Christ haunted death dealing western world".No new Jerusalem etc
> Is Percy's Tom More a cynical version of  Sir Thomas More?   Dr More was a
> diagnostician he wanted to diagnose and heal. ( the deep abscesses in our
> souls) with the lapsometer. I cant see that part of Sir Thomas
> More..........as I have read and watch. What do they have in common? other
> than their name and why did Percy name him Dr Tom More?


You should be a bit more skeptical about Hilary Mantel's depictions of More
and Cromwell. She had an often and explicitly expressed hatred of the
Catholic Church, which is on full display in *Wolf Hall*.

But I have an entirely different theory about Tom More's name. I suspect
that Percy's homage is to the Rev. Thomas Verner Moore, O.Cart, M.D., PhD
(1877-1969). Moore was a psychiatrist *and* a psychologist; a priest and a
Benedictine-turned-Carthusian monk; chairman of the Dept of Psychology at
Catholic University for many years; and a well known author on religion and
psychology in the 1940s and 50s. I have not turned up any evidence that
Percy knew of Moore, but I think it's entirely plausible that he did.


Steve Petrica
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