Activity

Hello All,
I hope you enjoy reading this discussion between Scott Walter and Walker Percy. I’ll try to soon post a piece by Percy entitled “Diagnosing the Modern Malaise”. The thought that there might be some interest in these was prompted a statement made by Dr. Farrell in the current Dialog. In the Dialog Dr. Farrell said that more and more people are beginning to have a feeling that something is wrong and that having this feeling prompts (at least some of) them to initiate a search some kind in order to find out what the origin of that feeling of wrongness might be (my paraphrase). We should, individually and collectively, give serious thought and consideration to this perception. Walker Percy did just that in both his fiction and nonfiction. Percy’s musements on “this feeling of wrongness”, and what one might do about it (See the mentions of Kierkegaard in his essay “Loss of the Creature”) might prove to be of some use.

As you read remember Dr. Farrell’s tip from the last Dialog … “pause and reflect”.

Cheers!

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

JULY 1, 1989
Out of the Ruins: The Poor Old Pope? Seduced Nuns? Nazis and the New York Times? Walker Percy Explains
SCOTT WALTER
Conversions have figured prominently in Walker Percy’s life. He trained as a physician, but contracted tuberculosis during his internship and found himself confined him to bed for three years. While convalescing, he read widely and, as his friend and admirer Flannery O’Connor put it, “he and St. Thomas became friends.” His reading converted him first to philosophic reflection, then to Catholicism, and finally to his new vocation as a writer.

His conversions to Catholicism and to the craft of writing have borne considerable fruit: Percy has just been awarded the nation’s highest honors in both categories. First, Notre Dame honored him with the Laetare Medal, the most prestigious award given American Catholics for contributions to the arts and sciences. Then the National Endowment for the Humanities named him the 1989 Jefferson Lecturer, the highest national honor for distinguished achievement in the humanities.

In Washington to deliver the Jefferson Lecture, Percy spoke with Crisis editor Scott Walter in his hotel suite. Dressed in khakis and a plaid shirt, the 72-year¬old author spoke leisurely and laughed often, belying his claim that his profession is “a very obscure activity in which there is usually a considerable element of malice.” Slouched in his chair —”I don’t ever stand if I can sit, and I don’t ever sit if I can lie down” —Percy proved once again that though he may deplore the urge to edify, he cannot amid pricking the consciences of men and women late in the twentieth century.

There is tremendous intellectual opposition in the Church to Pope John Paul II. What do you make of that?

The poor man. I think he’s getting a bum rap. On TV, they usually say: This pope is a nice man, but he’s a Pole and just by nature reactionary. Yet if you look at his encyclicals, he’s quite liberal politically. He’s almost as critical of free-wheeling capitalism as he is of Marxism. He certainly doesn’t come across as a “conservative” in the usual sense. What his critics mean, although they won’t admit it, is that he is an orthodox Catholic, that he’s bound and determined to maintain the magisterium.
I was talking to a priest the other day who said he was leaving the Church. Why, I asked? Because nothing had changed, he said. Changed how? Well, the bishops should be more independent, the magisterium is too strong, it should be up to the bishops to determine the nature of the Eucharist, and so forth. I said, If you do that, what you’ve got is another Episcopal Church —just another church on the street: a Roman Episcopal Church, next to the Protestant Episcopal Church, and so on.

A couple of years ago you were asked what you thought of Cardinal Ratzinger. You said you didn’t know his work that well, but the right sort of people hated him, so he couldn’t be all bad.
[laughter] I guess I’ll go with that.
Cardinal Ratzinger recently said that sometimes bishops ought to be martyrs
I’m sure he’d like to assist some of them.
What do you think of the Catholic press?
I think it’s all over the place. It’s extremely pluralistic, which is good, and some of it I like, such as Crisis, which I like considerably better than the National Catholic Reporter.
Your writings embody a critique of many of the philosophies of people who now praise you extravagantly. What do you think of this paradox?
Who praised me extravagantly?
Well, when your last book came out, it was surprising to see your face splashed across the front page of the Washington Post “Style” section and the front page of the New York Times Book Review. All of these publications which ought, philosophically, to dislike you, seem to like you, while the mainstream Christian press, which ought to like you, has begun to complain that you don’t care enough about women, the poor, and so on.
Well, that may be a good place to be—misunderstood both by one’s fellow Catholics and by the secular press. For instance, I remember The Moviegoer was well received, and for the wrong reasons, I think. The Catholic novelist has to be very careful. He has to be under-handed, deceitful, and damn careful how he uses the words of religion, which have all fallen into disuse and almost become obscenities, thanks to people like Jimmy Swaggart.
I remember that The Moviegoer was well received and reviewed favorably by the New York Times and other papers. One reviewer said that the reason he or she liked it so much was that at the end of the novel Binx Bolling says something like, “When the word God is mentioned, a curtain comes down in my head; I can’t think about it. What I really believe is that a kick in the ass, in the right place, is the only thing a man can do.” That was read by non-believers to mean, a kick in the ass to the Church, you see, instead of to the nonbelievers. That may be my fault.
On the other hand, if the subject of religion comes up in a novel, or any hint of any kind of conversion or revelation, it’s disapproved of. The secular reviewers say: the author did a good job, his characters are well drawn, and the plot moves along, but his religion shows. It’s a game you can’t win. What you do is, you tell the story. As Flannery O’Connor said, the worst thing the novelist can do is be edifying. She kept most specific references to the Church out of her work, yet God knows she was as powerful Catholic as I ever knew.