I stumbled upon the blog After the Future while tracking a Walker Percy loose end. I didn’t find the loose end. What I found instead was this post that uses Walker Percy, via Paul Elie’s book The Life You Save May Be Your Own, as a launch pad for the writer’s own musings on the state of the Catholic Church. The post takes several surprising turns, navigating some of the same contradictions I find myself inwardly navigating of late. I balk at points, but resonate with the basic drift of it. The writer, Jack Whelan, teaches a business communications (?!) course at the University of Washington and is writing a book with the same title as his blog. His bio says he is “a postmodern Catholic trying to figure out what that means in a Church still very much dominated by a premodern imagination of itself.” Again I resonate with the “postmodern” part but balk a bit at the tone of the “premodern” part. There’s a smugness in speaking that way as a Catholic about the Catholic Church that I dislike. Still, I’m intrigued. I like what he has to say about Lost, too. This blog bothers me, actually. I’ll be returning.
After the Future
June 26, 2010 by at 7:33 am
Thanks, Rufus. Interesting post, which is substantially enriched by the conversational comment from Lickona.
An alarm went off – albeit a quiet one – when he phrased his criticism in directional terms ("upside down," etc), as some of his own commentary seemed to be picking the shovel up by the spade end ("what the world needs the church to be", and sim.).
Still, Whelan makes a number of provocative points – I'll be back there, too.