I commend this short blog entry by Fr. Robert Connor on Walker Percy’s quest to name himself.

The great work of Walker Percy is his struggle to name the “I” of Walker Percy. His life-long endeavor was to name himself, which was to give himself an identity and reason to exist.

He goes on to provide an insightful view of Percy existential mission. Fr. Connor has the unique ability to write in a very Percy-like fashion. Percy’s non-fiction is complex, yet he avoids complicated words. He had a way of stringing together simple statements to explore extremely dense concepts. Any man that loved semeiotics as much as he did must have a multi-layered understanding of language.

Tags: existentialism

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Pope Pius XII published Humani Generis in 1950, condemning the philosophy of existentialism.  While he specifically named existentialism as a corrupting influence over theology, the encyclical goes on to condemn many different theories and philosophies that undermine the historic foundation of Church teaching. While the liberalizing ideas condemned in this pronouncement have never-the-less run their course through society and the Church, I do wonder how Percy interpreted and reacted to this statement.

Percy was willing to stare despair in the face, but of course, the Church had to stand against the eroding influence of philosophical despair. I remain impressed by Percy’s ability to adopt the existentialist dilemma, yet remain orthodox in his faith.

Tags: encyclical, existentialism

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