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The Row Boat"Had we but world enough, and time..." * Politics of the Holy Name5/12/2005 11:54:21Yesterday in the discussion following the thesis presentation of my friend Matt Hamilton about the religious nature poetics of Denise Levertov and Wendell Berry, it occured to both of us the incredible difference in political overtones that a Catholic reference made in the 1960s from what it makes now. In Levertov's most active period, the days of the Berrigans and Catholic Worker, priests wore their collars to protests. A professor who was listening said that as a Christian she grew up marching in the street. Certainly that is no more, in the public perception at least. In the literary perception. "Catholic" invokes abuse scandals and confusion, a sense of lost repugnance with the world as God seems to have made it. Justice is hard to measure. In abandoning its call for peoples' liberation in favor of fuss about marriage and reproduction, the Church seems to have become more postmodern than anybody, so possessed as it is by blinders close to home. When Levertov referenced her Catholicism in a politicized context, the signifier had an entirely different meaning than it might if I did today. As such, I refer entirely to perceptions, to public notions. The odd thing is that neither perception holds much water realistically. It's just what is in the news. God, Christ, the Church, the Eucharist, the old ladies praying before Mary long after the mass has ended- these have not changed since 1968 though most everything else has. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
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