Browsing by Subject "Walter J. Ong, Pope Francis, Robert P. Jones, Massimo Faggioli"

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    Walter J. Ong on Being Both Backward-Looking and Forward-Looking at the Same Time
    (This version has not been published previously., 2023-09) Farrell, Thomas
    In my 1,900-word review essay "Walter J. Ong on Being Both Backward-Looking and Forward-Looking at the Same Time," I highlight the life and work of the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian and pioneering media ecology theorist Walter J. Ong (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955). Then I highlight Ong's generous review of Marshall McLuhan's ambitious 1962 book The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (University of Toronto Press), on the one hand, and, on the other, Ong's 1981 article "McLuhan as Teacher: The Future is a Thing of the Past." Then I discuss Robert P. Jones' new 2023 book The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy: And the Path to a Shared American Future (Simon & Schuster). In it, Jones criticizes Pope Francis for not being sufficiently backward-looking regarding the Doctrine of Discovery. Finally, I discuss Massimo Faggioli's recent article "The Pope & the Americans: The U.S. episcopate is unparalleled in its resistance to [Pope] Francis" in Commonweal magazine. Faggioli notes that Pope Francis has recently criticized certain conservative American Catholics for being too backward-looking.