In Ong's first book, Frontiers in American Catholicism: Essays on Ideology and Culture (1957), he discusses Riesman's three character-types (pp. vii and 39). Ong does not fear the emerging other-directed character-type. Ong generally acknowledges the aptness of Riesman's characterizations of the other two character-types: (1) the tradition-directed personality type (presumably including many of Ong's Catholic co-religionists); and (2) the inner-directed personality type.
In Ong's own publications from the early 1950s onward, he does not explicitly use Riesman's term inner-directed personality type. Nevertheless, Ong tends to associate the decisive emergence of Riesman's inner-directed personality type with the further heightened interiorization of the visualist tendencies in our Western cultural history in the print culture that emerged in Europe after the Gutenberg printing press emerged in the mid-1450s.
Ong published his landmark study of print culture in our Western cultural history in his massively researched 1958 book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason, mentioned above. Peter Ramus (1515-1572) was a French Renaissance logician and educational reformer and Protestant martyr. Ong's massively researched 1958 book is also his pioneering media ecology account of our Western cultural history (for specific page references to the aural-to-visual shift in our Western cultural history, see that entry in the "Index" [p. 396]).
I have discussed Ong's account of the aural-to-visual shift in cognitive processing in our Western cultural history in his massively researched 1958 book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue in my widely read somewhat lengthy OEN article "Walter J. Ong's Philosophical Thought" (dated September 20, 2020).
Now, in Ong's accessible 1982 book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, his most widely read and most widely translated book, he devotes a subsection to discussing "The Inward Turn of Consciousness" (pp. 178-179). What Ong there refers to as the inward turn of consciousness was heightened in print culture in our Western cultural history to what Riesman refers to as the inner-directed personality type.
Ah, because the Roman Catholic tradition tended to favor the formation of what Riesman refers to as the tradition-directed personality type, does this mean that no Roman Catholics ever developed the inner-directed personality type? No, I do think that this was the case historically.
For example, the Roman Catholic tradition also includes the form of meditation on scripture known as lectio divina - and the form of meditation known as lection divina undoubtedly favored the forms of what Riesman refers to as the inner-directed personality type. Thus, in at least certain Roman Catholics what Riesman refers to as the tradition-directed personality type and the inner-directed personality type co-existed over the centuries in medieval manuscript culture and in print culture in our Western cultural history.
Now, for further reading about Pope John XXIII, see Norman Cousins' book The Improbable Triumvirate: John F. Kennedy, Pope John, and Nikita Khrushchev (1972).
Now, when I was in the Jesuits (1979-1987), I did my theological studies at the Jesuit theologate at the University of Toronto. In 1984, Pope John Paul II visited Canada. I witnessed the large outdoor Mass that he celebrated in the fields adjacent to the Shrine of the North American martyrs at Midland, Ontario.
The North American martyrs were a group of French Jesuit missionaries and some of their Native American converts who were killed by other Native Americans. There are two shrines to the North American martyrs in North America. The other shrine is in the State of New York. Of course, at thew time of the deaths of the North American martyrs, there was no such thing as the countries of Canada and the United States.
Now, in Emma Anderson's book The Death and Afterlife of the North American Martyrs (2013), she notes that "several newly minted Ojibwe deacons co-served Mass with Pope John Paul II during his visit to Midland" (p. 276).
Emma Anderson also notes that in Pope John Paul II's homily during that large outdoor Mass, he uttered the "much quoted but little understood catchphrase" "'Christ, in the members of his Body, is himself Indian'" (p. 271).
Now, in the closing years of Father Ong's life, he suffered from Parkinson's disease - about the same time that Pope John Paul II was visibly suffering from Parkinson's disease - which all the world could see as the pope continued to carry on certain public ceremonies as he was visibly suffering from Parkinson's disease. Father Ong died in August 2003 in a hospital in suburban St. Louis from complications due to pneumonia at the age of 90. (Pope John Paul II died on April 2, 2005, in a hospital in Rome at the age of 84.)
Now, as I just mentioned, I was in the Jesuits from 1979 to 1987, and I did my theological studies at the Jesuit theologate at the University of Toronto. While I was in Toronto, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger visited Toronto. Along with other Catholic seminarians from the Toronto area, I attended a presentation he gave to Catholic seminarians. Suffice it to say that I was not impressed with Cardinal Ratzinger's presentation.
After I left the Jesuits early in 1987, I subsequently taught at the University of Minnesota Duluth from the fall of 1987 to the end of May 2009. I October 2009, I published my first OEN article, "Why Obama Should Shun the Pope's Views on Abortion" (dated October 10, 2009). In it, I urged President Barack Obama to shun then-Pope Benedict XVI's teaching against abortion.
Now, in my later widely read OEN article, "Pope Francis on Evil and Satan" (dated March 24, 2019), I have candidly profiled the doctrinally conservative Pope Francis.
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