What's this about?

Were you looking for me? Probably not. Most likely you were searching for certain content and, having found it on this site, you wanted to know a bit more about what's behind  it.

This non-commercial (and, obviously, technologically unevolved) website is a repository of (a) samples of the scholarship that has put me in the debt of others over many years and (b) essays of mine through which I try to pay that debt forward. I hope the site continues to play that role, although I expect that it will do so less frequently than it has over the past eight years.

Those who have visited since January 17, 2004 should know that I have returned to the Christian orthodoxy from which (this may come as a surprise to some of you) my thinking strayed. Those fields did not yield what they seemed to promise. The harvest of my intellectual discontent is still on display here, but henceforth new content will reflect my new-old interests.

My current priority is situate myself mentally within Christian orthodoxy, a matter that I do not think has been settled for me.  I believe myself to be a member in good standing of the Roman Catholic communion within the Catholic Church, from whose fold I do not exclude Eastern Orthodox and Reformed Christians. Such self-situating requires more prayer and reflection than advertising.

Despite their disunity on the doctrinal level, these diverse communions form one Church of Jesus Christ. No official statement of any particular communion has gotten things exactly right, but neither does this deficiency justify a Christian's failure to belong to any one of them. Continued disunity is the greater scandal (John 17).

I am painfully aware that Roman Catholic officialdom does not regard the Roman Catholic Church as merely one “communion” among others. Whether my more modest description disqualifies me from continued membership is a question I am in no hurry to test, but I am certain that such a test's worst consequence would not include loss of membership in the communio sanctorum. So let the chips fall where they may.

In any case, my interest in airing the questions that interest me now is much less than it has been. Simply put, such airing has not paid off. I have no desire to issue a public retraction, and you probably have even less to read one. After I've drawn so much attention to thought I now deem error, it would be unseemly for me to put forward what I now deem true with the same enthusiasm. For now, at least,  much less is much more. The only continuity I see between then and now is personal idiosyncrasy, which is an admission that I cannot escape my times.

God only knows what that means for the future of this hopelessly old-fashioned site, but I assure those who have ever gotten anything out of their visit that there are no plans to pull it down.  I do have a few blogs*, but to maintain them on anything like a regular basis will cost more in the coin of precious time and energy, better spent on study, than I am willing to pay. If they have created expectations that will most likely not be met, I accept whatever censure my failure exacts. There are weightier matters to consider.

As always, feel free to write me at anarchristian at juno dot com.

Anthony Flood

January 17, 2012

(The site's eighth anniversary)

* Namely, anarcho-Catholic, anarchristian, and

Tony Flood's House of Hard Bop