Post-Metaphysical, Michael Perry, and the Limits of Blogs

I too am interested in what Michael Perry means when he says that he is a “post-metaphysical, apophatic  Catholic/Christian.”  It is mainly the post-metaphysical aspect that I am curious about.  I take apophatic  to mean that the nature of God is a mystery.  

But I would like to emphasize that I do not believe that any member of this blog is required to answer the questions of others. It is not just because we all have busy lives and more pressing intellectual interests than those pressed upon us by someone else on the blog.  I share Michael’s view that many of us inhabit different theological universes and those differences are so great that the potential for dialogue is limited. As some others have mentioned, I think this is especially true in the context of a blog the form of which among other things tends toward debate (sometimes heated and nasty) rather than dialogue in part because the person on the other side is not present when the words are typed and in part because the public character of the exchanges lead to defensive reactions. These tendencies are accentuated by the well known capacity of religion to inspire passionate defense of positions rather than open-minded exploration and tempered by the desire to cultivate Christian virtues.