"One of the quirkiest and most intriguing of all the Pivotal Players was a twentieth-century Catholic writer of fiction from the American South, a woman whose macabre, puzzling and luminous stories have had a transformative impact on both the Church and the wider culture." That's how Bishop Barron describes Flannery O'Connor in his book Pivotal Players.
New Georgia Encyclopedia describes Flannery O’Connor as ".. one of America’s greatest fiction writers and one of the strongest apologists for Roman Catholicism in the twentieth century. Born of the marriage of two of Georgia’s oldest Catholic families, O’Connor was a devout believer whose small but impressive body of fiction presents the soul’s struggle with what she called the “stinking mad shadow of Jesus.”"
"The Catholic novelist in the South will see many distorted images of Christ, but he will certainly feel that a distorted image of Christ is better than no image at all. I think he will feel a good deal more kinship with backwoods prophets and shouting fundamentalists than he will with those politer elements for whom the supernatural is an embarrassment and for whom religion has become a department of sociology or culture or personality development." - Flannery O'Connor
PBS's Liz Field focuses on O'Connor's illness, writing "The writer Flannery O’Connor was known for her dark, funny and sassy stories about misfits, outsiders and the types of offbeat characters she encountered while living in the American South. O’Connor herself could be considered a sort of outsider. Plagued by symptoms of lupus in the latter part of her life and mostly bound to the farm where she lived with her mother and many peacocks, she often wrote about themes of isolation and created characters driven by desires to connect with each other, society at large, or with God.
Whereas Bishop Barron's forward to the Flannery O'Connor Collection reads as follows: "As becomes unmistakably clear as you read through this collection, Flannery O’Connor was not only a masterful teller of tales; she was also one of the most perceptive literary theorists of the twentieth century. She once famously defined herself as a “hillbilly Thomist,” and the aesthetics of St. Thomas Aquinas do indeed inform the way she thought about her own work.
"The Catholic novelist in the South will see many distorted images of Christ, but he will certainly feel that a distorted image of Christ is better than no image at all. I think he will feel a good deal more kinship with backwoods prophets and shouting fundamentalists than he will with those politer elements for whom the supernatural is an embarrassment and for whom religion has become a department of sociology or culture or personality development." - Flannery O'Connor
PBS's Liz Field focuses on O'Connor's illness, writing "The writer Flannery O’Connor was known for her dark, funny and sassy stories about misfits, outsiders and the types of offbeat characters she encountered while living in the American South. O’Connor herself could be considered a sort of outsider. Plagued by symptoms of lupus in the latter part of her life and mostly bound to the farm where she lived with her mother and many peacocks, she often wrote about themes of isolation and created characters driven by desires to connect with each other, society at large, or with God.
Whereas Bishop Barron's forward to the Flannery O'Connor Collection reads as follows: "As becomes unmistakably clear as you read through this collection, Flannery O’Connor was not only a masterful teller of tales; she was also one of the most perceptive literary theorists of the twentieth century. She once famously defined herself as a “hillbilly Thomist,” and the aesthetics of St. Thomas Aquinas do indeed inform the way she thought about her own work.
Speaking from the window of the Apostolic Palace on June 23, Pope Francis asked the crowd gathered below in St. Peter’s Square to reflect on how they usually deal with times of trial. Jesus does not spare us from difficulties but strengthens us with the Eucharist to have the courage to face them, Pope Francis said in his reflection on Sunday’s Gospel.
When Flannery O'Connor was a a shy, promising young writer, novelist Mary McCarthy invited her to dinner. Attempting to draw Flannery out, McCarthy commented that though she was ex-Catholic, she had great admiration for the Eucharist as a symbol. To which Flannery responded in a shaky voice: "Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it." To be fair to McCarthy, she is not alone. In 2010, the Pew Research Center released its U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey. They found, “More than four in ten Catholics in the United States (45%) do not know that their church teaches that the bread and wine used in Communion do not merely symbolize but actually become the body and blood of Christ.”
The Catholic Church (1324) teaches "The Eucharist is "the source and summit of the Christian life." "The other sacraments, and indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it. For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our Pasch." As to symbology, the Church further teaches (1325) "The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being. It is the culmination both of God's action sanctifying the world in Christ and of the worship men offer to Christ and through him to the Father in the Holy Spirit."
Finally, (1326) by the Eucharistic celebration we already unite ourselves with the heavenly liturgy and anticipate eternal life, when God will be all in all.
Despite what McCarthy says, the Eucharist is not just a powerful symbol, but (CCC 1327), "the Eucharist is the sum and summary of our faith: "Our way of thinking is attuned to the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn confirms our way of thinking."
When Flannery O'Connor was a a shy, promising young writer, novelist Mary McCarthy invited her to dinner. Attempting to draw Flannery out, McCarthy commented that though she was ex-Catholic, she had great admiration for the Eucharist as a symbol. To which Flannery responded in a shaky voice: "Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it." To be fair to McCarthy, she is not alone. In 2010, the Pew Research Center released its U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey. They found, “More than four in ten Catholics in the United States (45%) do not know that their church teaches that the bread and wine used in Communion do not merely symbolize but actually become the body and blood of Christ.”
The Catholic Church (1324) teaches "The Eucharist is "the source and summit of the Christian life." "The other sacraments, and indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it. For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our Pasch." As to symbology, the Church further teaches (1325) "The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being. It is the culmination both of God's action sanctifying the world in Christ and of the worship men offer to Christ and through him to the Father in the Holy Spirit."
Finally, (1326) by the Eucharistic celebration we already unite ourselves with the heavenly liturgy and anticipate eternal life, when God will be all in all.
Despite what McCarthy says, the Eucharist is not just a powerful symbol, but (CCC 1327), "the Eucharist is the sum and summary of our faith: "Our way of thinking is attuned to the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn confirms our way of thinking."
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