Denver Newsroom, Aug 6, 2020 / 06:00 am (CNA).- Professor Angela Alaimo O’Donnell has studied Flannery O’Connor, an American Catholic author from the South, rather extensively. She wrote a book on O’Connor’s treatment of racial issues specifically, entitled “Radical Ambivalence: Race in Flannery O’Connor.”
So when the Fordham professor heard that Flannery O’Connor’s name would be removed from a residence hall at Loyola University Maryland, due to concerns over apparently racist remarks in some of her personal correspondence, O’Donnell decided to act by petitioning the university to reconsider. Her petition has been signed by more than 200 people, including O’Connor scholars, theologians, and writers of color.
So far, O’Donnell has not received a response.
“I was hoping to get a note from Father Linnane (president of Loyola University) just acknowledging the letter, but I haven’t heard anything from him. He probably is besieged by a lot of letters. I’m hoping that he will eventually respond, but so far I haven’t heard anything,” O’Donnell told CNA.
“I thought it was a great teachable moment for Loyola to have an opportunity to talk with students and take their time. I really don’t understand the rush,” she said. O’Donnell’s advocacy for O’Connor is not so much about a building, she said, and it’s not to deny O’Connor’s racist comments.
Rather, it’s about the swift erasure – the canceling, if you will – of O’Connor without the campus community considering a fuller picture of her person and what her work has to say to the current generation.
“I know Father Linnane says people can still teach Flannery O’Connor, that she’s not being removed from campus,” O’Donnell said. “But I don’t think Father Linnane realizes that, effectively, she’s not going to be on campus anymore, unless the faculty member (teaching her works) is tenured and also is very brave, and wants to have these conversations about race.”
O’Connor was a short story writer, novelist, and essayist as well as a devout Catholic who attended daily Mass. She lived most of her life in Georgia and became renowned for her biting Southern Gothic style of fiction. She died of lupus in 1964, at the age of 39.
Attention was drawn to apparent racism in O’Connor’s personal writings by “How Racist Was Flannery O’Connor?”, a piece that appeared in the New Yorker in June. There, Paul Elie wrote that “letters and postcards she sent home from the North in 1943 were made available to scholars only in 2014, and they show O’Connor as a bigoted young woman.” Some of the passages quoted by Elie had been published for the first time in O’Donnell’s book.
O’Donnell said professors should not ignore O’Connors comments about race in her correspondence. Rather, she said, they should be seen as just one piece of the full picture of who Flannery O’Connor was, and be compared to the way she treats racism in her works of fiction.
“It’s got to be a conversation about race. I welcome that,” O’Donnell said, adding that the purpose of her book in the first place was to genuinely pose the question of how Flannery can still be taught in classrooms given some of her problematic racist comments in her personal letters.
“How do you teach Flannery O’Connor in the classroom? What can you do? Because I think it’s worth us considering it from the angle of pedagogy and culture, how you encounter every writer. Every writer needs to be reevaluated with each new generation, and then we decide what it is that he or she has to offer, and whether or not it’s helpful. And so this is a really good moment to reevaluate O’Connor in a thoughtful way,” she said, “and not the way that Elie does, and not the way that Loyola has done.”
In many ways, O’Donnell noted, O’Connor is the perfect author for this moment in history especially because of how she treats racism in her work, which faces its ugliness head-on and views it as a sin.
“Her stories are powerful, iconic stories, and very realistic gritty depictions of what it was like to be alive in a culture, the very, very racist culture of the American south during the Civil Rights Movement, during a time of enormous change,” O’Donnell said.
And O’Connor’s favorite description of her job as a fiction writer was to live “hotly in pursuit of the real,” O’Donnell said, so her stories “do not look away from very difficult and challenging situations.”
In her stories, O’Connor portrays “a complex sort of dance that black Americans and white Americans had to negotiate in order to live together in a segregated culture. And it always reflects badly on white people, because they were – most white people are – ignorant of their racism. And the few who do know it oftentimes are proud of it and think it’s a badge of honor. And she just mercilessly exposes those people,” O’Donnell said.
O’Donnell said there are “all sorts of ways” in which Americans today experience the same or similar kinds of racism, whether personally or systemically. “And the fact that we have this writer who exposes it so knowingly, and exposes it to censure, it’s a powerful way of seeing how far we have not come,” she said.
As a devout Catholic, O’Connor also “thought about this in theological terms. She thought that racism was a sin. A sin against God, a sin against human beings, a sin against grace. And so in a number of her stories the people who are the most egregious racists really get their comeuppance in the course of the story,” she added.
Alice Walker, an African American writer and feminist who grew up in the same area of Georgia as the O’Connors, was one of the signatories of the petition sent to Loyola University Maryland. The letter opens with a statement from Walker, who said: “We must honor Flannery for growing. Hide nothing of what she was, and use that to teach.”
Walker herself is an admirer of O’Connor’s work. In an essay that appeared in the Dec. 1994/Jan. 1995 edition of Sojourners magazine, Walker wrote that it was O’Connor’s biting portrayal of Southern white people that initially captured her attention.
“It was for her description of Southern white women that I appreciated her work at first, because when she set her pen to them not a whiff of magnolia hovered in the air (and the tree itself might never have been planted), and yes, I could say, yes, these white folks without the magnolia (who are indifferent to the tree’s existence), and these black folks without melons and superior racial patience, these are like Southerners that I know,” Walker wrote.
O’Donnell added that Walker has also, in her past critiques of O’Connor, “really admired the fact that O’Connor did not pretend to be able to get inside the minds of her black characters.”
O’Connor admitted at one point that she did not write from the perspective of African Americans because she did not understand them.
“And so Walker saw this as a kind of a respectful distance that O’Connor kept, allowing black characters to have their own privacy, so she never pretends to know what they’re thinking.”
“I think what Walker valued was that she could see in O’Connor, this development, this struggle, and was wrestling with the problem of race. And…it’s foolish and shortsighted not to honor that and acknowledge that as being human.”
Something else that people today can learn from O’Connor is how to face and challenge the racism that exists even within themselves, O’Donnell said.
“All of us who are born and raised in this white privileged culture, we imbibe this from the time that we’re born into the world, and it’s impossible for us to escape it. It’s just impossible,” she said.
“The best that we can do is be knowledgeable about the fact, be knowledgeable of our blindnesses, and try to work against them and do what we call now anti-racist work. And one of the forms that anti-racist work took for O’Connor was: ‘Okay, I know I have this problem. I know all the people I live with and love have this problem, including my mother and including my aunt and my friends. And so I’m going to write stories that expose this problem.’”
For those who want to read some of O’Connor’s most poignant fiction that treats racism, O’Donnell recommended four stories. The first, “Revelation,” was one of O’Connor’s “last stories and one of her most powerful stories. It is a portrait of a racist who has a wake-up call and understands very clearly what she’s guilty of by the end of the story. And in some ways that person, that main character, is a portrait of O’Connor.”
Another story by O’Connor about race that O’Donnell recommended is “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” in which one of the characters seeks to atone for the racism of his mother, and must confront his own hypocrisy.
Another story, “The Geranium,” is one of the first that O’Connor ever published.
“It’s about an old white man who goes to live in New York with his daughter, and is horrified when he moves next door to black people. And he has a wake-up call,” O’Donnell said.
“And the last story that Flannery worked on on her death bed was a rewriting of that same story, it’s called ‘Judgment Day.’ So, O’Connor’s work – she only wrote 31 stories- is book-ended by these two stories and that story she rewrote four times in the course of her life.”
“And with each new version, her depiction of the relationship between the races gets more and more complex as she goes along. That is a sign of somebody who, throughout the course of her professional life as a writer, is growing and changing and developing,” O’Donnell said.
“She’s at war with herself in many ways and trying to figure out what she thinks. But the victory is you can see in the stories where she’s going and what she thinks,” she added.
O’Donnell said that going forward, she hopes that Flannery O’Connor gets a fairer and more honest consideration than a cursory glance at some of her racist remarks in her personal letters.
At Loyola University Maryland, Flannery O’Connor’s name could be used on a more appropriate building, such as a literary arts building or theater, she noted.
“I would really just encourage people to read the stories and decide for themselves what O’Connor is doing,” O’Donnell said. “And also to understand that the things that she says in her letters are problematic. Absolutely, no question about it. Nobody is going to side step that.”
“But we don’t remember Flannery O’Connor for her letters. We remember her for her stories. That’s where we go when we have to decide whether that work is worth it. It’s a decision we have to make.”
[…]
What steps does the Spirit invite us to take in order to grow in our ‘journeying together?
Encourage the Traditional Latin Mass and more Pro Life/Pro Family support from the clergy especially Pope Francis and the Vatican.
We read: “When you think about it being a 41-page document, how are we going to consult people? Are they going to read 41 pages?” Well, a good place to START might be Part I:5, Proposal “o” which reads in part:
“From the work of the Assembly, there is the call for better knowledge of the teachings of Vatican II (…).”
Indeed, this comes nearly forty years after the IDENTICAL CONCLUSION was achieved at the 20-years pulse-check following the Council, the Final Report of 1985 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops: “[Part 1:6] It is suggested […] a new, more extensive and reception of the Council. This can be attained above all through a new diffusion of the documents themselves [….]”
Perhaps, after almost sixty years, actually read the DOCUMENTS, as contrasted with the disembodied and decapitated “spirit of the Council” as marketed by Hans Kung and two generations of freelance theologians, including many lemming synodalizers.
Two other FINDINGS in 1985 were:
“[Part II:6]…from Vatican II has positively come a new style [not exactly a new idea!] of collaboration between the laity and clerics,” AND: “[Part II:3] We cannot replace a false unilateral vision of the Church as purely hierarchical with a new sociological conception which is also unilateral [!].”
Less dense than the inventory compiled in the 2023 Synthesis Report, key themes of the 1985 Final Report might already frame the requested “EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.” Although much of the overlay of current grassroots concerns gives added and valuable definition to engagement in the world. Omitting, of course, Germania’s distracting moral, sacramental and ecclesial novelties.
“Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, had noted at last month’s synod that only 1% of Catholics participated in the listening sessions.”
Is that 1% of Catholics, or 1% of Catholics who attend weekly Sunday Mass?
~ 17% of Catholics attend weekly Mass, so even if that’s 1% of Catholics, it’s still only about 5% of Catholics at Sunday Mass. And it’s not like there’s enough kids to make that an impressive number.
I am not surprised that only 1% of Catholics listened/paid attention to the Synodal conference. In the U.S., most people are too busy. Yes, some of the busy stuff is “junk”–being on X (Twitter) and other social media sites, being online on sports sites and other “fun” sites, ordering stuff from Amazon and trying to find a place to put the stuff in our homes when it arrives, working (often working overtime or more than one job), driving (can take up a lot of time depending on where you live in the U.S.), taking care of children and keeping up with teens, etc. And frankly, I didn’t want to spend time listening to a conference that seemed basically to be a meeting to talk about stuff that seems to be of little importance to many of us in our daily lives. There are so many wonderful things to learn about Jesus, the Bible, the Church, etc., and so many tasks that need to be done in my home and my parish, and so many things to talk to God about in prayer–I personally think there are better ways to spend my time than listening in on a conference that I don’t really understand the purpose of. I’ll read the “summary” when it comes out, and let the “thinkers” in the Church act (or not act) on the Synodal Way.
Drinking a six pack and staring at a turned off tv screen is a more valuble way to spend time than participating in the evil enterprise of a synod. Christians are oblighed to resist evil.
If the synod was held to hear the voices of Catholic lay people, then in my opinion, it has failed. Why even hold a synod if only one per cent of Catholics participated? Why is Francis insisting on having these synods, if the vast majority of Catholics express little to no interests? How does he know that the Holy Spirit will guide his synod in any way? To me, these synods are a waste of time, energy and money. I understand that the Vatican is not in good shape, financially. Is the Vatican able to afford these meetings?
Synod’s next step. Cancel all future meetings, give those millions of dollars to the poor and all those involved spend one month in a retreat given by Bishop Strickland entitiled: “Caritas in ecclesia”.
Yours truly humbly proposes that the needed EXECUTIVE SUMMARY of the Synthesis Report actually appears within the report itself! Not to diminish the contents of the report, but first an observation, then the very concise summary, and then a concluding question…
OBSERVATION: Curiously, the table of contents for the Report appears at the end rather than the beginning. The first impression is that this is either a formatting error, or a cross-cultural touch toward Hebrew, or Chinese, or even Egyptian hieroglyphic ways of reading, but no…this is a right-brained effort to place the “concrete” process in front and above of any synoptic or disdained “abstract” perspective.
THE SUMMARY QUOTE: Part III, n. 20—The Synod of Bishops and Ecclesial Assemblies: Convergences (a):
“Even though the experience of ‘walking together’ has been tiring, the Assembly sensed the evangelical joy of being [?] the People of God. The new experiences involved in this stage [?] of the synodal journey were generally welcomed [two thirds?]. The most obvious one included the shift [paradigm shift?] of the celebration of the Synod from an event [!] to a process [!]…”
CONCLUDING QUESTION: Event vs Process? As in “…being [?] the People of God?” Does this wording actually propose/impose, broadly and by subliminal suggestion, that experiences together displace being? That ontological being is subordinate to horizontal becoming? That what we are is reducible to what we do? That to do is the sum total of to be?
So, the process IS the message, “aggregated, compiled, synthesized” by “facilitator” bishops, more or less. AND, this message can be summarized: “Do-be-do-be-do-be-do”! The conceptual ambiguity of convergent synodality! The enabled reduction of pluriformity to pluralism. On this “backwardist” journey, which is not so new, the lay theologian Etienne Gilson reminds us:
“Philosophy always buries its undertakers.”
What’s occurring at the Synod is a circumscribed process that is light years away from the comprehension, or practical relevance to the vast sea of Catholic Christians. Mrs Sharon Whitlock’s comment expresses it well. Nor does a summary inform the reader of the rationale for getting there. That alone speaks to an exercise in futility. Unless there is a rationale to further an agenda.
Certainly this pontificate has an agenda to modernize the Gospel contextually, grounding it in cultural differences, scientific advances, anthropological, biological, philosophical, theological [recently proposed to that effect by pope Francis]. What will result is rote indoctrination of material that is otherwise unintelligible to the average Christian. Nor will the average Christian, or any Christian for that matter be able to identify continuity with the revealed Word of God.
The agenda was provided two millennia ago in the Great Commission.
However, That’s hard work, especially in these times and I suspect few if any Bishops can provide any evidence from their particular diocese of increased Mass attendance; reduced pre/non-marital cohabitation, increased conversions; the end of church closures; increased marriages.
Instead we get vainglorious soliloquys from our “Shepherds”.
Instead of looking to Rome for guidance, the bishops might save time (and sanity) by reading The Catholic Thing, Nov. 17.
Why do these bishops feel obligated to act as stupidly as entertainers?
The Bishops have an obsession with material poverty, to the exclusion of the far more pervasive and destructive moral poverty. On well, another verbose document should help.
Good point, and I believe the reason is because the first is a product of the latter which they refuse to acknowledge since it would implicate their failures.
Getting back, again, to the need to “formulate concrete plans to prepare for the final stage of the Synod on Synodality next fall”…The Synthesis is 41 pages, some 21,000 words, and was tweaked by 1,251 amendments (the devil is in the details). The term “LGBTQ+” is deleted. Deleted also is a permanent and content-free synod. The Magisterium is noted ten times rather than four in the draft report (but now whose magisterium?).
One simplifying way of preparing for 2024 might be to focus on the trees rather than the forest. That is, where are the unblended drops of cyanide in the punch bowl?
Two such possibilities:
The proposed “[16 (p)]…ministry of listening and accompaniment,” as potentially eclipsing the guardianship of the Deposit of Faith? And, “[12 (h)] Further reflection is needed on the relationship between episcopal collegiality and diversity of theological and pastoral views,” as possibly contradicting the clarity supplied in Veritatis Splendor, including “The Church [as in ‘episcopal collegiality’] is no way the author or the arbiter of this [‘moral’] norm” (n. 95).
Further, regarding the forced dichotomy (though much amended in the Synthesis) between progressive synodality and what is conservative, reflection reveals that there is no such thing as “conservatism” as a movement, per se, as if to counter the many historical movements of progressivism… Instead, a grounding in the fact of creation by a Creator. That is, the mystery and radical fact of “existence” (the is-ness of things) before “essence” (the thing-ness of things). With Leibniz, too, “why is there something rather than nothing”! Being above becoming, reality before ideas…
Of this conservative VISION, which should pervade any activism and even synodality, yours truly blatantly inserts, here, the vision of an unapologetic and archconservative layman, Frederich D. Wilhelmson (“Citizen of Rome: Reflections from the Life of a Roman Catholic” 1980):
“I repeat the thesis: we conservatives cannot cure the modern world: we do not hold the power, nor is it likely to pass into our hands. But if liberals–and they are in the saddle almost all over the West–will make the descent into the maelstrom of the modern soul, they will find in conservatism a diagnosis of the disease of our time. We conservatives have lost our kings and our chivalry; our craftsmen are gone, and our peasantry is fast disappearing. Our horses have been shot from under us. We have nothing to offer the world but our VISION.” Not a program at all, but a vision! The pre-modern and again awaited sacral nature of creation and of all of reality.
Does our synodal response to the “signs of the times” discount or even reject—or embrace—this broader and deeper and conservative (so-called backwardist?) “vision” …Wilhelmsen’s “rhythm [!] of being and becoming” [both]?
The exercise on discernment offers a constructive road map. “The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still small voice of conscience” – Mahatma Gandhi