Newspaper Page Text
THURSDAY, JULY 8, 1965
GEORGIA BULLETIN
PAGE 5
POSTHUMOUS OFFERING
Flannery O’Connor-Reality
BY REV. LEONARD F.X. MAYLEW
Just short of ayear after the untimely death
Of Georgia author, Flannery O’Connor, a post
humous!. volume of her short stories has been
published: Everything That Rises Must Converge
(Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, $4.95). Its appear
ance restirs the haunting sense of deprivation
created by her death. At the same time, it is
somehow consoling that a spirit of genius was
not so suddenly nor so completely cut off in
the midst of her creativity. The
appearance of more of her
words seems reassuring that
the easily spoken cliche will,
in her case, be true: she will
live on in her work.
FOR THOSE who have not
read the work of Flannery O’
Connor, this new volume will
be a good introduction~in some
ways, perhaps, better than beginning with her
earlier writings. Her literary executor, Robert
Fitzgerald, prefaces the stories with a moving
and incisive account of her short, brilliant ca
reer. He tells of her life in Milledgeville,
Georgia as a young girl and student. When she
went to New York to pursue her literary work,
she stayed in the home of Mr. Fitzgerald for
some time. Their friendship clearly outdistanced
the complexities of author-critic-litterateur,
without sacrificing any of the reverence ob
jectively owed her talent. He captures the
warmth and cheer of her personality when he
writes of their evenings together, “Our talks
then and at the dinner table were long and light
hearted, and they were our movies, our con
certs and our theatre.*' When her illness be
came serious and permanent, she moved back
to Georgia and, last summer, she died.
Flannery O’Connor was a story-teller of gen
ius. To appreciate her writing, we have to ap
proach it prepared to listen to the story, to
allow the story and its characters to speak to
us on their — and, her—own terms. The stories
are rich in meaning but it willlonly come to us,
if we let them and their characters live in our
selves. Her writing is imaginative, as Mr. Fitz
gerald remarks, sometimes comic, sometimes
tragic, but always imaginative. “We had better
let our awareness Of the knowledge in her
stories,’’ he continues,” grow quietly without
forcing it, for nothing could be worse than to
treat them straight off as problems for exegesics
or as texts to preach on.” She always mistrusted
the mechanics of literary criticism and this is
probably the reason. Analysis of what her stories
have to say never succeeds in saying it with as
much energy as the stories themselves say it.
FLANNERY O’Connor was conscious ofherself
as a Southern writher and a Catholic writer.
While the literary influences on her work might
be multiplied by the dozens, these are the two
that specified her work uniquely and are, there
fore, most worthwhile to discuss. In die cul
tural patterns of the rural South (and that is
what she primarily meant by “the South’’) she
saw a powerful influence “by a Christianity of
a not too unorthodox kind and by a strong de
votion to the Bible, which has kept our minds
attached to the concrete and the living symbol...*'
This was a conscious consideration in her writ
ing. Not that the people she wrote about should
be thought of as symbols. That would ruin every
thing. She intends that we see them as people
who, like all real people and all real events,
have a meaning—a symbolism—that transcends
what appears outwardly.She connects this with
her Catholic faith. “The Catholic sacramental
View of life (outward signs supporting and effect
ing invisible and transforming realities) is one
that maintains and supports at every turn the
vision that the story teller must have if he is
going to write fiction of any depth.’’ Far from
feeling restricted by the Church, she felt that
Catholicism opened up areas of meaning and
a discriminating approach to life that actually
liberated the writer.
FLANNERY O’CONNOR’S fiction has been cate
gorized as “grotesque.” The present volume
of her work is ample evidence of how she
understood this term — and of how others
have misunderstood it. The unifying theme of
the stories in Everything That Rises Must Con
verge is the horrow, the tragi-comedy emobied
in counterfeit love or counterfeit virtue. Faced
with real love, or real virtue, or death, the
synthetic make-believe that we are tempted
to accept as normal dissolves. Again and again,
she forces us to face the truth that our be
trayal of love is really solitude, our betrayal
of virtue is really vice. This is not pessimistic
and destructive; it is "a purifying terror.” The
protagonist of “The Enduring Chill,” one of the
best stories of the present collection, faces the
truth that he will not die the dramatic, sentimental
death he had imagined but remain a humbled,
helpless invalid: “A feeble cry, a last impos
sible protest escaped him. But the Holy Ghost,
emblazoned in ice instead of fire, continued,
implacable, to descend.” The stories are not
all perfect — but some of them are, absolutely.
GOOD NEWS
Quite A
.itmO 9(43 ssif 1 ' •'obssrcl'ioJtsvol a
w -BY MARY PERKINS RYAN
IT IS CERTA INLY very difficult, given the arch-
tecture of many churches, to implement the spirit
as well as the letter of the changes in the liturgy.
The long-and-narrow Gothic type of church build
ing, for instance, was designed for a Mass thought
of as something to be present at, not to take part
in. The “new” idea, that the congregation should
feel themselves to be gathered around the table
of the Lord, will take quite awhile to implement
in every parish church.
It isn’t a question of size or the number of
people to be accomodated Our parish church,
for instance, is quite small, made out of an old
New England house. The interior is almost square
and the people are on three
sides of the sanctuary. Now
that the altar for Mass is out
away from the wall, and the
celebrant stands behind it, he
really does look as though he
were presiding at a gathering
round a table. But the same
effect was obtained at the re
cent Baltimore Liturgical Week
- in the vast Civic Center, -as it
has been at previous liturgical weeks in equally
vast auditoriums, because the altar was set
up to look like the center round which people
were gathered. Maybe something could be done
even with long and narrow church buildings, if
somebody with imagination and the right idea
were allowed to get at them. Something could,
one would think, be done about pews, for in
stance. Surely they could be designed so that
they don’t seem to keep people apart, but rather
gathered together in an orderly and reasonably
comfortable way.
Even worse, of course, than a style of archi
tecture that is fighting the changes is a cele
brant who isn’t “with” them. When one has to
hear the Word of God read in English as if it
really didn’t mean anything and was just some
thing to get through, when the priest faces the
people but speaks and acts as if he were doing
something very hush-hush all by himself that
they are eavedropping at, one is tempted to wish
th@,t he were celebrating the Mass the old way.
The new letter seems worse than useless without
To Go Yet
the new • spirit — and it is almost' impossible
for the people to have the new spirit if the cele
brant doesn't.
OF COURSE, the rites themselves at the pre
sent stage of reform aren't consistent in facili
tating the new spirit either. It doesn’t make nay
sense for the celebrant to lapse into Latin at
all, if the people are really meant to be “in on”
what he is ssying and doing. ("Dicentes: Holy
holy, holy., is perhaps the silliest of all die
switches from Latin to English and back, but
they are all infuriating.,Particularly when he is
carrying out the great Eucharistic Prayer, in the
course of which the celebrant acts "in the per
son of Christ”, it doesn’t make anysenSefor him
to be speaking in Latin and in a “low tone.”
Our Lord certainly didn’t speak in a dead language
and under His breath at the Last Supper when He
said, “This is My Body...” “This is My Blood...”
It doesn’t make any sense, that is, according
to the "new” idea of the Mass, set out in the
Constitution on the Liturgy, which , seems to be
nearer to the New Testament idea than anything
we have had for many centuries. But we have
a long way to go to carry out the transformation
the Church is determined on, of a Mass that
became fossilized as an “ancient rite” (how
ever intense our personal devotion at it) into
a Mass that will be a joyful personal and
communal celebration of God’s love accom
plishing its wonderful works in our midst. We
shall have to change our architecture, ourmusic,
our art and, above all, ourselves if the present
and future reforms in the rites are to be effective.
BUT SOMETIMES one can realize a little of
what it will be like when all this is achieved.
In our parish, for instance, and surely in many
others throughout the country, we are blessed
with priests who celebrate Mass as if they
were really presiding at a gathering in which
everyone was meant to be concerned with what
is going on. At every Mass, the celebrant car
ries out the Eucharistic prayer in such a way
that we do not feel "included out” while he is
going through mysterious rites on his own, but
included in a gathering in which,through his vi
sible ministry as celebrant, the Lord is carry
ing out what He did at the Last Supper so that
we can be part of it. At such a Mass, one feels
that we are on our way, that all the present
are already proving worthwhile.
FOREIGN AID STUDY
Your World And Mine
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4
A recent book from a major U.S. publisher
shrieked that "$103 billion in foreign aid haS
poured out of the U.S. treasury since the last
war.” The clear implication in the context was
that this money had been spent, and spent with
little result, in the development of the under
developed world. Actually, five percent of that
sum (or $1 per U.S. citizen annually since 1945)
would be closer to the facts. What is perhaps
most surprising is that so little has achieved
so much.
ARNOLD VIEWING
‘The Yellow Rolls’
Q. A PROMOTER of the John Birch Society in our community is
now most active in the Catholic Traditionalist Movement, and has
sent out several hundred copies of the Catholic Traditionalist
Manifesto,
May a good Catholic in conscience support the movement of a
“spiritual leader*’ who has been silenced by his Cardinal? Is
there a possibility that those who follow in the footsteps of Father
De Pauw by promoting his movement may find themselves called
to silence?
A. I WANT to thank my questioner for
sending a copy of the Manifesto and a print
ed letter from the Secretary, Gloria Brit-
ting Cuneo, The only address of the Move
ment is a P. O. Box number in New York.
These are sad documents, indeed, but they
are revealing.
The first thing I note is how thoroughly ggjg
un-traditional is the Catholic Traditionalist
Movement, The letter urges that we write (and get all our friends
to write) the Holy Father, that we write or wire the Apostolic
Delegate, write or wire our own bishop, write Cardinal Shehan,
and let our local priests know our views and beliefs. Addresses
are given for Pope Paul, the apostolic delegate, and Cardinal She
han, and it is noted that the airmail postage rate to “Rome, Vati
can City” is 15 cents. (Even the manner of giving the Pope’s ad
dress shows a measure of ignorance). All we need to tell the
Holy Father is that we are in agreement with the aims of the CTM.
He will know what we mean.
Since when has Catholic tradition called for a large scale mail
ing campaign, putting pressure -on our religious leaders as we
would on our Senators and Representatives in Congress? It is a
part of pur American democratic process, and it may have some
intrinsic value, but it is certainly a radical innovation - not tra
dition - in Holy Mother Church; and I doubt that our Pope and bis
hops will view it with approval.
THE “TRADmONALISrS** justify their mail lobby technique
by quoting the statement of Vatican Council II that the laity “are
permitted and sometimes even obliged to express their opinion
on those things which concern the good of the Church...” This
statement, while fairly accurate, does not deserve quotation marks
because it is eliptical. Besides it quotes out of context. If our
‘Traditionalists” were honest they should have continued with
their quotation, rather than ending with a line of dots. The Con
stitution continues, regarding the laity’s expressing their opinion:
“When occasions arise, let this be done through the organs erect
ed by the Church for this purpose. Let it always be done in
courage and in prudence, toward those who by reason of their
sacred office represent the person of Christ.”
Q. How far over backward are you going to lean? According
to our own Bible, "For thine is the kingdom, etc., is NOT part
of the Lord’s Prayer. Please do not confuse our young Catholics.
A. Sometimes our young people are less easily confused than
our older people. Many of them now learn in school that the ph
rase: “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory,
for ever. Amen,” had an ancient Catholic origin; has been used
in its Greek, Slavic or other equivalent, by Byzantine Catholics
for most centuries of the Christian era, as an ending to the Lord’s
Prayer; is still used by millions of Catholics just as good and or
thodox as you and I, as an ending to the Lord’s Prayer; and was
at one time found in various Catholic editions of the Bible, as
an ending to the Lord’s Prayer. Where do you think the Protest
ants got this phrase? They diqln’t invent it.
BY JAMES W. ARNOLD
HE: It’s got a good title: “The Yellow Rolls
Royce.” After that it begins to go downhill.
SHE: The film or the car? It really wasn’t
that bad. Think of all the scenery. How often do
you get Ascot, Pisa, Rome, the Mediterranean and
Yugoslavia all in one picture?
UNCLE GEORGE (grouchily): %
Nuts to the title. There are a
million better ones, if you must
use cars. How about ’The Pink
Thunderbird”?
HE: No, that reminds me of a
drink. Or a kind of wild motel.
Rolls Royce definitely has more
class,
SHE: It’s a good thing. Did you ever stop to
think what that movie is all about? Hanky—panky
in the back seat, that’s what.
Crawford, naturally, would be purple. Instead of a
decanter inside, there could be an axe.
SHE: There was that bit when Rex Harrison
says to his wife, Jeanne Moreau: “You’re not
extraordinary. Just ideal. But I suppose to be
ideal is to be extraordinary,” It sounds pro
found,
HE: That Harrison episode was the best. It
had a tenuous connection to real life; the irony
of a man with every worldly success except a
faithful wife. The British aristocracy’s need
to keep up a front - to be unaffected before the
world. Nicely underplayed and, well, touching.
The hanky-panky was kept in focus: clumsy,
silly, a little sad.
SHE: It was worth it just for the dresses and
that country estate. It must be the biggest set
since "Marienbad.”
HE: How did Ingrid Bergman put it?
ing foolishly.”
‘Behav-
SHE: It may be foolish behavior in a Rolls but
it’s just plain smut in a Chevrolet.
UNCLE GEORGE: Then there’s ‘The Black
Maserati." That would have to be about Sicily,
with an orgy by Fellini.
HE: Actually it’s a clever idea. I always enjoy
those episode films that trace the history of an ob
ject as it goes from one person to another. As a
kid, I remember one about a tuxedo. Edward G.
Robinson is a bum who rents it, see, to go to his
college class reunion...
SHE: Wien the French do it, it’s usually about
* love.” The foreign minister loves his secretary,
and she loves a motorcyclist, and he loves a can
can dancer, and she loves a wine-taster. And he,
when focusing correctly, loves the foreign-ninis-
ter’s wife.
UNCLE GEORGE: All that would be too crowded
in a Renault. Dare I suggest ’The Peach Peu
geot”?
HE: Anyway, it’s not the best episode movie
I’ve seen. And Asquith and Rattigan have done bet
ter, too. Even ‘The V.LP.’s” was better.
SHE: There he goes again. Asquith? Ratti
gan? Who do they play for?
HE: My dear, you’ll never understand films.
They are the director and writer. They made the
film. The actors just stand about and show their
teeth. Now Asquith and Rattigan like talky drama.
Did you notice that tonight? It was like a garden
club tea. Movies should move. For all the gab,
I can’t recall a piece of dialog worth quoting.
One can recognize the simple truth and remain perpendicular. GEORGE: The color for Bette Davis and Joan
Reapings Continued
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4
YET, FT IS this regard for man’s freedom which
keeps the Catholic Liberal in his liberalism, as
difficult and embarrassing as this may be. His
commitment to his Catholic heritage, and his com
mitment to this American heritage lead him to this
conclusion. A deep knowledge of the history of the
Church, of her insistence on the dignity which
flows from the fact of man’s freedom, and her
unceasing efforts to raise him to the point where he
can live the glorious freedom of the sons of God,
inspire him to avoid the temptation to quit before
the forces that'would immerse man in any deter
minism.
In the light of this urgency he reads the con
demnations by the nineteenth century Church of
the nineteenth century abuses and errors, and ac
cepts them. But he does not find in them what was
not there in the first place — a condemnation of
freedom itself.
His love of his American heritage leads him to
the same position. A real admiration of the
works of our Founding Fathers lets him see the
genius behind their work, and leads him to desire
to see the work progress a pace. The areas of
freedom must expand, or they will atrophy. But
the threats to freedom increase with the expansion
of the country and the world.
HE NEITHER DENIES nor decries the expan
sions that have occurred and will occur, but he
does search them carefully for any threat they
hold. He protects the things he loves against
this threat, without denying the good that is avail
able in the expansions. The eye of the eagle and
the dexterity of the tight rope walker are hardly
sufficient for his task.
Like his Thesaurus, Roget has led us from hu
mor to the depths of a real problem. The best
hope for a solution to the real problem is our
ability to keep our sense of humor. God help us
when that has been sacrificed.
OLD AND NEW
Romans And Sabines
Sr
OUR ENTRIE foreign aid effort would, I believe
have achieved far more if it had not often gone
astray as regards its purpose. The justification
of development aid, in my opinion, is that it
promotes the interests of the United States. V\e
cannot hope to have normality within our frontiers
while a great and growing part of the world is a
slum. If the gap between developed and undeveloped
continues to widen, tension must mount to ultimate
explosion.
Many will give verbal assent to this proposition,
but as a nation we do not yet accept it.
GARRY WILLS
Apparently Evelyn Waugh is not alone
in his belief that, however much "liberal priests"
may talk about things like liturgical change,
with they really want is wives. The odd thing
is that many lesser Waughs, who feel that
virginity Is a sublime ideal, are just as cer
tain that the priestly elite of Christendom, after
long training in this ideals’ sublimites, would
desert the single state en masse if given any
chance to exercise individual choice. Paradoxi
cally, the more these people are convinced that
celibacy is imposed on a restless crew, themore
determined they become on enforcing it. They
seem afraid of the spectacle they must imagine
as the result of any "softening” on Rome’s
part — i.e., the greatest rush
toward anything nubile since
Romulus invited the Sabines
over for lunch.
Even great men get a bit
unbalanced on the subject of
a celibate priesthood. The
young Newman, for instance,
went through a terrible period
of writing and destroying denun
ciations of his friends, Henry Wilberforce, when
that Anglican priest married. Newman saw him
self and his Oxford friends, in a typically lan
guishing line of verse, as "pilgrims pale with
Paul’s sad girdle bound.” It is not a very
heartwarming prospect. No wonder poor Wil
berforce slipped off the “sad girdle.”
MANY PEOPLE, it seems clear, do not like
to think of priest “that way”, and resent being
asked to do so. Yet Catholics of all people,
should not be disturbed by the idea of married
priests. After all, they place the greatest em
phasis on the actual and symbolic role of St.
Peter, the first Pope; and Peter was a married
man. He did not wear “Paul's sad girdle.” The
harsh Pauline Virginity, the rapt Johannine my
sticism, obviously have their place in the Chris
tian ministry. But in Peter’s day, at least, that
place was not the Papacy. The first Supreme
Pontiff is pictured holding the keys; we do not
often imagine, among them, the head of the
household’s key. Perhaps we should.
Modern reasons for asking priests to be
celibate are not the same as those that first
prompted the law. The Church inherited a cul
tural complex) of sexual attitudes that looked
upon everything connected with reproduction -
menstruation, coitus, childbirth — as a form of
pollution, requiring purification before one could
approach holy things again. We are annually re
minded of this primitive concept by the ironic
liturgy that celebrates Mary ’s purificiation after
Christ’s birth -- “a Priests daily touch holy
things — so went the ancient instinct and there
fore they should abstainfrom sexual contacts
that require elaborate purification. This belief
-- reinforced by a monastic code, by anti
feminism, and by a pagan superstition about
the magic force of virginity surely entered
into the decision to make celibacy a duty for
priests of the Roman rite. (I am not talking here
about the ascetical mystery of virginity itself.
That has deep spiritual roots in the Gospel
precept about “eunuchs for the kingdom of hea
ven’s sake” and in the New Testament examples
of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, John the Baptist, and
St. Paul. I am talking only about the decision
to make the separate vocation of the virgin
an indispensable adjunct of the priestly life,
and of various cultural conditions that contri
buted to that decision).
TODAY WE HAVE different supersitions. The
two main ones, I suppose, are;
1. The pseudo-practical view: The priestwould
be distracted from his duties by family life. Yet
doctors, teachers, scientists, Protestant mis
sionaries, and others can be very devoted to
their work. Besides, the job of maintaining celi
bacy in our cultural climate can get pretty dis
tracting — a thing indicated by the heavy drinking
and feverish hobbies of certain priests (“I was
married to my golf bag”)
2. The pseudo-mystical view: The man who
“divides his heart”* 'with his family must love.
God and mankind less. This resembles the li
beral crudity that says love for mankind at
large is diminished by a special affection for
one's own countrymen. The heart is not a re
servoir to be tapped sparingly, lest it run dry.
The more we love, the more love we have to
give; and this love is always particularizing.
It sets each person apart for special love,
even as it includes more and more of mankind
in its compass. The doctrine of Thomas a
Kempis, that one becomes a man by avoiding
contact with other men, is a caricature of the
biblical attitude toward virginity.
WHEN ALL THIS is said, a strong case re
in ains for priestly celibqcy.Sex and religion
are, taken separately, unsettling things. Mixed
they are explosive. The magnetic preacher is
a danger to himself and others if part of the
magnetism derives from his sexual availabi
lity. Bishop Sheen has been called almost every
thing; but not, thank God,” the most eligible
bachelor of the cocktail-ecclesiastic set.” Msgr.
Knox’s book on the great fanatics, Entusiasm,
shows how oddly the ascetic and the erotic
emotions mix, how easy it is for the cult to be
come the revel. There is a great lesson to be
learned from the history of religious aberration.
God Love You
BY BISHOP FULTON J. SHEEN
WHAT IS THE PECULIAR psychology in man which makes him
more attached to his wealth as he gets closer to his death? So
many behave like soldiers in an army preparing for war rather
than those preparing to leave the battlefield after victory. They
drag all the "impedimenta” (the old word for baggage which
impeded a journey) instead of leaving behind the surplus which is
no longer needed. The Sacrament of Confirmation is a preparation
for the battle of Christian life, but the Sacrament of Extreme Unc
tion (Last Annointing) is for the surcease of that battle.
Can it be that our fear of death in the mod
ern world is less concerned with our indi
vidual end than with our collective end? Has
not the nuclear bomb made us think of whole
sale destruction rather than of a personal
departure? But if one looks at things aright,
does not each individual’s personal life begin,
not with his birth, but with his death? It is
not the arrow in flight that interests the arch
er as much as whether it strikes the target.
What happens at death is the final "What then?” This question can
be asked of a boy when he quits high school or college or is mar
ried, but the last "What then?” determines eternity.
Here are some important considerations for anyone who has
reached the middle of life: Are there any sins for which I should
do penance? Have I been so loyal to my faith that I have no need
of making up for my lack of it by bringing others the faith after
my death? How shall I recognize Christ on the day of my death un
less, during life, I met Him where He lives anonymously in the
poor, the sick and the hungry? Will He say to me then "I was
hungry, thirsty, sick, and you gave...” or “I was a stranger and
you did not give...”? Why do I allow stocks and bonds to pile up in
my vault, accumulating interest and adding to my responsibility)
if it makes me like the rich man in the Gospel who dined well every
day while ignoring Lazarus at his gate? Shall I give my wealth to
those who will make more investments? Do I want those who re
ceive it to increase it, exchanging my hard-earned money for new
Wall Street investments?
THERE ARE TWO WAYS to avoid this. The first is to make a
VVill, leaving everything to the Holy Father who will give all of it
to the poor of the world and the Missions within the year of your
death. The other way is to take out an Annuity, receive an income
while you live (reduce your taxes), and at your death the remain
der goes to the Holy Father to be spent that year. This is the
great advantage of giving to The Society for the Propagation of the
Faith, the middle man for the Holy Fatherwho gives it to the poor
For more information write to me at 366 Fifth Avenue, New York,
10001, N.W/ God Love You!
GOD LOVE YOU to Mr. and Mrs. G. S. for $20 “We promised
that if we made over $500 on the sale of our hay we would send this
to you.” ...to the D.V.W. family for $10 “Please accept this little
gift for the poor— at times like this I wish we were millionaires.’
...to D.B.L. for $800 “1 am a non-Catholic but I know that the
job you are doing needs the help of everyone.”
Cut out this column, pin your sacrifice to it and mail it to
Most Rev. . Fulton J. Sheen, National Director of The Society
for the Propagation of the Faith, 366 Fifth Avenue, New York,
N.Y. lOOCil, or to your Diocesan Director, Rev. Harold J. Rainey
P.O. Box 12047 2699 Peachtree Road N.E. Northside Station At
lanta 5, Georgia.