Flannery O’Conner on Emotionally Satisfying Faith

Good words from more than 60 years ago by one of the great defenders of the faith. “But I can never agree with you that the Incarnation, or any truth, has to satisfy emotionally to be right (and I would not agree that for the natural man the Incarnation does not satisfy emotionally). It does…

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Grace Changes Us

Another quote from Flannery O’Conner is instructive in her understanding of life. There is a question whether faith can or is supposed to be emotionally satisfying. I must say that the thought of everyone lolling about in an emotionally satisfying faith is repugnant to me. I believe that we are ultimately directed Godward but that…

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Laws of the Flesh and the Physical

In 1955, Flannery O’Conner1 said, “Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul.”2 I wonder what she would say about the whole world today. 2014 is a time in which we are “post-everything.” Many have given up on the Catholic Church, given up on Evangelicalism, given up…

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Follow-Up to Truth

Leaving the Incarnation aside, the very notion of God’s existence is not emotionally satisfactory anymore for great numbers of people, which does not mean that God ceases to exist. M. Sartre finds God emotionally unsatisfactory in the extreme, as do most of my friends of less stature than he. The truth does not change according…

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Flannery O’Connor on Mystery

“I don’t think literature would be possible in a determined world. We might go through the motions but the heart would be out of it. Nobody could then ‘smile darkly and ignore the howls.’ Even if there were no Church to teach me this, writing two novels would do it. I think the more you…

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