Mystery, Manners, and Church: Flannery O’Connor’s art

Mystery, Manners, and Church:  Flannery O’Connor’s art

Flannery O’Connor promotes the Eucharist past Yeshua[1], while Cynthia[2] expresses humility.

In Mystery and Manners, 1957, O’Connor explains her art: faith in the Church. Dying in 1964, her influence still thrives. Selected letters are in the 2019 book, Good Things Out of Nazareth.

Within UBC[3], the art of Yeshua-of-Nazareth thrives. Reared by Jews, Yosef and Miryam, Yeshua promotes constraint to the bad in order to perfect the good. He influences civic integrity. A Jewish faction hopes Yeshua returns and unites the 12 tribes. A diverse faction hopes Christ redeems souls.

After Yeshua’s execution, early church promoted Ἰησοῦ, the rabbi, then Χριστός, the Incarnation, hiding Yeshua’s influence.

Father to my Catholic family, I never wanted the Eucharist. Monsignor Ott held that priest-plus-parishioners’-liturgy yields Christ’s-body-and-blood for personal-consumption. That’s transubstantiation.

Our teenaged children, at UBC by my request, stopped Remembrance after I read Herschel Hobbs’ opinion: Only believers-who-chose-submersion are invited-to the Lord’s Supper.

O’Connor condemned Ralph Waldo Emerson’s preference[i]: Remembrance without bread and wine.[ii]

O’Connor wrote, “The artist uses his-reason to discover an-answering-reason in everything he sees. [He would] intrude upon the timeless . . . by the violence of a single minded respect for the truth.” Bishop Baron recounts[iii] O’Connor-violence: “Well, if [the Eucharist] is a symbol, I say, to hell with it.”

Spoken violence stuns me. Yet I support human quest for the ineluctable truth. That requires evidence that is altogether unavoidable plus unchangeable plus irresistible. Ineluctable truth does not yield to violent opinion.

Both Emerson and O’Connor pursue appreciation for Yeshua of Nazareth. So far, neither’s art reforms the Church.

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[i] Mystery and Manners, page 161-2.

[ii] Online at https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/essays/lordsupper.html. Quoting, “[T]he Almighty God was pleased to qualify and send forth a man to teach men that they must serve him with the heart; that only that life was religious which was thoroughly good; that sacrifice was smoke, and forms were shadows”, September 9, 1832. Emerson resigned as Unitarian minister, 2^nd Church of Boston, October, 1832.

[iii] Online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wgo0ONxWiWk

PRB, 4/10/2024, updated 4/11/2024

[1] In ancient Hebrew life, “Joshua” and “Yeshua” were interchangeable. The Greek translation done in Egypt 2250 years ago uses Ἰησοῦ for Yeshua and Χριστός for anointed one. Jewish parents, Yosef and Miryam, 2000 years ago, named their firstborn, a son, Yeshua. I think Yeshua’s civic integrity improves or corrects civil codes in the Bible. Ἰησοῦ and Χριστός began to repress Yeshua’s civic influence 1900 years ago and dominated 1600 years ago. Jesus, the expression, is not Yeshua, the person. We may and can develop Yeshua’s civic influence.

[2] My wife, who practices Louisiana-French Catholicism.

[3] University Baptist Church, Baton Rouge Louisiana.

[4] Mystery and Manners, page 161-2.

[5] Online at https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/essays/lordsupper.html. Quoting, “[T]he Almighty God was pleased to qualify and send forth a man to teach men that they must serve him with the heart; that only that life was religious which was thoroughly good; that sacrifice was smoke, and forms were shadows”, September 9, 1832. Emerson resigned as Unitarian minister, 2^nd Church of Boston, October, 1832.

[6] Online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wgo0ONxWiWk

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