Letter #12

Dear Flannery,

It is difficult to describe a person’s wholehearted love and loyalty to her church. It encompasses one, like a radiant impenetrable shield. I believe you and I share that same distinct feeling for our respective churches. Like you I was raised in my church, its precepts and practices have been primary constants in my everyday life. In my family our faith goes back generations. Prayer, scripture, church meetings and programs, service, baptism, the Holy Ghost, sacraments, priesthood, temples, are all part of the steadfast and immovable whole. Being a member of my Church has been an identity as much as being a human being, a female, a daughter, a wife, a mother.

You said, "The cultural climate should make no difference in what the Church teaches" (59). You talked about how all human beings are fallible, priests certainly being no exception, but that the Church generally must not teach error. "The Church stands for and preserves always what is larger than human understanding" (90). But I wonder how you would have reacted if your Church actually did "fail to hold her own?"

I am glad you are not here to see what is happening to religion today. I’ve mentioned before that, sad to say, under political, financial, and social pressures, many churches are actually watering down their doctrines, winking at their principles, and widening their policies to go along with the radically secular and sexually permissive cultural climate. You might say everlasting truths are being conveniently ignored. It seems that many churches want to keep their institutions going and at the same time keep up with the "enlightened"world. It is what you called "the vaporization of religion"( 74). I find myself praying for my church, praying for yours, praying for all churches, that they will stand firm for truth and goodness in the heat of this dreadful culture war.

Why would a church presume to exist when it says and does things that contradict its own foundational, transcendent truths? If to the world it doesn't stand for anything truly religious and eternal, it cannot with integrity say or teach anything truly religious or eternal. More and more, America's bastions of faith founded on man's eternal relationship to God now present themselves as, in your words, more Elks Clubs or community centers (39, 74).

You said to “A,” “your pain at the Church's [faults] is "a sign of your nearness to God" 83. I think many people today are experiencing the same pain as their churches soften, make compromising statements, and finally effect changes to accommodate the wickedness of the world. It is nice to know this pain could be a sign of nearness to God rather than what others may perceive, which is disloyalty, fault-finding, apostasy, or plain old sour grapes.

It has been said that you approached your Church "with a warm heart and a clear, cold eye" (37). Yes, "You have to suffer as much from the church as for it. You have to cherish the world at the same time you struggle to endure it" (75).

Your words: "To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness. Charity is hard and endures" (83). To some degree I must have a sentimental view of life because over the years I have sometimes felt the bitterness creeping up on me and have thought a lot about the difference and choice between knowledge and charity. Without charity, realities we must deal with can indeed cause bitterness. So, when we see things we'd rather not see, and know things we'd rather not know, it is only charity, the pure love of Christ (all those impossible-seeming godly qualities like patience, long-suffering, humility, selflessness) that will save us from drowning in an ocean of bitterness.

Yours, "thrown back on the living God" (141),

J.

Flannery O'Connor, Spiritual Writings, edited by Robert Ellsberg, Orbis Books, 2003.