Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Awesome quote!

Flannery O'Connor to Cecil Dawkins:
Glibness is the great danger in answering people's questions about religion. I won't answer yours because you can answer them as well yourself but I will give you, for what it's worth, my own perspetive on them.

All your dissatisfaction with the Church seems to me to come from an incomplete understanding of sin. This will perhaps surprise you because you are very conscious of the sins of Catholics; however what you seem actually to demand is that the Church put the kingdom of heaven on earth right here now, that the Holy Ghost be translated at once into all flesh. The Holy Spirit very rarely shows Himself on the surface of anything.
The rest at Bill Cork's.

1 comment:

assiniboine said...

I guess glibness might be a better word: my axe-to-grind with some clergy used to be smugness, but she and I might be talking about the same thing. And in my rather older (though not necessarily wiser) perception, perhaps that's only a matter of a misperception of contentedness in their faith. And it's not necessarily an attribute only of conservatives: Do you suppose that could be part of the issue some have -- me included -- with the new Primate of the Episcopal Church of the USA?

Funny how one grows in tolerance with waxing years. Curiously, for me it's encounters with Muslims of good will that challenge me to examine my own convictions -- and then to be strengthened in them, though of course that isn't necessarily the outcome they expect.