Words of Wisdom from Flannery O'Connor's "Mystery and Manners"

“The Catholic writer, insofar as he has the mind of the Church, will feel life from the standpoint of the central Christian mystery: that it has, for all its horror, been found by God to be worth dying for. But this should enlarge, not narrow, his field of vision”

“When people have told me that because I am a Catholic, I cannot be an artist, I have had to reply, ruefully, that because I am a Catholic, I cannot afford to be less than an artist.”

“The fiction writer presents mystery through manners, grace through nature, but when he finishes there always has to be left over that sense of Mystery which cannot be accounted for by any human formula”

“Christ didn’t redeem us by a direct intellectual act, but became incarnate in human form, and he speaks to us now through the mediation of a visible Church. All this may seem a long way from the subject of fiction, but it is not, for the main concern of the fiction writer is with mystery as it is incarnated in human life”


Flannery O'Connor says it all. She addresses the questions that are undoubtedly posed to the Catholic writer, which can also be applied in various degrees to any believer living in the world, writer or not. It is our privilege, our joy, and our struggle to do everything with our eyes on Heaven, looking to the Church for guidance, and striving to be like Christ. The faith must be at the center of every aspect of our lives, as there is nothing that can be kept separate from God, no dark corner of ourselves that he does not want to be part of; not because he doesn't want to give us our privacy, but because he loves us totally, virtues and imperfections alike. In this way, a Catholic writer cannot separate faith from writing, because a writer depicts the truth the way he or she perceives it, and for a Catholic, the truth is in the Paschal Mystery.

In her story, "A Good Man is Hard to Find," O'Connor epitomizes what should be the view of every Catholic in a statement made by the Misfit at the end of the story. He says, "If [Jesus] did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can." Either the Christian faith is true or it isn't. Either Christ is truly God and truly man, he died to redeem us and rose from the dead because the grave could not hold him, or it's all a lie.

I believe in the truth of the Gospel, the authority of the Church, that Jesus did what he said. I want to strive to write as O'Connor did, conveying theological truths while still portraying the world as it really is, while writing good fiction, not piously bad fiction. If I believe, why would I want to write about anything other than "mystery as it is incarnated in human life"?