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Amidst Charges of Racism Against Flannery O’Connor, Loyola University Maryland Renames Residence Hall
Catholic Review ^ | 7/28/20 | George P. Matysek Jr

Posted on 07/31/2020 6:49:07 PM PDT by marshmallow

Thirteen years after he named a new residence hall at Loyola University Maryland in honor of Flannery O’Connor, Jesuit Father Brian Linnane has removed the prominent Catholic writer’s moniker from the building.

The structure will now be known as “Thea Bowman Hall,” named in honor of the first African-American member of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration.

Sister Thea, a Mississippi native, was a tireless advocate for greater leadership roles for Blacks in the Catholic Church and for incorporating African-American culture and spiritual traditions in Catholic worship in the latter half of the 20th century. Her sainthood cause is under consideration in Rome.

O’Connor, a Southern Gothic writer who died of lupus in 1964 at age 39, is recognized as one of the greatest short-story writers of her era, one whose work often examined complex moral questions. Recent concerns have been raised about her use of racist language in private correspondence, however, prompting more than 1,000 people to sign an online petition asking Loyola to rename the residence hall that bore her name.

Father Linnane, president of Baltimore’s Jesuit university, said it was a difficult decision to remove O’Connor’s name. He noted that the issue of O’Connor and race is very nuanced.

“I am not a scholar of Flannery O’Connor, but I have studied her fiction and non-fiction writings,” Father Linnane said. “Particularly in her fiction, the dignity of African-American persons and their worth is consistently upheld, with the bigots being the object of ridicule.”

(Excerpt) Read more at catholicreview.org ...


TOPICS: Catholic; Current Events; Religion & Culture
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 07/31/2020 6:49:07 PM PDT by marshmallow
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To: marshmallow

Nothin named after a person of color will ever be renamed, because a person of color can never be racist, you know.


2 posted on 07/31/2020 6:52:20 PM PDT by simpson96
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To: marshmallow

This foolishness will never end until reasonable people stand up against it.


3 posted on 07/31/2020 6:56:18 PM PDT by windsorknot
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To: marshmallow

The letter to Father Linnane asserts that very few, if any, of the great writers of the past can survive the “purity test” they are currently being subject to.

“If a university (Catholic or otherwise) effectively banishes Flannery O’Connor, why keep Sophocles, Dante, Shakespeare, Dickens, Dostoevsky and other writers who were marked by the racist, misogynist, and/or anti-Semitic cultures and eras they lived in the midst of? No one will be left standing,” it said.

++++++

That’s the whole point.


4 posted on 07/31/2020 7:00:02 PM PDT by Southside_Chicago_Republican (The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog.)
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To: marshmallow

Father Linnane represents the very worst of post-modern Catholicism.

He’s so WOKE, coffee is coming out of his sanctimonious ears.


5 posted on 07/31/2020 7:02:45 PM PDT by BrexitBen
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To: All

I didn’t know much about Flannery O’Connor.

Found this article that explains why the shallow minded think she was a racist:
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/06/how-flannery-oconnor-fought-racism


6 posted on 07/31/2020 7:04:52 PM PDT by LegendHasIt
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To: marshmallow

She supported the work of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement.

Nevertheless, she wrote in a letter to Maryat Lee 3rd May, 1964, “You know, I’m an integrationist by principle & a segregationist by taste anyway. I don’t like negroes. They all give me a pain and the more of them I see, the less and less I like them. Particularly the new kind.”


7 posted on 07/31/2020 7:19:17 PM PDT by Liz
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To: Mrs. Don-o; ebb tide

Ping.


8 posted on 07/31/2020 7:21:48 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
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To: Liz

How many black people then and now have said the exact same thing about whites or other groups? Probably millions.


9 posted on 07/31/2020 7:26:42 PM PDT by Cecily
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To: marshmallow

Flannery O’Connor was one of the literary giants of the twentieth century - these people are total idiots. It’s only a matter of time before Mark Twain gets replaced by Dr. Dre in today’s academia.


10 posted on 07/31/2020 7:39:02 PM PDT by Stosh
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To: marshmallow

I am speechless.


11 posted on 07/31/2020 7:39:26 PM PDT by Ouchthatonehurt
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To: Stosh

Agree. We can only hope cancelling her might be a bridge too far for these rampaging Marxists.


12 posted on 07/31/2020 7:43:57 PM PDT by lodi90
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To: marshmallow

If Flannery was the one who raised the funds to allow that hall be built there should be no “name change”.


13 posted on 07/31/2020 7:52:59 PM PDT by mosesdapoet (mosesdapoet aka L.J.Keslin posting here for the record hoping somebody might read and pass around)
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To: marshmallow
In one of her letters Flannery O'Connor commented that the Negroes in Milledgeville were "protesting" for the integration of the public library. Flannery thought it comical that they didn't even realize the library had already been integrated for over a year. But don't tell that to the "protesters".
 
14 posted on 07/31/2020 8:19:57 PM PDT by Governor Dinwiddie (Guide me, O thou great redeemer, pilgrim through this barren land.)
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To: Cecily

Not for thee,but for me


15 posted on 07/31/2020 9:05:37 PM PDT by Hambone 1934
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To: marshmallow

Any College short of Hillsdale, and its brethren, has an administration that is already eager to placate the mob that is currently entitled the ‘Cancel Culture’! There is nothing that is too far UNTIL it effects their precious revenues, like taking down an ‘endowed’ name where the provisos of the endowment say removing the name removes the monies that come with the name. I guarantee that any new endowments being done today will have a lot tighter restrictions in these contracts and thus fewer will be done. So sad!


16 posted on 08/01/2020 3:52:15 AM PDT by SES1066 (Happiness is a depressed Washington, DC housing market!)
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To: Liz
She sawlife in the segregated south more clearly than most, and more clearly than those who say they do.....especially for the modern liberal of today where it is now not only OK, but are reduced to “judging people by the color of their skin, and NOT the content of their character,”...it’s pure hypocrisy for the liberal when they run up against brutal honesty, And make no mistake- Honesty is brutal.

From the New Yorker hit piece:
In May, 1964, she wrote to her friend Maryat Lee, a playwright who was born in Tennessee, lived in New York, and was ardent for civil rights:

About the Negroes, the kind I don’t like is the philosophizing prophesying pontificating kind, the James Baldwin kind. Very ignorant but never silent. Baldwin can tell us what it feels like to be a Negro in Harlem but he tries to tell us everything else too. M. L. King I dont think is the ages great saint but he’s at least doing what he can do & has to do. Don’t know anything about Ossie Davis except that you like him but you probably like them all. My question is usually would this person be endurable if white. If Baldwin were white nobody would stand him a minute. I prefer Cassius Clay. “If a tiger move into the room with you,” says Cassius, “and you leave, that dont mean you hate the tiger. Just means you know you and him can’t make out. Too much talk about hate.” Cassius is too good for the Moslems.

But we mustnt think like that.....Anymore...
17 posted on 08/01/2020 5:12:58 AM PDT by MurphsLaw (“In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti...Amen.”)
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