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 ...
Nothin named after a person of color will ever be renamed, because a person of color can never be racist, you know.
This foolishness will never end until reasonable people stand up against it.
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.
Father Linnane represents the very worst of post-modern Catholicism.
He’s so WOKE, coffee is coming out of his sanctimonious ears.
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
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.”
Ping.
How many black people then and now have said the exact same thing about whites or other groups? Probably millions.
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.
I am speechless.
Agree. We can only hope cancelling her might be a bridge too far for these rampaging Marxists.
If Flannery was the one who raised the funds to allow that hall be built there should be no “name change”.
Not for thee,but for me
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!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.