SOURCE: Russell, Henry M. W. “Racial Integration in a Disintegrating Society: O'Connor and European Catholic Thought.” Flannery O'Connor Bulletin 24 (1995-96): 33-45.

In the following essay, Russell maintains that O'Connor's ideas about race were profoundly influenced by her Catholic faith.

Flannery O'Connor's thoughts on race are more informed by her Christian faith than by her geographic roots. American critics have long acknowledged the importance of her statements about being a Catholic writer in the South, but the dismal failure of the American church to communicate orthodox Catholic teaching since the 1960s has obscured to many what such a commitment implies. To be an intellectual Catholic like O'Connor meant engaging serious theologians and philosophers who labored to tease out the implications of Church dogma for yet another new era. So earnest was O'Connor about the necessity for an educated faith that she quixotically attempted to direct the readers of her...