Reading Flannery O’Connor

I have been reading Flannery O’Connor. In a fascinating essay entitled “The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South” [Mystery and Manners, selected and eds. Sally and Robert Fitzgerald (London: Faber and Faber, 1972)], she makes this extremely revealing remark about how a Catholic writes fiction: “The Catholic novel…cannot see man as determined; it cannot see him as totally depraved. It will see him as incomplete in himself, as prone to evil, but as redeemable when his own efforts are assisted by grace” (p.196-197).

She goes on to talk about the centre of meaning of the Catholic novel being Christ—but the above quote is so quintessentially Roman Catholic.