A Moral Dilemma

I am always fascinated by “moral dilemmas”, and so, as you can imagine, I am in a state of constant fascination these days since there are so many demanding our attention out there in our world. The good news is I feel rather equipped to deal with them, as maybe you do, because I’ve had so much practice dealing with the multitudinous moral dilemmas involved in a lifetime of navigating my way in our Church!

I came upon an especially beguiling recent dilemma involving a major American female literary giant, Flannery O’Connor. She had been a passionately devout Catholic all of her life and had infused much of her literary works with profound and complex explorations of sin, repentance, penance, sacrament, grace, and redemption. A decade ago Loyola University Maryland, for one, had honored this world famous iconic Catholic woman artist by naming one of their dormitories Flannery O’Connor Hall. This summer, the University unceremoniously removed her name from that same building. President Brian Linnane, SJ stated she “did not reflect Loyola’s Jesuit values.” Why would such an internationally renowned artist, a Catholic at that, be ‘canceled’ by a major Catholic University and perhaps even by her own Church?  Read on.

The problem centered on the furor cause by an article in the June New Yorker contending O’Connor was a racist. Her most infamous quote on the subject, written to a friend in 1964 with the Civil Rights Act pending, was: “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.” This was particularly troubling and puzzling coming from the same writer who had created some of the most powerful anti-racist stories ever written: Everything That Rises Must Converge, Judgment Day, Revelation and more.

The debate over whether Loyola was irresponsibly participating in “cancel culture” of a major artist or responsibly expressing its commitment to anti-racism and sensitivity to its entire student population heated up the literary world. In the September issue of Commonweal, two authors took sides.

Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, whose book Radical Ambivalence: Race in Flannery O’Connor had formed a good deal of the basis for the New Yorker article, argued against Loyola’s action. O’Connor had to be seen in the context of her times – the South in the 1950’s and ‘60’s – and in her honesty about her own personal struggles with racism and how so many of her stories condemn and repudiate racism. O’Donnell called on us to protest the erasure and be bigger persons: “The canceling of a writer who possesses the wisdom and power of Flannery O’Connor demonstrates our impoverished imaginations, our narrowness, and our inability to embrace complexity.”

Cathleen Kaveny, former Loyola University Maryland board of trustees member and teacher of law and theology at Boston College, was not buying that argument. Her rationale centered on the reason the President gave for the removal: the emotional effect  keeping the name might have on the students. The name, Kaveny pointed out, was not on an academic building but on a dormitory, a student’s home while at university. Did anyone supporting retaining the name ever think to emphasize, she asked, with the Black students who actually have to live in that dorm”? Furthermore, the Jesuits had committed themselves to redress their past complicity with slavery and with systemic racism and create a community of equality and justice for all students.

I bring this example up because I believe all moral dilemmas are fascinating precisely because they are so complex. Like those arguing for Flannery O’Connor’s name to remain, I often argue for the Church to remain because I do not want to confuse the intrinsic value of its magnificent work for social justice, its sacramental grace, its gifts of sacred community, and its celebration and preservation of artistic works of indescribable beauty with its often morally bankrupt, myopic, misogynistic past and present history and leadership. On the other hand, because I am wholly committed to racial, gender, and ethnic justice, because I am a champion of spiritual and moral evolution, because I want to redress and purge ancient and current wrongs, and because it is my home, I want any outward sign of its inner corruption removed…and replaced, yes, to suit the times.

The dormitory formerly named for Flannery O’Connor is now Thea Bowman Hall celebrating the African-American Sister who once taught the Conference of Bishops to sing with joy and is on her way to official sainthood. 

With due respect to Flannery O’Connor, I can only applaud a moral dilemma resolved with such grace, sensitivity, and wisdom. A model for resolving our future dilemmas with  the Church, perhaps?