{"id":6788,"date":"2015-12-11T11:46:40","date_gmt":"2015-12-11T11:46:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2015\/12\/11\/pious-language\/"},"modified":"2015-12-11T11:46:40","modified_gmt":"2015-12-11T11:46:40","slug":"pious-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2015\/12\/11\/pious-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Flannery O’Connor on Pious Language"},"content":{"rendered":"

Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being<\/em> (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1979), p. 227 in a letter to Maryat Lee dated 28 June 1957: <\/span><\/p>\n

\n

I doubtless hate pious language worse than you because I believe the realities it hides.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"O_connor_flannery2\"<\/a>To the unbeliever, pious language is just so much cant and hypocrisy and offensive for these reasons.  At funerals for worldly persons one sometimes hears pious claptrap about the dearly departed going off to be with the Lord.  This may prove sickening to the unbeliever.  Here is someone who spent his whole life on the make.  And now you portray him as eager to meet his Maker?  Or a nominal Catholic who never prayed the rosary in his life is set  in an open casket with a rosary interlaced between his fingers.  Disgusting!<\/span><\/p>\n

The conventional lukewarm believer, for whom there is a tendency to conflate formulas and usages with the underlying realities, will not be offended.  He does not take religion all that seriously in any case.  It is a matter of habit and acculturation and respectability together with a vague sense that it might be a good idea to attend services as a sort of insurance  lest any of the stuff about heaven and hell turn out to be true.<\/span><\/p>\n

And then there is the person of genuine faith, for whom faith is not a convenience or a crutch or cheap consolation or an insurance policy or a mere matter of habit or acculturation or respectability.  Such a person aims to penetrate through the formulas and usages to the transcendent realities and is offended by conventional piety for the right reason.<\/span><\/p>\n

Related:  Afterlife Again<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Being Itself: Continuing the Discussion with Dale Tuggy<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1979), p. 227 in a letter to Maryat Lee dated 28 June 1957: I doubtless hate pious language worse than you because I believe the realities it hides. To the unbeliever, pious language is just so much cant and hypocrisy and offensive for these reasons.  … Continue reading “Flannery O’Connor on Pious Language”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,6,139],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hypocrisy","category-language-matters","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6788\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}