Never underestimate hillbillies.
Thought For The Day
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Maybe I’m being less than charitable here, but in the nearly 12 years of this pontificate, I have never found anything Francis said to be even in the vicinity of profound or even mildly thought-inducing. It’s either warmed over leftist CCD-level platitudes or sheer projection. Here it seems to be both
What’s engaging about Flannery O’Connor is that she was an individual with an idiosyncratic imagination and considerable wit. Making sense of authorial intention is an issue with her.
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I doubt there’s anyone writing for NCR who is both philosophically sophisticated and not a con artist. And Francis is well known for his academic deficiencies.
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(BTW, O’Connor was a small-town bourgeois who grew up near the boundary of the coastal plain and the Piedmont).
Art:
Yes, in Southern parlance, she might be a “cracker” (Georgia or Florida lowlander), but not a “hillbilly” (which term I understand came first from the Ozarks, not Appalachia). It would depend on her family’s social standing.
What I find shocking is a Fr Edward Beck added to the insult and went onto CNN and said JD Vance has been a Catholic for 6 years and PF has been a Catholic for 88 years. And that Vance should therefore listen to PF because he knows more about Catholicism. Converts everywhere should feel outraged by this stupid comment. It’s not even a refute or argument to JD Vance moral reasoning for the tightening of the US Border Policy. It’s attacking his Faith and bullying him into hiding it by claiming he, and converts, lack any Faith formation.
On one hand, PF claims to fight for the little guy and yet when someone like Vance who has managed to rise above the circumstances of his upbringing publicly displays his Faith, he is mocked by his minions.
The Church has no business getting involved in politics. Priests shouldn’t be going onto CNN for their 15minutes of fame.
Vance should reply “Aquinas has been Catholic for 800 years, so I’m going with him” 😀
Vance did not become Catholic because of Jorge Bergoglio. More like, in spite of him.
National Catholic Fishwrap, according to Father Zuhlsdorf…
“Vance did not become Catholic because of Jorge Bergoglio. More like, in spite of him.”
Too right. Any convert during PF reign-of-error is a miracle in itself.
As a convert, I heard some of that same idiotic prejudice when I began teaching RCIA classes. “What’s a convert doing teaching this class?” I like CAG’s answer, above, better than mine, but when I overheard that as I began a 30-minute presentation on the theology of the Our Father, I said, to no one in particular, (heh), “Oh, by the way, all of the Apostles were converts to the faith. Just saying.” There were no further snarky remarks, at least not in my hearing. 😁
Let’s all sing a rousing chorus of that Trace Adkins-Blake Shelton song ‘Hillbilly Bone’!