[I was listening to the speaker on 60 minutes and he said the following}…<\/p>\n
:\u201cI have \u201d\u201c one teacher I remember was an elderly Jesuit at Xavier (high school in New York City) from Boston. He had a Boston accent. Father Tom Matthews, and he taught me a lesson that I\u2019ve recounted in some of my speeches. He taught me what I refer to as the Shakespeare principle.<\/p>\n
The class was reading one of the Shakespeare plays, \u201d\u02dcHamlet\u2019 or whatever, and one of my classmates or whatever, sort of smart aleck kid, John Antonelli, as I recall. It\u2019s ridiculous I would remember his name. But [John] made some really smart aleck sophomoric criticism of the play, and Father Matthews looked down at him and he said, with his Boston accent, \u201d\u02dcMister, when you read Shakespeare, Shakespeare\u2019s not on trial. You are.\u2019\u201d\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And so it was for me and Flannery O\u2019Connor. As I read her work, Flannery O\u2019Connor was not on trial. I was. Sheepishly, I have to admit that I had similarly grossly misjudged the great G.K. Chesterton in the past (see my previous post \u201cFinding My Way to Orthodoxy\u201d\u009d http:\/\/acatholicthinker.wordpress.com\/2012\/11\/22\/finding-my-way-to-orthodoxy\/). The work of Flannery O\u2019Connor could be harsh, violent and discomfiting. And yet it is also thick with truth, grace and redemption<\/b>. To the superficial reader, a yarn filled with unattractive figures on ill-fated endeavors may be all that is perceived. But to those willing to consider her work more deeply, powerful themes of deeply religious truths become apparent. Perhaps the greatest and most pervasive of these truths in Flannery\u2019s stories is the pain, suffering and \u201cmeanness\u201d\u009d that often accompanies the beautiful grace of God.<\/p>\n