Flannery O’Connor and the Eucharist

In 1950, Flannery O’Connor was brought by friends to a dinner with the prominent author Mary McCarthy and her husband. At the time, O’Connor, who would eventually blossom into one of the greatest Catholic writers of the twentieth century, was just commencing her career, and there was no question that she was a junior member of this elite circle of conversation. In fact, in a letter describing the scene, she commented, “Having me there was like having a dog present who had been trained to say a few words but overcome with inadequacy had forgotten them.” As the evening drew on, the talk turned to the Eucharist, and Mary McCarthy, who had been raised Catholic but had fallen away from the Church, remarked that she thought of the Eucharist as a symbol and “implied that it was a pretty good one.” She undoubtedly intended this condescending observation as a friendly overture to the Catholic O’Connor. But O’Connor responded in a shaky voice, “Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.” One can only imagine that the elegant dinner party broke up rather soon after that conversational bomb was dropped. In its bluntness, clarity, and directness, Flannery O’Connor’s remark is one of the best statements of the Catholic difference in regard to the Eucharist. For Catholics, the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Jesus, and any attempt to say otherwise, no matter how cleverly formulated or deftly articulated, is insufficient. Bishop Barron, This is My Body, 64