A Reason to Read the Irish Times

John Waters writes about the Rimini meeting of Communion & Liberation:

The other day, for example, I went for a second time to experience an exhibition on the life and work of the Irish-American writer Flannery O’Connor. Now there’s “conservatism” for you: a Catholic novelist whose characters seem to have been conceived at the very precipice of human possibility: strange, dark misfits torn between grace and meaninglessness, awaiting that moment of exceptionality when a choice will throw itself before them. Flannery O’Connor once said that if she had not been a Catholic, she would have had “no reason to write, no reason to see, no reason ever to feel horrified or even to enjoy anything”.
Is it possible for those of us who live in the nominally Catholic land from which her ancestors once hastened to gain any insight into such a judgment?

It never fails to astound me how hostile the reader comments are when John Waters dares to say something positive about his faith. Probably the most amusing hostile comment is from a 'Roger Quinlan' who suggests that Flannery O'Connor should widen her horizons. Given that she passed from this life in 1964, I would imagine that her horizons are, God willing, infinitely broad.