A Temple of the Holy Ghost
Flannery O’Connor’s childhood experiences attending Catholic school radiate from “A Temple of the Holy Ghost,” the fifth story in her collection A Good Man Is Hard to Find. For example, Mount St. Scholastica parallels Sacred Heart Academy, the Catholic school in Savannah at which O’Connor began sixth grade. Sister Mary Consolata, O’Connor’s teacher in the third and fifth grades, echoes Sister Perpetua, who is also a Sister of Mercy. After moving to the Cline Mansion in Milledgeville to accommodate O’Connor’s father’s work in Atlanta, O’Connor’s Aunt Agnes, would visit during the summers, bringing her four daughters with her, who reflect Joanne and Susan. Based on these experiences, O’Connor wrote “A Temple of the Holy Ghost” much later in early 1954, around the same time that she wrote “A Circle in the Fire,” a companion piece. Because of their striking similarities, “A Temple of the Holy Ghost” may respond to fellow Southern woman writer Carson McCullers’s novel The Member of the Wedding. Biographer Brad Gooch explains that while the twelve-year-old girl in McCullers’s novel “accepts her female identity” (250) after being “provoked by her brother’s wedding” (250), O’Connor responds by having the twelve-year-old in her story “discover her identity in the body of Christ” (250), thus making a statement toward McCullers’s work as well as about O’Connor’s own religious beliefs. After O’Connor submitted the story for publication, Harper’s Bazaar printed the story in its May 1954 issue. Reflecting on the strong influence of O’Connor’s years in Savannah on her work, Gooch quotes O’Connor, who ultimately says, “I think you probably collect most of your experiences as a
child – when you really had nothing else to do – and then transfer it to other situations when you write” (qtd. in Gooch 50).
Based on essayist W.A. Sessions’s conclusion that this is “one of O’Connor’s most theologically complex stories” (21), scholar Margaret Earley Whitt points out that, “although the obsession with Christ is reiterated throughout O’Connor’s fiction, it is usually characterized by an overtly crazed backwoods fundamentalist Protestant. This strong grip that the Catholic Church has on the child’s imagination is unparalleled” in “A Temple of the Holy Ghost” (60-61). Therefore, O’Connor superficially uses this story to present and defend her beloved institution of Catholicism against popular Protestantism. Literary scholar Bryan Giemza reveals that, “as an Irish Catholic in the South, O’Connor was no doubt used to being put in a class along with Jews and non-Christians” (186), thus potentially creating a desire in her to defend and positively represent her personal religious ideals. Apart from the strong, developed spirituality of the story’s protagonist, O’Connor incorporates numerous references to Catholicism, such as when, in the words of scholar Ralph C. Wood, “two pubescent Catholic school girls sing St. Thomas’s sublime Eucharistic hymn in order to mock the saccharine gospel songs sung by two preacher-boys named Cory and Wendell Wilkens” (29). O’Connor also provides a detailed scene of the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament where she describes “the altar where the priest was kneeling in front of the monstrance, bowed low. A small boy in a surplice was standing behind him, swinging the censer” (“Temple,” 247) while everyone sang Tantum Ergo. Essayist John R. May reflects on this scene that “there can be no question” that “the eucharistic host in the monstrance during the Benediction ceremony is genuinely Catholic in intention and execution” (216). In the story’s last scene, O’Connor makes a final distinction between Catholicism and Protestantism that Wood points out by explaining that “the town’s Protestant preachers are so scandalized by [the hermaphrodite], who contravenes the ordinary norms, that they have the freak show shut down. Yet O’Connor’s Catholic child is not offended” (246). Ultimately, O’Connor establishes her support of the institution of Catholicism, writing in a letter that the Eucharist “is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable” (The Habit of Being, 125). Therefore, O’Connor uses the story to make obvious the significance of Catholicism on her personal beliefs.
O’Connor’s unique characterization of the protagonist as having significant spiritual knowledge and fervor despite her youth makes the protagonist a compelling central character. O’Connor always refers to the protagonist, never named, as “the child” (“Temple,” 236), immediately establishing her as innocent, inexperienced, and naïve. For instance, when Susan and Joanne tell the protagonist about the intersex person at the freak show, the protagonist, with an “abstracted, absent” face, “wanted to ask how it could be a man and woman both without two heads but she did not. She wanted to get back into her own bed and think it out” (245-246). This reveals the protagonist’s inability to cognitively grapple with hermaphroditism due to her naivete. Then, when Joanne and Susan push the protagonist to reveal how a rabbit has given birth, the protagonist says that “‘it spit them out of its mouth’” (246) and therefore, as Whitt claims, reverts “to the comfort of a secure childlike version of the world” (61). Despite her establishment of the protagonist as clearly childlike, O’Connor characterizes her as highly knowledgeable and devoted to Catholicism. Wood, for instance, describes the protagonist as having “intellectual brilliance” (244), “an acute religious sensibility” (245), and “potential for spiritual excellence” (245). The protagonist startlingly demonstrates her devotion to Catholicism when, after Wendell and Cory insult Susan and Joanne’s Catholic song by calling it “Jew singing,” the protagonist “stamped her foot on the barrel. ‘You big dumb ox!’ she shouted. ‘You big dumb Church of God ox!’ she roared and fell off the barrel” (241). The protagonist also shows her devotion and knowledge through contemplating “martyrs” and “saints” (243), and, when “she remembered that she hadn’t said her prayers” before going to sleep, she dutifully “got up and knelt down and began them,” reciting “the Apostles’ Creed” (244). As a result, O’Connor solidifies her characterization of the young protagonist as uniquely knowledgeable and devoted to Catholicism.
Demonstrating her Biblical knowledge, the protagonist’s profound conclusions about the intersex person transform her original understanding of 1 Corinthians 6:12-20, the Biblical passage about sexual sin that supplies the story’s title. When the giggling Susan and Joanne, calling themselves “Temple One and Temple Two,” arrive at the protagonist’s house for the weekend from the convent where they attend school, they laugh endlessly about Sister Perpetua’s instruction “on what to do if [... a man] should ‘behave in an ungentlemanly manner with them in the back of an automobile.’ Sister Perpetua said they were to say, ‘Stop sir! I am a Temple of the Holy Ghost!’ and that will put an end to it” (238). Sister Perpetua’s instruction and this story’s title refer to Paul’s explanation that “sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body” (1 Cor. 6.18-20 NLT). Paul calls human bodies “temple[s] of the Holy Spirit” within the context of sexual sin, stating that “no sin so clearly affects the body as this one does” (1 Cor. 6.18 NLT). However, O’Connor uses Sister Perpetua, Joanne, and Susan’s strictly sexual interpretation of this Biblical passage as the basis for expanding the protagonist’s understanding in the story’s conclusion. After contemplating the intersex person’s sexual identity, the protagonist discovers a more profound interpretation of “a temple of the Holy Ghost” that expands the the Bible passage’s original meaning beyond sexual sin.
For the protagonist, deliberating over the intersex person coupled with attending the benediction at the end of the story redefines “a temple of the Holy Ghost” to mean the need for uprightness in all aspects of one’s character. Telling the protagonist about the intersex person, Joanne and Susan relate that the intersex person said, “God made me thisaway and if you laugh He may strike you the same way. This is the way He wanted me to be and I ain’t disputing His way. I’m showing you because I got to make the best of it” (“Temple,” 245). While the protagonist cannot initially understand the intersex person’s situation, she subsequently dreams that the intersex person preaches in a church and tells the people to “raise yourself up. A temple of the Holy Ghost. You! You are God’s temple, don’t you know? Don’t you know? God’s spirit has a dwelling in you, don’t you know?” (246). Wood explains the protagonist’s dream as the start of her transformation, which begins “with her perception of the holy within the hermaphrodite” (246). The intersex person echoes Paul when he asks the Corinthians, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” (1 Cor. 3.16 ESV), which proclaims a divine presence within all people. As a result of abolishing the stereotypical rules of sexuality that give way to the sexual emphasis of 1 Corinthians 6:12-20, the intersex person expands the meaning of the passage, adding that human bodies as “temples of the Holy Spirit” should resist all sin, not just sexual sin. Paul instructs that people’s bodies “were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies [...] for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body” (1 Cor. 6.13, 20 NLT), thus emphasizing that all sin, not just sexual sin, tarnishes human bodies as “temples of the Holy Spirit.” Therefore, Whitt explains that the protagonist ultimately understands that “the body is ‘a temple of the Holy Ghost’” and that “God can make one person both man and woman” (62), thereby allowing her see that the unique body of the intersex person also qualifies as “a temple.”
Watching the benediction solidifies the protagonist’s transformation of understanding the expanded, more profound meaning of 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 while also deepening her comprehension of the importance of Jesus’s crucifixion. During the service, the protagonist “began to realize that she was in the presence of God,” and “she was thinking of the tent at the fair that had the freak in it” (“Temple,” 247-248). As a result, the protagonist gains a greater understanding of the crucifixion, acknowledged in the benediction, through witnessing three symbols that connect Jesus and the intersex person. First, the protagonist connects Jesus and the intersex person as she watches the priest’s elevation of the Host in the monstrance, the physical body and blood of Jesus in the sacrament of the Eucharist, which reveres Christ’s crucifixion. Essayist Davis J. Leigh explains that the protagonist “thinks of Christ and the hermaphrodite in the same vision, and comes to realize that [the hermaphrodite] and Christ were both suffering from being exhibited to the public eye as ‘freaks’ of nature” (371). Through connecting Jesus and the intersex person in their suffering, the protagonist prays for God to “hep me not to be so mean, she began mechanically. Hep me not to give her so much sass. Hep me not to talk like I do” (“Temple,” 247). In this way, the protagonist asks for God’s help in combating multiple non-sexual sins, demonstrating her newfound interpretation of 1 Corinthians 6:12-20. As a result, May reveals that “the heart of the story concerns [...] whether the child will [...] learn to accept herself for what she is, with all of her personal shortcomings, and what she can accomplish despite them” (216), thereby further defining all sins as destructive to “a temple of the Holy Ghost.” Second, the nun embracing the protagonist and “mashing the side of [the protagonist’s] face into the crucifix hitched to her belt” (“Temple,” 248) connects the intersex person and Jesus. With a cross stamped onto the side of her face, the protagonist’s understanding of the significance of the crucifixion deepens as a result of the expanded meaning of 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 afforded by the intersex person. Third, when the protagonist leaves the benediction and sees that “the sun was a huge red ball like an elevated Host drenched in blood” (248), she receives her “final symbol of the redemptive suffering of Christ” (Leigh 371). Because the protagonist contemplates the intersex person at the benediction, she more profoundly defines human bodies as “temples of the Holy Ghost,” connecting the intersex person and Jesus to deepen her understanding of the crucifixion.
O’Connor concisely defines examining purity as the purpose of “A Temple of the Holy Ghost.” O’Connor reveals in letters that “purity strikes me as the most mysterious of the virtues and the more I think about it, the less I know about it. ‘A Temple of the Holy Ghost’ all revolves around what is purity” (Habit, 117). Jesus speaks to purity in his Sermon on the Mount when he proclaims, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matt. 5.8 ESV). In the context of the expanded meaning of 1 Corinthians 6:12-20, which signifies that all sin damages human bodies as “temples of the Holy Spirit,” the ESV Study Bible explains that “the pure in heart are those whose pursuit of purity and uprightness affects every area of life” (1828), thereby considering purity to include more than sexual morality. As a result, O’Connor concludes that purity “is an acceptance of what God wills for us, an acceptance of our individual circumstances” (Habit, 124), which the protagonist learns through the intersex person. Reflecting on the intersex person’s impact on the protagonist, Giemza claims that “O’Connor thought that freaks were mostly, in essence, the distorted version of ourselves that we become, which is to say, the version that must appear before God” (186). Yet, in spite of O’Connor’s message that all should strive for purity, Wood claims that O’Connor’s ultimate message rests in her supposed suggestion that “our creation in God’s image affords us an unbreakable mutuality with every other person. [...] We are full human beings not only in and through, but sometimes even apart from, our genital condition” (247). Therefore, O’Connor conveys to readers the same understanding gained by the protagonist, who deepens her knowledge of the importance of Jesus’ crucifixion by expanding her understanding of 1 Corinthians 6:12-20, which discusses the significance of all human bodies as “temples of the Holy Ghost.”
Works Cited
ESV Study Bible: English Standard Version. Translated by Crossway, ESV text ed., Wheaton, Crossway Bibles, 2011.
Giemza, Bryan. Irish Catholic Writers and the Invention of the American South. Baton Rouge, Louisiana State UP, 2013.
Gooch, Brad. Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor. New York, Little, Brown, 2009.
Holy Bible: New Living Translation. Translated by Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Tyndale House Publishers, 2015.
Leigh, Davis J. “Suffering and the Sacred in Flannery O’Connor’s Short Stories.” Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature, vol. 65, no. 5, fall 2013, pp. 365-79. MLA International Bibliography.
May, John R. “Flannery O’Connor and the Discernment of Catholic Fiction.” Inside the Church of Flannery O’Connor: Sacrament, Sacramental, and the Sacred in Her Fiction, edited by Joanne Halleran McMullen and Jon Parrish Peede, Mercer UP, 2007, pp. 205-20.
O’Connor, Flannery. The Habit of Being. Edited by Sally Fitzgerald, New York City, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979.
---. “A Temple of the Holy Ghost.” The Complete Stories, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971, pp. 236-48.
Sessions, W. A. “Real Presence: Flannery O’Connor and the Saints.” Inside the Church of Flannery O’Connor: Sacrament, Sacramental, and the Sacred in Her Fiction, edited by Joanne Halleran McMullen and Jon Parrish Peede, Mercer UP, 2007, pp. 17-40.
Whitt, Margaret Earley. Understanding Flannery O’Connor. Columbia, U of South Carolina P, 1997.
Wood, Ralph C. Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South. Grand Rapids (Michigan), W.B. Eerdmans Publ., 2005.