The King of the Birds: Aesthetic Naturalism as Apostasy
The cited article from the National Catholic Register presents a hagiographic profile of the celebrated writer Flannery O’Connor, focusing with sentimental nostalgia on her fondness for peacocks at her Georgia farm, Andalusia. It relates anecdotes of her childhood chicken-collecting, her sewing outfits for birds, and the proliferation of her peacock flock. The piece concludes with banal observations about the noise of peacocks and a list of the author’s credentials in the post-conciliar Catholic media ecosystem. The entire narrative is framed as a charming, personal essay, a celebration of a writer’s quirky passion. Yet, from the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this article is not merely harmless biography; it is a symptomatic manifestation of the theological and spiritual bankruptcy of the post-1958 “Church.” Its profound error lies not in what it states, but in its entire omission of the supernatural, its implicit naturalistic humanism, and its subtle dethronement of Christ the King in favor of the “king of the birds.”
1. Factual Deconstruction: The Cult of the Creature Over the Creator
The article meticulously details O’Connor’s avian obsession: the specific breeds, the sewn clothing, the garden destruction, the numerical growth of the flock. It treats these facts as neutral, even endearing, data points. The sole “theological” statement is O’Connor’s quoted prediction: “I intend to stand firm and let the peacocks multiply, for I am sure that, in the end, the last word will be theirs.” This is presented as a witty, homespun maxim. In reality, it is a declaration of creature-worship. The “last word” belongs to God alone (cf. Quas Primas: “His empire shall be multiplied, and there shall be no end to peace”). To attribute ultimate significance to a flock of birds is a profound inversion of the First Commandment. The article’s factual focus on the material, sensory reality of the peacocks—their colors, noises, habits—epitomizes the Modernist error condemned by St. Pius X: the reduction of religious sentiment to a “mere internal and subjective feeling” (Pascendi Dominici gregis). The “beauty” of the peacock becomes an end in itself, a naturalistic substitute for the beauty of God.
2. Linguistic Analysis: The Tone of Sentimental Naturalism
The language is saturated with the vocabulary of subjective experience and aesthetic appreciation: “awe,” “beloved,” “elegant,” “wow,” “charming.” This is the language of the cult of man, where personal feeling and sensory pleasure are the highest goods. The article employs the tone of a lifestyle magazine, not a Catholic commentary. There is no language of sacrifice, sin, grace, or redemption. The peacocks are not seen as creatures to be used for God’s glory (as St. Francis might have seen them) but as co-equal objects of devotion. The phrase “King of the Birds” is used unironically, directly competing with the sole Kingship of Christ. This linguistic naturalism is a direct fruit of the “errors concerning civil society” condemned in the Syllabus of Errors, where the secular order is divorced from the divine. Here, the “order” of the farm is centered on the peacock, not on the Blessed Sacrament.
3. Theological Confrontation: The Nullification of Christ’s Royal Dignity
Pius XI’s encyclical Quas Primas is unequivocal: “The kingdom of our Redeemer encompasses all men… all are subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” The Pope condemns the secularism that “removed Jesus Christ and His most holy law from… public life.” The article about O’Connor’s peacocks is a perfect illustration of this secularism in the realm of culture and personal obsession. By making the peacock the symbolic “king” of her world, O’Connor (and the article celebrating her) actively participates in the “public apostasy” Pius XI lamented. The feast of Christ the King was instituted precisely to counter such dethronements. Where is the mention of the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary offered at Andalusia? Where is the recognition that every creature, including the peacock, exists to manifest God’s glory? The silence is deafening and damning. It reflects the Modernist principle that “Christian doctrine was initially Jewish, but through gradual development… became… universal” (Lamentabili sane exitu, Prop. 60), meaning it can be diluted into a general appreciation for “beauty” and “nature.”
Furthermore, the article’s entire premise rests on the private, subjective “imaginative world” of a writer. This is the heresy of “private judgment” applied to aesthetics and life-choices, divorcing the individual from the objective, hierarchical order of the universe with God at its apex. The peacock, a creature of vain display (its tail a traditional symbol of pride), becomes the hero. This is a satanic inversion: the creature that displays its feathers to attract mates is extolled, while the call to “deny himself and carry his cross” (Matt. 16:24) is absent. The article promotes what Pius IX condemned as the error that “the civil power may prevent the prelates of the Church and the faithful from communicating freely and mutually with the Roman pontiff” (Syllabus, Error 49) by showing a world where the “king” is a bird, not the Vicar of Christ.
4. Symptomatic Analysis: The Conciliar Revolution’s Fruit
Flannery O’Connor died in 1964, on the cusp of the conciliar apocalypse. Her Catholicism, as presented here, is a purely private, literary, and aesthetic affair. There is no hint of the militant, social Kingship of Christ demanded by Quas Primas. This is precisely the “individualistic” piety that prepared the way for the “abomination of desolation.” The post-conciliar “Church” has canonized this type of “saint”: a culturally significant figure whose faith is confined to the realm of personal taste and artistic inspiration. The article’s venue, the National Catholic Register, is a flagship of the conciliar sect, promoting this sanitized, culturally acceptable Catholicism. O’Connor’s peacocks are the perfect symbol for the post-conciliar “Church”: beautiful, noisy, multiplying, consuming the garden (the souls of the faithful), and utterly irrelevant to the true mission of the Church, which is the salvation of souls through the Sacraments and the public reign of Christ the King.
The article’s complete silence on the state of grace, the necessity of the Sacraments, the reality of Hell, and the duty of Catholic states to recognize Christ’s Kingship is its most grave accusation. It presents a world where the ultimate concern is the proper care of poultry. This is the “naturalistic and modernist mentality” in its purest form. It is the logical outcome of the “hermeneutics of continuity” that pretends the pre- and post-conciliar “Church” are the same: a “Catholic” who loves peacocks more than the Real Presence, who finds “awe” in iridescent feathers but not in the Tabernacle, is a product of the revolution.
5. The Sedevacantist Imperative: Rejecting the Abomination
From the standpoint of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, which subsists in those who profess the integral faith and are not in communion with the conciliar antipopes (beginning with John XXIII), this article is a document of the “neo-church.” It promotes a “Catholicism” that is indistinguishable from highbrow paganism. The true Catholic, following Pius XI, must “stand firm” not for the multiplication of peacocks, but for the reign of Christ the King in all aspects of life. The “last word” is not of a bird, but of the Verbum caro factum. The beauty of Andalusia should point to the greater beauty of the Heavenly Jerusalem, not become an end in itself.
The “King of the Birds” is a false king. The article, in its sentimental naturalism, commits the error of “indifferentism” condemned by Pius IX: it treats the worship of a creature as a harmless personal preference, equivalent in its own sphere to the worship of God. This is the “broad and liberal Protestantism” foretold by Pius X (Lamentabili, Prop. 65). The only legitimate “king of the birds” in Catholic tradition is the peacock as a symbol of eternal life (its flesh was believed not to decay), pointing to the Resurrection. Here, the symbol is emptied of its supernatural meaning and turned back into mere aesthetic object.
Therefore, the integral Catholic must reject this narrative. He must see in it the spirit of the age: the replacement of the Sacrum Imperium with the empire of personal taste, the substitution of the Sacred Heart with the “heart” moved by the squawk of a peacock. The call is not to let peacocks multiply, but to let the faith multiply, to restore the public and private reign of Christ the King, and to purge the “Catholic” imagination of such pagan substitutes. The true “king of the birds” is the Holy Ghost, who “moved over the waters” (Gen. 1:2), not a strutting fowl in a Georgia garden.
Let every Catholic, therefore, heed the command of Pius XI: “Let Christ reign in the mind… in the will… in the heart… in the body.” There is no room for a “king of the birds” in the Kingdom of Christ.
Source:
King of the Birds: Flannery O’Connor’s Beloved Peacocks (ncregister.com)
Date: 05.04.2026