Thanks to Eve Tushnet for this quote. There should be more FLannery O'Conner on my reading list, maybe I'll try to pick this one up.

In any case I can't climb down off the high powered defense reflex whateveritis. The fleas come with the dog as Mr. McG. ...says. If you were Pius XII, my communications would still sound as if they came from a besieged defender of the faith. I know well enough that it is not a defense of the faith, which don't need it, but a defense of myself who does. The Church becomes a part of your ego and gets messed in with your own impurity. It's a situation I can't handle myself so I wait for purgatory to do it for me.
--The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor