"A Temple of the Holy Ghost" is a short story

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

 by Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O'Connor

Mary Flannery O'Connor was an American novelist, short-story writer and essayist. An important voice in American literature, O'Connor wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries...

. It was written in 1954 and published in 1955 in her short story collection A Good Man Is Hard to Find

A Good Man Is Hard To Find

A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories is a collection of short stories by American author Flannery O'Connor. The collection was first published in 1955...

and is one of O'Connor's only explicitly Catholic stories. A devout Roman Catholic, O'Connor often used religious themes in her work, but more commonly described rural Southern Protestants.

Plot summary

The story is told from the perspective of a 12-year-old girl and involves a visit from a pair of her 14-year-old cousins, Roman Catholic convent school girls, who were recently lectured by the nuns about preserving their bodies as "temples of the holy ghost." The young girl's mother arranges for a pair of neighborhood boys who are training to be preachers to accompany the cousins to a fair. While picking up the girls, the boys are mildly ridiculed for their seemingly ignorant religious views. At the fair, the girls see a hermaphrodite

Hermaphrodite

In biology, a hermaphrodite is an organism that has reproductive organs normally associated with both male and female sexes.Many taxonomic groups of animals do not have separate sexes. In these groups, hermaphroditism is a normal condition, enabling a form of sexual reproduction in which both...

 displayed as a freak

Freak

In current usage, the word "freak" is commonly used to refer to a person with something unusual about their appearance or behaviour. This usage dates from the so-called freak scene of the 1960s and 1970s. "Freak" in this sense may be used either as a pejorative, a term of admiration, or a...

, which they later describe to their younger cousin. The hermaphrodite explained that this was how God made her. The end of the story reflects upon the acceptance of God's will as in the case of the hermaphrodite.