The heart of the Gospel, the Shema Yisrael, but out of Jesus’ mouth.
"Which is the first of all
the commandments?"
Jesus replied, "The first is
this:
Hear, O Israel!
The Lord our God is Lord alone!
You shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your
strength.
The second is this:
You shall love your neighbor as
yourself.
There is no other commandment
greater than these."
-Mk 12:28-31
This
is the second post on my reading of Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory.
You
can read Post #1 here.
Perhaps in my rush to get this discussion started, I incorrectly assumed everyone knew the history of the novel’s setting. The setting of the novel is during what has been called the Cristero War in Mexico. From Wikipedia:
The Cristero War, also
known as the Cristero Rebellion or La Cristiada [la kɾisˈtjaða], was a
widespread struggle in central and western Mexico in response to the imposition
of secularist and anticlerical articles of the 1917 Constitution of Mexico,
which were perceived by opponents as anti-Catholic measures aimed at imposing
state atheism. The rebellion was instigated as a response to an executive
decree by Mexican President Plutarco Elías Calles to enforce Articles 3, 5, 24,
27, and 130 of the Constitution, a move known as the Calles Law. Calles sought
to eliminate the power of the Catholic Church and all organizations which were
affiliated with it and to suppress popular religious celebrations in local
communities.
The massive popular rural uprising in north-central Mexico was tacitly supported by the Church hierarchy, and it was also aided by urban Catholic supporters. US Ambassador Dwight W. Morrow brokered negotiations between the Calles government and the Church. The government made some concessions, the Church withdrew its support for the Cristero fighters, and the conflict ended in 1929. The rebellion has been variously interpreted as a major event in the struggle between church and state that dates back to the 19th century with the War of Reform, as the last major peasant uprising in Mexico after the end of the military phase of the Mexican Revolution in 1920, and as a counter-revolutionary uprising by prosperous peasants and urban elites against the revolution's agrarian and rural reforms.
While the war theoretically ended in 1929, there were localized persecutions all the way into the thirties. I don’t think it is clear what year the novel is set, but Greene traveled in Mexico in 1938 and wrote a non-fiction book of his travels called The Lawless Roads, which he published in 1939. I haven’t read the book but Wikipedia does not mention them. His experience from the trip and the writing of the non-fiction book shaped his writing of The Power and the Glory.
Now one other important fact from the Cristero War. There were many martyrs that took place. Priests were truly hunted down and shot. One important martyr that symbolizes the plight of Catholic priests is that of Blessed Miguel Pro. You can read about Miguel at Wikipedia, but one thing that is ingrained in Catholic imagination is that at the time of his execution, Miguel spread out his arms so that his body became a cross, and just before being shot yelled out in that position, “Viva Cristo Rey!" “Long live Christ the King. There are pictures of Miguel Pro’s last moments at the Wikipedia entry.
The novel is in some ways a contrast between the almost perfect faith of Miguel Pro and the less than perfect faith of the whisky priest. There are many allusions to Miguel Pro in the novel. The woman who speaks of the martyrs to her children is undoubtedly referring to Miguel Pro. The whisky priest is shot like Miguel, though he exhibits fear at his last moments. The whisky priest even gets a last request like Miguel.
I assumed this was common knowledge among Catholics, but perhaps that is a bad assumption. Plus there may be non-Catholics who have not heard of Blessed Miguel Pro or the Cristero War.
###
Part 2, Chapters 1 & 2
Summary
Chapter 1
The priest on the run now on a mule comes to a familiar village. There he meets Maria, the woman who he has had a relationship with that has produced his illegitimate daughter Brigida. He learns that the police have enacted a policy of executing a villager from every suspected place where the priest may or may not be known to have visited. He is pushed to leave as soon as possible and celebrate Mass in the morning and then depart. But the police arrive before the Mass is over, and so the villagers quickly break up the Mass. The lieutenant interrogates the villagers, including the whisky priest himself. No one turns the priest in and the priest evades the questions that would have given him away, but the police decide to take a prisoner for execution. The priest offers himself in exchange but the lieutenant turns him down.
After coming to the conclusion that he can escape north where there is no Catholic persecution, the whisky priest decides against it and travels south. On mule he meets a mestizo, who he lets know he is heading to the town of Carmen. The mestizo, suspecting he is a priest, follows him, and in conversation and action intuits that he is a priest. The priest tries to separate himself from the mestizo, fully realizing the man is after the reward for turning in a priest, but cannot. When the mestizo gets seriously ill, and the priest has the chance to abandon him, the priest decides to let the mestizo ride on his own mule while they both journey to the town. Finally on that journey the priest confirms for the mestizo he is a priest, despite knowing full well the mestizo intends to turn him in. Just as he enters Carmen, the priest lets the mestizo and mule go down one road while he escapes by another.
Chapter 2
In Carmen, the priest is approached by a beggar, but the priest, pretending to be an alcoholic, tells him he wants to buy alcohol, especially wine. He doesn’t let on that he wants the wine to celebrate Mass, but that is his objective. The beggar brings him to the governor’s cousin, who secretly sells confiscated liquor. The governor’s cousin agrees to sell him a bottle of brandy and a large bottle of wine. The beggar tells the priest it would be courteous to offer the governor’s cousin a drink, and he does offer him brandy, but the governor’s cousin prefers to drink the wine. And so they open the bottle and the men drink as the priest despondently watches as the quantity of wine is diminished. Along too comes the jefe, who also joins the group drinking wine. Slowly despite the priest’s objections the wine is finished, and even most of the brandy. Walking about the town he runs into some men playing billiards where they learn he is carrying alcohol. They chase him and he runs to the home of Padre Jose, who refuses to harbor him. Turned away, he is caught by the police as a drunk, and when he cannot pay the fine for drinking alcohol is placed in jail.
###
There’s a lot to be gained by a close examination of Part 2, chapter 1. It’s by far the longest chapter in the whole novel, and I think it contains within it all the themes. In Part 1, Greene looks at the whisky priest mostly from the outside. In Part 2, the point of view shifts to the priest’s internal view. It’s interesting to note that both Parts 2 and 3 tell the story mostly from the priest’s internal point of view, while Parts 1 and 4 are mostly from external to the priest. I’ll give my thoughts on that later when I get to Part 4.
So in the first chapter of Part 2 we see how complex the whisky priest character is before us. By writing from the priest’s internality, the novel enters what I’ll call the psychological phase of the work. What we have is a Dostoyevsky-esk drift into the heart of the character so that all his emotions, his character makeup, and his contradictions form a three dimensional profile—a psychological profile, if you will—of the central character. Let’s go through several passages in the chapter to accumulate this character profile.
The
chapter opens with him riding through the woods with the police in search of
him. Instead of fear, which we will see
many times over, we has a strange thrill.
The priest scrambled off and began to laugh. He was feeling happy. It is one of the strange discoveries a man can make that life, however you lead it, contains moments of exhilaration; there are always comparisons which can be made with worse times: even in danger and misery the pendulum swings. (p. 59)
He
stops to wash his face in a pool of water and sees his reflection.
He knelt down in the late sunlight and bathed his face in a brown pool which reflected back at him like a piece of glazed pottery the round, stubbly and hollow features. They were so unexpected that he grinned at them—with the shy evasive untrustworthy smile of a man caught out. In the old days he often practised a gesture a long while in front of a glass so that he had come to know his own face as well as an actor does. It was a form of humility—his own natural face hadn’t seemed the right one. It was a buffoon’s face, good enough for mild jokes to women, but unsuitable at the altar-rail. He had tried to change it—and indeed, he thought, indeed I have succeeded, they’ll never recognize me now, and the cause of his happiness came back to him like the taste of brandy, promising temporary relief from fear, loneliness, a lot of things. He was being driven by the presence of soldiers to the very place where he most wanted to be. He had avoided it for six years, but now it wasn’t his fault—it was his duty to go there—it couldn’t count as sin. He went back to his mule and kicked it gently, ‘Up, mule, up,’ a small gaunt man in torn peasant’s clothes going for the first time in many years, like any ordinary man, to his home. (59-60)
The earthy, brown reflection and the analogy of his face to pottery suggests a primordial humanity, and one can’t help thinking of Isiah 64:8 where God is referred to as a potter and humanity is the clay. So in one sense the whisky priest is Adam, or Everyman, representative of the human condition.
Notice how many adjectives and nouns he uses to describe himself: shy, evasive, untrustworthy, humility, a buffoon. Notice the emotions: happy, exhilaration but those are temporarily covering up fear and lowliness. It’s almost if he’s experiencing a bi-polar range of emotions. And then there are the more complex feelings of duty and sin. It was his duty to go to his home, but endangering his fellow villagers was a sin. Implied there is guilt, which we will see later. And so we see a paradox of conflicting sensibilities: an obligation to do his duty, and the guilt that results from doing it. These conflicting emotions, the contradicting actions, the paradoxical motivations are at the core of his character.
We
get more of his interiority as he contemplates his own decision.
In any case, even if he could have gone south and avoided the village, it was only one more surrender. The years behind him were littered with similar surrenders—feast days and fast days and days of abstinence had been the first to go: then he had ceased to trouble more than occasionally about his breviary—and finally he had left it behind altogether at the port in one of his periodic attempts at escape. Then the altar stone went—too dangerous to carry with him. He had no business to say Mass without it; he was probably liable to suspension, but penalties of the ecclesiastical kind began to seem unreal in a state where the only penalty was the civil one of death. The routine of his life like a dam was cracked and forgetfulness came dribbling through, wiping out this and that. Five years ago he had given way to despair—the unforgivable sin—and he was going back now to the scene of his despair with a curious lightening of the heart. For he had got over despair too. He was a bad priest, he knew it. They had a word for his kind—a whisky priest, but every failure dropped out of sight and mind: somewhere they accumulated in secret—the rubble of his failures. One day they would choke up, he supposed, altogether the source of grace. Until then he carried on, with spells of fear, weariness, with a shamefaced lightness of heart. (60)
More emotions: surrender, loss, failure, despair, fear, weariness, shame. He carries on despite the fact that he isn’t very good at his priestly obligations, that is, isn’t very good at his very identity. “He was a bad priest, he knew it.” And yet paradoxically he carries on those duties despite the fear at being caught and killed.
When he hears that the police are taking hostages and killing them if they don’t over a priest,
‘They are taking hostages
now—from all the villages where they think you’ve been. And if people don’t
tell … somebody is shot … and then they take another hostage. It happened in
Concepción.’
‘Concepción?’ One of his
lids began to twitch up and down, up and down. He said, ‘Who?’ They looked at
him stupidly. He said furiously, ‘Who did they murder?’
‘Pedro Montez.’
He gave a little yapping
cry like a dog’s—the absurd shorthand of grief. The old-young child laughed. He
said, ‘Why don’t they catch me? The fools. Why don’t they catch me?’ The little
girl laughed again; he stared at her sightlessly, as if he could hear the sound
but couldn’t see the face. Happiness was dead again before it had had time to
breathe; he was like a woman with a stillborn child—bury it quickly and forget
and begin again. Perhaps the next would live.
‘You see, father,’ one of
the men said, ‘why …’
He felt as a guilty man does before his judges. He said ‘Would you rather that I was like … like Padre José in the capital … you have heard of him …?’
“He felt like a guilty man before his judges.” And so one of his dominant emotions is a sense of guilt. There is the guilt of being a priest, which causes the deaths of others. There is the guilt of being an alcoholic. There is the guilt of breaking his vow of celibacy.
I find his exclamation there, “Why don’t they catch me?” insightful. Why is he there in the dangerous territory pastoring, celebrating Mass, and issuing the sacraments? He has a chances to escape, and later actually reaches safe territory. At least twice he deliberately turns toward the very danger and though he doesn’t want to be captured, fully expects to be captured and shot. Is he doing it out of priestly obligation? Does he have a martyr complex? Does he do it for the thrill of the danger? Is he trying to expiate his guilt? You might be able to find justification for all those possibilities.
Which
brings me to what I think Greene is after in this psychological profile. I think he’s creating a character based on
what St. Paul says about himself in Romans 7:15-20.
What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I concur that the law is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh. The willing is ready at hand, but doing the good is not. For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want. Now if [I] do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.
“I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate.” Why do we sin when we know better? It is a paradox. St. Paul is suggesting that it is part of the flesh, the very fact of being human, and at the very heart of being human is a paradox. And I think Greene is agreeing with him. Paradox is at the heart of this novel. In the whisky priest, Greene creates a character—an Adam type—that shows the psychological complexity that is at the very heart of Catholic anthropology. Adam sinned even though he had no intention of doing it. We see in the whisky priest the paradox of being human, wanting to be holy, wanting to obey God’s commandments, and yet doing what we really don’t want to do.
###
To
speak of the whisky priest’s psychological complexity is ultimately to speak of
the priest’s flesh, but that would not be the complete picture. If the sins, the guilt, and the failures to
live up to his vocation are on the horizontal plane of his nature, there is
also a vertical plane, his transcendent plane.
There is his capability to love.
Christ commands us to love God and love one’s neighbor, and the priest
in various places in the novel shows his love for God, but what is central to
the novel is his love of neighbor. It
does strike me that his love of God in the novel is muted, but that is because
I think it is a given. In that wonderful
sermon he gives to his home town peasants in the only Mass we see him celebrate
in the novel we get this passage:
He kissed the top of the packing-case and turned to bless. In the inadequate light he could just see two men kneeling with their arms stretched out in the shape of a cross—they would keep that position until the consecration was over, one more mortification squeezed out of their harsh and painful lives. He felt humbled by the pain ordinary men bore voluntarily; his pain was forced on him. ‘Oh Lord, I have loved the beauty of thy house …’ The candles smoked and the people shifted on their knees—an absurd happiness bobbed up in him again before anxiety returned: it was as if he had been permitted to look in from the outside at the population of heaven. (p.70-71)
If you have time go back a read over the Mass in Part 2, chapter 1 (pp. 69-71). It has been six years since he last celebrated. He performs it with such reverence and love that one feels the priest’s love of God. “Oh Lord, I have loved the beauty of thy house” (Ps 26:8). He feels exhilaration again, performing the Mass, the “absurd happiness.” Why absurd? Because he is celebrating in a rundown hut with a chipped cup for a chalice and homemade bread for the Eucharist. But yet, it is the miracle of the Mass.
But passages where he is in direct contact with God are rare in the novel. The love of God seems muted because love of neighbor dominates the novel. We see it everywhere, with every relationship he has. We see it up front with Mr. Tench where the priest offers to share his brandy. They are essentially strangers but still have a heart to heart conversation. And Mr. Tench is later emotionally touched by the priest as he sees his execution. He has a heart to heart conversation with Coral Fellows, the girl who later will die and who sends out Morse Code to priest from the beyond. He has heart to heart conversations with the mestizo, who he knows will betray him. He has a heart to heart conversation with the people he meets in the jail cell and who do not betray him. He has a heart to heart conversation with the Indian woman whose child is killed. He even has a heart to heart conversation with the lieutenant, who though he will have him executed, is actually moved by his conversation with the priest. In fact the novel’s narrative propels forward through a coupled pairing of the priest and another character in dialogue. Let’s have a look at a couple of these conversations.
Let’s look at the Tench/Whisky Priest interaction first. First, the two by chance meet out at the port. The priest hears Tench exclaim something to himself in English and out of his own initiative responds to him in English. “You speak English,” Tench asks him in surprise. The priest responds he speaks a little English (p. 9). Why did the priest even respond? As it turns out it makes a huge difference to Tench. It will uplift him.
As a habitual expression, Tench uses the Latin phrase Ora pro nobis, “pray for us” (10-11). It comes right out of the Hail Mary prayer, the second half: “Sancta Maria mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen” (Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.). As it turns out, the last words the priest says to Tench when he departs is “I will pray for you” (17). It’s no coincidence that after Tench for the second time says Ora pro nobis, the priest tells him he has brandy and is willing to share it with him, answering Tench’s prayer (17).
When the two go back to Tench’s apartment, Tench offers to show him his dentistry equipment. The priest quietly is attentive, though I can’t imagine he would have much interest. But he is gently receptive, and one can see Tench uplifted. He is a lonely person in a foreign country, and here is someone acknowledging his person.
The
priest notices that one of the apartment windows is actually a stained glass:
‘The window,’ the
stranger said, ‘is very beautiful.’
One pane of stained glass had been let in: a Madonna gazed out through the mosquito wire at the turkeys in the yard. ‘I got it,’ Mr Tench said, ‘when they sacked the church. It didn’t feel right—a dentist’s room without some stained glass. Not civilized. At home—I mean in England—it was generally the Laughing Cavalier—I don’t know why—or else a Tudor rose. But one can’t pick and choose.’ (13)
Again the Blessed Virgin subversively enters between them. One should keep in mind that it is through that window Tench watches the execution at the end of the novel. So he is either looking through the image of the Madonna as he looks out or is by his head as he looks out the window.
When
the dentist explains his failures at making molds to the priest, he starts to
feel depressed. But the priest brings
him back to a shared love.
His mouth fell open: the
look of vacancy returned: the heat in the small room was overpowering. He stood
there like a man lost in a cavern among the fossils and instruments of an age
of which he knows very little. The stranger said, ‘If we could sit down …’
Mr Tench stared at him
blankly.
‘We could open the
brandy.’
‘Oh yes, the brandy.’ (13)
It
is here then that they sit and their hearts open up. They have a conversation, and Tench shares
his private life.
Mr Tench poured himself
out another glass. He said, ‘It gets lonely here. It’s good to talk English,
even to a foreigner. I wonder if you’d like to see a picture of my kids.’ He
drew a yellow snapshot out of his note-case and handed it over. Two small
children struggled over the handle of a watering-can in a back garden. ‘Of
course,’ he said, ‘that was sixteen years ago.’
‘They are young men now.’
‘One died.’
‘Oh, well,’ the other
replied gently, ‘in a Christian country.’ He took a gulp of his brandy and
smiled at Mr Tench rather foolishly.
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ Mr
Tench said with surprise. He got rid of his phlegm and said, ‘It doesn’t seem
to me, of course, to matter much.’ He fell silent, his thoughts ambling away;
his mouth fell open, he looked grey and vacant, until he was recalled by a pain
in the stomach and helped himself to some more brandy. ‘Let me see. What was it
we were talking about? The kids … oh yes, the kids. It’s funny what a man
remembers. You know, I can remember that watering-can better than I can
remember the kids. It cost three and elevenpence three farthings, green; I
could lead you to the shop where I bought it. But as for the kids,’ he brooded
over his glass into the past, ‘I can’t remember much else but them crying.’
‘Do you get news?’
‘Oh, I gave up writing
before I came here. What was the use? I couldn’t send any money. It wouldn’t
surprise me if the wife had married again. Her mother would like it—the old
sour bitch: she never cared for me.’
The stranger said in a
low voice, ‘It is awful.’
Mr Tench examined his companion again with surprise. He sat there like a black question mark, ready to go, ready to stay, poised on his chair. He looked disreputable in his grey three-days’ beard, and weak: somebody you could command to do anything. He said, ‘I mean the world. The way things happen.’ (14-15)
They speak of his children, one’s death, his wife and marital problems, and his heart has opened up to the priest. The priest was “somebody you could command to do anything.” He is receptive and understanding. One heart is speaking to another heart.
###
To
close this post, I’d like to embed the movie trailer to the novel. The movie was made in 1961 and stars Laurence
Olivier as the Whisky Priest and George C. Scott as the Lieutenant.
Despite
what is a superstar pairing of actors, the movie does not get great
reviews. I have not seen it.
Last week Matthew and his baseball teammates received their trophies for the spring season. I posted in June on what a great season it was, undefeated from start through championship. They had their championship dinner—pizza of course!—and handed out their trophies.
As each boy was called up Coach Charlie said something that made that particular boy distinctive. Here’s what he said about Matthew.
If you didn’t catch all that, Coach mentioned that Matthew threw a lot of innings, was constantly throwing strikes, had about six different pitches, nicknamed “Tanaka” after the pitcher from Japan and on the Yankees by his teammates, was lucky to have drafted him for the team, was a great teammate, had improved his hitting by the end of the season, and that Matthew was “easily the best pitcher in the division.”
Here’s a team picture.
Matthew
is in the first row on the left.
It was also trophy night for the summer elimination league, which Matthew also participated, but this team did not fare as well being eliminated after four games. Much smaller trophy. Again Matthew on the left.
Matthew
really enjoyed his little league experience, and he’s really proud of his effort
for the championship team.
Great job Matthew.
This
starts a series of posts on my reading of Graham Greene’s novel The Power and the Glory. The novel was published in 1940 and set with the Mexican
war against Catholicism.
Summary
Part 1
Chapter
1
We meet an English dentist, Mr. Tench, living in Mexico and the man we later know as the whiskey priest get together to secretly drink whiskey. We learn the Mexican government has outlawed alcoholic beverages and expressions of Catholicism. A boy eventually knocks on their door looking for a priest because his mother is dying. Against his better wishes and despite Tench telling him it’s futile, the whiskey priest goes off with the boy
Chapter 2
(A)
We meet the lieutenant, who is the principle enforcer of the anti-Catholic laws
and his chief of police, who tells him there is still a priest at large in
their state. We learn of the lieutenant’s
hatred of religion, especially Catholicism.
He comes up with a plan to take hold of a peasant in every village and
execute him unless they reveal the priest at large.
(B)
We see the boy from chapter one with his mother, who we learn is not dying, and
they discuss the killing of another boy for his faith.
(C) We meet Padre Jose, a laicized priest who has been forced to marry. He contemplates his cowardice.
Chapter
3
We meet the Cora Fellows, a young girl and daughter of Americans running a banana business in Mexico. She tells her parents she has hidden the priest in their barn from the lieutenant who wanted to search the premises. She prevented the search and saved the priest, but her parents were not happy. In the middle of the night, the priest leaves and goes off to a small village.
Chapter
4
(A)
Mr. Tench is in the process of writing a letter to his wife in England. His thoughts revert to the priest and he
abandons the letter.
(B)
At a cemetery Padre Jose is asked to say a prayer for a deceased child being
buried. He refuses out of fear.
(C)
The mother of the boy again reads the boy the story of the martyred Juan, and
this time the boy reacts by saying he doesn’t believe it. The mother gets angry at him.
(D)
Cora Fellows asks her mother if she believes in God. That and other religious questions scare Mrs.
Fellows and never does answer,
(E) The Chief of Police tells the lieutenant that his plan of executing peasants to get the priest has been approved by the governor. Outside the lieutenant meets a boy who is throwing rocks pretending they are bombs. The lieutenant shows the boy his gun. The boy runs off but the lieutenant stands there wishing to massacre all in an effort to make life better for the boy.
###
What an amazing novel. I knew this novel was great (I had read it before) but I had not realized just how great. On this read I feel I am reading one of the truly elite novels, perhaps in the top ten of all-time great. The psychological depth of the whiskey priest is extraordinary, especially when you consider how concise and short this novel is. I was trying to compare his character development with some of the other great psychologically developed characters. One thinks of Anna Karenina from Tolstoy’s novel, or the great characters from Dostoyevsky or Faulkner. One thinks of Leopold Bloom from James Joyce’s Ulysses or Madam Bovary from Flaubert’s novel. But these are all novels that have room for the character’s psychological development to be brought out. The Power and the Glory is a mere couple of hundred pages. The only comparisons I can think of is of the great characters in Shakespeare's plays. Perhaps Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, and the whiskey priest is on that level of depth and with equally tragic dimensions from his innate character. This novel is Shakespearean!
And just like the great Shakespeare plays, every element of storytelling works in concert to bring out the theme: plot structure, character contrast, character development, dialogue, conflict, setting. I’m going to hold off talking about the psychology of the priest until Part 2, when it’s more developed. Three fictional elements are worth looking at in Part 1.
First is the plot structure. Notice how we are introduced to the priest and his contradictions and how he is in conflict with himself up front. This is no surprise dilemma two thirds into the novel. And this novel too has a dystopian setting, although the dystopia was a true in life occurrence. This really was the case in 1920s Mexico. But the dystopia, if I may call it that, comes after character development, and is never presented to have a resistance. The novel is really a navigation through the dystopian world.
[I hope by comparing the structure of The Power and the Glory you can see how poorly structured Brian Moore’s Catholics was. Once you start up front with the dystopia and a passionate resistance, the author has created expectations. You can’t just switch then to a psychological dilemma and never resolve the expectation.]
The plot in a way is actually quite simple. I would summarize it as navigating through the dystopia with the understanding the narrative is propelled by the action to capture the priest. Throughout the novel it feels like we are watching the priest walk on a high wire without a safety net. The tension throughout the book of whether he gets caught is palpable. The reason it is so palpable is because Greene has created a connection with the priest. We know him and we feel for him, which brings me to the second fictional element that is in the foreground in Part 1, character development.
Our first look at the whiskey priest is through another character, the dentist, Mr. Tench. What do we see of the priest? He has a “hollow face charred with a three-days beard.” He speaks a little English, wears a shabby suit, carries an attaché case and a book under his arms, has protuberant, bloodshot eyes and gives the impression of “unstable hilarity, as if perhaps he’s celebrating a birthday alone.” He carries brandy in his pocket and is willing to share it. He reminds Mr. Tench of a coffin and death. The priest goes off to attend the boy’s mother who is supposed to be dying. Mr. Tench, the supposed “optimist” tells the priest, who appears to be the pessimist, to not bother. And yet the priest does go.
We can get into the psychology of it all later, but the priest is shabby, worn, melancholic, and alcoholic.
Actually for the most part I think we see the priest from the outside in all the chapters of Part 1. We see the caricature of priests from the lieutenant. We learn from the boy’s mother how once the priest in a drunken state had baptized a boy with a girl’s name “Brigitta.” (I just realized; that was his daughter’s name.) We see him through Cora Fellows, who sees him as a kindly, perhaps grandfatherly man. He is thankful for her kindness, and apparently has a very good rapport with children.
From the outside he seems to be liked by all, except of course the lieutenant. So we see him a shoddy man, worn, alcoholic, but kindly, perhaps a screw up but certainly humble. I think this little bit of conversation between the mother who was supposed to be dying and her husband captures the priest from the outside. The mother speaks first:
‘They are two little
saints already. But the boy—he asks such
questions—about the whisky priest. I
wish I had never had him in the house.’
‘They would have caught
him if we hadn’t, and then he would have been one of your martyrs. They would write a book about him and you would
read it to the children.
‘That man—never.’
‘Well, after all,’ her husband said, ‘he carries on. I don’t believe all that they write in these books. We are all human.’
“We are all human.” I think that’s what we’re supposed to take away. He is human with all his frailty and with all his kindness. We connect with him because he is human, he is frail, and he is humble. In the context of the injustice of the dystopia, we don’t want him caught and killed.
The third fictional element is character contrast. Part 1 has a wide range of characters that contrast significantly with the priest. On this I will postpone these thoughts for later in the week. Please feel free to comment on my observations.
###
My
Comment:
My one experience with Mexico is on several occasions crossing over the border to go shopping on the Mexican side. I had been close to the Mexican border several times on business trips and a few times some of us would venture over to shop. The one thing that was amazing to me was how many Mexican dentists were on the border on the Mexican side. The Mr. Tench character recalled for me how Americans who live on the border have their dentistry done on the Mexican side. American health insurance rarely covers dentistry, and so there is usually a high out of pocket cost to dentist’s visits. The Americans who lived on the American border side all went down to Mexico for their dental work where it's cheaper. And lots of snow birds from northern states would come down during the winter and use the Mexican dentists. I don't think that has anything to do with the novel, but I found the focus on dentistry in chapter one interesting.
###
There are four characters in Part 1 which clearly are meant as contrasts against the whisky priest’s character: Mr. Tench, the lieutenant, Padre Jose, and Captain Fellows. What I find interesting is that in Part 1 we see the priest mostly from the outside through the eyes of each of these characters. In Part 2, the point of view shifts so that we look out at the world from the internal view of the priest and get his reactions to his circumstances. Let me examine each one of the characters in Part 1 to see how the priest either contrasts against or reflects that character.
Mr. Tench. The fact that he’s a dentist is an interesting contrast to the priest’s clericalism. Both in a way are professionals, both try to heal people in some fashion. Both apply a sort of liturgy, the priest for Mass, the dentist for drilling cavities. On the contrast side, the Mass heals the spiritual while the drilling of cavities is most definitely and profoundly healing the physical. In a way, both are addressing the internal rotting of individuals, the priest the rotting from sin, the dentist decayed food between the teeth. Decay might be an interesting word to hold on to for the novel. Emotionally they seem similar. Both have a particular pessimism. Both see the world as futile, and both have an emotional core that I would describe as apathetic. They both wish they weren’t there. The priest, though, despite the apathy, has a strong sense of conscience that compels him to move on despite the indifference. Mr. Tench does not.
The lieutenant. The contrast between the two is strong. The lieutenant is an ideologue, a true believer in socialism. Despite being a religious, I do not see the whisky priest as a strong believer. He is not an atheist, as the lieutenant, but we see he has doubts. His faith never comes across as dogmatic. The lieutenant performs his job with reckless abandon, and the priest too performs Masses in a reckless way when you consider the danger he places others with it. But I think that may be the only similarity. The priest connects with people on an emotional level; the lieutenant is dispassionate to the level of a psychopath. Anyone that can propose and then carry out the killing of innocent people to reach an objective is deranged. It is interesting to compare how the priest connects with children while the lieutenant has that one child run away. The key I think in comparing the priest and the lieutenant is that the priest connects his heart to others while the lieutenant cannot.
Padre Jose. The contrast here is stark on the surface, but I wonder how different ultimately. Padre Jose has capitulated from fear to the government and has given up the priesthood and even accepted a wife to his disgrace. The whisky priest has not capitulated but still he has the very same fears. He even has a woman who could have been his wife. Both Jose and the priest are cowards (who wouldn’t be actually under these circumstances), but what sets the whisky priest apart is that there is a piece in his makeup that cannot capitulate, despite the fear. It is not courage. He doesn’t want in his heart to face the danger, but there is something in his heart that cannot give up the priesthood, despite the danger. He feels compelled to pastor when he can, not out of courage but of compulsion. It’s a very subtle distinction, but a remarkable one. It’s easy for a writer to delineate a black and white character, but to capture this subtle distinction is superb.
Captain Fellows. Like Mr. Tench, Fellows is an outsider to Mexico. He has a certain flexibility and adaptability that the priest shares, but Fellows is most decidedly an optimist while the whisky priest is a pessimist and a fatalist. Fellows is cheerful while the priest melancholic. Fellows deals with a dysfunctional wife. Both Fellows and the priest are adapting to their circumstances, Fellows to a neurotic wife and the priest to a neurotic government. Fellows does offer some accommodation to the priest, despite the risk, but it’s modulated and limited. He is practical while the priest is not practical. Practicality would dictate the priest go to safety, and something within him compels him to not.
So to sum up these characters in perhaps one word, Tench would be apathetic, the lieutenant ideological, Jose as surrendered, Fellows as practical. The whisky priest can be seen in contrast to all these descriptions, and yet remarkably I think Greene has an element of each these paradoxically within the priest’s character. It’s quite remarkable.
There are a few other characters, not counting the children, who also add to contrast and compare with the priest. There is the chief of police who has that painful toothache. He needs to see Mr. Tench to have it addressed. The chief is not ideological but he certainly is adaptive. There is the mother of the boy who is devout and perhaps in an ideological sense. She certainly is the most dogmatic person of the characters, other than the lieutenant. Her husband is not a believer, but he is not militant in his atheism, and he adapts to his wife. Finally there is Mrs. Fellows, who is an atheist too but a neurotic and extremely fearful. You can see how each of these minor characters have elements of the major characters to more or less some degree, and all serve to compare with the whisky priest.
There
are a number of children in the novel, and I do think they are important to the
themes. I’ll do a closer study of them
as the themes become clearer.
No, it’s not a person who comes from the island nation of the Dominican Republic, though the island nation was named after the same St. Dominic de Guzman, the founder of what is informally referred to as the Dominican Order. So the Lay Dominicans are the lay (non-consecrated) branch of the Catholic religious order formally known as the Order of Preachers, founded by St. Dominic and officially approved by the papacy on December 22nd 1216. Yes, we had our 800th anniversary a few years ago. That still might be a bit much to comprehend, especially if you are not Catholic. Let me break this down in a scholastic way—in the fashion of St. Thomas Aquinas the premier Dominican of scholasticism—so that Catholics and non-Catholics alike can understand.
What is a religious order?
A religious order is a community of people who come together to live under a rule of life. The first communities that could be construed as religious orders, though there was nothing official about them, were the desert fathers and mothers of the fourth century. Once the Roman persecution of Christianity ended under the Emperor Constantine, life for Christians suddenly became easier and less stressful. Not only were they no longer persecuted, but they were exalted. You would think everyone would be happy with that. However, many felt that Christianity should have a certain sense of carrying the cross for one’s faith.
When Christianity came out from underground and became the accepted religion, some people found living out their faith too easy and somewhat tainted by the worldliness of everyday life. So some decided to remove themselves from society and go to the desert to live out their faith away from the world. They came to be known as the Desert Fathers and Mothers. Over time groups formed and decided to live in common, and that became the start of monasticism. People formed religious groups with rules of practice to try to live out their version of the Gospel.
In the west, monasteries in time essentially gravitated to the Rule of St.Benedict, and the most well-known of the medieval monasteries were Benedictine. It should be pointed out here that monasteries were either all male or all female, which gave women in their monasteries an unprecedented amount of freedom and autonomy and access to education, administering and leading their monasteries. Saints Scholastica (St. Benedict’s sister) and Hildegard of Bingen had notable accomplishments as women that were not possible in the secular world. Benedictine monasteries became so popular that various versions formed, such as Cistercian, Trappist, and Carthusians, each with their own version of the Rule. At the heart of St. Benedict’s rule is the notion of work and pray. The day was divided into the eight liturgical hours where community prayer was held and in between was either work or sleep: ora et labora, pray and work.
It is a misunderstanding of the early Middle Ages to think that learning and knowledge degenerated as a result of Christianity. These Christian monasteries actually preserved knowledge as the Classical World underwent a collapse from the barbarian take over. Today there are those who call for the Benedictine Option in dealing with the current collapse of Judeo-Christian values, recalling the early Benedictine monasteries as they preserved learning and culture. Even Protestants have talked about segregating themselves from the caustic post-Christian culture we have today. But I think most religious at some point wish to separate from the surrounding culture. It’s a recurring impulse among religious people.
So all these orders of the first millennia were essentially separatists from society but by the high Middle Ages when cities became more prominent again across Europe there was a need to engage with the general population. Orders formed to address various public needs: Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites, and others. These orders were not separated in monasteries but engaged the general public, mostly fulfilling some sort of role and providing a service to the community. So instead of separating from society the new orders were itinerant, moving about, and teaching. The Dominicans were established to combat the heretical theological groups that had formed in Southern France (the Albigensians) but also to address the general ignorance of the faith that was about. Ignorance of the faith has not been limited to our times.
And in time more religious orders formed. By the late middle ages you had the Jesuits, whose charism is missionary, and then by the Renaissance and up to this day you have a plethora of orders who go out and address needs such as poverty or health. Little Sisters of the Poor is one that's been in the news that you may have heard; or you may have heard of Mother Teresa's order (Sisters of Charity), or the Salesians, who are known for helping and teaching poor children across the world.
Notice the trend over the two millennia. What started from individual hermits developed to communities, then to groups that engage the public, and finally to activist groups. These orders which at one time were limited to enclosed monasteries spread across the world, attempting to deal with the direct needs of others. While there are still hermits and monasteries, the impulse over time has been not inward nor secluded but outward.
This impulse to strive for holiness by forming a community and living under a rule is not limited to Catholics and Orthodox. In some ways Protestants also have informal orders, though they may not call it that. Protestants send out missionaries across the world. Some live in separated communities. Take the Amish, for instance. They live under a rule based on a Biblical understanding of holiness. One of my favorite historical Protestant denominations are the Shakers who secluded themselves under a very strict rule, which unfortunately caused their extinction. I also think of the Salvation Army as an informal Protestant order. And this phenomena is not limited to just Christians. We know Buddhists have monasteries with monks and nuns. Can’t the Hasidim in Judaism be thought of as living in a community under a rule of life? It’s more complicated than that, but on some level there are similarities.
So in summary a religious order is a community that have ordered their lives around a particular rule in effort to achieve a greater holiness.
What is the Dominican Order?
Having outlined the essence of a religious order, what then is specifically the Order of Preachers, which is the official name of the Dominicans? St. Dominic in his humility emphatically did not to want the order to be named after him, but reverence held for the founding father could not totally honor that wish. Just as the Franciscans are named after their founder, St. Francis of Assisi, the Order of Preachers are informally, though fairly commonly, referred to as the Dominicans.
To
combat ignorance and heresy, what was required then was study and
learning. St. Dominic’s great innovation
on the Benedictine Rule was to replace work with study. So the Dominican approach to holiness was to
study the faith and communicate it to others.
And so, he called it the Order of Preachers. Here too they saw themselves as fulfilling an
aspect of Gospel life. The same impulse
to strive to a greater holiness than the world offered was still at work. The Dominicans can trace their charism to a
passage in the first chapter of Mark:
Rising very early before dawn, he [Jesus] left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed. Simon and those who were with him pursued him and on finding him said, “Everyone is looking for you.” He told them, “Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For this purpose have I have come.” So he went into their synagogues, preaching and driving out demons throughout the whole of Galilee. (Mk 1:35-39)
As the Desert Fathers saw themselves as embracing Christ’s life in the desert, and as the Benedictines saw themselves as embracing the apostles after the Ascension, the Dominicans saw themselves as embracing Christ the preacher, at times retreating to be contemplative, and then other times engaging the public with His Word. Notice the contemplation, which amounts to study and prayer, but then the going out and preaching, the engagement with the world. That's the heart of Dominican spirituality.
While the first Dominicans were mostly students in the universities, in short order the universities across Europe were filled with Dominican friars teaching and leading studies. It’s possible to see a synergistic effect between the rise of the universities in the High Middle Ages and the rise of the Dominican Order. As the Universities grew, so did the Dominican Order; as the Dominican Order grew, so did learning, publishing, and debate accelerate in the universities. It is interesting to see how spread across Europe were those early Dominicans. Just to name a few from its first two generations: St. Dominic was from Spain; his successor, Bl. Raymond of Saxony (Northern Germany), St. Albert the Great (Southern Germany), Giles of Santarém (Portugal), Reginald of Orleans (France), St. Hyacinth of Poland, St. Thomas Aquinas (Italy), and Gilbert of Fresney, who established the first chapter at Oxford in 1221, just five years after the Order was officially formed. If there was a university in your medieval city, there were friars teaching in it.
One of the ways to describe the nature of Dominican spirituality is by listing the four pillars of Dominican life: prayer, study, community, and apostolate. Prayer and study are rather obvious, and community is simply the fact that the religious live in common, such as a convent for nuns, a priory for sisters, or a friary for friars. But community can also imply a larger shared community of the heart for all Dominicans, not just those you share an abode. Apostolate is a personal or group activity that one does to bring Christ to the world. It’s roughly synonymous with how people use the word “ministry” such as some might consider providing or working at a soup kitchen “their ministry.” For Dominicans, it’s usually more of an intellectual endeavor, though it doesn’t have to be. A Dominican’s life, then, is centered on those four pillars.
The other way to explain Dominican spirituality is understand three mottos of the order. First is Veritas, or “Truth,” and this refers to communicating the Truth of the Gospel. “For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth” Jesus says in Jn 18:37. So one of the Dominican missions is to testify to the Truth. A second motto is Laudare, benedicere, praedicare, “To praise, to bless, and to preach.” That I think shows the dual nature of Dominican spirituality: contemplative prayer (blessing and praising) and reaching out to communicate (preaching).
The third motto is I think the most insightful: Contemplata aliis trader, or “to hand down to others the fruits of contemplation." A Dominican doesn’t study for the sake of study or for the sake of mere contemplation. He must hand down and share the fruits of his learning and his contemplation. He or she studies to bring the wisdom and truth of the Gospels into the world, and therefore shine a light to testify to the light that enlightens everyone.
I
should also point out how varied the Order has been over the centuries. Yes, Thomas Aquinas, perhaps the most
well-known Dominican, is known for his philosophic and theological writings,
and to many that is the ideal when they think of Dominicans. But Dominicans have been part of many
disciplines. Quite a number were leaders
in medieval law. A number of Dominicans
were missionaries across the globe as they followed the great explorers. Friar Bartolome de las Casas may have been
one of the first human rights activists in history as he pleaded to the King of
Spain for the rights and dignity of the natives in the New World. There were Dominicans who explored the
sciences, such as St. Albert the Great.
Famous mystics like Catherine of Siena and Meister Eckhart. Writers and poets such Henry Susso, Matteo
Bandello, who a few of his stories found their way into Shakespeare’s plays,
and Sigrid Undset, the 20th century Norwegian novelist who won the
Nobel Prize in literature. There were
great painters such as Fra Bartolomeo and the extraordinary Fra Angelico. All Dominicans who preached the faith through
their special God given talents nurtured through Dominican spirituality.
What is a Lay Dominican?
We finally come to the question. A Lay Dominican, also referred to as a Third Order Dominican—the friars being the First Order, the sisters being the Second, and the laity being the Third—are a branch of the Order of Preachers reserved for the laity. Lay people began being attracted to the overall Order almost immediately after the Order’s founding, culminating in an official recognition by the year 1286. We are approaching 750 years of existence. Some of the Dominican’s most famous saints were actually Third Order, such as St. Catherine of Siena. A Lay Dominican is obviously a non-consecrated member, who does not take vows of poverty and chastity. Instead of vows we do make promises, which are to live to the rule as modified for the laity and live out a Dominican spirituality.
What does that mean exactly? That can be answered by how we address the four pillars I mentioned above.
(1) Prayer: We are required to pray daily two of the liturgical hours of the Divine Office, Lauds (Morning Prayer) and Vespers (Evening Prayer) and to pray a daily rosary. Each of the three takes about fifteen minutes. We are required to attend Mass daily if possible (not possible for me, I work, but I try to catch a service on TV) and go to Confession once a month, which I admit am woefully delinquent.
(2) Study. We are required to read scripture constantly, read religious books that enlighten scripture and increase devotion, and whatever may help support your particular apostolate. The formation process, which lasts five years—which follows the same process as the religious, that is Novice, Postulant, Temporary Promise, Final Promise—requires one to learn the faith and its history through a series of study modules.
(3) Community. One participates in and supports the Dominican community. The Order is an international organization, broken down into provinces, sub broken down into regions, and finally chapters. The headquarters are located in Rome at the Basilica of Santa Sabina, which is a church that dates back to the year 432. I count about forty provinces worldwide, and there are four in the United States. A chapter meeting is once a month, unless you have some special activities that could lead to meet more frequently. A regional meeting is about once a quarter, but attendance to those are optional, unless you’re an officer in the chapter. I’ve never attended above a regional meeting. Annual dues are a very reasonable roughly $100 per year, depending on your chapter.
(4) Apostolate. First each chapter is assigned an apostolate to work on together. Our chapter has been assigned ending human trafficking, which is not an easy endeavor to work toward. There aren’t any national or local marches and events to participate in. What we’ve done is mostly written to legislators and pray on the issue and when the subject happens to come up in conversation try to raise awareness. Second, we each have our own personal apostolate, which doesn’t have to be very elaborate. Some of the older members mostly support through prayer. Some teach catechism at parishes or help out their churches in some way. My apostolate includes moderating a Catholic book club at Goodreads, maintaining this blog where I write about the goodness, truth, and beauty of literature (sometimes dabbling in art and music as well), and where I also post devotional meditations and other Catholic information. Well, you know what I do here. I also participate in the pro-life movement, such as praying in front of abortion facilities and attending the annual March in Washington. My apostolate keeps me busy.
I
hope that gave people an understanding of religious orders, of the Dominican
Order, and of Lay Dominicans. I do try
to live my faith. As C.S. Lewis said, “I
believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I
see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
