Catholics: A Novel by Brian Moore, Post #3

This is the third in a series of posts on the Brian Moore novel, Catholics: A Novel.  The first post can be found here.    

The second post here.   

Summary

Part Three

Fr. Kinsella wakes up the following morning and is met with Fr. Manus instead of the Abbot, is asked if he would like to celebrate Mass, which he declines, and then is brought to breakfast.  The Abbot finally meets him after breakfast and is told Kinsella will be leaving shortly with the helicopter.  Kinsella finally asks the Abbot what his decision will be, continue to rebel against the Vatican authority or comply with the new ecumenical rules.  The Abbot tells him he will comply and deflect the TV news.  At the helicopter landing, monks have congregated to swarm Kinsella over what they see as heresy, but the Abbot mollifies them enough for Kinsella to get on board and take off.

Part Four

The Abbot knows he will now have to face his monks.  They press him for what came out of the discussions with Kinsella, and he reveals the monastery will now comply with the new rules.  The monks are now angered, especially Fr. Matthew.  The Abbot enjoins them to pray, and kneels and starts the Our Father.  The monks kneel behind him and the novel ends with all of them reciting the Our Father.

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Some major questions here. 

(1) Why does Moore avoid the coming together of the two sides of the conflict?  Why does he have the monk’s advocacy of the traditional rules not engage the Kinsella, the advocacy of the new rules, come to a head?  He has avoided this the entire novel and here in Part Three the two sides are perfectly aligned for a conflict, and he makes sure it gets avoided.  Why?

(2) Is the Abbot sincere in his praying at the end?  Here he is in a tight spot where his leadership is at stake, and he then resorts to what could be an appeasing move.  When he was alone in Part Two in the church, he decidedly didn’t pray.  Here when it serves his interest, he does.  Is he sincere?

(3) Why does Brian Moore call the novel “Catholics?”  The perspective is from one who is not a Catholic.  It’s as if I were to write a novel about Islam and call it “Muslims.”  The perspective is from the outside and not the inside.  What is he trying to say?  Is he condemning the whole religion? 

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If there is any theme to be drawn from this novel, it lies in these passage from Part IV.  First, Fr. Matthew accosting the Abbot.

“And I will not be put off like that,” Father Matthew shouted. “I will not be ordered to believe something that I do not believe.”

 

“No one can order belief,” the abbot said. “It is a gift from God.” But even as he said this, said the only truth left to him, he saw in these faces that he was failing, that he was losing them, that he must do something he had never done, give something he had never given in these, his years as their abbot. What had kept him in fear since Lourdes, must now be faced. What he feared most to do must be done. And if, in doing it, I enter null and never return, amen. My time has come.

“No one can order belief,” that is a true enough statement.  But what is he getting at?  Is the true presence a matter of belief or a true reality?  I seem to take that as a statement of relativism.  What is this entering into the “null?”  I think Moore is suggesting that the Abbot is facing the nothing of the supernatural, its non-existence.  Of course, coming this doesn’t mean Moore doesn’t believe in the supernatural, just that the Abbot is facing his non-belief.  Then we come to this.

 

Stood, holding the door for them, as they moved past him, his eyes on their faces, these faces he knew better than his own, seeing every shade of wavering, from confusion, to doubt, to anger at him, to fear, to Father Donald’s dangerous tears and Brother Kevin’s hysterics, tight on snaffle, a horse ready to bolt. He entered behind them and shut the door. Moved past them in the aisle, going up into the great vault of the nave, moving in that silence, in the gray light of this place where he had spent the longest years of his life, this place where his body would lie, this place he feared most. He entered the chancel. He faced the altar.

 

“A miracle,” he told them, “is when God is there in the tabernacle.”

 

“But you said the opposite, you said that the sacrifice of the Mass is just ritual, that bread and wine remain bread and wine, that there are no miracles!”

So the Abbot moves to the place he fears most, the place where his body will be eventually interred.  What specifically is his fear here?  His fear here could be either facing God’s judgement or facing the nothing that is from an atheist’s perspective.  So when he says he is entering the “null” above, is he saying he is facing God’s judgement or the nothing of death from an atheist’s perspective?

And then we get the final part of the scene.

 

Matthew, thundering: righteous, wronged. The abbot, his back to all of them, heard their stiff intake of breath, the fear of their lives at these words, said in this place. He stared at the golden door of the tabernacle. His fear came. “Prayer is the only miracle,” he said. “We pray. If our words become prayer, God will come.”

 

Slowly, with the painful stiffness of age, he went down heavily on one knee, then on both. Knelt in the center of the aisle, facing the altar, the soles of his heavy farm boots showing from the hem of his robe. He trembled. He shut his eyes. “Let us pray.”

 

He bent his head. “Our Father, who art in heaven,” he said. His trembling increased. He entered null. He would never come back. In null.

“His fear came?”  Which fear is this, because I think it’s not clear, the fear of God in the tabernacle or the fear of losing the leadership of the monks?  One can’t help thinking that his words at that moment is Brian Moore’s central theme: “Prayer is the only miracle,” he said. “We pray. If our words become prayer, God will come.” 

So if that is the case, Moore is a relativist, and the Mass is just a ritual.  That I think is the central theme of the novel.  That would explain why he names the novel “Catholics,” because his perspective is not within Catholicism but outside of it. 

Frankly, this novel is such a mess I can’t draw any conclusion with any certainty.  In the end, Kinsella and the dystopian forces are right?  You got me.

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This is in Part 2 but I'll post it here since it's relevant to this discussion.  When the Abbot and Kinsella are discussing the dangers of the TV documentary, this exchange ensued:

 

A program in the wrong hands, about this subject, could be made to look like the first stirrings of a Catholic counterrevolution.”

 

“Ah, now begging your pardon, Father Kinsella, I find that very far-fetched.”

 

“Far-fetched? To the enemies of the church, won’t it seem that you have acted in direct contradiction to the counsels of Vatican IV?”

Notice Kinsella fears the “Catholic counterrevolution” and characterizes those that would seize on the issue as “enemies of the church.”  So the enemies of the church are the counterrevolutionaries, which are people inside the church!  And the monks, such as Fr. Manus and Matthew and the Irish on the mainland, could easily be the formation of the counterrevolution.  Then how despicable is the Abbot’s mollifying of the monks at the end where he undermines any coalescence of a counterrevolution?  Of course, I’m using the word “despicable” because it’s from my point of view, but frankly I have no idea where Brian Moore falls on this because he’s made such amess of the inherent logic of the novel.

By the way, it shows the counterrevolution is the natural opposition to a dystopian situation.  It's just that Moore never follows through on it.

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I have to say I giggled out loud when I read this.  That is Kinsella speaking first in dialogue with the Abbot.

“Are you asking me what do I believe?”

 

“Yes, if you wish. There is a book by a Frenchman called Francis Jeanson, have ever you heard of it? An Unbeliever’s Faith, it is called.”

 

“I have not read it.” “It is interesting. He believes there can be a future for Christianity, provided it gets rid of God. Your friend, Father Hartmann, has mentioned Jeanson in his own writings. The idea is, a Christianity that keeps God can no longer stand up to Marxism. You have not heard of the book?”

Christianity can only survive if it gets rid of God…hahaha.  Was that meant to be funny?  Is Moore satirizing here or is he serious?

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I skimmed through the book to make a list of all the “Vatican IV” changes to Catholicism.  It’s pretty interesting and funny.

• -       Priest’s collar and black shirt replaced by military style uniform.
• -       No praying of the rosary.
• -       No private confessions, but a group act of contrition.
• -       No Latin Mass but vernacular.
• -       Facing the congregation rather than God.
• -       No Pope but a “Father General”?  Is that correct or is Father General head of the Albanisean Order?
• -       No Rome as center of the Church but Amsterdam being the place of the World Ecumen Council.
• -       The “interpenetration” between Christianity and Buddhism.
• -       No traditional church hierarchy but military ranks.
• -       No transubstantiation but symbolic act.
• -       Church service similar to a “bingo game.”
• -       No religious grace before meals but an ecumenical grace.
• -       No sign of the cross.
• -       Lourdes is no longer in operation.  One would assume all miracle visitation sites are closed.
• -       No distinction between mortal and venial sins.
• -       No prayers.
• -       Christianity without God or faith.
• -       Clerical dress for priests is optional.
• -       The sacrifice of the Mass is not a miracle but merely a ritual.

I probably missed others.  It’s fun in a dystopian novel to see what the details of the dystopia amount to. 

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Kerstin comment:

I expected more fireworks. I expected a more detailed discussion with a lot of back and forth regarding the merits of Tradition and the Latin Mass that goes back to Gregory the Great (if I remember correctly). I expected a deeper delving into the spiritual needs of the people and how the Latin Mass serves these needs on a deep level. Instead what we get is an Abbot who falls like a house built of straw at the slightest puff from Kinsella. Kinsella wasn't really needed to be there in person at all to bring about the desired change for the Vatican, a stern letter of 'cease and desist' would have sufficed.

This to me is what made this novel so dissatisfying. Why bother? In Lord of the World we have a group of priests whose faith is never in question, who are steadfast to the bitter end. Here the end feels like a whimper.

 

My Reply to Irene:

Irene wrote: "Fr. Matthew defied the abbot's orders and organized a vigil as part protest, part hope that God would somehow make things work out the way he and the other monks desired. "

I didn't read your whole comment, I'll do so later, but I did see that which I quoted. No, I don't think anyone has an obligation to obey clear heresy. See St. Athanasius and his struggles against 4th century heresy from his bishops. If the Pope tomorrow declared the Eucharist to be only a symbol, I would imagine you would defy it? I would hope. I would.

This is the problem with Moore's novel. He has clearly laid out a dystopian heresy of which there can be no compromise. Any intended compromise can only be seen as immoral. He did not lay out a grey position but a black and white one.

 

My Reply to Irene:

Irene wrote: "Is is possible to force someone to believe what they don't believe? These monks are not in public positions. They are not being asked to teach something heritical. The TV cameras are being headed o..."

Community shapes belief. Would my son believe if I didn’t? Of course the Mass is critical to community belief. And no, they should be bringing the faith to the media. That is the moral thing to do. It is akin to Martin Luther King bringing to the attention of society civil injustice. This heresy is even of greater moral concern to Catholics than civil rights. Denying the true presence in the Eucharist is even greater than the Arian heresy St. Athansius fought against in the very church. You seem to be down playing how big a deal this is. I’ll ask again, would you obey this?

I’ll ask the book club readers, would you be fighting against or going along with these “Vatican IV” heresies?

There is no question I would be fighting against, with my whole heart, soul, and life. If ever a case for martyrdom we’re called, this is it. In fact St Michael Pro and the Mexican martyrs gave their very lives over a similar issue, of which we’ll get to in the next novel

 

My Reply to Irene:

Irene wrote: "All that is left is to surrender all in prayer. And, if they can find God in that surrender, in that humility, in that prayer, that is MIRACLE. Faith is a gift, one that the abbot has not enjoyed for some time. But he must have had it once. So he enters that null because there is nothing else to do, because all that is left, when everything has been taken, is to kneel in surrender and humility and hope. And he does it out of love, love for these men that he has shepherded for all these years despite the emptiness in his own life. Beyond the social reforms, beyond the doctrinal certitude, beyond the arrogance of intellectualism, beyond exquisit liturgies, beyond it all is the surrender to what is beyond what we can know or persuade or define or control."

OK, now I've read your entire comment, and can agree with that. But isn't that proof that Brian Moore doesn't understand the material? What exactly is the point to come to the end and have it end in a prayer? As Kerstin said, this ends in a whimper. This is like ending a novel with someone detonating an atomic bomb on a timer and having the group kneel down and pray that it doesn't kill anyone when it goes off. Moore has set off what amounts to as an atomic bomb in Catholicism. He can't just end it like this. What will happen on the next day when the monks have to perform the non valid Mass? Are they simply going to go along and obey now? That would be incredible. Moore has invested no space in that kind of change in Frs. Matthew nor Manus. This novel is so flawed it's a joke.

 

My Reply to Irene:

Irene wrote: "O, and I did not answer your question. Would I obey an order to stop believing in the Real Presence? No. Would I obey an order to accept a new liturgical form? Yes."

Oh I missed that earlier. Thanks.

 

My Reply to Frances:

But Frances, the monks weren’t shy. They were ready to engage just as St. Catherine would have. And you’re right, she wasn’t shy about talking back to the Pope. The problem is not the monks. The problem is Brian Moore. He has them apparently capitulate when no precedence in the novel has been established for this to occur. It’s still another flaw in the novel.

As to being shy, the word that to me defines the Abbot is pusillanimous. He has been pusillanimous throughout the novel. In way it’s the only character consistency in this work. The abbot has been pusillanimous when originally his monks kept the Latin Mass against Rome, he was pusillanimous in his decision to fight Rome, and when he is forced to disagree with his monks, he is pusillanimous in standing up to them.

 

Kerstin Replied to My Comment:

Manny wrote: "I’ll ask the book club readers, would you be fighting against or going along with these “Vatican IV” heresies?"

I wouldn't go along. The heresy is too blatant. In Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict wrote the following:

The formula "the Church is the Body of Christ" thus states that the Eucharist, in which the Lord gives us his body and makes us one body, forever remains the place where the Church is generated, where the Lord himself never ceases to found her anew; in the Eucharist the Church is most compactly herself - in all places, yet one only, just as he is one only.

In other words, if the Eucharist becomes only a symbol, the very life of Christ is no longer within the Church - all we have is a human construct. In the Latin Mass reverence for the Eucharist is especially pronounced, and this is why Kinsella makes the trip to crush it.

Despite all its faults, the novel does pose some hope, and I don't see it with the Abbot. The hope lies with the monks. They are the faithful remnant. Throughout salvation history God has worked with a faithful remnant, they are the key for the rebirth of the Church.