A life without the ability to believe wholly without worry, imagine. Graham Greene's "The Power and the Glory" is a stark tale of a priest living in "mortal sin", a so-called "whisky priest", addicted to the brandy, abandoned his child (he weren't supposed to have in the first place), still seeking to deliver mass and do his duty...but on the run from the authorities in a dystopian fascist state where religion -- tolerance -- free speech -- is outlawed in the name of a, perhaps, more truthful world.
As one who considers himself an atheist 67 years after Greene obtained his copyright, I probably approach this book with significantly different mindstate, one who doesn't yearn for religion to be outlawed, but perhaps to be minimized, I sit between the ideals of the whisky priest and the atheist lieutenant antagonist who goes to all ends to destroy, in a most vulgar manner, this pathetic sinful man, yet still priest. I connect to hardly anyone -- perhaps Coral Fellows, the girl who sheltered the whisky priest, naively tells him about morse code, she being outside the conflict of religion v. atheism, yes, but not outside the simple right v. wrong, deciding not to act with the state but with her own moral judgement, acting on Kohlberg's highest level. Coral -- a secondary character but the most important character, in my view, outside the priest, lieutenant, and the seeming Judas in the half-caste -- seems to be the only one capable of such action in the book, a break from the mold of New World v. Old World into simply doing what she believes. She's too idealistic for this book, so when the whisky priest escapes prison unwittingly for being picked up for smuggling whisky and seeks the help and asylum she had once promised him, she is gone, her family is gone, leaving behind only a pathetic starving dog the priest effectivly robs for its last meat.
He is the last priest, it would seem, and his journeys only cast more furor in his pursuer, kidnapping and killing people in every village the priest receives help in. He is given martyr status where he himself knows he is undeserving -- the bloodthirst of the search for him, the hunger of the religion-deprived people to feel his mercy at confession, it all gives his otherwise sin-filled and pathetic life meaning and holiness. The foolish ruling class always gives unearthly meaning to those they persecute. The priest even pondered his piety a great sin at several points throughout the book. Unworthiness haunted him, but he still trudged on to do what he knew he must, and that was to deliver in the sacrements. I've read armchair interpretation that Graham Greene held these sacrements sanct and wanted to juxtapose the purity of such to this decisively impure man who was to deliver them; John Updike's introduction also talks ot an author coming to a state of conflict over his own religious conviction. I can see the truth in both strains on interpretation. The triumph of this book is its ability to show all unworthy men in the face of this odd hope religion lends through its pure points, and of course, from the stance of the atheist, I have my ideological quandaries with the text, seeing Greene deny all of the philosophical doublespeak of religion, but I'll save that for another high horse. Religion is a power wielded by common, sinful, desolate man. Greene shows what boundaries cannot hold it in, a powerful message.
The scenes he paints are probably his strongest point as a writer, at least from a reader's standpoint. Nothing is more vivid then when the Indian woman lays down the child among the picture of crosses tied jagged and at varying heights, a burial ground, and a point I never thought of but Updike states in his opening, the entrance to a godly state, outside of Mexico (he was coming upon the border -- and freedom -- though a freedom he knew would haunt him forever). Also the scene where the priest is finally betrayed, where he sits across the lieutenant and they begin hashing out their difference in a battle of wits of educated, staunchly idealistic men, in a small abandoned hut and makeshift seating, in the middle of nowhere, anywhere, it is perfect for the scale of destitute shown in this time and place where God has been driven out. And even the lieutenant is in internal agony as the last priest is killed -- the enemy defined him and now the enemy is no more. An interesting commentary on impressing your beliefs all over, for what happens when you are successful?
Without reflection and going over little bits and pieces of interpretation, I find myself strapped by my own state as non-believer when it comes to "The Power and the Glory" and Graham Greene's thought process as a believer, but as a novelist, and as a brilliant word painter of scenes. So while I have a hard time empathizing with either protagonist or antagonist, on an intellectual level I can see where both come from and the frightening possibilities of the fascist way, putting specific ideals on every single person. While religion exists far too purely, rarely and dismissively questioned (only one very secondary character seems to dig into the priest at all, but is painted only as a nuisance to be disregarded), I also know the frightening possibilities associated with such a view of religion, one where we assume ignorantly that its administering is possible as nothing but a pure act without ulterior motive, be it to get money or make the people subservient. But we know, because he has said it, that Greene was writing to separate the man from the act. In that, "The Power and the Glory" is an excellent novel regardless of where it comes from or how disagreeable the sentiments can be at times because it is written with such conviction, no matter how naive it may sometimes seem in a current America where religion is used as a shield, or worse, a sword, but not merely a way of hope and a path of good living. Perhaps in that dystopian Mexico, that by killing priests and making the act of sacrements taboo and unlawful, then and only then religion can be made into such a pure act, in the face of imminent destruction. A scary, morbid thought. It is good to see a man flesh-out the potential of such a way of life, of religion. Good and bad..."The Power and the Glory" got me thinking, and it won't stop after I hit Publish Post. I read it in three days, lazy bum days, too. I'll reduce it and close it out common-man glib style: It must've been a good book.
"'I'm not telling them fairy stories I don't believe myself. I don't know a thing about the mercy of God: I don't know how awful the human heart looks to Him. But I do know this--that if there's ever been a single man in this state damned, then I'll be damned too.' He said slowly, 'I wouldn't want it to be any different. I just want justice, that's all'"
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