This book features in my Classics Club list of 55 books to read – before bucket time I suppose. It’s one of the many books by Graham Greene which we inherited from Jack’s beloved Grandad and I’ve read one or two of the others but somehow Greene and I just don’t get on. I was particularly disenchanted by the setting of The Power and the Glory as it’s Mexico in the 1930s, during one of their many revolutions. Not my idea of a good subject. The Power and the Glory seems to have been published with the title The Labyrinthine Ways in the US.
Anyway, to the book. The powers that be in the Tabasco area have decreed that the Roman Catholic Church is to be no more and the priests have all left that part of the country one way or another, been shot or have chosen to marry with a government pension rather than die.
At the beginning of the book a man who turns out to be a priest is trying to escape on a boat but he ends up missing his chance of freedom as he is asked to help a peasant in a nearby village. The man turns out to be what the peasants call a whisky priest, a poor specimen of priesthood as not only is he an alcoholic but he has also fathered a child by a villager.
Well aware of his weaknesses the priest continues to minister to villagers, trying to make up for his sins I suppose, whilst also dodging the authorities.
There’s a Judas type character and I suspect that Greene was writing an updated version of sinners and martyrs with the message that no matter what happens the Church will always survive.
Graham Greene did convert to Catholicism but he seems to been one of those people who did that because they were attracted by the thought that they could do whatever they wanted in life and then enjoy confessing it all to some poor priest and have the slate wiped clean ready for them to do it all over again. Tony Blair is another one of that ilk.
Although I must admit that I haven’t heard of Blair having it off in Catholic churches all over the world which apparently was what Greene did. It takes all sorts I suppose. Just as well that our Rev D. didn’t hear about that!
I think this was made into a film, which I’ve never seen – nor have I read any Greene. I’ve heard good things about Our Man in Havana – but I’m not in a hurry to try him.
Lisa,
I think I’m going to have to amend my list and weed out the Graham Greene books.
I’ve only read Greene’s ‘The End of the Affair’, which I can’t say I enjoyed, but I did think it was well written, full of ideas and questions packed within its pages – a tragedy about conflict and doubt. In fact there was quite a lot in it about the existence of God/Devil, and I got the impression that Greene had doubts about belief and criticised Christianity – but then he was writing fiction.
It hasn’t made me want to read any more of his books.
Margaret,
I suppose he was writing about what interested him, unfortunately it doesn’t do much for me. I’ve seen the film of The End of the Affair, which I quite enjoyed so that’ll do me, no reading required.