God Loves Bad People Like a Whiskey Priest

I am always dumbfounded by how self-righteous we all appear sometimes.

Christians in our day seem to have the attitude of having everything together and have the tendency to look down on those who do not. We are often kinder to the outside world than we are amongst our own brethren, but still we seem to have a superiority complex. This is especially true amongst the moral sects of Christianity that emphasize good conduct over loving compassion. It is sad to see that many of us have denied the Apostle Paul's own admission that we are indeed "the chief of sinners."

When reading Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, I was struck at how decrepit and yet completely lovable Greene made the man known only as "the whiskey priest." Throughout the work the priest remains firmly aware of his transgressions, the are like spectres that chase him through the Mexican wilderness. A huge deal to the priest is the mortal sin he committed when he fornicated with a woman named Maria and had a daughter named Brigitta. This girl is the icon of his sin and the keepsake of his love. We are given every deplorable reason to hate this priest and everything that he has stood for (indeed the lieutenant does hate him and everything he stands for), and yet the more I read the more I could see myself in this priest.

Man is dogged by the nagging of his sin until he finds grace and forgiveness in Christ, who is the doorway of redemption. The priest despises himself throughout because he has a drastically human impression of himself: depraved and evi; boiling over with hypocrisy. Other people remind him of this from mestizo who tells him he has not trust to the Lutheran man who knows all about "those priests." The conflict of morality is apparent to everyone and we all see the priest make one loving, selfless choice after another (even though the vice of brandy brands him throughout) and we all know in our hearts that for all of his vices this man really is filled with some sort of love greater than himself.

His transformation comes as the mestizo leads him to the dying Yankee (an obvious trap) and all of sudden he is unafraid and not delaying. There is an air of matrydom to what the priest is doing. During this journey he comes to grips and finally accepts who he is, though I still think he wonders if God will accept who he is. No longer clinging to ritual (he will never be given confession) he must cling to God, even though his faith is poor and shaken.

Looking at all the "good people" we see in the novel we cannot help but see where Greene was going with his critique of self-righteousness and a compassionless Christianity. We see characters like the pius woman in the communal cell who was obviously seek judgment from the ole priest but found only a denouncement of herself. You also cannot help but see the "good catholic mestizo" as someone who professes great religion and yet is willing to sell the last working priest to the police for pesos. He is supposedly very clingy and affectionate, and almost pitiful snake-like character. Anyone who reads this novel can see past this facade of religious charity to the nasty evil vice inside.

So, really one cannot help but be amazed at the faith of the "bad" whiskey priest and his own view of his sinfulness and yet we also see in his actions the love of God; whether he was cognisant of it or not. The greatest saints believe themselves to be the most wretched sinners because indeed they know it is true but not for the blood of Jesus Christ.