Perelandra is for the Public Option!

You would be surprised how many people love the name Perelandra. Apparently, CS Lewis' descriptions of the planet Venus have inspired folks like these. Among the things being advanced on the website: ObamaCare...yes ladies and gents...CS Lewis would have throw a cigar at someone by now.

http://www.perelandra-ltd.com/

Perelandra, Malcandra, Thulcandra, and Every other Andra not Mentioned...

The universe is linked in and through Maledil.

That is what I gathered in the last chapter of C.S. Lewis' bizzare novel Perelandra.

Oh yeah, "blessed be he," and welcome to the "Great Dance."

Lines like this one are sure to open some eyes:

The edge of each nature borders on that whereof it contains no shadow or similtude. Of many points, one line; of many lines one shape; of many shapes one solid body; of many senses and thoughts one person; of three persons, Himself (184)

It (dust) is farthest from Him of all things, for it has no life, nor sense, nor reason; it is nearest to Him of all things for without intervening soul, as sparks fly out of fire, He utters in each grain of it the unmixed image of His energy.(185)

Yet this seeming also is the end and final cause for which He spreads out Time so long and Heaven so deep; lest we never met the dark, and the road that leads nowhither, and the question to which no answer is imaginable, we should have in our minds no likeness of the Abyss of the Father, into which if a creature should drop down his thoughts for ever he shall hear the echo return to him. (187)

Hmmm, now that was eh, interesting?

Am I reading Thomas Aquinas or C.S. Lewis (both whom I dislike greatly)?

I mean I am not bashing poetic imagery; I love a good poem. I like imaginative descriptions and sayings concerning the nature of God and many other theological/philosophical subjects. Yet, I find this blather of paintball imagery, utterly absurd and frankly ridiculous. I literally felt as I was reading the last chapter of this novel that I was being sucked into a black hole from whence I would never return...maybe that is what ole Clive intended all along?

I do get what he is saying because I understand what message the eldil (or are they Mars and Venus, Aphrodite or Ares?) are trying to convey. The vastness of Maledil (God) and how small everything is in him and how large everything is made by him. Maledil is what holds the seemingly insignificant (as well as the significant) things together. Ransom is just a small part of a massive story that is so beyond the scale of his mind that it cannot make rational sense (the speech of the eldil certainly did not). The "Great Dance" is a dance between the persons who make Maledil and they only include the rest by his sovereign pleasure and goodwill.

If Ransom had understood this at the beginning, then he would not have fretted so much when the hideous professor/demon/possessed child Weston arrived to try to stir things. Sometimes we must just trust to the goodness and greatness of God and simply let him work in us and through us. That is a difficult thing for our culture of "movers and shakers" to grasp. Ransom's destiny was unknown to Ransom but it was known to Maledil and Maledil had him at the right place at right time.

Why?

Because Maledil knows his universe; his wisdom is beyond measure. Maledil is what cause all to participate in the "Great Dance" in the first place. We are perfectly safe and secure only in the hands of Maledil. He is the only one who really matters anyway. This story is not about Ransom, it is about Maledil's love for a strange world with green people called Perelandra.

If that did not make any sense, then try to read chapter 17 again...good luck.

What does it mean?!

I went to dictionary.com in the vain attempt to find a definition for "perelandra." It kept trying to send me to things that had nothing to do with C.S. Lewis, so I decided to look up Venus. Obviously, Venus was a beautiful woman and because of that, and what Dr. Mitchell said about how we attribute female characteristics to Venus, it became clear why all of the definitions talked about beauty and lushness. Just thought someone might like to know that.

Even the most plausible people can make a difference

“Either something or nothing must depend on individual choices. And if something, who could set bounds to it?”
At this point of the book, Ransom has figured out that it is he who must stand against the Un-man. He does not believe that he can have such an impact on the world until he discovers that all he has to do is not let the Un-man off without a fight. He does not have to win the fight; he just has to put up a good effort. The best thing is that he doesn’t have to put up a physical fight (which is a good thing). He just has to make sure that the Un-man does not get into his mind and undermine everything that he believes.
It’s hard to believe that the decisions we make can have such an effect on the world around us, but every decision we make (whether it’s to cross the street or to tell someone the truth) has some sort of effect on the world. Ransom says that the course of a river may be changed because of a stone, and “he was that stone at this horrible moment which had become the centre of the whole universe.” If he fights the Un-man and loses, well, at least he died trying. If he lets the Un-man off without trying to stop him, that’s a different story. He will be a coward if he does not fight back, and what is worse, it will almost certainly be his fault if the Un-man is able to complete his task of causing the Green Lady to fall. Though the Un-man has completed this task before (in the case of Eve), there was no one then to save her. She made a decision to buy into whatever the Devil told her, and because she did not listen to her higher judgment (she had to have had a voice telling her not to do it, right?) she caused the world to fall. Ransom must stick to his beliefs in Maleldil and not let the Un-man’s attempts to destroy Perelandra get the better of him. Though it may seem crazy that all he has to do is stand up for Maleldil in order to save a world, one man can make such a great difference.

Lost

Upon reading and attempting to grasp the waterfall that is Williams, I have discovered the key that holds the entire book together. From the very beginning there is a sense of lostness. Pauline is lost and does not know what to do. She is scared of becoming the person she is meant to be. It just so happens that Pauline had to lose herself more than she had ever been lost before she could truly come to terms with who she really is: Periel.

We first get the sense that Pauline is lost when Stanhope is talking about his play. As he and Myrtle Fox dialogue about play being terribly good, Pauline begins to feel uneasy. She begins to ponder the meaning of “a terrible good.” She is terrified that her own Magnus Zoroaster may be something wonderful and at the same time something terrible. As Lewis put it in Perelandra, “[Her] fear was now of another kind. [She] felt sure the creature was what we call “good,” but [she] wasn’t sure whether [she] liked “goodness” so much as [she] had supposed” (17). What if her double was something that was terribly good? What if she met her “better side” and didn’t like what she found? It would be as Lewis again says, “Suppose you struggle through to the good and find that it also is dreadful. . .then indeed, there is no rescue possible” (17). She has lost all hope and has become terribly afraid of the “good” that she is soon to become.

Seeing that Pauline is indeed lost and afraid, what is the resolution? How can one be found when one is utterly lost without knowing lostness? She must lose herself even more in order to find herself. As her grandmother dies, Pauline is catapulted into a frenzy of confusion. Time begins to mesh together with itself, and people intermingle and converse between conventional restraints. Williams grabs the reader and plunges him into the same confusion that Pauline is immersed in. On page 161 Williams’ incantation of time travel screams forth from the page: “Up and up, the wind was rising…nothing was there for her to find, but to find nothing now was to be saved from finding nothing…The edge of the other world was running up along the sky…Alice in Wonderland, sweet Alice, Alice sit by the fire…where things were given backward, and rules were against rights and rights against rules, and a ghost in the fire was a ghost in the street, and the thing that ha been was the thing that was to be and it was coming, was coming.” She was about to meet herself just as the martyr was about to meet himself. Times converged and connected in an instant, but before that instant could be approached, Pauline must lose herself in the cacophony of time. She is Alice, tumbling down the rabbit hole, disoriented and confused. Upon the other side, she understands her task and walks boldly forward, gaining the right to be called Periel. As she speaks with the martyr, she hears herself taking his burden before she realizes what she is doing. She has become who she was always meant to be.

The journey that Williams takes us on is not a meaningless, emotionless journey. It is a terrible journey wrought with peril. Danger awaits us at every turn. Just as the chorus appears to embody the souls of the saints, so Periel is the incarnation of the Christian becoming a new creation.

So, if I have utterly confused you, I have proven true to the true heart of Charles Williams. If this dialogue has proven to be incomprehensible, it is only because the truth does not exist in words but in conversation between two people. Williams has truly captured the truth by avoiding clarity.

Unutterable.

I'm late on writing about Charles Williams; he has not proven easy to understand for me in the least. Descent into Hell was a book where I had to read...then re-read...then read again to try to understand what he was saying. I knew he had to be saying something...so I kept digging. And I think - with the help of Dr. Mitchell in class - I have found not what I was looking for (just an explanation of what was going on in this crazy Hill) but the truth of "the fantastic." Truly, the moments where I experienced the message of Williams were amazing, because the deeper the treasure is buried, the more precious it is. What I'm about to write is just one of the jewels I've discovered. I hope I can do justice to it's beauty.

I keep thinking back to the day that we went to the coffee house and first started exposing Williams. I found an interesting piece of information that kept bringing me back to that afternoon...

In 1943, Williams was asked to contribute to a symposium on "What the Cross Means to Me." These are his opening lines:

"Any personal statement on such a subject as the present is bound to be inaccurate. It is almost impossible to state what one in fact believes, because it is almost impossible to hold a belief and to define it at the same time, especially when that belief refers not to the objective fact but to subjective interpretation. A rhetorical adjective will create a false stress; a misplaced adverb confuse an emotion. All that can be hoped is that a not too incorrect approximation may eventually appear..."

After reading Descent, the thought struck me of how little dialogue is in the book. There is so much description, so much inner turmoil, so much wandering that is connected by speech. But it is the journey, the walking throughout the Hill, the "lostness" that owns most of the story. I think it's because Truth is not just simply said for Williams. It is sought, it is experienced, it is found. It is impossible to completely explain, but there is hope for it to be encountered. Few find it in Williams world...but when faced with the Truth and their choice to turn to it and not away, the Paulines are never the same. Descent depicts the encounters incredibly. At first I didn't think I would like it, to be honest. It was so complex, so confusing, so intricate. "What's the point of this? Why not just come out and say it?" But after I closed the cover, my mind went back to the coffee shop...

Dr. Mitchell said, "If I can say it directly, it's not the answer. The Truth exist between us. It's giving and receiving through the Third Person. It's 'bearing witness'. It's testifying to the nature of reality...bound up in mystery with the unutterable."

Williams could not describe the Truth of the Cross in his life. His fallen human attempt to simply say the Truth could result in the lie of our suppositions...but he could write a wandering in which we are forced to walk with the pilgrim, searching for peace, searching for Truth...and we can encounter it. Just don't expect us to describe it afterwards. The only Truth I can speak is the Name of the Third Person...the one who speaks for me "with groanings that cannot be uttered."

Time...What a Dimension

I must admit, I was not wildly in love with Charles Williams’ Descent into Hell when I first started reading it, or even after I had read it, but I’m finding a fascination with his strange understanding of time. I believe it is an idea that grips every human being in a moment of awe and wonder at how the dimension of time works, ends, begins, or just is.
As Christians, we believe and understand that God is not bound by the dimension of time like we are; He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, the beginning and the end. The moment that we realize in the book that Pauline is actually taking on the burden, the fear, of her ancestor 350 years after his martyrdom seems so far-fetched; yet, at the same time it makes all the sense in the world. Thomas Howard put my thoughts on paper about this idea in Williams’ work when he reminds us about the faith that saved Abraham is still the same faith that saves us today. The Cross has been our point of salvation since Adam and Eve. Faith in the Savior is what saves no matter what time is doing because God is greater than that.
So, Pauline carries a burden 350 years after its victim has died and yet it was still taking place. Just because we are bound by time does not mean that history is. People who visit the Pearl Harbor memorial have often said they get a strange feeling when they are there, standing over the graves of our lost soldiers because in that moment it is as if time has stood still and they are still dying. What if we could carry the burdens of those who have gone before us? What if I prayed for God to strengthen our brother Paul while he was in prison? As crazy as it sounds, God is not bound by time and can still, or did, answer that prayer. One more thing, I found it interesting that Pauline shares Paul’s name and his writing is what her salvation in the story was based on; sharing each other’s burden.

What Lewis Said about Williams...

I found this clip from a longer lecture by Lewis. I found it amazing, 1) just to hear his voice! I can picture that voice reading Narnia to Tolkien, and 2) to hear what he has to say in defense of the writing of his friend and fellow Inkling, Charles Williams.

Suppose that our world could be "invaded by the marvelous?"

Here's the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5w134gYz04

Another Exampe of the Below...

The Victor Hugo novel Les Miserables is a classic example of this contrast of authenticity and fabrication. Jean Valjean and Javert represent these two realities in vivid and sometimes enigmatic detail. Valjean the former criminal becomes a respected official and someone people look up to and praise. Though he seems to living a lie, he is actually living an authentic existence and is one of the most powerful symbols of redemption of all of literature. Javert is the opposite. Consumed by zeal and hate, he lives for a world of law and justice unable to see that his reality is really a lie. His effort to live without grace and love shows how desperate his fabrication really is and it does unravel in the end.

Tremendous novel for anyone to read.

Authenticity and Fabrication

This book was strange and that is an understatement I do believe.

I do want to draw attention to two interesting sets of relationships: the one between Stanhope and Pauline and the relationship between Wentworth and his conception of Adela. This, ladies and gents, is a lesson in the concrete and the abstract: the difference between what is real and what is illusory. There is a tendency in every human being to want the abstract, the fabrication if you will, of the ideal life and existence. The human will for the ideal is extremely powerful; it fuels fanatics to suicide and hermits to live in solitude. There is an ideal to strive for, we Christians have identified it as a relationship with God by grace through faith and the transformation of our world in love, yet there is also the danger of fabrication. When we fabricate our existence we give in to living in a world similar to what we find in the film The Matrix, a world that only exists as our minds illusion; a world that satisfies only because we believe it does.

Charles Williams in his interesting and admittedly twisted work Descent into Hell shows vividly the contrast and the consequence of living in authentic relationship as opposed to a fabricated one. Let me begin by putting this bluntly, Wentworth does not have a relationship with Adela (corporeal or incorporeal). His perception of a relationship is really the manifestation of his ideal, which is divorced entirely from relationship. In contrast, Stanhope and Pauline have a very real relationship based on a demonstration of love and a consistent corporeal interaction. Their relationship is incarnate, meaning it has flesh, it is expressed in the language, rhythm, and mystery of poetry.

Wentworth and, as Katie named her, Adela 2.0 seem to have a relationship. They have intimacy, they speak to each other, there is even the sensastion of touch. Their relationship is very sensual and many philosophers have argued that one cannot experience or understand the world except through the senses. Wentworth can see, hear, feel, touch, and dare I say it, taste this apparition of Adela. Yet, that is the problem Adela 2.0 is an apparition; she does not corporeally exist. There is nothing incarnate about Adela 2.0; she has form but no substance; she is a feminine reflection of Wentworth's lust and tortured desire. Notice also that the more Wentworth gets attached to the fabrication the less he is connected to the authentic; he loses any hope of a real relationship with the real Adela and eventually begins to become so caught in the illusion that he begins to fade from reality! As the book draws to a close, even Adela 2.0 fades in to oblivion, because he rejected the authentic, even the fabrication is taken away from him; he is left alone to be consumed endlessly in the abyss beyond Gomorrah.

Stanhope and Pauline share an authentic relationship and the reader will likely think it is odd that this is so. In fact, the situation of Stanhope and Pauline is eerily similar to that of Wentworth and real Adela. However, there is one major difference: their relationship is real. At the beginning Pauline is confused and wary of Stanhope but when in a genuine offer of love he takes on her fear of the doppleganger that has been stalking her, she becomes devoted to him. Later, Pauline will ask for Stanhope's help and will even emulate him by taking on the parcel of the dead man. This emulation is not some distorted mirror of Stanhope, it is an actual imitation of his characteristics by a free agent who embraces imitating him. While Wentworth's succubi leaves him alone in the end, Pauline will continue to keep in contact and even probably visit Stanhope in the future. Their relationship is incarnate; it has flesh to it. One more thing, Wentworth seeks to live in the realms of dates, facts, and history and ends living the lie. Stanhope lives is in the realms of poetry, devotion, and actual love and is living the truth.

Their are tremendous consequences for living an illusion, a fabrication of what is actually true. Eventually everything we construct, everything we put our faith and trust in comes crashing down and is taken from us. If any of us are on that road, let us pray that God saves us, before like Wentworth we get to the end of our rope and descend into the abyss. Let us instead, embrace the world of poetry and deeper meaning; let us embrace love in all of its true demonstrations and so honor our Lord Jesus Christ.

Keats poem

If you'd like, this address will get you to a copy of Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn." I think it's pretty, but you can have your own opinion! It helps with the whole artifice thing.

http://englishhistory.net/keats/poetry/odeonagrecianurn.html

The artifice

I thought that what Tara said the other day about Adela 2.0 was funny. It’s gross to me that Wentworth would be so in love with himself that he would create this creature that constantly told him how perfect he was and they were always in bed together. I know that we are generally self-centered people, but come on! It has to reach a point where enough is enough.
I found a passage where Wentworth was talking about Keats’ poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” I remember reading this play in both British Literature and World Poetry. Keats, though sad to read, has beautiful poetry. In this poem, he talks about how two lovers can never kiss and the musicians’ music can never be heard. Wentworth talks about this when he first comes back to the world after he has locked himself away with his “buddy.” The real Adela is trying to get his attention because she remembers that he used to be in love with her. It seems like she wants to be recognized as the star of the play and she will use whatever means necessary to get it.
Anyway. Back to “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Wentworth says, “It was not without reason that Keats imagined the lover of unheard melody in reverie on stone images; the real Greek dancers would have pleased him less” (Williams 141). I think he’s saying that the artifice is better than the real thing because the real thing so often disappoints. Wentworth does say that there was some relief in “the clumsy tread and the loud voice” of Adela because he no longer wanted to hate it. He has now found comfort in Adela’s weird “evil?” twin. I don’t necessarily think that she is “evil,” but she’s a strange creature who only comes when she is called.
I think that it would be easier to create our own worlds where everything is perfect, but that’s not the real world. Even though Wentworth does have Adela 2.0 leave in the end, he still created a strange and disturbing world that should not exist.

Greene Obituary

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0gUvrGWLNU
Channel 4 News Graham Greene Obituary 1991
Thought this was very interesting! It gives some insight into Greene’s ideas of the Catholic Church.

The Broken Image

A world without God just simply cannot exist. Just as Satan would cease to exist without God’s existent (without any good there would be nothing left to pervert) in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, what will happen to the Lieutenant now that he has defeated his enemy? I keep going back to chapter 2 of part 2 and the discourse that takes place between the Governor’s cousin and the jefe. Their conversation keeps coming back to the ideas of the origin of life and the mysteries unknown; “words like ‘mystery’ and ‘soul’ and ‘the source of life’ came in over and over again, as they sat on the bed talking, with nothing to do and nothing to believe and nowhere better to go” (114). In their greatest attempts to rid the country of Christian doctrine, these very men find themselves pondering the very questions Christian doctrine exists to answer. This gives credence to the idea that man has an innate desire to know his Maker, to know his origin.

The priest had just a few pages earlier in the book begun to understand why this desire existed; “But at the centre of his own faith there always stood the convincing mystery – that we were made in God’s image. God was the parent, but He was also the policeman, the criminal, the priest, the maniac, and the judge” (101). Man was made in the image of God unlike any other created being. Thus the reason the gentlemen continue to ask such questions; they too were made in the image of God, even though the image is broken from the fatal act of sin.

As for the Lieutenant, he had every right to be disgusted by the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church. However, his hatred grew to an insane obsession. At the end of the book he appears to feel some sense of loss after killing the last priest; there are no more. That had been his goal and now that it is fulfilled he must find new meaning to life. No doubt he will face still the questions that the priest would have like to have answered for him. But, as long as there is still another priest, the Lieutenant will not consider his origin or his Maker, but will find his meaning in unknowingly killing the image of God.

Padre Jose: All That Is Wrong with Religion

Most of you were there when I backed up Justin Bridges' claim that Padre Jose is the most despicable character in The Power and the Glory. I figured that in this extra installment I would explain the position and why it is so important that we see the truth.

I have no respect, admiration, or pity for Padre Jose. He represents everything that is wrong with religion, everything that must change if a true, living presentation of the Gospel can be made. I want to call attention to the beetles, the vulture, and the rabid dog. All of these are symbols of decay and mixed with these symbols of decay are those of death, especially the death of children (seeming innocents). Greene portrays this province of Mexico as dead and decaying; what is not dead is only living off of the the dead. The land is in dire physical and spiritual straits.

During this time period there have no doubt been many martyrs, great men (and women) of faith he withstood this Marxist secularization of this area of Mexico. These martyrs died to protest the destruction of what is good, the living witness and power of the Church as it proclaims the Gospel. They are killed off and hunted to exinction except two people: the whiskey priest and Padre Jose.

The whiskey priest is not perfect but he is faithful and he is triumphant; ultimately having to depend entirely of the grace of God. Padre Jose however, "retires" from the priesthood, marries a woman, and settles down to a nice government pension. He compromises everything to be secure and comfortable. Now, one may want to feel sorry for Padre Jose, but this to me is impossible. His own ghosts haunt him because he knows that he is the one who really betrayed the faith. The whiskey priest has questionable habits, but Padre Jose has questionable character.

He won't do his duties but then he dares to want people to call him a priest. His "wife's" protest of his denial is absolutely spot on and telling. Padre Jose is not a priest, he something far less, he is a type of Judas the betrayer of Christ. He dutifully, apathetically watches as men and women are called for standing for the truth of the Gospel and lives in his comfortable home with his government stipend. He is no priest, he is letch, a leech, a disgusting tumor on the Church that rightly needs to be exposed and sliced off.

Greene is using this to comment on religion of his day. It had no power and no glory. It was comfortable, cute, and absolutely pathetic in its nature; it was harmless. Religion used to justify the status quo or tradition when it is clear that such things are helping society decay, is not religion but harsh, acidic embalming fluid. What good is it? Where is the power? Where is the glory? Where is the demonstration of truth and love? Where is the Church especially in a time where voices need to be heard on behalf of love and holiness? Where is the fruit of our professed beliefs, and if none is present, do we really believe at all?

Say what you want about the morality of the whiskey priest; he indeed was a bad man (but refer to my previous blog). However, Padre Jose is so disgustingly evil because of his clinging to tradition, titles, and an illusion of importance (even when such things have long since passed) and neglecting the very call of faith and demonstration God had placed on his life. I would rather be a morally depraved, yet consistently loving and selfless whiskey priest than to be a faithless, godless mongrel priest that does no one any good and brings disgrace upon the Gospel of Christ.

Bathsheba's Firstborn

Alright. So when talking about the whole relationship of the priest with his daughter and the mother, it kind of reminded me of David, Bathsheba, and their first child. It might be a stretch, and I don't think Greene really had the parallel in mind, but it's something to think about.

The priest had an illegitimate daughter, Brigitta, with Maria. David had an illegitimate child with Bathsheba. Here's where it gets a little interesting. In case you didn't know the story of David, he saw Bathsheba bathing, wanted her, slept with her, and had her would-be husband killed. She then got pregnant and had David's child. As a direct consequence of David's actions, that child died at seven days old. The parallel I guess I'm trying to make is this: just as David was punished with the physical death of his child, the priest was punished with what seems to be a spiritual death of his daughter, for she seems to be completely void of any want of spirituality or belief in God, but seems to be empty. For a king, who is high and mighty and strong, physical ailment or early death would be a disgrace, and so the child of the disobedient king was ill to death. For a priest, who is holy, ungodliness and spiritual emptiness would be the opposite, so the child of disobedient priest was without love and godliness.

Greene on His "Priest"

This is an excerpt from Greene's book The Ways of Escape (pg. 65-68), telling about how he discovered his "whiskey priest" from The Power and the Glory.

So it was that the doctor put me on the track of Father Jose in my novel… "I asked about the priest in Chiapas who had fled. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘he was just what we call a whisky priest.’ He had taken one of his sons to be baptized, but the priest was drunk and would insist on naming the child Brigitta. ‘He was little loss, poor man.’"

(Speaking about reading The Power and the Glory) "As I read on I encounter more and more characters whom I have forgotten, who beckon to me from the pages and say ironically, "And did you really believe you had invented me?"

But I had always, even when I was a schoolboy, listened with impatience to the scandalous stories of tourists concerning the priests they had encountered in remote Latin villages (this priest had a mistress, another was constantly drunk), for I had been adequately taught in my Protestant history books what Catholics believed; I could distinguish even then between the man and his office. Now, many years later, as a Catholic in Mexico, I read and listened to stories of corruption which were said to have justified the persecution of the Church under Calles and under his successor and rival Cardenas, but I had also observed for myself how courage and the sense of responsibility had revived with persecution – I had seen the devotion of peasants praying in the priestless churches and I had attended Masses in upper rooms where the sanctus bell could not sound for fear of the police. I had not found the idealism or integrity of the lieutenant of The Power and the Glory among the police and pisteleros I had actually encountered – I had to invent him as a counter to the failed priest: the idealistic police officer who stifled life from the best possible motives: the drunken priest who continued to pass life on.

An Unashamed Coward

'...To die in a state of mortal sin' - he gave an uneasy chuckle - 'it makes you think.'
'There. It is as I say. Believing in God makes cowards.' The voice was triumphant, as if it had proved something.

How many times have I heard words such as these before? "Your faith is just a crutch...God is something you depend on during hard times..." It is often these days that people such as I are ridiculed by society for believing in GOD. I see the traces of the same disparagement in Graham Greene. Throughout The Power and the Glory, there are beautifully powerful moments that follow the path of the whiskey priest. These glimpses are found hidden inside barns, sitting in the dirt, looking at a child's dead body, soaked by the downpour of the thunder storm, and beside a dying convict. One of the instances where his faith is exposed is in the darkness of the prison, surrounded by other offenders and awaiting death. A unseen man speaks to him in a voice of accusation, and in what would normally be the most miserable of moments, a light can be seen inside the heart of the priest.

'So then?' the priest said.
'Better not to believe - and be a brave man.'
'I see - yes. And of course if one believed the Governor did not exist or the jefe, if we could pretend that this prison was not a prision at all but a garden, how brave we could be then.'
'That's just foolishness.'

At a moment of despair and certain death, this failure of a priest defends the faith he still has in the depths of his heart, even though he himself sometimes doubts how true it is to him. He cannot explain why or even how he still believes in the GOD who has seemingly deserted him - and Whom he has deserted - but when challenged, he answers unashamedly.
While the priest is fallen and seemingly far from any measure of grace, there is something in him that shows true belief. It might be the broken prayers, the moments of compassion, the desperation for peace....it might be for the times like when he was called "foolish" in the prison.

"But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are." 1 Corinthians 1: 27-28

I cannot think of a literary character more pathetic, more foolish, more weak, base, and despised than the whiskey priest. He confounded me at every turn of the page. I wanted to hate him, judge him...but I couldn't. Somehow, in his broken, shameful state, the whiskey priest stood unashamed and usable by God. He was a coward in many ways, but so much more brave than Padre Jose. In the prison, his voice rings out:

"But when we found that the prison was a prison, and the Governor up there in the square undoubtedly existed, well, it wouldn't much matter if we'd been brave for an hour or two."

The whiskey priest confounds me. And I am far from wise...

*Quotes from p. 126 of The Power and the Glory

Time: 100 Best English Novels from 1923-Present

http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/0,24459,the_power_and_the_glory,00.html

In this articles Time Magazine reviews the book and counts it among the 100 Best English Novels from 1923-Present. That is a pretty prestigious list that includes Things Fall Apart and To Kill a Mockingbird.

So, I should probably stop going on wikipedia, but they can tell you information that other sites might deem stupid. Anyway, I looked up The Power and the Glory, and it was adapted into a made-for-tv movie of sorts starring none other than Laurence Olivier as the priest. It does not specify which priest, but I bet it's the whisky one. That's too crazy to me.

Reluctance

Throughout the entire novel the Whiskey Priest is plagued with a sense of reluctance. I believe that reluctance defines his character. As he sits in the dentist's house, he is reluctant to drink. He holds the brandy as if it were a creature that could destroy him. Soon after he sips at the amber liquid a child comes to the door and demands that the Whiskey Priest help the child's mother. The priest states that there is nothing wrong with the boy's mother. He does not wish to leave and allow the boat to sail away. His reluctance is also seen as he wishes to leave the Fellow's barn. At this point in the story he is reluctant to stay! He is almost afraid of seeing his daughter. He is terrified to take the confessions of the people in the small village; he is even scared to sleep for fear that he might be caught. Even his donkey is reluctant. As they are headed toward Brigetta and home, the mule stops on the trail and refuses to move forward. The mule again stops as the Whiskey Priest is leaving his "family." This time it stops because of a snake that has trailed across the path. Could this be a foreshadowing of the danger that awaits up the road? The reluctance of the Whiskey Priest is mimicked by his mule.