'...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
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Indeed. You see my reaction to the whiskey priest was an entirely different. I respected this man who refused to leave the darkness just to protect his own light (however, muted it may be). There is something to be said about perseverance here; the whiskey priest simply refused to give up his faith, even in the faith of his own damnation. That is pretty gutsy stuff and I believe a sure sign that one's faith is true: ultimately he could not depend on his Catholic religious system for absolution and must instead fall completely on the grace of God. That is what every true believer must do; brandy and all.
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