The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene, 1 of 3

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene was first published in 1939. The book was a fictionalization of Greene's experiences in Mexico, and a non-fiction account of those events, The Lawless Roads, was later published.

1. Is the writer Catholic?

Greene remained slippery on this point. A convert to Catholicism for marriage, he later self-identified as "Catholic agnostic," though claimed to receive the Host in his own home. Greene's infidelities are legendary, though if sin demoted one's Catholicism none of us need apply. How did Greene contextualize adultery (his and others). Could The End of the Affair help us understand his opinions?

Regardless, Greene certainly counts as a Catholic writer.

2. Is the practical content Catholic?

Absolutely. An unnamed whisky priest is wanted by an atheist lieutenant during Canabal-like "fascist" control of Mexico. Greene slyly appropriates genre conventions here (beginning the novel with his useful "independent" British expatriate--this time a "Mr. Tench"; the mid-book political wrangle; the cross-country chase with final-act ambush), yet the novel reaches much, much higher. The whisky priest is no hero: he has fathered a daughter, who now hates him (along with the mother). He was an over-fed, proud clergyman whose penchant for liquor bleeds into his inability to resist other corporeal temptations. Self-doubt is his constant, and it is sometimes unclear whether he baptizes for the sacrament, the (previous) duty, or to make meager money. He is willing to have others be captured, and die, so that he is not caught by the "Red Shirts," and Greene is smart to present his actions as either cowardice or the fact that the priest's life and actions exist for the greater good of believers.


3. Is the thematic content Catholic?

Again, yes. The lieutenant, though, is perhaps the essential Catholic element in the text. Hard-nosed, (and in the sense of metonymy) presented as a gun-in-holster lawman in the archetypal sense, he's a sufficiently complex character: some incident in his childhood fed his distrust of the church, a church showed in the text as one that fattened its clergy while simultaneously thinning its parishioners. The lieutenant's perspective is jaded, of course, and the key philosophical consideration of the text is whether the lieutenant (or any government entity) has the right to dictate the faith beliefs of citizens. The whisky priest is dirty, shamed, a horrible role model. He has, in the dogmatic sense, erred in the essential tenets of the church. And yet he is loved by the faithful not for his sins, but for the representation of Christ he presents--this appears to be the fatal miscalculation of the lieutenant. The lieutenant's violence and rhetoric leave a much worse taste than the delinquencies of the priest. Children go from pining for the lieutenant's gun to spitting on his holster; the whisky priest is gone but Catholicism in Mexico is continuous.

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It is difficult to read Greene's novel and not appreciate the work as Catholic in the thematic sense: the "spirit" of the priest has endured suffering and rhetoric, and yet his enemy, the lieutenant, operates not without intellectual and emotional warrant. Greene portrays a damaged church in Mexico, one particularly susceptible to criticism and revision. Yet such an acknowledgment is only the first step.

Part 2: The Text

Part 3: The Reaction