Summary: A bad priest tries to evade the police during anti-Catholic persecution in early 20th century Mexico.
I read this for the first time about eight years ago. Before I read The Power and the Glory the first time I had already read Silence by Shusaku Endo two or three time and I knew about the broad thematic connections. I am not going to repeat myself about the connections between the two books, but I do think the books should be read together.
Both this time and last time I alternated between listening to the audiobook and reading the kindle edition. Last time the narrator was Bernard Mayes, a very British narrator who didn’t really match the low born Mexican priest from the early 20th century. The new narration by Johnny Rey Diaz published earlier this year I think is a better match to the content.
I slowly read this around several other books. I broadly remembered the story so I was trying to pay attention to how the story was structured and how the characters fit together. Largely the book follows the unnamed “whiskey priest,” but there are several other characters who are given first person perspectives. I wish some of those were developed more. They are largely present to give context to the setting and help the reader to know the thinking behind those who are after the priest. The young and ambitious lieutenant who is primarily leading the search for the priest opposes Catholicism because he believes it is hindering the development of the native Mexican population. There are vague accusations of abuse of the people by the priests (largely financial), but those are more abstract than personal. What is clear is that the police lieutenant believes he is doing the right thing.
Similarly the priest often does what he thinks is the right thing in spite of the danger because there is no one else to do it. But his attempts to do the right thing are hindered by his alcoholism and his love for his daughter, which he had because of a relationship with her mother when he was most depressed. The priest understands the reality of his sin, but doesn’t see the grace available to him in forgiveness.
There is real tragedy here. The church did abuse people both individually and as a whole. Some of that was financial and some of that was sexual abuse or other abuses of power. The discussions about charging for baptisms gets at the ways this was cultural as well as theological. The priest is a bad priest and did abuse his power and at times did continue to do the work of being a priest while persecuted for both good and bad reasons. But I think the reality of grace is that God can redeem some of the bad. That does not excuse the bad, but we do not have to discount all good because there is bad. What I think is missing here with a better understanding of grace is that the guilt of the priest keeps him from finding value in doing good for the sake of others or forgiving himself for past sin so that he can truly repent and do things differently. The alcoholism feels like it is a means of self punishment more than an addiction.
The beauty of the book is the grace that happens in spite of not understanding it. The tragedy of the book is that God’s grace does not remove us from pain, persecution or natural consequences of our or other’s sin. This book doesn’t have a happily ever after ending. The real world does not often have a happily ever after. But the long term belief of Christianity is that there will eventually be a happily ever after. That being said, there is a real critique here of the way that the church has used the eventual happily ever after to not address abuse and oppression. And we do need to remember that we have an obligation to address that now, not just allow God’s grace to be an “eventually.”
As I have tried to focus on fiction this year, I keep being reminded of how fiction can explore theological questions in ways that non-fiction can’t. We need the non-fiction to give structure to some of the theological questions. But we need fiction to give us empathy to knowing how the theology can distort without considering the real people that are impacted by the theology. This comes back to 1 Corinthians 13’s remember that doing great things without love is worthless. In spite of it all, the unnamed priest does love those around him, whether it is the man who would betray him or the lieutenant or the unknown people who seek baptism or communion. He doesn’t love them as well as he theoretically could have, but the love that he does have is real.
One examples:
When you visualized a man or woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity—that was a quality God’s image carried with it. When you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination. He began to feel an overwhelming responsibility for this pious woman.