The Power and the Glory: Greene's Catholic Allegory Analyzed

Introduction: Death, Allegory, and the Catholic Novel

Graham Greene's novel The Power and the Glory (1940) is one of his works that the author himself identified as a Catholic story, and it is clearly concerned with issues of Catholicism in both theory and practice. The novel is set in Mexico in the 1930s, at a time when the Church was in conflict with the political powers in the country. Greene gives his story an allegorical structure, with the two opposing forces represented by the Whiskey Priest and the Lieutenant of Police, neither of whom is ever named beyond this identification with their jobs and roles in life. The metaphorical framework of the novel evokes images of death, leading ultimately to the death of the priest but also suggesting the death of a corrupt religious order. The novel was deemed anti-Catholic by the Church, which sought to have it banned for a time, though it is more critical of the way the Church administers its religion than it is of Catholicism in a broader theological sense. The novel is equally critical of any government that believes it can legislate human thought and determine what people may or may not think, then enforce its will by fiat. As the novel shows, such an intention is doomed to failure.

Many critics cite The Power and the Glory as Greene's best novel, and it was certainly the work that first signaled the full development of his great talent. In some ways, he differed from other writers of his time in a manner that made him less flashy but more deeply realistic in tone:

"Unlike many literary practitioners in this century, he did not experiment with language, subvert traditional narrative, or choose exotic subjects. He simply used the powerful imagination that led him to speak of his work as a 'guided dream.' That imagination — fired, at least during the great middle years, by intense moral and religious perception — made Greene's fiction the best-realized portrayal in its time of the drama of the human soul" (Royal 16).

The novel begins with an evocation of death and dying as Mr. Tench goes out into the heat and dust of a Mexican afternoon: "A few vultures looked down from the roof with shabby indifference; he wasn't carrion yet" (Greene 715). The whiskey priest is also not carrion yet, but from the first it is evident that his days are numbered and that he lives with a sense of doom. He appears as a vulture hangs in the air above, observing, and presumably waiting for him as well. There is a sense of mystery about the priest from the beginning, emphasized by the fact that he is never named and is referred to again and again as "the stranger," implying both that he does not belong and that something about him remains always hidden.

The idea of mystery is carried throughout the novel in several senses. The story has the structure of a mystery narrative, but it also refers to "mystery" as understood in religion — the contemplation of the ineffable. Greene examines this concept within the structure of a thriller, though it is clear that he has deeper intentions than the typical thriller writer. In this and several other novels, Greene analyzes the idea of the spiritual in terms of Catholic thought:

"Greene's books were a symptom of Catholic thinking that was increasing in depth, but inevitably his work collided with the pious rigidity inherited from the nineteenth century. Nevertheless his widely read fiction exerted a strong influence. The 'open Church' of the 1960s, with its acceptance of all 'men of good will,' had in its background the puzzled, slowly comprehending, worldwide Catholic audience on which Greene's themes were working in the 1940s and 1950s. These were the decades when the separatism that had dominated the nineteenth century was surrendering to the older recognition that had begun with such men as Campion and continued with such men as Newman: that there was good in all people. Greene's work was a sign of the accelerated convergence between the Catholic and the non-Catholic worlds" (Kellogg 127).

Greene's Catholicism and the Church's Condemnation

Of course, the Church itself did not envision this kind of future for itself and so challenged writers like Greene for going against the orthodoxy of the time. In 1953, the Catholic Church denounced The Power and the Glory:

"While the author's intention had been 'to bring out the victory of the power and the glory of the Lord in spite of man's wretchedness,' this aim had not been achieved. Rather, 'the latter element' — that is, human wretchedness — had appeared 'to carry the day' in a way that did injury 'to certain priestly characters and even to the priesthood itself.' Moreover, the novel portrayed a state of affairs so 'paradoxical' and 'erroneous' that it would disconcert 'unenlightened persons' who formed the majority of the readers" (Schloesser).

Greene himself referred to three of his novels as his "Catholic novels": The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter, and The End of the Affair. At the same time, Greene did not like being called a "Catholic novelist," feeling that such a label restricted him too much. Many Catholic leaders agreed — and used the label as grounds for criticism. In 1953, Cardinal Bernard Griffin of Westminster wrote a pastoral letter condemning the three Catholic novels, citing a Vatican official's view of Greene's work. Cardinal Giuseppe Pizzardo condemned The Power and the Glory for being "paradoxical." At some point, Greene met Pope Paul VI, who commented on the cardinal's unfavorable reaction by telling him, "Mr. Greene, some aspects of your books are certain to offend some Catholics, but you should pay no attention to that" (Sherry).

Greene is not a polemicist for any specific point of view, however, and he does not follow any doctrine closely in his novels. In The Power and the Glory, he explores conflicts and paradoxes in the Church, in government, and in the soul of the human being.

The Whiskey Priest: Paradox, Weakness, and Redemption

In spite of his role as an allegorical figure, the whiskey priest is not a simple black-or-white character but instead a fully realized and complex human being, as is the police lieutenant who serves as his opposite. Greene explores his themes through the way human beings act in paradoxical fashion rather than holding to one clear course, and he presents the Church in the same light — which may be one reason many in the Church saw him as an enemy. Of the main character, Sherry writes:

"Weak and sinful — alcoholic, the father of a child — he runs from death, yet serves in doubt. At any juncture he could reveal himself, marry, and live safely. He does not, but he is keenly aware that his persistence in secretly administering the sacraments is grudging and less than ideally noble" (Sherry).

Sherry further points out that Greene does not present this character in simple terms but develops him more fully: "But — and here is Greene's paradoxical mind at work — we discern through hints about the priest's past that perhaps, despite his weakness, he is indeed holier than he would have been without persecution, and even without violating his vows. For it is only in those experiences that he has learned how to suffer and to love, respectively. How else can we reach holiness, the novel challenges us to ponder, except from the place where we are?" (Sherry).

Greene wrote this novel based on his own experiences in Mexico, which he had written about earlier in The Lawless Roads (1939). He traveled through Tabasco and Chiapas, Mexican provinces where the Church was under persecution, and many of the characters and settings in the novel were drawn from this trip. In both books, Greene is interested in the attitude of the Mexican government toward religion. The state was then dedicated to imparting a socialist education and to eliminating all religious doctrine. Many priests were forced either to marry or to accept martyrdom, while a few tried to continue their ministry while evading the police:

"In outlawing the influence of the Church and in making any practice of its dogma an act of treason, the government under Garrido Cannibal sought to establish a state that would consider the bodily needs of the people and free them from the narrow-mindedness and bigotry of the Roman Catholic Church. It sought to enforce a secular order in place of a religious one. The attempt failed, for the new order could not destroy the forms and symbols of the old" (De Vitis 76).

In this novel, Greene shows some of the reasons why this effort was doomed to failure, even as he also shows how certain corrupted elements of the Catholic Church were equally doomed in the long run. Even as he celebrates the achievement of the whiskey priest and the failure of the lieutenant, Greene does so in a paradoxical and ironic way: "One tends to forget that the virtual triumph of the priest is due less to the sustaining power of his faith than to the nihilism of the opposition" (Atkins 124).

Similar paradoxes abound in Catholic doctrine and are embodied in the life of the priest. The priest in the novel has endured pain and guilt for years "but recognizes in his suffering the purposeful presence of God's love" (Kelly 53). The whiskey priest is heroic in spite of himself. He would be deemed a fallen priest by most assessments — he is not only an alcoholic but has fathered an illegitimate child. He is also terrified of both pain and death, which makes his willingness to endure both more heroic than if he were the kind of uncompromising saint many might expect. Ultimately, he finds a form of salvation through his daughter, a young woman "who appears to have lost her innocence prematurely and has little hope for joy in this world" (Kelly 53). John Updike finds the development of this character perfectly suited to the novel's themes, noting that the "nameless whiskey priest blends seamlessly with his tropical, crooked, anti-clerical Mexico. Roman Catholicism is intrinsic to the character and terrain both" (Updike 16). It is also significant that "those who believe in the priest are children. Most adults have little faith in him, but the young draw their hope from him although he is weak and corrupt" (McCann 435). Perhaps they see more clearly than the adults — and than the priest himself — for the heroic act he undertakes at the last is not something he would have foreseen for himself.

Conclusion: The Enduring Power of Faith

The Power and the Glory depicts a period in history when the Mexican government sought to distance itself from — and ultimately eliminate — the influence of the Catholic Church in Mexico. Graham Greene makes it clear that some in the Church had been corrupt and that this element had to be purged, but he also shows how much power and glory still reside in the idea of Catholicism and in certain individuals within the Church hierarchy. His fallen priest is in many ways more worthy than the cowardly priests who marry and leave the Church because the authorities tell them to do so.

The priest represents the Church even though he would not be recognized as a worthy heir by the Church itself, and the lieutenant represents the power of the state — a power that will ultimately fail even as he seems always to succeed, because he can force others to comply outwardly but cannot force real change inwardly. He can stamp out the external forms of the Church, but the ideas of the Church remain in the hearts of people like the whiskey priest and in children who believe. Even the lieutenant seems to recognize this by the end of the novel, trapped as he is in a bureaucratic mindset with an impossible mission against entrenched religious feeling. The lieutenant's mission is as doomed as is the priest — and yet, where the priest's doom carries the possibility of redemption, the lieutenant's offers none.

Works Cited

Atkins, John. Graham Greene. London: Calder and Boyars, 1966.

De Vitis, A.A. Graham Greene. Boston: Twayne, 1986.

Greene, Graham. Graham Greene: Seven Novels: The Power and the Glory. New York: Heinemann/Octopus, 1979.

Kellogg, Gene. The Vital Tradition: The Catholic Novel in a Period of Convergence. Loyola University Press, 1970.

Kelly, Richard. Graham Greene. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1984.

Lodge, David. Graham Greene. New York: Columbia University Press, 1966.

McCann, Janet. "Graham Greene: The Ambiguity of Death." The Christian Century (April 30, 1975), 432–435.

Royal, Robert. "The (Mis)Guided Dream of Graham Greene." First Things 97 (November 1999), 16–18.

Schloesser, Stephen. "Altogether Adverse: The Story of Graham Greene and the Holy Office." America (November 11, 2000). http://www.americapress.org/articles/schloesser.htm.

Sherry, Norman. "Graham Greene." 2002.

Updike, John. "The Passion of Graham Greene." New York Review of Books (August 16, 1990), 16–17.