The Power and the Glory

I've heard about this book a number of times over the years. When I began reading, I quickly realized my assumptions about the plot were quite different than what's actually written. I was uncertain how much I'd enjoy it, but given that the book has been considered the greatest Catholic novel of all time, I wanted to see it through.    Set in a time in Southern Mexico where religion — Christianity in particular - has been outlawed by the ‘Red Shirts', one surviving priest is on the run. He's been coined a ‘whiskey priest' given his downfalls and deviations from Catholic practices. He finds many helpers along the way who help keep him hidden.    It took me a while to get into the story. I latched onto the introspection of the priest, but my attention waned when it skirted off to the side characters. Though the paragraphs with lengthy and my focus wasn't great at the time of reading, there were many quotes that resonated with me. I loved the raw, even ugly imagery of the struggles that humans face and don't always like to admit to. It was especially powerful watching it through the eyes of a priest. While, yes, they are figureheads of the church, that doesn't mean they are free of the temptations to make poor or even terrible decisions. In this case, watching the redemption that comes after such falls through a deep faith was inspiring.    Even though I wasn't completely captivated by every page, I can see why The Power and the Glory is a renowned work. 

A tremendous book about the nature of suffering, bravery, responsibility, and humility.

Set in 1930s Mexico during a period of intense anti-Christian persecution by the government, the book follows a nameless priest who is the only remaining minister in his state after the others have been hunted down and shot. But he's not a heroic figure, or at least not really; he's called a “whiskey priest” because he's a drunk, it's unclear if his younger self was more focused on his congregation or rising up the clergy ranks to get promoted, and he fathered a child years ago. For all that, he's remained to try and minister to the Christians in the area when he could have easily fled the region or renounced the faith and joined the government, like others have. But there's his dilemma: is he doing more damage to the faith by staying and being such a mediocre role model of the priesthood, or is he doing his duty by at least providing the sacraments sometimes? With no support from the Church, and a zealously secular police lieutenant hunting him down to kill him, the whiskey priest's moral dilemma is compelling.

Perhaps more than any book I've read, The Power and the Glory shows how suffering can - if not quite be seen as a gift by God - then at least be something that we try to learn from. That's a message with very little traction in today's world, and mostly for good reason. But the whiskey priest demonstrates something about the necessity of humility, and that a true reckoning of our own sins ought to make us incapable of looking down on anyone. In his life during the good times, the trappings of power overwhelmed his better nature. But when he is brought low by being on the run for years and confronting his own failures, he's able to enter into a much deeper solidarity with all the people around him, not just the most pious ones.

There are a few particularly striking scenes of him interacting with a peasant who wants to turn him in for the reward money. The priest's interactions with the man have such moral weight they feel straight out of scripture.

There's also a scene featuring the priest in a jail cell with a whole swathe of petty criminals that feels shot through with the Christ figure. It's beautiful.

This book and Silence, by Shusaku Endo (about the Christian persecutions in 1600s Japan) strike me as required seminary texts and some of the best possible entryways into a Christian conversation about the nature of suffering and the Christ figure. Highly recommended.



While hearing a confession, “The man had an immense self-importance; he was unable to picture a world of which he was only a typical part – a world of violence, treachery, and lust in which his shame was altogether insignificant. How often the priest had heard the same confession - Man was so limited he hadn't even the ingenuity to invent a new vice: the animals knew as much. It was for this world that Christ had died; the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater glory lay around the death. It was too easy to die for what was good and beautiful, for home or children or a civilization - it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and corrupt.”

Short Review: I can't read this without thinking about Endo's Silence. I will always connect Greene and Endo, but I think these two books are the two that are probably most connected between the two authors. Both are about persecutions, but different types of persecutions. I didn't know anything about the Mexican persecution of the church prior to reading this. I looked up a little bit about it after I finished the book. It was regional and not a serious, but there was still many people that died and the suffering described here seems realistic.

The Power and the Glory is smaller and I think a bit more approachable as a means to thinking about what it means to be a Christian in the face of suffering. Silence is so big. The entire church was essentially wiped out. Graham Greene's story ends more hopefully because as he was publishing it, the persecution was basically ended. The church overcame. So the stories are different because of the endings.

Part of what is interesting to me is how the role of the priest in Catholic theology is different from a Protestant Pastor and so the whiskey priest, as much as he may have been ridiculed because of his sin, was still a priest. A similar book I don't think could really be written about a Protestant pastor.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/the-power-and-the-glory/