his bewilderment at differences of culture and outlook. Greene's mentality
was "odd and paradoxical, a true product of the disturbed, confused, and
audacious character of today's civilization," he wrote. "For me, the book is
sad." Sadness and sorrow, rather than anger and indignation, colored his
tone. The work's title implies an emphasis on God's power and glory, but
as the consultant read the book itself, he found only a barren landscape of
despair. "Immoral" or married priests; the ambiguity with which the
central figure refers to God and the doctrines of the faith; the conviction or
the virtue attributed to Protestants and atheists—all this made it impossible
for Greene's first reader in the Holy Office to see why the book was
regarded as excellent literature. "Troubling the spirit of calm that should
prevail in a Christian," The Power and the Glory, in his judgment, ought
never to have been written. Since the novel had been written, and
published, and widely disseminated, the consultant hoped that its fame
was already in decline. A condemnation would do no good, because the
author, with his "paradoxical modes of thought," would probably not
accept it, and the repercussions of an intellectual condemnation could be
dangerous, given the author's fame. Better, the consultant recommended,
to have Graham Greene "admonished" by his bishop and "exhorted to
write other books in a different tone, attempting to correct the defects of
this one."
The opinion of the second consultant, delivered in Latin, supported that of
the first. Both readers acknowledged that Greene was not only the leading
Catholic novelist in England but also a convert from Protestantism.
Despite his many failings, the comfort he offered to enemies of the
Church, and his "abnormal propensity toward ... situations in which one
kind of sexual immorality or another plays a role," it would not do to put
him on the Index, because his book was a best seller. The second censor
therefore concurred that Greene should be told that "literature of this kind
does harm to the cause of the true religion," and that "in the future he
should behave more cautiously when he writes."
The mindset of Rome's censors was not malevolent. It is difficult,
however, to resist the conclusion that it was dim. Defensive about their
authority (which they desired to assert even as they doubted its efficacy),
and incapable of grasping the conceptual problems posed by Greene's
writing, they could be checked in their course only by intervention from
above. That intervention came on October 1, 1953, in the form of a
confidential letter written by a highly placed colleague in the Vatican's
Secretariat of State. It was a protest addressed to Giuseppe Cardinal
Pizzardo, the secretary of the Holy Office.
Years ago, I had occasion to read [The Power and the
Glory] which a priest had pointed out to me as a highly
significant work of contemporary romantic literature. It is
indeed a book of singular literary value.
I see that it is judged a sad book. I have no objection to
make to the just observations in the [censure of] this work.
But it seems to me that, in such a judgment, there is lacking
a sense of the work's substantial merits. They lie,
fundamentally, in its high quality of vindication, by
revealing a heroic fidelity to his own ministry within the
innermost soul of a priest who is in many respects
reprehensible; and the reader is led to esteem the priesthood
even if exercised by abject representatives ... I venture this
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/07/godman.htm (3 of 7) [11/28/2001 10:06:40 PM]