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by Graham Greene

How does good spoil, and how can bad be redeemed? In his penetrating novel The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene explores corruption and atonement through a priest and the people he encounters. In the 1930s one Mexican state has outlawed the Church, naming it a source of greed and debauchery. The priests have been rounded up and shot by firing squad--save one, the whisky priest. On the run, and in a blur of alcohol and fear, this outlaw meets a dentist, a banana farmer, and a village woman he knew six years earlier. For a while, he is accompanied by a toothless man--whom he refers to as his Judas and does his best to ditch. Always, an adamant lieutenant is only a few hours behind, determined to liberate his country from the evils of the church.

On the verge of reaching a safer region, the whisky priest is repeatedly held back by his vocation, even though he no longer feels fit to perform his rites: "When he was gone it would be as if God in all this space between the sea and the mountains ceased to exist. Wasn't it his duty to stay, even if they despised him, even if they were murdered for his sake? even if they were corrupted by his example?"

As his sins and dangers increase, the broken priest comes to confront the nature of piety and love. Still, when he is granted a reprieve, he feels himself sliding into the old arrogance, slipping it on like the black gloves he used to wear. Greene has drawn this man--and all he encounters--vividly and viscerally. He may have said The Power and the Glory was "written to a thesis," but this brilliant theological thriller has far more mysteries--and troubling ideals--than certainties. --Joannie Kervran Stangeland

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Historical Fiction, Literature, Religion, Novels, Book Club

225 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1940

About the author

Henry Graham Greene was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading novelists of the 20th century.
Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers (or "entertainments" as he termed them). He was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. Through 67 years of writing, which included over 25 novels, he explored the conflicting moral and political issues of the modern world. The Power and the Glory won the 1941 Hawthornden Prize and The Heart of the Matter won the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Best of the James Tait Black. Greene was awarded the 1968 Shakespeare Prize and the 1981 Jerusalem Prize. Several of his stories have been filmed, some more than once, and he collaborated with filmmaker Carol Reed on The Fallen Idol (1948) and The Third Man (1949).
He converted to Catholicism in 1926 after meeting his future wife, Vivienne Dayrell-Browning. Later in life he took to calling himself a "Catholic agnostic". He died in 1991, aged 86, of leukemia, and was buried in Corseaux cemetery in Switzerland. William Golding called Greene "the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety".

Reviews

[Jim Fonseca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Graham Greene is known as a “Catholic novelist” even though he objected to that description. I mention that because this book is one of his four novels, which, according to Wiki, source of all wisdom, “are the gold standard of the Catholic novel.” The other three are Brighton Rock, The Heart of the Matter, and The End of the Affair.

Like many other Greene novels, this one is set in a down-and-out environment in a Third World country. (Third World at least at the time Greene visited: Mexico and Africa in the 1930’s and 1940’s; Haiti, Cuba and the Congo in the 1950’s.) Greene’s travels around the world (including a stint as a British spy in WW II) informed many of his novels. This one, The Power and the Glory, was based on his travels in Mexico in 1938; The Comedians, Haiti; A Burnt Out Case, the Congo; Our Man in Havana, Cuba, and The Heart of the Matter, Sierra Leone.



Greene hit his literary stride in writing set in these destitute countries marked by starvation, disease, political tyranny, graft and corruption.

In this novel the focus is on anti-clericalism in Mexico in the 1930’s. Greene’s publisher specifically paid for his trip to Mexico for this purpose in 1938. Anti-clericalism has a long history in Mexico related to the Revolutions in 1860 and 1910 and the Constitution of 1917 which seized church land, outlawed monastic orders, banned public worship outside of churches, took away political rights from clergy and prohibited primary education by churches.

By the 1930’s the persecution of clergy had reached new heights, varying in each Mexican state depending upon the political inclinations of the governors. In Tabasco state, on the southernmost curve of the Gulf of Mexico, persecution was the worst and it’s likely the geographical setting of the story. We’re in a place of subsistence farming and banana plantations, days from any city by walking, mule or water. Churches here were closed and many destroyed. Priests were forbidden to wear garb or even conduct masses and many were forced to marry. The persecution escalated to the point where priests were hunted down by police and executed without trial.



On to the story: Our main character is a priest on the run because there is a reward on his head. He's not dressed as a priest but his diction and decorum as an educated man give him away. Just about everyone he meets assumes he’s a priest on the run.

But he’s a “whiskey priest,” addicted to his wine. He has also fathered an illegitimate child. At one point he meets his 7-year old daughter for the first time. Everywhere he goes crowds of peasants beseech him to perform a mass, conduct weddings and baptisms. Depending on his level of fear, sometimes, in despair, he ignores them and moves on; other times he conducts the sacraments. Sometimes he calculates how much he will charge for baptisms and how many bottles of wine the receipts will buy him. Because of his drinking, his illicit liaison, and his fear of death by firing squad, he feels unworthy of his role. He’s human.

We have other characters of course. A dentist, cut off by WW II from contact with his family in Europe, despairs of ever seeing them again. A precocious 13-year old runs the family plantation for her incapacitated parents. She hides the priest for a time. We have good cops/bad cops in pursuit of the priest; some want to see him killed and some try to help him. The priest can’t trust anyone --- an offer of help may be a trap to get the reward on his head --- a huge sum in this backwards, destitute world.

A few quotes:

He walked slowly; happiness drained out of him more quickly and completely than out of an unhappy man: an unhappy man is always prepared.

[A man talking to his wife] It’s not such a bad life…But he could feel her stiffen: the word “life” was taboo: it reminded you of death.

The woman began to cry – dryly, without tears, the trapped noise of something wanting to be released…

Of course, a classic.

Graham Greene is one of my favorite authors and I have read seven or eight of his novels. Below are links to my reviews of other novels of his:

The End of the Affair

The Quiet American (set in Vietnam)

The Third Man

Brighton Rock

The Comedians (set in Haiti)

The Heart of the Matter (set in British West Africa)

Photo from runyon.lib.utexas.edu
Anti-clerical logo from newworldencyclopedia.org

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not a few electronic evangelists nowadays think they're saving souls. The majority of these are actually not, really. They're only leading random drowning souls to the Island of Ethical Faith.

But Ethics means Zilch to the majority of victims of drowning.

And most of the drowning feel they're worthless, like the Whiskey Priest. The people or person they love has rejected them. And it's devilishly difficult for such modern introverts to develop a thick skin in a world of aggressive misinformation, especially when leaders endorse that world.

Gotta keep moving.

Water, water everywhere -
And not a drop to drink.

When the world nauseates us we don't exactly feel famished for facts. And if our faith in the world is broken the Island of Faith is self-negating nonsense. Truth is now a Movable Feast. Where do we turn?

Gotta keep moving.

Graham Greene's Whiskey Priest loves the poor all around him, but his faith comes at a price: strong drink is all that can assuage his hurt. And he must always keep on the run.

The sophisticates despise him but the broken love him.

To the lost, he's a beacon.

Freud says no one among us loves reality. We all need an anodyne.

To the Mexican government of the time, that anodyne was the power to destroy an enemy that has insulted their enlightened reason - like the Church. To Mexican sophisticates it was the power of irony.

But to the hopeless poor, it was this humble priest. 'Unless a seed dies and goes into the ground, it cannot be reborn': the Whiskey Priest has come to nothing and has gone to ground, like his Saviour.

Do you want to save souls, televangelists?

Take this novel to heart, then -

And crucify your pride first, like the little Whiskey Priest…

For he was dead to sin but Alive to Christ.

[Emily May · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've tried with Greene, I really have, but I've yet to read a story of his that truly grabs me and holds my attention.

For a short book of just over 200 pages, it felt like an endless waiting game. I kept waiting for the moment when I would connect to this "whisky priest", feel for him, and become immersed in his story. I kept waiting for an inexplicable something else to happen that would elevate the story and make it more interesting to me. I kept waiting... and then suddenly it was the end.

The best aspect of The Power and the Glory is that it introduced me to an area of Mexican history I knew little about-- La Cristiada. This was a time when Catholicism was outlawed, and in some areas of Mexico the ban was enforced with violence. Catholics were tortured and executed; churches were fired upon. But that premise is where my interest ends.

The rest of the story follows a whisky priest on the run in rural Tabasco. He moves around, evades capture and ruminates over Catholic doctrine. Themes of duty, faith, sin and a heavy serving of Catholic guilt abound. Sound interesting? Then this is the book for you.

[Fabian · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can never go wrong with this guy—most definitely dude's on my Top Ten of All-Time favorite novelists. You cannot ask for crisper prose: the dialogue is practically in audio, the descriptions themselves cause impressive bouts with synesthesia. I cannot think of a single writer that is without flaw—the closest to that super-man would be Graham Greene.

That being said, this is my least favorite novel of his thus far; and it is interesting to note that this one is widely hailed as his masterpiece. No sir, that title goes to “The Quiet American", a thunderbolt of supreme genius. But I even preferred “Brighton Rock”, too. Here, like in that one, Greene creates his own orb around a very fickle, very risque topic: religion (and, most specifically [not, of course, my favorite at all:] Catholicism). It is a very hard thesis to substantiate (that the search for God transcends the church) and yet the different facets in the tests and shortcomings of a very human, very counter-effective “whisky” priest proves just how false the whole enterprise is… and yet religion, it seems, is a must. I really did not side with any particular point of view, just enjoyed the ride—and it’s sort of like Cather’s “Death Comes to the Archbishop,” only better (an accomplishment without a doubt). It is ambitious and harsh, beautiful and devastating--Mexico is there, & yet not. It is cinematic and simultaneously personal. I will read ALL his others, for here's a novel to discover, & after some time naturally, to rediscover.

[Valeriu Gherghel · Rating 4 out of 5]

„Moartea începea să-l atragă prin felul în care simplifica lucrurile...” (p.203).

Firește, preotul din Puterea și gloria are toate păcatele: e alcoolic, i se spune „popa Țuică = Whisky priest”, a făcut și un copil, pe Brigitta, deși clerul catolic e obligat să respecte abstinența etc. Dar e singurul preot care a ales să rămînă într-un ținut din Mexic, Tabasco, stăpînit de revoluționari atei. Ceilalți clerici ori au renunțat la slujbă (precum padre José, renegatul), ori au fost uciși. A rezistat doar el.

Omul „sărman, rău îmbrăcat, uscățiv”, care cerșește brandy cu o „umilință ostilă” (p.59), continuă în pofida amenințărilor să-i împărtășească pe oameni, să-i asculte, să-i boteze, să spună o rugăciune la căpătîiul defuncților, să-i urmeze la cimitir.

Trăiește o viață de pribeag. Nu are un acoperiș. Doarme pe unde apucă. E hăituit de poliție. Suferă adesea de foame și sete. Fiica lui, Brigitta, îl disprețuiește. E ros mereu de îndoieli: „Dar eu nu-s un sfînt... Nu sînt nici măcar un om curajos” (p.300). Se consideră mai mult rău decît bun: „Răul circula prin venele lui precum malaria” (p.272). Poate fugi din țară (și chiar o face pentru cîteva zile), dar se întoarce resemnat tocmai pentru a-și urma soarta de preot mărunt, mult îndurător, cu greșeli strigătoare la cer și cu momente de vădită sfințenie. Ceea ce nu uită el niciodată e umilința. Știe că va muri...

Oare cum se va descurca Dumnezeu cu acest păcătos?

Un roman care dă de gîndit. Nu-l ratați...

P. S. Se înțelege că romanul lui Graham Greene i-a iritat pe unii prelați catolici. Ei n-au putut sesiza deosebirea dintre o ficțiune și un reportaj și au văzut în Puterea și gloria un pamflet la adresa catolicismului...

[Orsodimondo · Rating 4 out of 5]

LA CROCE DI FERRO



Credo che sia servito tutto il grande talento di Graham Greene per farmi amare romanzi dove la religione è così presente, il senso di colpa nella sua malefica variante cattolica, la fede e dio e compagnia cantante. Di solito mi ritraggo tra lo spaventato e l’infastidito: nel suo caso, invece, mi immergo con passione e fede (unicamente nelle sue capacità letterarie).
Qui, i riferimenti compaiono sin dal titolo: tuo il regno e la potenza e la gloria nei tempi recita nel finale quella preghiera chiamata “Padre nostro”.



Il fatto è che con Greene si gira il mondo, si viaggia. Andando a memoria: Vietnam, Haiti, Cuba, Sud America, Sudafrica, Africa Occidentale, Turchia… E qui, siamo nel Messico degli anni Trenta, durante il tentativo di arginare lo strapotere cattolico attraverso quella che è passata alla storia col soprannome di Guerra Cristera.
Il protagonista è un prete che ha un nick che è tutto un programma, Padre Whiskey: è l’unico nome col quale compare nel romanzo (che Greene giudicava il suo migliore).
Padre Whisky ha conosciuto la carne di una donna e ha generato una figlia. Ha quindi peccato: al punto che lui stesso riterrebbe giusto essere punito:
Cinque anni prima aveva ceduto alla disperazione, il peccato imperdonabile, e adesso stava tornando sulla scena della sua disperazione con una curiosa leggerezza del cuore. Era un cattivo prete, lo sapeva. La gente aveva un nomignolo per quelli come lui: preti spugna, whisky priest; ma, a una a una, le mancanze sparivano dalla vista e dalla memoria, per accumularsi in qualche luogo segreto: le macerie della sua indegnità.



Ma la repressione anticattolica in atto in quegli anni in quella parte del paese, la regione del Tabasco, che lo costringe a vivere in fuga perenne, nascondendosi a occhi umani, muovendosi solo di notte, finisce col fare di lui una vittima. Anzi, un martire, per restare nella terminologia della sua religione.
E come un martire si avvia alla punizione finale, consapevolmente assecondando il traditore che lo consegna al plotone d’esecuzione.
I soldati che lo inseguono hanno messo una taglia sulla sua testa. E non solo: adottano una nota tattica antiguerriglia secondo la quale, dovunque si ritiene che il prete sia passato, e quindi sia stato aiutato dagli abitanti, vengono presi ostaggi poi fucilati. I morti innocenti aumentano, e nel “prete spugna” cresce il senso di colpa.



Peraltro in quella zona s’aggira anche un misterioso gringo che ruba uccidendo perfino le donne e i bambini: le colpe dell’uno vengono fatte ricadere sull’altro. E sarà proprio per soccorrere il malvagio gringo che Padre Whisky andrà incontro alla sua sorte.
E nonostante la sua precaria fedeltà all’abito talare, il prete ubriacone sparge perle di saggezza profonda che fanno struggere anche me: forse il male non è altro che mancanza d’immaginazione, il male vede e riconosce solo il male, mentre il bene è in grado di andare anche oltre il male e scorgere cosa lo motiva, riesce a vedere il bene dentro le pieghe e le piaghe della nostra esistenza confusa
Questa scala di colpa, questa gradazione tra bene e male, che sembra escludere il male assoluto, è usata da Greene anche nel descrivere tutti gli altri personaggi: la donna, la bambina, l’ufficiale che gli da la caccia, il prete traditore… E così altrettanto nel descrivere il paesaggio di un Messico a tinte forti, sole accecante, aridità, odore di marcio: ma niente riesce a rendere quella terra meno accogliente grazie alla pietas del mio amato scrittore.



Alla fine la gloria è proprio quella del prete ubriacone.
Presumo che grazie a quella specie di gioco delle tre carte che i credenti di questa religione fanno tra volontà di potenza e libero arbitrio, per Greene anche il potere fosse dalla sua parte.
Ma su questa seconda strada riesco a seguirlo con maggiore difficoltà.

Nonostante il titolo ricorra spesso, credo che l’unico film, peraltro ispirato e non basato sul romanzo, sia quello di John Ford del 1947 dove il prete è il sempre magnifico Henry Fonda: nel film il paese dove si svolge la storia non viene mai nominato, e il prete, per quanto perseguitato come nel romanzo, è un sacerdote irreprensibile. Il titolo originale è a sua volta quasi abusato, The Fugitive, che in italiano diventò La croce di ferro.


Il regista e l’attore protagonista sul set.

[Megha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This little gem turned out to be quite a surprise. It is indeed powerful and it is glorious. Greene's writing seems really simple and is easy to read, and yet is so full of meaning. I am still soaking it all in.

As the lead character, the 'whiskey-priest', moves from one place to another, Greene takes us along on a journey taut with suspense and tension. However, it is really his moral journey which is the most captivating. We not only witness the priest's struggle to escape, we also get to look into his tormented soul and his ambivalence. He is constantly torn between following what his religious faith has taught him while his worldly sense seems to make more practical sense. He feels guilty for his sins, but he loves the fruit of his sin. He almost wishes that he be caught so that he could be rid of the fear and the misery. But doesn't his faith teach him that it is his duty to save his soul? He has sinned and is immoral, but he is also full of compassion and love for fellow human beings.
A question that haunts the priest and the reader throughout is whether he will find redemption and if his soul will achieve salvation? Or do immoralities and sins always overshadow a man's goodness? Greene makes it so easy for one to understand his characters. The priest, with his virtues and his flaws, feels like a very real person. It is not at all difficult to imagine such a person walking some part of this earth in flesh.

While we read the thoughts and the convictions of the priest, the lieutenant serves as the opposing voice. Both have some ideals which I do not completely agree with, but I also don't consider either of them to be totally wrong. I also liked that the priest and the lieutenant, though rivals, are able to see the good in each other and have mutual respect. Through these two characters, Greene brings forth the impermanence of beliefs through which one defines what is "right". Life can always take such turns that one's firmly believed ideals cease to make sense anymore.

As the journey proceeds and we encounter various places and characters, Greene also reveals the misery, poverty, disease and utter desolation that has engulfed these wastelands. He captures the feeling of the place and the moment with just the right words. Through his words, you can almost feel the oppressive heat or the thundering rainstorm or the tranquility and freshness of an early morning. Different characters that we meet give a sense of how bleak and despairing their life is. There is a person who cannot shirk off the idea of death, there is another with a desperate cheerfulness who has to constantly remind himself that he is happy. There are several instances where we see the difference between the world-view of adults and children. Adults who have known better times and have only those memories to draw any happiness from. While the only world their children have seen is this world of misery. These children haven't known what happiness, hope or faith means. They have matured before they have aged. All the playfulness and innocence of childhood has been drained away.

Another frequently encountered theme is that of abandonment. The words 'abandoned', 'abandonment' crop up very often..be it a man who has abandoned his family, a child abandoned by her father, a man deserted in the forest. However, what Greene is really hinting at is the abandonment of this land and its people. They are cut-off from the rest of the world to rot in suffering, while the world and civilization outside progress. The future holds no promises, all hope and faith has vanished. Life has ceased to have any meaning, God himself has ceased to exist. Death is an everyday affair for them and life is just a duty to be performed from day-to-day without ever knowing its joy and charm.

She said: "I would rather die."
"Oh," he said, "of course. That goes without saying. But we have to go on living."

"She was one of those garrulous women who show to strangers the photographs of their children: but all she had to show was coffin."

For the most part the novel is bleak and grim, but it speaks of hope as well.

"It is one of the strange discoveries a man makes that life, however you lead it, contains moments of exhilaration: there are always comparisons which can be made with worse times:even in danger and misery the pendulum swings."

Greene also reminds us of how peace and beauty can exist in the smallest of moments, which people often fail to notice until it has been left far behind.

"It was nearly like peace, but not quite. For peace you needed human company-his alone-ness was like a threat of things to come. Suddenly he remembered - for no apparent reason - a day of rain at the American seminary, the glass windows of the library steamed over with central heating, the tall shelves of sedate books, and a young man - a stranger from Tucson - drawing his initials on the pane with his finger - that was peace. He looked at it from outside: he couldn't believe he would ever again get in."

There is so much more I have to say about this novel, I could never cover it all in a review. Let me just say it is so very human.

[Kimber Silver · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Perhaps all life was like that—dull and then a heroic flurry at the end."

The Power and the Glory, set in 1930s Mexico during a period of state persecution against the Catholic Church, follows a whisky priest on the run and a police lieutenant who vows to rid his small corner of the world of its clergy. Their paths, fraught with danger and moral dilemmas, intersect with a group of unfortunate characters, each of whom profoundly impacts the fate of both men.

Mr. Tench was the whisky priest's first encounter at a port where they both searched for their own version of freedom.

"A few vultures looked down from the roof with shabby indifference: he wasn’t carrion yet."

A dentist by trade, Mr. Tench, had come to Mexico from England nearly twenty years earlier and found the country to be a bit like the Hotel California — he'd checked out long ago but could never leave. As the doleful dentist and the camouflaged cleric share a glass of bootlegged brandy while waiting for a boat, fate intervenes and pulls the padre back into the bowels of a country from which he was not likely to escape.

"There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in. We should be thankful we cannot see the horrors and degradations lying around our childhood, in cupboards and bookshelves, everywhere."

This was not a story to be rushed. I found myself reflecting on how prejudice can cloud our vision. Life is vast, and we limit ourselves when we close our hearts to other perspectives. Some passages halted my reading, leaving me to gaze into the distance as I basked in their brilliance. The narrative was a potent exploration of darkness, with occasional rays of hope to light the way.

The praise I've seen for this book is well deserved. The elegant writing alone makes it a five-star winner.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Greene had an unerring eye for the sanctity of human weakness and the ominousness of human strength.

I am re-reading this book now and am amazed all over again by how Greene makes such poetry out of such mundane horror. The hunted and haunted "whiskey priest" is a compellingly tragic figure, and the idealistic fanatic policeman prefigures not only Cormac McCarthy in Blood Meridien but also so much modern wartime folly. "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it," is a line that seems to come straight from this tale.

There is a certain inevitability to this story as it unfolds. Nothing is hidden, there are no surprises, the man you think will turn in the priest does, and the priest's fate is what he always assumed it would be. Still the sheer humanity of the tale makes it a compelling page-turner. While you know what will happen, you desperately don't want it to. But the priest himself has no hope, and therein lies both his tragedy and his salvation.

[Mark Porton · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s 1930s Mexico, and we follow an ‘outlaw’ priest on the run. A priest who – I’m not sure if 'self-loathing' is the right term – is struggling with his belief that he is a bad priest.

The internal struggles of a Catholic Priest's heart and mind, which to me seem fairly pointless, as they appear to be self-imposed, and also the internal conflicts created by religion such as witnessed here, is something I have little interest in.

A couple of hundred pages of this was painful.

I now understand Greene converted to Catholicism in the late 1920s. I have also learned that his books seem to be classified into two genres. First, the entertainment, suspense novels, and second, the more literary type, such as this work dealing with matters of faith.

Note to self: I must remember to avoid the latter like the plague.

However, I didn’t want this drab affair to go to waste as the history is fascinating, albeit terribly violent. Mexico during this period was destroying churches and shooting priests to move towards a secular society. Alcohol was also banned. Tens of thousands of people on both sides (Government and Christian) sadly died during this conflict. So, it was interesting from a historical perspective.

My fascination came after reading this book. I had no relationship with any of the characters, and I found the plot a tad diffuse. I couldn’t wait for it to finish.

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here we have a novel which takes faith at face value which for an atheist reader is a bit of a thwack round the fizzog with a wet towel. This novel is all about the confession and all about the Mass. (And a little bit about the baptism too.) And the reality behind these rituals is that if they aren’t done properly (by a priest) YOU yes YOU could end up going to HELL because you might then die in a state of mortal sin, i.e. outside the reach of the grace of God, these are the rules, don’t look at me like that, it’s tough I know, because Hell means infinite pain for all eternity and God will be okay with that because He created Hell and created these complicated rules so you better get a priest over right NOW since you’re looking a bit green and your eyes are puffy. You could keel over at any minute.

So babies will get roasted in Hell if they don’t get baptized? So when the priest blesses the bread it then TRANSUBSTANTIATES into the actual body of Christ which is God although it still looks like bread, so that when the priest puts it in the mouths of his faithful flock he is putting God into their mouths literally? (this is what the priest in this novel says).

The first thing I think when confronted with these concepts, which millions have believed and still believe, is that I’m glad I don’t believe this kind of stuff because it seems to be very bad for your mental health which Graham Greene amply demonstrates. And it’s this exact kind of stuff which so outraged the guys who made the Mexican revolution in the 1920s that they set about crushing and destroying the Catholic Church, to the extent of hunting down and shooting priests. And I was completely unaware of that! So when I was reading Graham Greene’s novel and I found it was about a priest being hunted down by the military not because he’s a criminal but because he’s a priest I was like….. wow. Heavy. And this really happened? Yes, it really did, in Mexico, between 1926 and 1934.



Two things about this particular priest – he’s not got a name. Now why do authors do this – have their protagonist being all nameless? It just makes it a bit portentous. That wasn’t good. The other thing is that he’s a whisky priest, the definition of which is that he’s a bad one, an alcoholic, he’s fathered a child, he’s not very pious. He spends many pages desperately trying to get his hands on a bottle of brandy or two.

The whole novel is about him being hunted up mountain and down canyon often on the back of a mule (just like Jesus!) by the also-nameless lieutenant. He’s now the last priest in the state, all others having been shot or they’ve vamoosed or they’ve been forced to marry a woman (no! – fate worse than death to a priest!) and so been de-fanged. But our Father Nameless has ducked and dived for eight years but now he’s getting to the end of his tether. As Martha and the Vandellas sang in 1964, there’s nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide. No village will give him shelter, every man could be his Judas Iscariot.

So why didn’t this very bad priest just take a slow boat to China or give up and get married? After all, this isn’t some brave wanna-be martyr for the Holy Roman Apostolic Catholic Church. He’s a sniveling whining self-loathing reptile most of the time. But he himself provides a great explanation. When he realized he was the last priest in his state, he was filled with euphoria. Now at last there were no fellow priests to sneer at his drunken lacksadaisical ways. He could make his own rules up! He could be exactly the kind of priest he damn well wanted to be and no one to give him a hard time any more!

I think that the novel wants in the end to show that martyrdom for the true faith can happen even in the squalor of this unpleasant man’s life, and that the power and the glory may sometimes be located in the filth and the vileness. Something along those lines, I wasn’t too sure of the moral of it all. What it meant to me was something quite different

This was is a surprisingly savage nasty grim miseryfest, a real feel-bad book for Catholics, atheists and Mexicans alike.

[Lorna · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Power and the Glory has often been considered Graham Greene’s masterpiece in his beloved literary works. This book was published in 1940 after Greene had visited Mexico in the late 1930s gathering material for the book. The novel’s hero is known as the “whiskey priest” and is on the run from Mexican authorities after a state governor has ordered the military to dismantle all vestiges of the Catholic faith. The novel follows the journey of the “whiskey priest” as he evades state persecution in the 1930s. Churches are burned and relics, medals and crosses are banned. Any disobedience is punishable by death. This unnamed priest travels in secret, celebrating Mass and hearing confessions under the cover of darkness. Yet this priest is also a flawed man consumed by his own vices and his religious ambition of his earlier years has been replaced by a constant desire to drink. He is a deeply flawed man. This is a violent and raw novel about suffering, strained faith and ultimate redemption. The Power and the Glory speaks to the relationship between a priest’s humanity and God’s divinity and redemption. This is shown vividly throughout the novel in how this broken and fallen man’s life brings grace and humanity to others. This was a beautiful book, albeit a little gritty, to read during the Christmas season.

“Already clouds were darkening the heavens, and President Calles was discussing the anti-Catholic laws in the Palace at Chapultepec. The devil was ready to assail poor Mexico.”

“He knew he was in the grip of the unforgivable sin, despair.”

“That was another mystery: it sometimes seemed to him venial sins—impatience, an unimportant lie, pride, a neglected opportunity—cut you off from grace more completely than the worst sins of all. Then, in his innocence, he had felt no love for anyone; now in his corruption he had learnt. . .”

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first Greene I have read in years and it is a powerful novel. It is set in Mexico and Greene has spent some time there in research. The novel is about a priest; a whisky priest in a province of Mexico where the Catholic Church is banned and priests are shot. The unnamed protagonist is a bad priest and a drunkard who has also fathered a child. He is also a coward.
The title is taken from the end of The Lord's Prayer and there is religious imagery all over the place. The priest rides a donkey to his inevitable capture (having been given a chance to escape), the peasant who betrays him is Judas. Most of the other characters can be seen to represent someone in the gospel narratives; Maria, padre Jose, Tench etc. The priest is a very imperfect Christ and the Lieutenant a very implacable reperesentative of authority who is ultimately moved by the priest. The Lieutenant plays a much larger role than Pilate does in the gospels, but there is a "What is truth" Moment.
The book represents Greene's own struggles with faith and the Church. There are also themes relating to abandonment, desolation, hope and the bleakness of everyday life for the poor. Greene's descriptive powers are very powerful and you can feel the stifling heat.
This is a thought provoking piece and managed to offend Catholics and atheists in equal measure; quite a neat trick. I've known a few whisky priests in my time and remember one particular church and rectory which was locally christened St Glenfiddich's because of the drinking habits of the incumbent. He didn't seem to do a great deal apart from drink, but when the alcohol finally got him everyone turned out for the funeral and he was rather fondly remembered. The whisky priest here doesn't do a great deal apart from move around and perform any religious duties he was forced to by the locals. There is something here perhaps about being rather than doing.
While I don't share Greene's faith it is an interesting and powerful novel with more hidden layers than I first perhaps realised

[Luís · Rating 3 out of 5]

During a book fair organized in my village, I was surprised to find this book by Graham Greene, which I had discovered as a teenager and had forgotten.
The story takes place around 1930 in Mexico. The communist revolutionaries hunt down and shoot priests who refuse to deny their faith. Finally, an undercover priest, the last exercising the profession, is pursued by a convinced Communist lieutenant. This hunted priest has alcoholism and is the father of a little girl he had with one of his parishioners.
A price is placing his head. His pursuers threaten to execute the villagers who come to his aid.
That's a vital text, not always easy to follow, but a significant work for the great Catholic writer Graham Greene.

[Laysee · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Power and the Glory is a powerful novel that is unashamed to reveal the inglorious that resides in human nature and the real struggles the best of us encounter in trying to rise above our limitations. The protagonist is an unnamed whisky priest who is all too acutely aware that he is unfit for office.

The story is set in the southern Mexican state of Tabasco in the 1930s when the Catholic Church was outlawed by the revolutionary government. It was a time of religious persecution and a capital offence to function as a priest. All priests are to be shot unless they conform to the governor’s law to marry. The whisky priest is the last priest alive on the run, hotly pursued by a police lieutenant who despises the Catholic Church and everything it stands for.

A reward is placed on the head of the priest. In every village the priest has visited and given shelter, hostages are taken and killed unless they turn him in. I followed the whisky priest’s desperate shuttling from place to place to avoid capture with fear and trembling. It soon became clear that even though the priest is an alcoholic and has fathered a child, and continues to struggle with elements of the faith, he is moved by the suffering of others. On many occasions when he is at risk of being arrested, he has visited the dying, conducted Mass, listened to the confession of the people at their insistence, and even extended help to an outcast whom he knew will betray him. Yet, at other times he is not above charging the poor for baptism and bargaining with cantina owners for liquor, including wrestling the last chicken bone from a lame dog. He is ashamed and mortified. He encounters kindness from people he meets while on the run, and is moved by their extraordinary affection and companionship.

What stood out was Greene’s ability to bare the whisky priest’s soul to us. He is tortured by his failings and unworthiness. Yet, he is honest in not being able to repent and is ashamed of his empty prayers of contrition and even habit of piety. What struck me the most is his palpable humanity. Reading his painful struggles, it is impossible to be self-righteous and think I can do better. The dominant feeling I had toward this priest is one of pity. The last section that documented his fate was heartbreaking.

I was left with one thought after the last page was turned. Perhaps, there are no saints. There are only fallible human beings who sometimes, in rare moments of better judgment, succeed in showing kindness and compassion toward others.

The Power and the Glory is considered Greene’s masterpiece and worthwhile reading.

[Perry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Classic Parable, 1930s Mexico, Paramount Importance Today
"A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him." George Orwell, "Shooting an Elephant," 1950.

Greene was driven to write this sympathetic novel about persecution of Mexican priests after visiting the Mexican province of Tabasco in 1938 at the height of the Mexican anti-clerical purge of Marxist revolutionaries. Upon returning home, Greene called it the "fiercest persecution of religion anywhere since the reign of Elizabeth." [Note: obviously this was before the Nazis' slaughter of millions of Jews during WW II.]

The Power and the Glory is Greene's nearly flawless parable of dualities in society and within us: good vs. evil, spirituality vs. materialism, love vs. hate, and the freedom of the individual versus the intrusive and paternalistic state.

Greene based the novel on the life of a real-life whiskey priest who "existed for ten years in the forest and swamps, venturing out only at night." It is structured as a game of cat and mouse between the priest and an unnamed Communist police lieutenant as part of an attempt to eradicate the country of Catholicism.

The lieutenant despises the church and is obsessed with capturing the priest to execute him for the greater good of the state. The communists' attempts backfired, turning the priest into a martyr in the eyes of the people.

To me, the novel's focus on hope and redemption and the lessons of Greene's realistic parable make it a classic. The whiskey priest is a significantly flawed man, a bad alcoholic, who has been scandalized by fathering a child in a night of weakness with a peasant woman. He is acutely aware of his defects and failures as both a man and a priest. Although a man of the cloth with faith in a hereafter, he is terrified of pain and of death, and thus acknowledges his doubt. His knowledge of self elevates him to the level of heroic in the novel, as he is redeemed by his conviction that he is responsible for his sins and the suffering he has brought on others, especially on his illegitimate daughter.

He especially feels a sharp pain when seeing her--she's around 10--because she seems to have lost her innocence way too soon and thus he sees her as having scant hope for pleasure and happiness in the world. His love for her and sense of responsibility for her plight, her ruined purity crush the man: "The world was in her heart already like the small spot of decay in a fruit." So, through the sin of her conception and the love he has for her, he finds salvation, even in his darkest hour as the chase by the lieutenant and police force gets tighter and closer.

Though dark and tense, this novel is so hopeful in Greene's vision and truth that even a most flawed man can achieve redemption if he can humbly accept his fallibility and responsibility for his sins and the harm he has caused others. Indeed, such a man can gain back respect and even be admired to the point of being heroic.

In today's world where our leaders spew spastic shit daily in 140 characters under a tweety bird, full of noxious narcissism, always passing the buck and refusing to admit even the possibility of their human fallibility or a sense of responsibility when things go wrong, this parable seems a particularly important read for young adults and a must-read reminder to the rest of us of our greater selves.

[°°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ʜᴇʟᴇɴ Ροζουλί Εωσφόρος ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°° ★·.·´¯`·.·★ Ⓥⓔⓡⓝⓤⓢ Ⓟⓞⓡⓣⓘⓣⓞⓡ Ⓐⓡⓒⓐⓝⓤⓢ Ταμετούρο Αμ · Rating 3 out of 5]

«Η δύναμις και η δόξα» είναι ένα μυθιστόρημα καταδίωξης και απόπειρας φιλοσοφικής / ιδεολογικής έκφρασης με αρώματα απο κίτρινο λιβάνι,
κόκκινο κρασί, πράσινο βάλτο, ανθρώπινη λάσπη
και αίμα, μιας ιερής αυτοαναιρούμενης
Καθολικής - Κομμουνιστικής συνείδησης.

Η πλοκή και η αγωνιώδης εξέλιξη της ιστορίας μας λαμβάνει χώρα στην Λατινική Αμερική όπου απεικονίζεται με έντονο και παραστατικό τρόπο η επιβάρυνση μιας εξαθλιωμένης πλέον κοινωνίας απο διαφθορά, βία και ιδεολογική τυραννία.

Στο Μεξικό την δεκαετία του 1930 κάτω απο ένα βάναυσο καθεστώς ιδεολόγων που θα μπορούσαν να είναι φασίστες ή κομμουνιστές χωρίς την παραμικρή διαφορά, επικρατεί με απόλυτη βασανιστική και απάνθρωπη διαφθορά χρησιμότητας μία εξουσία ολοκληρωτική, η οποία αναπόφευκτα καταλήγει σε έναν ευρύτερα κατανοητό φασισμό Καθολικής εξάπλωσης και γενικής παραίτησης.

Η καταδίωξη ενός ιερέα εθισμένου στο ποτό, πνιγμένου απο ιδεοληψίες και τύψεις αγάπης για το εξώγαμο παιδί του και τις κοσμικές του αξιώσεις για εκμετάλλευση είναι όλη η πλοκή και η «πυρηνική» μας βάση.
Γύρω απο την αυτήν υπάρχουν πολλά πρόσωπα και σκληρές σκηνές δορυφορικής λειτουργίας που υποδύονται την προδοσία, την ξιπασιά, την αγνότητα, την ελπίδα, την απάθεια, τη δυστυχία και την συγκατάβαση.
Ο φοβικός μεθυσμένος ιερέας της αυτοθυσίας αντιστέκεται στην θρησκευτική απαξίωση της εξουσίας και αρνείται να αποποιηθεί τους ιερούς του όρκους ενώ παράλληλα προσελκύεται ολοένα και πιο πολύ προς τη δική του εξολόθρευση μέσω ψυχολογικών καταναγκασμών.

Η προφανής συσχέτιση της αναπόφευκτα αμαρτωλής θυσίας του παπαμέθυσου με εκείνη του Ιησού Χριστού φαίνεται να ειναι η κεντρική ιδέα του βιβλίου.
Ασφαλώς υπάρχει και άλλη εξήγηση για την δέσμευση του ιερέα.
Θα μπορούσε η χριστιανική ιεροσύνη να προνοεί μια δέσμευση κοινωνικής αρχιτεκτονικής όπου
ο καλός/κακός καταδιωκόμενος είναι το ίδιο
καλός/κακός με τον διώκτη του.

Η δύναμις και η δόξα ανήκει στα πολύ καλά έργα της λογοτεχνίας, όμως προσωπικά τα φιλοσοφικά- θρησκευτικά- ιδεολογικά μηνύματα του συγγραφέα με απέκρουσαν διανοητικά σε μεγάλο βαθμό.


Καλή ανάγνωση!
Πολλούς ασπασμούς.

[Adam Dalva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary, my favorite of the Greenes I’ve read, like a kinetic action scene with some slowed down sequences out of Dostoyevsky, and a touch of The Night of the Hunter. Goodness I loved this book.

[Jason Koivu · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Power and the Glory is the sort of title to inspire readers to great deeds, pushing beyond the bounds of normal reading capabilities to turn pages at superhuman speed! But alas no. And why not? Afterall, the premise is promising...

A cynical, whiskey priest sneaks about the poor, rural lands of southern Mexico, evading capture for the treasonous action of being a priest. The question is whether he's on the lam to preach the word of god or to save his own neck.

I haven't read much Graham Greene, but what I have read makes me think Greene could turn a phrase and slap a good sentence together right up there with some of the best of them. The problem seems to be his plots. They don't punch you like you expect. I always seemed to be waiting for something more out of this book and it never came, and this isn't the first time it's happened with a Greene book.

Straight out of college I made a pledge to read through the works of respected authors. I powered through Kafka and then Camus. Both were exciting or at least interesting. In hindsight, I think I read them both at the perfect time in my life.

Next up was Greene. He wrote over two dozen novels, and then there were plays, screenplays, children's books, travel journals, short story collections. Out of all that, all I managed to read was The Man Within, his less than spectacular first attempt at a novel. Such were the deflating affects of that ho-hum experience that twenty years passed before I picked up my second Greene, A Gun For Sale aka This Gun For Hire. It wasn't great, but it was good enough to reignite my interest. Since then I've renewed my pledge, but with lowered expectations. I just don't think I'll be able to bulldoze through his work.

If only his work was a bit more exciting. As you read on a growing sense that nothing will be resolved starts to envelope you, and if you're a person that likes resolution, you're up shit's creek paddle-less, my friend. If you let the current take you, you'll float along into a boggy morass of self-doubt and moral ambiguity, where you're left to stew in unpleasant juices (<<< like contemplating a poorly mixed metaphor). Graham Greene writes thinking man's books and I don't mean books for smart folk necessarily. I mean he intends you to ponder his ideas well after you've put the book down. The Power and the Glory is just such a book. That's fine, but couldn't he have managed both? Say perhaps, a thinking man's thriller? I'm just asking for a little more spark. It would make me leap to his next book!

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

“He knew now that at the end there was only one thing that counted-- to be a saint.”--Greene

I have always listed this book among the top ten novels of my life, but have not read it for many years. I agree with John Updike, who says of the book, “This is Greene’s masterpiece. The energy and grandeur of his finest novel derive from the will toward compassion, and an ideal communism even more Christian than Communist.” I just reread Greene’s The Heart of the Matter, which I found terrific, but darker than Power and the Glory, which though also dark, sings in places, and is ultimately moving, and unforgettable. And to this agnostic (me, I mean), he makes a powerful case for some kind of faith in love, even possibly God's love:

“'Oh,' the priest said, 'God is love. I don't say the heart doesn't feel a taste of it, but what a taste. The smallest glass of love mixed with a pint pot of ditch-water. We wouldn't recognize that love. It might even look like hate. It would be enough to scare us--God's love. It set fire to a bush in the desert, and smashed open graves. Oh, a man like me would run a mile to get away if he felt that love around.’”

And it’s a particular kind of love that this priest and Greene explore, one for the poor, the indigent, and not the love of the Crystal Cathedral and the comfortably rich.

The Power and the Glory is one of four “Catholic” novels from Greene (also including The End of the Affair and Brighton Park), though all of them feature struggles with faith worthy of Dostoevsky and J. M. Coetzee. This is a pilgrimage novel—such as John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, or even Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, in a way, a story of hope and love in the darkest of times. The whiskey priest is stripped of every religious vestment, his life reduced to bare spiritual essentials. He’s not a saint, he’s very much a human being with deep flaws who continues to serve as a priest and keep his faith in God.

Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation was in part intended to address what were seen as abuses of the Roman Catholic Church, which some had seen as getting rich and fat as the poor suffered. This was also the idea behind the Red Shirt anti-clericalism of Mexico in the thirties, where priests were forced to marry, and the Church and indeed all evidence of religion was eventually--for a time--banned. Priests who did not renounce their faith were at one point rounded up and shot. Those who didn’t turn over priests in some towns were taken hostage and shot. It is in this context Greene writes of the last priest in the state of Tabasco, who had fathered a child whom he loves, though it is evidence of his "sin," his "adultery."

The whiskey priest can hear the confessions of people wherever he goes, but he himself can't yet renounce his own transgressions.

“When we love the fruit of our sin we are damned indeed,” the whiskey priest thinks. But he can’t repent this sin, because he loves her, of course, which of course makes so much sense for all of us.

The priest also drinks, and he is afraid of the death that he is faced with as the authorities hunt him down, as he is tracked down by a character he knows as “Judas” again and again. Pomp and “respectability” are taken from him, as he, like Jesus, goes among the poor, the destitute.

“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 the glory lay around the death; it was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or civilization--it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt.”

His is an identity by subtraction--almost a kind of Buddhist renunciation, or maybe John Calvin and Martin Luther's stripping down the Church in their Protestant moment to the bare, unadorned essentials of faith--as he loses everything he has owned, is reduced to rags, without shoes. And still he performs the Mass as he shuffles from village to village, hearing confessions of people as he goes.

And his nemesis in this tale is a red shirt atheist/Communist lieutenant who hates the Church and its indulgences, and hates the priest, too, for not taking an active role against poverty: “It infuriated him to think that there were still people in the state who believed in a loving and merciful God. There are mystics who are said to have experienced God directly. He was a mystic, too, and what he had experienced was vacancy--a complete certainty in the existence of a dying, cooling world, of human beings who had evolved from animals for no purpose at all. He knew.”

There are powerful images of spiritual anguish in this book, such as this one of an encounter on the road between the priest and a woman whose baby has died, who carries him in search of a blessing, maybe searching for a miracle:

“The woman had gone down on her knees and was shuffling slowly across the cruel ground towards the group of crosses: the dead baby rocked on her back. When she reached the tallest cross she unhooked the child and held the face against the wood and afterwards the loins: then she crossed herself, not as ordinary Catholics do, but in a curious and complicated pattern which included the nose and ears. Did she expect a miracle? And if she did, why should it not be granted her? the priest wondered. Faith, one was told, could move mountains, and here was faith--faith in the spittle that healed the blind man and the voice that raised the dead. The evening star was out: it hung low down over the edge of the plateau: it looked as if it was within reach: and a small hot wind stirred. The priest found himself watching the child for some movement. When none came, it was as if God had missed an opportunity. The woman sat down, and taking a lump of sugar from her bundle, began to eat, and the child lay quiet at the foot of the cross. Why, after all, should we expect God to punish the innocent with more life?”

This is a powerful novel of spiritual depth, one of my favorite books ever. When I first read it I was a Christian, and again when I taught it, and now think of myself as an agnostic, but I was still very moved by this book again all the way through. I don't think you have to be religious to strive for some kind of meaning in bleak circumstances. Greene was once asked where he imagined the whiskey priest might be, in the afterlife, and he answered “purgatory,” which is to say neither saint nor damned, but as a deeply flawed and sympathetic human being who loves his daughter, who makes him realize: “We must love the whole world as if it were a single child.” With that kind of love, then, you could have some chance of changing the world. You don't have to be religious to understand that kind of love and commitment to goodness.

[Bob Newman · Rating 5 out of 5]

When a man with a gun meets a man with a prayer.....the man with a prayer is a dead man."

Not many people would start off a review of a Graham Greene novel with a paraphrase from a Clint Eastwood movie, but I am just a drifter on the high plains of literature. This is no doubt a powerful novel with the same theme of man's relation to God that suffuses many of Greene's other works. In a Mexico where state control had broken down, local satraps carried out projects of their own, taking national policy to extremes. So, in Tabasco, a warlord decreed that all priests must be expelled, forced to marry, or killed; all churches would be closed or destroyed. A few priests dared to stay behind in secret, defying the tyrant, ministering to the suffering masses (or continuing to bilk them---from an atheistic point of view) The main character here is a priest, driven from pillar to post, hunted like a bandit (indeed he is paired with a gringo killer in terms of police priorities), riding a mule through the jungles and swamps, hiding out with reluctant villagers, fearing betrayal at every step, but never giving up. He recognizes that he is a sinner (alcoholic, father of a child) but though he is human, he is yet divine through his soaring spirit, which slowly emerges and arises through his fear. Whether Greene could really get inside a Mexican priest's head is another question. I'll leave it to Mexicans to decide. A cold-blooded police lieutenant hunts the priest, swearing to kill him. He too is human, not a cardboard baddie, he has hopes for the new generation who will never be subservient to the wiles of `the Church'. A couple minor English characters appear from time to time: though well-drawn, I felt they were superfluous in a parable-style tale like this. Pain and martyrdom, sacrifice, duty, contradiction and consistency---all these in God's name or in the name of no God, but Fate. The priest escapes to Chiapas, a more moderate state, but returns at the behest of a debased informer, knowing his certain doom full well, accepting his Fate (even though dreading it) like Christ. The police lieutenant understands the priest's humanity at the end, but carries out his duty. The power wins out, but the glory lives on. A great book which carries a lot of suspense within its pages.

[Lyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene’s 1940 novel about the Mexican state of Tabasco’s virulent anti-church campaign in the 1930s is a powerful statement about courage, duty and the persistence of faith.

Greene describes the flight of the “whiskey priest” a never named survivor in the state’s operation to rid all vestiges of Catholic faith, even to the point of arresting priests, finding them guilty of treason and executing them against a wall with firing squads. Some priests were given the opportunity to renounce their faith, to marry and to forgo their earlier duties.

Greene’s protagonist is a mixed bag of guilt, dogmatic devotion to duty (albeit a deeply conflicted one and in whose service he is often reluctant) and, finally, saintly mettle. During the priest's evasion from the police, Greene introduces his readers to an unsavory assortment of characters who further illustrate the signs of the times; from the over zealous and idealistic Socialist Lieutenant who chases him to the various citizens with diverse reactions to his plight and to their own faith.

Told with warmth, humor and an endearing faith in humanity to do what is right in spite of the difficulties, Greene demonstrates his mastery of the language and his ability to create a work of lasting importance.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is considered Graham Greene’s masterpiece, and he, himself, said it was his best work, although I liked both The End of the Affair and The Quiet American better. The story takes place in Mexico in a state under the control of the Red Shirts. Catholicism has been outlawed, all the churches closed, and all the priests have either renounced their faith, fled or been executed--all except one. This one is roaming from village to village, seeking a way out of the area, but always drawn into performing one last service, one last secret mass, one last baptism. He is not a good priest, he has broken all the rules, but as we come to see, he is a good man.

It took me a while to become involved with the main character here. I kept thinking of him as a “whiskey priest” without much of a moral compass to follow, but then I began to see him as a human being, frightened and alone and suffering within himself for knowing how short he has fallen from the calling he professed. The priest’s journey is a quest for faith and courage and a grappling with the idea of death and martyrdom. One might ask where God is in all of this.

The woman sat down, and taking a lump of sugar from her bundle, began to eat, and the child lay quiet at the foot of the cross. Why, after all, should we expect God to punish the innocent with more life?

Perhaps it depends on what you ascribe to God and what to man. The priest must grapple with whether he is God’s agent or simply a victim of his own pride. In the end, perhaps it is both--that a man can be fallible and still be used by God to good purpose.

Greene always tackles the more difficult questions. He isn’t afraid to put his belief on the table and dissect it slowly to see if he can find the part in which God resides. That takes some of the same courage with which he finally imbues this lowly priest, and it challenges us to find our own answers about our own faith.

[Michael Perkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a re-read and, boy, no one writes this well any more.

The prison chapter, Part Two, Chapter 3, is an utterly amazing piece of writing. You feel you're right there in the dark, crowded cell with the whiskey priest and the rest of the inmates.

Sample....

"The old man seemed to be uneasily asleep; his head lay sideways against the priest’s shoulder, and he muttered angrily. God knows, it had never been easy to move in this place, but the difficulty seemed to increase as the night wore on and limbs stiffened. He couldn’t twitch his shoulder now without waking the old man to another night of suffering. Well, he thought, it was my kind who robbed him: it’s only fair to be made a little uncomfortable … He sat silent and rigid against the damp wall, with his dead feet under his haunches. The mosquitoes droned on; it was no good defending yourself by striking at the air: they pervaded the whole place like an element. Somebody as well as the old man had fallen asleep and was snoring, a curious note of satisfaction, as though he had eaten and drunk well at a good dinner and was now taking a snooze…. The priest tried to calculate the hour: how much time had passed since he had met the beggar in the plaza? It was probably not long after midnight: there would be hours more of this."

"Suddenly, he realized that he could see a face, and then another; he had begun to forget that it would ever be another day, just as one forgets that one will ever die. It comes suddenly on one in a screeching brake or a whistle in the air, the knowledge that time moves and comes to an end. All the voices slowly became faces— there were no surprises. The confessional teaches you to recognize the shape of a voice— the loose lip of the weak chin and the false candour of the too straightforward eyes. He saw the pious woman a few feet away, uneasily dreaming with her prim mouth open, showing strong teeth like tombs: the old man: the boaster in the corner, and his woman asleep untidily across his knees. Now that the day was at last here, he was the only one awake, except for a small Indian boy who sat cross-legged near the door with an expression of interested happiness, as if he had never known such friendly company. Over the courtyard the whitewash became visible upon the opposite wall."

============

Truly haunting.....

"They had travelled by the sun until the black wooded bar of mountain told them where to go. They might have been the only survivors of a world which was dying out; they carried the visible marks of the dying with them....At sunset on the second day they came out on to a wide plateau covered with short grass. A grove of crosses stood up blackly against the sky, leaning at different angles— some as high as twenty feet, some not much more than eight. They were like trees that had been left to seed....The evening star was out: it hung low down over the edge of the plateau— it looked as if it was within reach— and a small hot wind stirred."

============

the danger of spiritual pride for the whiskey priest......

"It was appalling how easily one forgot and went back; he could still hear his own voice speaking in the street with the Concepción accent— unchanged by mortal sin and unrepentance and desertion. The brandy was musty on the tongue with his own corruption. God might forgive cowardice and passion, but was it possible to forgive the habit of piety?....men like the half-caste could be saved, salvation could strike like lightning at the evil heart, but the habit of piety excluded everything but the evening prayer and the Guild meeting and the feel of humble lips on your gloved hand."

But also common human weakness...

"He told himself. In time it will be all right, I shall pull up, I only ordered three bottles this time. They will be the last I’ll ever drink, I won’t need drink there— he knew he lied."

=======================

In 1960, a Catholic teacher in California wrote Greene:

"One day I gave The Power and the Glory to…a native of Mexico who had lived through the worst persecutions…. She confessed that your descriptions were so vivid, your priest so real, that she found herself praying for him at Mass. I understand how she felt. Last year, on a trip through Mexico. I found myself peering into mud huts, through village streets, and across impassible mountain ranges, half-believing that I would glimpse a dim figure stumbling in the rain on his way to the border. There is no greater tribute possible to your creation of this character—he lives".

==============

And some interesting insight into the nemesis...

A hero-maker narrative based on moral superiority is convincingly captured in Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, which is set in Mexico during the persecution of the Catholic Church. When a murderous police lieutenant examines a photograph of a wanted priest, the emotion comes first: ‘Something you could almost have called horror moved him’. Next comes the self-justifying memory, followed instantly by a hero-maker narrative that ties it all together so that the killer is reassured he’s a moral actor:

"he remembered the smell of the incense in the churches of his boyhood, the candles and the laciness and the self-esteem, the immense demands made from the altar steps by men who didn’t know the meaning of sacrifice. The old peasants knelt there before the holy images with their arms held out in an attitude of the cross: tired by the long day’s labour . . . and the priest came round with the collecting-bag taking their centavos, abusing them for all their small comforting sins, and sacrificing nothing at all in return . . . He said, ‘We will catch him.’"

====

A character’s conviction in their rightness and superiority is precisely what gives them their terrible power.

-Will Storr

=========================

A favorite Greene quote....

“Doubt is the heart of the matter. Abolish all doubt, and what's left is not faith, but absolute, heartless conviction. You're certain that you possess the Truth -- inevitably offered with an implied uppercase T -- and this certainty quickly devolves into dogmatism and righteousness, by which I mean a demonstrative, overweening pride in being so very right, in short, the arrogance of fundamentalism.”

============

The Power and the Glory was published in 1940. For all the struggle in the story, it has an idealistic ending. That would not be the case with Greene's "A Burnt-Out Case," published 20 years later....

"A Burnt-Out Case" review....

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

==========

Greene's writing method...

https://www.williamlanday.com/2009/07...

[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

After being received into the Roman Catholic Church Graham Greene would some years later travel to Mexico in 1938 to report and witness first hand the persecution of the clergy, this would clearly go on to have a major impact in writing 'The Power and the Glory', which sees an unnamed Priest (known to locals as the 'whisky Priest') go on the run from the authorities during a time of religious hostilities where many Priests were tried for treason and shot, with only his mule and little in the way of supplies he navigates the harsh terrain trying to evade capture, and it's the humane and compassionate poor folk of small towns and villages along the way that help to keep him safe even while being offered a reward for his arrest, all the while the Priest is struggling with his own demons and bringing into question his faith and that of those around him. At times things get pretty tense where capture seems inevitable only for him to somehow escape, but I never felt he was in anyway afraid of his outcome and that his life was basically in the hands of God to decide his fate. Although written as a work of fiction I would not be surprised if some content was based on fact, and the writing is highly believable and impeccable throughout, as my first Graham Greene novel I can fully understand why he was considered one of the greats.

[Chris_P · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not a Christian. I most probably am an agnostic who's constantly flirting with atheism. What I feel about the Church as a constitution and the practices of the priests and their followers is contempt, to say the least. You read this, now look at my rating. OK? Read it again. Look at my rating. Get it?

This is a book that's called The Power And The Glory and it's about a priest trying to stay alive in a country where all priests are executed and faith is prohibited. The reason it appealed to me, apart from the great writing and plot development, is that Greene handles the subject without being in the least dogmatic. The reason I think it's a masterpiece is that Greene, as is exactly the case with his hero, seems to be in a constant conflict with God. As a result, there are no "good Christians vs bad unfaithful people" clichés here. Many questions are raised within the story and it's for the reader to give the answers.

Whether your beliefs are similar to mine or completely opposite, don't hesitate to read The Power And The Glory. You will find yourselves immersed in its pages and what you'll find there may surprise you. A true masterpiece.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

A typical Greene, I guess. This one is situated in the outback of southern Mexico, where a militia is hunting priests. Greene has chosen the last priest (on the run) as his protagonist. He's a real antihero: he's lonely and desperate, an alcoholic, at odds with the church, in short, no martyr at all, but just because of that truly human, fit for divine grace. Greene seems to make a reckoning with the church, yet at the same time -through the padre - he accentuates the mystery of faith, illustrating the ambiguous relation he himself had with the church. It's an interesting read, but I must say it feels a bit outdated; it's difficult in the 21st century to relate to the rather heavy themes of Greene (I can relate more to The Quiet American and The Human Factor). Stylistically the first part at times is a very slow read, picking up pace in the other parts through the dialogues. (2.5 stars)

[Helga چـو ایـران نباشد تن من مـباد · Rating 5 out of 5]

An unnamed priest is on the run during the 1930s’ persecution of Catholic priests by the anti-clerical government in Mexico.
Our protagonist who has succumbed to alcoholism, is running away from authorities and if possible, hides in pious people’s houses.
Nevertheless he constantly chastises himself for his flight. He is torn between giving himself up, continuing his escape and fighting against the persecutors by secretly administering confessions and baptisms, albeit drunk.
Is he a coward? Should he have martyred himself like many of his brothers?
Or is he a hero?

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this Greene novel slightly less than my favorites The Comedians and The Heart of the Matter, but it is still extraordinary writing. The Catholicism of the author is ever-present, but not distracting. As usual, don't expect happy endings with Graham, but definitely revel in the beautiful writing and wry humor despite the dim prospects for love or happiness.

I had a hard time finding some sympathy for the whiskey priest

[Zoeb · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I could write like Graham Greene.

Actually, I take that back. I wish I could see the world and chronicle it as Greene did. And I wish, oh how I wish, that I could believe like Greene.

'The Power And The Glory' is lauded widely (and deservedly so) as Greene's masterpiece and while some hard-nosed critics and snobs call it a 'Catholic novel' merely because its primary protagonist is a priest and it deals primarily with the said priest's struggle to keep the flag of his faith flying even in the oppressive atmosphere of Mexico in the days of the Red Shirts, it is important to note that the novel transcends effortlessly the very limited scope of a real Catholic novel. I stepped into Greene's book with exhilaration but also a faint sense of apprehension; an overtly Catholic novel, while undoubtedly intriguing, could also be a bit inaccessible, unfathomable even in all its moral conundrums and intriguing spiritual arguments. However, right from the first page, reeking of the stark desolation and disillusionment that marks many a page in this 200+page magnum opus, we know that we are in the hands of Greene again, more compellingly than ever, the tale writ large over his customary canvas of a morally grey landscape that almost feels like dystopia.

Our protagonist is a priest. Greene does not give him a name or even much of a description apart from the stray discerning glances that he lends every now and then. Faces and identities, like so much other seemingly pivotal detail, are of no great significance; like a Biblical narrative, 'The Power And The Glory' reads like a brooding yet frequently eye-gouging nihilistic spectacle played out over a ruthless, sun-baked and sweltering land where this priest is forced to take flight and keep on plodding ahead for his life. Christianity, or rather religion and belief of God itself, is deemed as taboo and treason in this alienating and desolate part of a savagely beautiful country and priests are either shamed into mortal sin and lazy complacency or shot down like political prisoners. Yet, the priest goes on, doing his work, sometimes out of reluctance, sometimes out of a misplaced, naively genereous passion for the downtrodden and desperate who seek his succour.

Alongside Greene, however, it is God who is also at the helm of this strange yet stirringly grand narrative. It is well said that 'Man proposes and God disposes' and whenever Greene grants his flawed yet obstinately proud priest a chance, a fair shot at redemption or even escape, it is God who seems to intervene, deciding otherwise. 'The Power And The Glory', more than any other Greene novel (and so many, from 'The Heart Of The Matter' to 'The Human Factor' to even 'The Honorary Consul' come brilliantly close to it), explains with potent force and profundity the predicament and despair of mortal man at the mercy of metaphysical forces and the strange workings of the soul itself, of the irreparable devastation that faith, or the obsessive, even toxic belief in an ideal both noble and ruthless, can bring on the soul.

And yet, what makes 'The Power And The Glory' frequently uplifting and invigorating, even as every moment of possible release and redemption darkens spectacularly into doom, is Greene's strident insistence that we need to believe, if not in Christianity then in some faith that concedes to the acceptance of God's eye-widening miracles. Unfairly attacked by the Church for being heretical, here is instead a rousing vindication of the very essential belief in an existence and omnipotence of God and yet Greene is no mere preacher from a pulpit. He is instead a warrior poet with a soul of subtlety and compassion and even as the novel culminates in heartbreak and catharsis, there is always a little but nevertheless all too distinct room for hope. Some have likened it to a modern Cruxificion parable and the metaphors and similarities are unmistakable and the even the darkest scenes in the narrative bring such a surging force of emotion that it is hard not to be swept along.

As I started reading 'The Power And The Glory', I had been talking to a friend who had read it a long time ago and he remembered that the first time he finished the book, he thought of it to be dystopia. Indeed, as ever with the powerfully and prophetically prescient Greene, this is set in a specific country in a specific epoch of chaos and darkness but it is more than just about Mexico in the 1930s. It is rather indeed as powerful a dystopian portrait of mankind brought to its knees by a regime that uproots the very nourishment of the human soul as any can be. Greene's portrait of that country is one rendered in telling and deeply nuanced strokes; any other writer would have been content to indulge in exotic scenery but the characters that Greene populates his world with, as an evidence of his peerless storytelling abilities and astute command of craft, are not merely literary stereotypes; they might not have faces, identities or even backstories but they have flesh, blood and souls that makes them so compelling. And as always, Greene's prose is flawless, beautiful and dramatic without exaggeration or excess. Not a word is out of place, not a trope is repeated; like Hemingway, the words sing lithely yet profoundly. Just that in Greene's case, the words are even more beautiful.

Is 'The Power And The Glory' Greene's finest novel yet? The fact that we are pondering over this question is itself the answer. Read it for yourself to believe just how powerful and glorious it is.

Hallelujah!