The Catholic Book Club discussion

8. The story in Poor Banished Children: A Novel is structured as a long confession, the desire for forgiveness and redemption. Of what serious sins is Warda in need of forgiveness?

Yes for me the mortal sin exists during the novel. If the main character had taken a diferent choice. She had apostatized or she had betrayed to her friends she would have committed a mortal sin. As my friend Krisi Keley would have said she is a lone woman in a hostile world in which she suffers violence and harassment but this kind of women are quit by the feminists for ideological reasons.

Fonch wrote: "Yes for me the mortal sin exists during the novel. If the main character had taken a diferent choice. She had apostatized or she had betrayed to her friends she would have committed a mortal sin. A..."

Bien, pero, que indentificas como pecado grave es lo que no ocurrió.

Apostasy of course would have been mortal sin. What of the men she killed?

To kill ever is a sin but the legitime defence exists the own Saint Thomas Aquinas believed in the fair war. There are circumstances in which the employed of the strenght is justified for instance a terrorist is going to commit a terrorist attack in which a lot of people can be killed in this case the violence is justified to avoid most evil. I think that the main character is justified to do that she does.

It is true that the apostasy did not happen but it might happend i put cases in other section of the discussion i do not Know in A long the way.
The fact that the main character does not apostate it does not mean that she could not do it. The King Richard explained really good in "Ivanhoe" the members of the Robin Hood's gang are greeted not only for their good actions also for the actions that they do not commit. Because avoid doing bad actions (resist the temptation) is also doing a good action.
For this reason my first post it is not as stupid that at the beggining could look it.

John wrote: "Apostasy of course would have been mortal sin. What of the men she killed?"

Although I have read about one half of the book and she has killed a single man yet, I think the problem (for her) is not the fact of killing, which was self-defense, but the fact that she enjoyed killing him: I should not have felt so triumphant when it came to it.

Also she is ashamed of having put on the clothes of a dead man. We wouldn't think so today, but it conforms to the mindset of her place and time.

You got the loot of the defeated enemy. They are the rules of the war 😁.

The man she "bleeds" then lets bleed to death without staunching his wound is clearly a mortal sin. No self-defense there really.

Jill wrote: "The man she "bleeds" then lets bleed to death without staunching his wound is clearly a mortal sin. No self-defense there really."

I haven't got there yet :-)

The only life she takes that is a mortal sin is the man Jill describes, though her description of the killing might lead a modern reader to wonder whether she was of sound mind at the time. As John says, however, the stabbing of a man in self defence is problematic because she clearly enjoys it. Stripping a dead man and wearing his clothes would have been regarded as an act of defilement at the time, and wearing male garb at all was strictly forbidden

Fiorella wrote: "wearing male garb at all was strictly forbidden"

But they did it all the time, as can be seen in the literature (Cervantes, Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina), and for reasons much less dramatic than escaping death or being raped.

We must remember the case of Joan of Arc her clothes were a defense against the stalkers. I want to remind that this Man was not an Angel he come to loot, kill, steal, kidnap and slavering personas and got renegades for his army. Warda would have done lest evil.
In a dialogue of a movie starred by Clint Eastwood and Shirley McLaine the asked to Shirley McLaine if to hate is a sin and Shirley McLaine said that he hated to the evil. I do not agree with this but if there is not other way to stop an evil Man it is fair to kill him. I put the case of the terrorist if you can kill before the terrorist attack go ahead.

Fair point about the clothes, though I was warned by an academic that cross dressing was punishable by death in the Islamic world at the time. Warda certainly wears male clothes to protect herself from rape so it is arguably not a sin, even if she sees it that way

It is the same case of Saint Joan of Arc for me it is totally justified.

Manuel wrote: "Jill wrote: "The man she "bleeds" then lets bleed to death without staunching his wound is clearly a mortal sin. No self-defense there really."

I haven't got there yet :-)"

I will wait until you do before discussing it. I am not so sure it is clearly a mortal sin.

I have now finished the second part. I agree that a physician bleeding to death a patient would be a mortal sin in principle, but in this case there were extenuating circumstances.

I'm glad I don't have to make the decision. And I don't think even a priest would make it. Even though giving absolution, he would leave the final judgment to God.

I think that in case of doubt we must let that God has the Last word. It is the most sensible.

This is such a complicated question! I'd say that the death of the man she stabbed in the head was not a mortal sin, no matter how much she seemed to "enjoy" it. I think she was feeling triumphant at her ability to preserve herself. If nothing else, Warda suffers from extreme pride.

I'd say that the death of (view spoiler)[Omar (hide spoiler)] however, was a mortal sin. Yes, it allowed her to escape, but there was something very inhuman about the exchange. It was very hard to read, even if the reader could justify that he "deserved" it.

But, in the end, I agree with Fonch--I think that we have to let God have the last word. He's the only one who knows what's in our hearts. I think, too, that much of Warda's narrative is colored by extreme guilt, so she might be adding in details that weren't really true, such as her "enjoyment" of killing.

I agree with Emmy when somebody committed a sin and if this person has conscious usually to trend to see worst that this person is really. It is a good point that Emmy says 🤔.

Jill wrote: "The man she "bleeds" then lets bleed to death without staunching his wound is clearly a mortal sin. No self-defense there really."

As I said, I disagree. Slavery is an ongoing act of implicit and explicit violence by the slaver against the slave. Escape is an act of self defense and acts taken against the slaver to enable escape are generally self-defense if necessary. Omar would have sounded the alarm, killing him was necessary and, in my view, licit.

I can see your point that this is self-defense, but to me, it feels very different from Warda killing the man in the alley. That was self-defense, for sure. This just feels...I don't know, inhuman to me!

This thing it was defended by me legitime defense.

Let's give an example. Let's think of a Haneke movie, that psychopaths enter your house and, out of sadism and evil, dedicate themselves to torturing your family. In this case, self-defense would be more than justified. I have always said it, if there is no justice, people will take it and, that is usually the preamble to ominous events

I agree with your points, Fonch. I guess what I struggled with is letting a man bleed out, while he knows he's dying, letting his pleas for forgiveness fall on deaf ears, etc. Of course, God takes all these things into account and understands the circumstances that led to this point. Of all the deaths in the book, Omar's was the one I struggled with the most.

I agree with you, Emmy. With Omar, her life wasn't in imminent danger. It's at least not a clear-cut case of self-defense -- it would take some creative lawyering, like the "battered woman defense," based on what she had suffered already, to make it prevail in court. Not that God's judgment is the same as the law's, of course!

Kristi wrote: "I agree with you, Emmy. With Omar, her life wasn't in imminent danger. It's at least not a clear-cut case of self-defense -- it would take some creative lawyering, like the "battered woman defense,..."

Exactly! While I'm not an advocate for murder, the other deaths felt like a natural response to the situation at hand, such as the man in the alleyway (and even, to an extent, the scene on the boat). But, I felt like the killing of Omar was Warda's lowest spiritual point in the story. God of course takes all into consideration.

Emmy wrote: "Kristi wrote: "I agree with you, Emmy. With Omar, her life wasn't in imminent danger. It's at least not a clear-cut case of self-defense -- it would take some creative lawyering, like the "battered..."

This discussion was had by the Professor and I when we talked about the novel by the Polish Nobel Prize winner Henryk Sienkiewicz In Desert and Wilderness in which the leader with whom Gordon clashed in the Sudan the Mahdi. Some of his henchmen kidnap an English girl (Nell) and a Polish boy (Stas). At first I had not liked that Staswould violate the promise made to her captors and kill them at the slightest opportunity. Now, over the years I agree with the Professor who scolded me for not approving this act. A promise extracted by force and with threats cannot be kept, and even more so when you have been deprived of your freedom. If we compare what Stas does and what Warda does. The second seems to me infinitely less serious. It is evident that God knows the circumstances of each one and, for him, mitigating circumstances are useful.

Fonch wrote: "At first I had not liked that Nell would violate the promise made to her captors and kill them at the slightest opportunity."

Of course, it wasn't Nell (an 8-year old girl) who killed their abductors, but 14-year old Stas. And I don't agree that he had promised not to kill them. They had threatened to kill Nell. So, when the abductors gave Stas a weapon to kill a lion, he seized the opportunity to kill them too.

Manuel wrote: "Fonch wrote: "Emmy wrote: "At first I had not liked that Nell would violate the promise made to her captors and kill them at the slightest opportunity."

Of course, it wasn't Nell (an 8-year old gi..."
Fixed the bug ;-). As the Professor explains, in this case the violence would be perfectly justified to try to escape the kidnapping to which the kidnappers subjected these tender infants.

What do you think about Warda's actions on board the ship?

Fiorella wrote: "What do you think about Warda's actions on board the ship?"

At Mass the faithful say that they sin in thought, word, deed and omission. It is true that Warda murders these wicked men, but not to have acted would have been in my opinion a sin of omission. We must imagine the victims of the looting, the dead, the slaves and the women who would have suffered Warda's fate. In the fifteenth century the Turks assaulted Otranto and caused a death toll that filled Christendom with dread and terror. If Warda had not intervened in my modest I would have done infinitely greater damage. Let us remember the phrase of a compatriot of Mrs. De Maria: "For evil to triumph, it is necessary that good men do nothing" Edmund Burke

I would hope that none of us have to make the same decision that Warda made on the ship. But, I saw it as her sacrificing her life in order to spare the lives of so many innocents. There was no way that one tiny woman and three wounded sailors would have been able to overpower the whole ship. This was the best way to handle things and I think that while deeply complicated, she did the right thing.

Emmy wrote: "I would hope that none of us have to make the same decision that Warda made on the ship. But, I saw it as her sacrificing her life in order to spare the lives of so many innocents. There was no way..."

I agree, but I find her actions on the ship, overall, to be more difficult than the killing of Omar - she yields to the captain, with the intent of stealing the keys to the powder room during post-coital languor.

I agree that her actions with the captain certainly complicate things. Are you saying that it was a worse sin to do that than to bleed Omar?

Emmy wrote: "I agree that her actions with the captain certainly complicate things. Are you saying that it was a worse sin to do that than to bleed Omar?"

John wrote: "Emmy wrote: "I would hope that none of us have to make the same decision that Warda made on the ship. But, I saw it as her sacrificing her life in order to spare the lives of so many innocents. The..."

In this case I believe that I am a strong mitigating circumstance to justify Warda's actions and the damage she avoided against third parties must also be taken into account. As King Richard would say in "Ivanhoe" one is not only good for the good one does, but also for the evil one avoids. She is a poor woman who finds herself in a terrible situation extrapolating what my friend Krisi Keley told me from the The Hunger Games saga regarding her young protagonists. They are poor children in a terrible situation. For me this is the same case.