"The Power and the Glory" is a 1940 novel by Graham Greene about a "whisky priest" in 1930s Mexico during religious persecution. The story focuses on his clandestine ministry and personal struggles amidst prohibition and the suppression of the Catholic Church.
"The Power and the Glory" (1940) is a novel by Graham Greene set in 1930s Tabasco, Mexico, during a period of anti-clerical persecution. It follows a "whisky priest" ministering secretly amidst religious suppression and prohibition, struggling with personal failings and the state's enforcement against the Catholic Church. The novel, which won the Hawthornden Prize, explores themes of faith, sin, and redemption through the priest's quest for dignity.
| Front | The power and the glory |
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| Back | The Power and the Glory (1940) is a novel by British author Graham Greene. The title is an allusion to the doxology often recited at the end of the Lord's Prayer: "For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever, amen." It was initially published in the United States under the title The Labyrinthine Ways. Quick facts: Author, Country … Greene's novel tells the story of a renegade Roman Catholic 'whisky priest' (a term coined by Greene) living in the Mexican state of Tabasco in the 1930s, a time when the Mexican government was attempting to suppress the Catholic Church. That suppression had resulted in the Cristero War (1927-1929), so named for its Catholic combatants' slogan Viva Cristo Rey (long live Christ the King). In 1941, the novel received the Hawthornden Prize British literary award. In 2005, it was chosen by TIME magazine as one of the hundred best English-language novels since 1923. Plot The main character is an unnamed 'whisky priest', who combines a great power for self-destruction with pitiful cravenness, an almost painful penitence, and a desperate quest for dignity. By the end, though, the priest "acquires a real holiness." The other principal character is a police lieutenant tasked with hunting down this priest. This Lieutenant – also unnamed but thought to be based upon Tomás Garrido Canabal – is a committed socialist who despises the Church. The overall situation is this: Catholicism is outlawed in Mexico. However, while the other states of Mexico seem to follow a Don't-ask-don't-tell policy, the state of Tabasco enforces the ban rigorously. Mexico, or at least Tabasco, is ruled on socialist grounds, and priests have either been settled by the state with wives (breaking celibacy) and pensions in exchange for their renouncing the faith and being strictly banned to fulfill priestly functions (such as one Padre José), or else have left the state or are on the run. The story starts with the arrival of the main character in a small country town and then follows him on his trip through Tabasco, where he tries to minister to the people as best he can. In doing so, he is faced by a lot of problems, not least of which is that Tabasco is also prohibitionist, with the unspoken prime objective to hinder celebration of the Sacrifice of the Mass, for which actual wine is an essential. (It is, therefore, quite easy to get, say, whiskey, despite it being forbidden, but very difficult to get wine.) He is also haunted by his personal problems and past and present sins, especially by the fact that he fathered a child in his parish some years before; additionally, his use of whiskey may be bordering on addiction and certainly is beyond the limit of good measure in his own view. (In one scene, both of these problems are mixed: the protagonist tries to procure a bottle of wine for Holy Mass, needing to go to very high officials to do so, with an additional bottle of whiskey for cover and also for his personal use; not being able to reveal himself, he is talked into emptying the wine on the spot and in vain tries to offer the whiskey instead.) |
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