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Posts tagged "The Power and the Glory"

The Paradox of The Power and the Glory, Part Three: Love and Death

The Paradox of The Power and the Glory, Part Three: Love and Death

by Ethan Richardson on Oct 28, 2011 •

Here we have the concluding segment of our three-part series on The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene’s novel on a Mexican priest bound in life to love and death.

[The lieutenant] wanted to destroy everything: to be alone without any memories at all…That, of course, was the best solution of all, to leave the living witness to the weakness of their faith…The lieutenant, lying on his hard bed, in the damp hot dark, felt no sympathy at all with the weakness of the flesh.

It is paradoxical that the power and the glory comes by means of sickness unto death. This…

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The Paradox of The Power and the Glory: Piety and the Whisky Priest

The Paradox of The Power and the Glory: Piety and the Whisky Priest

by Ethan Richardson on Oct 26, 2011 •

Continuing our three-part series on Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, we take a look at the paradoxical power of simul iustus et peccator in the nature of the whisky priest, the catholicity of the human experience, and the disarmament of piety in the name of love. For Part One, click here.

A priest passed to and fro before the altar saying Mass, but he took no notice: the service no longer seemed to concern him…someone out of sight rang the sanctus bell, and the serving priest knelt before he raise the Host. But he sat on, just waiting, paying…

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The Paradox of The Power and the Glory, Part One: The Criminal as Parishioner

The Paradox of The Power and the Glory, Part One: The Criminal as Parishioner

by Ethan Richardson on Oct 21, 2011 • 3 Comments

Here begins a week-long, three-part series on Graham Greene’s faith opus, The Power and the Glory, exploring his use of paradoxical realities of “this bloody land.” Through his “whisky priest,” the outlawed and only man left to administer the sacraments, Greene captures a world wherein the power is in the weak, and the glory is in the mire.

That’s another thing altogether—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…

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