Rachel and I are longstanding members of a Mythopoeic Society reading group. Most of the time we focus on the works of the Inklings (Tolkien, Lewis, et al), or works that influenced or were influenced by the Inklings, but we branch out from time to time to read other stuff, particularly works of great fiction with spiritual themes.

Last night we discussed Graham Greene’s incomparable The Power and the Glory, surely on nearly everyone’s short list of Great Catholic Novels. There are any number of “zingers” in that book, but here was one that particularly struck me apropos the so-called “culture of death”, which has been much on my mind of late, particularly in the context of the artistic successes of Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto and Alphonse Cuaron’s Children of Men.

In The Power and the Glory the culture of death, where a man’s life can be forfeit for wearing a religious medal under his short, is represented by the figure of the ascetic police lieutenant—a far more “virtuous” man, it could be argued, than the Whiskey Priest, except that his mission in life is to wipe out every trace of God and religion from his society, even from the very memories of the people.

Here is a passage from the book, in which the Whiskey Priest observes some of the iconoclastic work of men such as the liieutenant. I think it brilliantly points out the self-destructive irony of trying to wipe out the image of God from humanity:

The wall of the burial-ground had fallen in: one or two crosses had been smashed by enthusiasts: an angel had lost one of its stone wings, and what grave-stones were left undamaged leant at an acute angle in the long marshy grass. One image of the Mother of God had lost ears and arms and stood like a pagan Venus over the grave of some rich, forgotten timber merchant. It was odd—this fury to deface, because, of course, you could never deface enought. If God had been like a toad, you could have rid the globe of toads, but when God was like yourself, it was no good being content with stone figures—you had to kill yourself among the graves.

There is an old saying that the first casualty in war is truth. Surely one of the lessons to be learned from our present culture of death is that the first victim in the war against God is man.

By the way, John posted a lovely review of The Power and the Glory on catholicfiction.net some months ago. If you’d like to read it, click here.

Tags: Catholic fiction, culture of death, Graham Greene