The book's hero is an unnamed priest on the run from Mexican authorities after a state governor has ordered the military to dismantle all vestiges of the religion. Churches are burned. Relics, medals, and crosses are banned. The price for disobedience is death.

While many clerics give up their beliefs and accept their government pensions, the unnamed priest travels in secret, celebrating Mass and hearing confessions under the cover of night.

Yet he's also a gluttonous, stubborn, and angry man drowning in vices, and the religious ambition of his earlier years has been replaced with a constant desire to drink, hence Greene's term for him: the "whiskey priest." Tired of risking his life, the priest even prays to be caught.

A violent, raw novel about suffering, strained faith, and ultimate redemption, The Power and the Glory received literary acclaim—but not without catching the attention of Catholic censors, who called the book "sad" and denounced its "immoral" protagonist.

Despite—or even because of—this vexed history, Greene's novel is the perfect book to read during the season of Lent, which began Wednesday.

Stereotypically a time for modern Christians to abstain from Facebook or chocolate or alcohol, Lent is the most dramatic time of the liturgical year—40 days of prayer, fasting, and cleaning one's spiritual house, in hopes that honesty might lead to penance and good deeds.

One vision of Lent emphasizes transcendence over struggle: the American Catholic writer Thomas Merton called it "not a season of punishment so much as one of healing."

But Greene's dark novel and its deeply flawed protagonist offer a richer way to think of faith and self-reflection—one that average Christians might find more accessible and realistic than romantic narratives about belief. Continue reading

Sources

• The Atlantic, the beginning of an article by Nick Ripatrizone, is a staff writer at The Millions.
• Image: 101 Books

Like Pope Francis, Merton engaged in interfaith dialogue. What these three men have in common, however, is that their works reveal them to be visionaries and mystics with a faith message for the world, a message that does not shy away from naming and engaging with the darkness around us.

Graham Greene led an eclectic life, and embraced and dialogued with the complex world around him. After his conversion to Catholicism in the 1920s, he was commissioned to go to Mexico to report on religious persecution there which resulted in him writing one of his famous novels, The Power and the Glory.

He was adept at characterising the flawed broken priest or individual who could still bring Christ to others, despite his brokenness. The internal struggle of the soul to find and receive grace was amongst the issues that consumed him.

As he so well depicted in another work, The Heart of the Matter, he understood the paradox of how a person's conscience and love of God, could also lead them to disaster.

Greene confronted and explored the world of international politics, espionage and the world of corruption, (he worked for MI6 at one stage). He took a stand on moral issues - he allegedly quit the American Academy of Arts and Letters over America's involvement in the Vietnam War.

A serial adulterer and womaniser, he explored flawed and complex interpersonal relationships in his writing, such as in his famous work, The End of the Affair. He was by his own admission, a man who struggled with his own sins whilst balancing a passionate faith.

Able to deepen and challenge his own religious and spiritual beliefs amidst a rich and tumultuous life, his flawed and complex nature both informed his writing, and furthered his faith as a devout Catholic. Continue reading

• Joanna Thyer is a writer, Sydney hospital chaplain, and educator. Her most recent work is 12 Steps to Spiritual Freedom, (Loyola Press, 2014).
• This article, from The Good Oil, the e-magazine of the Good Samaritan Sisters, is used with permission.