“The Power and the Glory” by Graham Greene is one of my favorite books. And yet, I haven’t been able to read it more than once. It’s one of the books that I wouldn’t reread because I already know how it ends. What I did do is read the last part several times (the dialog between the main character and his nemesis).
“The Power and the Glory” is about a priest who struggled as much with his own corruption as he did with the Christian persecution that he was trying to evade. It’s about responsibility and choice.
When my friend Miguel de Jesus suggested reading Shusaku Endo, I looked up the author and noted the comparison to Graham Greene. I went ahead and bought “Silence” – his most popular work. Endo, apart from being acclaimed as one of the best Japanese novelists of all time, supposedly is the Japanese Graham Greene. I finished “Power” during an idle evening in New York. I finished “Silence” during a jetlagged night in the Philippines.
In some ways, the above books by Endo and Greene are similar. Both are about making difficult choices. Both have very poignant endings that left me pausing and rereading certain paragraphs over and over.
But “Silence” is in a way the opposite of “Power”. In Greene’s novel, the protagonist, a corrupt and drunken priest, makes what would be considered the more difficult but at the same time more moral choice relative to Christian ethos (and to priestly duty in particular.)
Endo’s novel, on the other hand, is about choosing the alternative with regards what would be considered rightfully Christian. And yet by the end of the story, the protagonist -- also a priest (and this time, a more proper one as supposed to Greene’s “whiskey priest”) -- is filled with joy and the certainty that he loved Christ more than ever (though “differently”) and that his whole life is proof of it -- despite what he chooses in the end.
. . .
I’m writing about “Silence” partly because it’s just a really good book and partly because it brings out interesting points that I think may be apt for modern Christian living. (Endo was recommended to me last year when I was looking for more material to cover. The idea was to read both Christian and atheist literature hoping to get an objective picture of my own faith. A friend pointed out that maybe I was looking at the wrong places.)
It’s a really good read – plain and simple. In fact, despite of (or maybe because of) Catholicism’s failure in Japan, it seems to be a popular book among the Japanese (given that Endo is rather famous in the first place and “Silence” constitutes his best work, of course).
Probably one of the most touching parts in the novel is the characters conversation with God in his mind. He declared that he resented God’s silence throughout all the suffering. God answered that He was never silent He suffered with them.
But one can also view the book as a criticism of the Catholic mission in Japan. The missions seemed very much divinely-inspired; at least, this was the case in the time of St. Francis Xavier.
But Catholicism itself and the concept of the Christian God were fated to rot during the time of persecution that followed its propagation in Japan. To paraphrase the book’s main antagonist, it was not the persecution that defeated the missions. It was the “swamp that was Japan”. It may be true as St. Francis Xavier described how the Japanese were this gentle and amiable people. But it may be equally true that they weren’t as receptive of Christian teaching the way the missionaries thought. So perhaps the typical Western approach of the Christian mission was just as soon distorted as it was absorbed by the Japanese.
One may say that this thesis flirts with moral relativism: If the truth propagated by the Catholic Church were universal, then why doesn’t it ring true in Japan as it did in the west and other countries? (It’s noteworthy that the Philippines is the only Asian country that’s predominantly Christian.)
But the Catholic faith failed in many places in the world and at so many points in history. It can even be argued that its past inflexible adherence to dogma coupled with its stubborn resistance to answer modern questions in fact, spawned the many Christian denominations that exist today. (And sure, one can also argue that this is simply the logical progress of religion.)
In “Silence”, one can simply state that Christian faith wasn’t the same in Japan. Furthermore, being a Christian in a time of peace and plenty is different in a time of persecution. Universal truth isn’t even truth anymore if it is distorted or misunderstood.
Having the last of the Christian missions and missionaries crushed, the protagonist, therefore, continued to love Christ. But differently. He had no choice otherwise. It was simply that loving God secretly outside the shelter of the Catholic Church was, during that time in history, his only recourse. God being within human reason is a reasonable, loving God.
