Graham Greene:” A struggle with Faith”

Published in 1940 The Power and the Glory, its American version, The Labyrinthine Ways, is regarded by most as Graham Greene’s finest novel. At the time of the book’s publication London was being bombed and the Heineman offices took a hit destroying a considerable amount of the first impression copies of the Power and the Glory. As a result the first edition, first impression, is very rare and even more difficult to find with its original dust jacket. A highly sought after and valuable book.

Set in Mexico during the Cristero Wars, the state had banned the Catholic church and with ruthless and violent intentions intended to rid Mexico of its priests. This is the story of one of those priests, unnamed, as he represents all priests, but who becomes known to the reader as the Whisky Priest. A sinner in search of redemption who throughout the novel has to question his own morality. The meeting with his daughter, product of an illicit affair with a parishioner, only serves to enhance his love for his daughter and thus make it impossible for him to repent the sin of conceiving her.

In a Mexico devoid of beauty and beset by poverty, disease and disillusionment the whisky priest travels aimlessly but always conscious of his duty as a priest for the benefit of those seeking to use their faith to survive. His growing awareness of the need for compassion and acceptance of the faults of others is his redemption. 

Greene was commissioned to write an article on the events taking place in Mexico at the time of this revolution. He travelled through the provinces of Tabasco and Chiapas where all the churches had been destroyed or closed and the priests driven out or killed. The whole scenario seemed tailormade for Greene. An opportunity to reach ‘rock bottom within the self in the humanly created world’. ‘Lawless Roads’ embraces the spiritual and political conflict of the twentieth century, the cruelty, the corruption of politicians and the decline in spiritual life. Lawless Roads is a combination of the geography of a distant place and an intense understanding of individual human destiny under appalling conditions and oppression.

In part disliked because it appears not as a travel book but more a condemnation of a country and its people. To label Greene as some colonialist on the march is a superficial critique. He is an Englishman with a dark view of capitalism ,especially that of Mexico’s northern neighbour. Wishing to see instead an understanding between communism and Catholicism, something  he struggled with all his life. This travel account provides context, depth and inspiration for the novel,’ The Power and The Glory’ which Greene was to write on his return to England. ‘Lawless Roads‘ is a rich and rewarding journey into the mind of a great writer.