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“God in Literature”: A Comparison of Early Modern and Modern

Perspectives in Thomas More and Graham Greene

Lanier Burns, Research Professor of Theological Studies, Senior Professor of Systematic

Theology, Dallas Theological Seminary

Abstract

This paper will attempt to compare early modernity with the Twentieth Century under the topic

“God in Literature.” It will seek to accomplish this by analyzing selected works of Thomas More

and Graham Greene. Both authors were influential English Catholics, who were affiliated with

Oxford for a time. Their respective views on social authority and order expose their differences

and insightfully reflect their centuries. In conclusion, this paper will briefly explore the

implication of their differences for our thinking about public policy. For More social order and

harmony was vested in the Catholic Church as the cohesive bond of God’s ordained “chain of

being.” God is mysterious, so Europeans should accept and live obediently in his “one trew

catholyke fayth, wyth all old holy doctors and sayntes” as the basis of certainty in extraordinary

change. By the Twentieth Century, the chain had been replaced by individual autonomy as “the

very foundation of contemporary Western thought.” Greene also affirmed the mysteriousness of

God, but in a different sense than More. The severest of evils in church and society were a mix

of evil and virtue. In the darkness of the world hovers “an appalling strangeness of the mercy of

God.” More’s certainty as a backdrop for Greene’s uncertainty can affect the way that policy

issues are prioritized.

Introduction

A perennially fascinating topic for academic research is the calibration of continuity and

discontinuity between times of extraordinary change. The need for such studies surfaces in

classrooms where the extremes of “everything has changed” to “nothing has changed” are

usually present. For me, comparisons of the sixteenth and twentieth centuries have been

insightful. I have chosen Thomas More (c.1478 - 1535) and Graham Greene (1904-91) for that

purpose. In the process, I have been able to refresh my doctoral research from a distant past.

More and his fellow humanists were a focus of my research for about ten years. I also devoted a

great deal of time in those days to Existentialists like Sartre, Camus, and Kafka as well. I have

enjoyed my friendship with Greene this year in light of those interests. I chose More and Greene

because they were prolific and representative of significant aspects of their centuries. Obviously,

one cannot hope to capture the complexity of changes between the sixteenth and twentieth

centuries in two individuals. Also, one cannot quantify every change between times as different

as these. But every glimpse offers a welcomed insight. For years I have devoted myself to

interdisciplinary trajectories in history, philosophy, political theory, literature, art, and science

(especially neuroscience) to the comparison of modernity with its predecessors. Now I am using

a different approach, which is a use of the suggested topic “God in Literature” to trace

continuities and discontinuities between very different English Catholics, both of whom were

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affiliated with Oxford for a time, in their respective centuries. Consistent with my prior research,

I do not wish to emphasize theology; instead, I wish to read More and Greene with a focus on

social authority and order. How did their literary arguments reveal their views on social cohesion

and conflict?

The Authority of the Church

Thomas More’s works have been magnificently preserved in the fourteen-volume Yale Edition

of his complete works. Because the scope for this project must be limited, I have subjectively

selected two of his English polemical works, Dialogue Concerning Heresies (1529) and

Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer (1532-33) for analysis.1

E.M.W. Tillyard observed about the Tudors in general and Elizabeth I in particular: “The

world picture …was that of an ordered universe arranged in a fixed system of hierarchies but

modified by man’s sin and the hope of his redemption …Everything had to be included and

everything had to be made to fit and to connect…. the conception of order is so taken for

granted, so much a part of the collective mind of the people, that it is hardly mentioned except in

explicitly didactic passages.”2 This paper will assume that Tillyard is correct in his assessment of

early-modern England and will frame our discussion of More as an ecclesial expression of it. He

reflected this “great chain of being” in that he argued from its view of the world that a fracture in

the Catholic Church would threaten the harmony of the whole. Without the church life would

lose meaning, and civility would lapse into barbaric chaos.3 With emphatic repetitions he

defended Catholicism as the conduit of God’s ordering providence in the world. His convictions

reached back into late medieval piety, “summarizing an age in a way that few lives have been

able to do.”4

More understood the church as

The common knowen catholyke people, clergy, lay folke, and all / which what so

euer theyr lyuynge be (amonge whom vndowtedly there are of bothe sortes many

ryght good and vertuouse) do stande to gether and agre in the confessyon of one

trew catholyke faith, wyth all olde holy doctours and sayntes, and good chrysten

1 I have used other works like Utopia and Selected Letters as needed. Other works in his “controversies” include

Responsio ad Lutherum, Letter to Bugenhagen, Supplication of Souls, Apology, and Debellation of Salem and

Bizance. More studied at Oxford c.1492 – 1494 in Canterbury College, after training as a page in the household of

Cardinal Morton. Afterwards, he continued his education at the New and Lincoln Inns. 2 E. M. W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture (New York: Random House/Vintage, 1944), 5-6, 9. To

supplement Tillyard, the reader should consult Stephen Collins, From Divine Cosmos to Sovereign State: An

Intellectual History of Consciousness and the Idea of Order in Renaissance England (Oxford, New York: Oxford

Univ. Press, 1989), chap. 1. 3 Peter Ackroyd, The Life of Thomas More (New York, London: Doubleday/Nan Talese, 1998), 229, 279: “His was

a church of order and ritual in which precepts of historical authority were enshrined. . . . More knew that all the

certainties of inherited belief and the prevailing social order would thereby be destroyed; it would be tantamount to

the collapse of the entire structure of the world.” 4 Richard Marius, The Yale Edition of the Complete Works of Thomas More, Vol. 8: The Confutation of Tyndale’s

Answer, eds. Louis Schuster, Richard Marius, James Lusardi, and Richard Schoeck (New Haven, London: Yale

University Press, 1973), 1272.

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people besyde that are all redy passed thys fyftene hundred yere byfore,

agaynste…all the rable of…erronious heretykes.5

This description underscore his conviction that the “church” that stabilizes and orders the world

is “the commonly knowen catholyque church.” That is, no one has been confused about the

“very chyrche” for 1500 years, and, in his view, its meaning has not changed. In their symbiotic

relationship, tradition and authority were welded in the Catholic Church.6 It is the extension of

the life of Christ on earth, God’s joining of himself with his people so that they can finally enter

his paradise. Contrary to any invisible “true church” of the reformers, More believed that only an

indisputably recognizable church could fulfill its nurturing role on earth. The church must be the

authority for the masses of Christians rather than any sort of a company of elect believers that

were known only to God (contra the reformers), “There is no suche secrete vnknowen chyrche of

Cryst.” 7

More’s insistence on ecclesial authority was grounded in his medieval convictions about

God, who was immanently powerful yet ultimately inexplicable. Perhaps Raphael Hythlodaeus

reflected More’s beliefs most cogently in Utopia, where God is “a certain single being,

unknown, eternal, immense, inexplicable, far above the reach of the human mind.”8 More shared

a sense of God’s fearfully mysterious nature in times of unrelenting plague, warfare, and

violence in the formation of nation states with their concomitant uncertainty and change on the

European landscape. In a widespread quest for a clear and certain authority, More shared the

medieval mentality which advocated authority and obedience more than far-reaching reason.

God had ordained the existing order from his secret counsels, “secret” being one of his favorite

modifiers. It signified the direction of the Spirit in the consent and beliefs of the church. His

English polemics invariably stressed God’s mysterious ways as the anchor of the church. The

Christian must accept what God deigned to reveal through his church. Fallen mankind simply

could not comprehend the mysteries of God.

Likewise, the Christian should practice the sacraments based on what God had

established as his means of grace. More’s understanding of the church made the sacramental idea

most germane. Sacraments had both physical and spiritual aspects, both visible and mysterious.

God could have chosen other means, but he did not; clearly, he revealed what people must do

and not why they should do it. They represented the union of beliefs and visible symbols by

which the Spirit infused grace in the souls of Catholic people:

Vnto all good crysten men the outward sensible sygnes in all the sacraments and

holy ceremonyes of crystes chyrch, by one generall and comen sygnyfycacyon of

5 Ibid., pp. 480.36-481.5.

6 Ackroyd, Thomas More. p. 47: “It is impossible to over-emphasize the authority which custom and tradition

exercised upon More; he was, in that sense (as in others), one of the last great exemplars of the medieval

imagination.” 7 Thomas More, The Yale Edition of the Complete Works of St. Thomas More, Vol. 6: The Dialogue of Heresies, 2

vols., eds. Thomas Lawler, Germain Marc’hadour, and Richard Marius (New Haven, London: Yale Univ. Press,

1981), 1.201.22-33. 8 Thomas More, The Yale Edition of the Complete Works of Thomas More, Vol. 4: Utopia, eds. Edward Surtz and J.

H. Hexter (New Haven, London: Yale Univ. Press, 1965), 217.12-14.

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them all, bytoken and do sygnyfye and that right effectually, an inward secrete

gyfte and inspiracion of grace infused in the soule with the receyuyng of that holy

sacrament by the holy spirite of god. This comen sygnifycacyon of the sacraments

haue all ye comenaltye of crysten people / & they beleue not onlye that the sacraments

be tokens of suche grace and do sygnifye it, but also be in some maner wyse a meane to

come to the getynge therof, bycause god hath so ordeyned.9

For More, God always reveals himself in this mingling of the corporeal and incorporeal

elements. In a larger sense of the idea, the church is the general sacrament of Christ. Like a

person the church is a body of faithful believers which is animated by the Holy Spirit. The

“body” itself was evidenced by a continuous history that was bracketed by Jesus’ promise and

God‘s presence in his church to the end of the world, “Yf the whole catholyke chyrche haue been

in errours sand heresyes …then hath Chryste broken all hys promyses to be wyth his churche all

days to the worldes ende.”10

Though the sacraments ordinarily conveyed grace, More also

embraced the traditional “baptism of desire,” whereby God “of hys power maye and of his

goodnes wyll gyue vnto that man the gyfte of such grace to come to heuyn without baptysme.”11

Thus, there was no alternative for God’s infallible commitment to his mystical body.

Occasionally, More used reason to uphold the church’s sole right to arbitrate revelation,

but it was always the servant of faith:

Yf reason be suffred to renne out at ryot / & wax ouer hye herted & prowde / she

wyll not fayle to fall in rebellyon towarde her maystres fayth. But on ye other

syde / yf she be well brought vp & well gyded & and kepte in good temper, she

shall neuer dysobey fayth beyng in her right mynde.12

Mankind’s nature and reason were corrupted by the Fall to the extent that the grace of

sacraments is necessary to incline reason to assent to the positions of faith:

But yet syth the ende is heuenly and so high aboue the nature of man, that the

nature corrupte, coulde not without helpe of god attayne and reche therto: god

helpeth forth them therefore that are wyllynge wyth hys supernaturall grace,

towarde the inclynacion of reason into the assent and obedience of faith / and that

the whole catholyke chyrche be it neuer so syke & sore in other synnes beside, is

yet ledde into the trough of bylyefe by the spyryte of god.13

Ecclesial boundaries around truth meant that going beyond them was presumption rather than

wisdom. He consistently condemned unrestrained reasoning that, in pride and on the “authority”

9 More, Confutation, p. 78.4-15.

10 Ibid., p. 679.13-16, cf. p. 108.28-32.

11 Ibid., p. 98.27-31.

12 More, The Dialogue of Heresies, 1.131.26-30.

13 More, Confutation, p. 778.13-20.

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of faith, sought to explain the meaning of ceremonies in general and the sacraments in particular.

Their validity rested on God’s will, wisdom, and power rather than “phylosophicall reasons.”14

Reason must serve God’s revelation in the church as proven by miracles and history, yet

unfathomable mysteries establish it as the ongoing authority of revelation to the extent that its

doctrines do not need an internal logical consistency.

God’s power, according to More, means that he is free to do anything that is consistent

with his nature and character. He could have determined other plans, but he was pleased to

ordain the Catholic order of things.15

In the interests of relevancy, More allowed that Catholic

practices could change from one age to another:

God is at hys lyberte styll and euer styll shalbe, to teache hys trouthes more and

more, as hys pleasure shall be to haue them known, and to gouerne his chuyrche

to hys pleasure in dyuerse ages after dyuerse maners, such as hym self lyste for to

dyuyse / wherof his chyrch is by theyr hole consent sure. For ellys shall the

spyryte of god assystent euer with them by goddess promise, & ledynge them in

to all trouth; neuer suffer his hole catholyke chyrch to consente thereto.”16

Does this openness to change not make God capricious and untrustworthy? More’s

answer was that God gave good promises to mankind through the church, thereby indicating how

he had chosen to order the world. The greatest promises concerned Christ’s presence (Matt.

27:20) and the Spirit’s teaching (John 16:13) within the infallible authority of the Catholic

Church. God’s revealed will was also the standard for good works. People may be imperfect, but

their efforts in behalf of church and world are meritorious according to the medieval principle of

“facere quod in se est.” God would reward the person who sincerely tries to please him.

More’s emphasis on “reverence” toward authorities, ecclesiastical and political, surfaced

the reformers’ questions about the sins of popes. More’s answer was that there are legal ways in

both spheres of influence for errant leaders to be admonished or deposed.17

But this does not

mean that commoners could slander their superiors, lest they promote contempt toward rulers

“whom they be fore all that styll bounden bothe to lour and obaye.”18

He seems to have had the

Council of Constance in mind, the gathering which ended the Great Schism by deposing three

claimants to the office. Although popes may be evil or holy, one cannot attack the office because

some of its occupants were corrupt. On that basis, all offices from emperors to aldermen would

have to be abandoned. The issue, he emphasized, was the legitimacy of the office in the church

as advocated by Jean Gerson, Chancellor of the University of Paris at the time of the Council of

Constance. In his “De potestate ecclesiastiea,” Gerson cited two decrees in 1415 that affirmed

14

Ibid., p. 102.17-19. 15

Ibid., p. 464.8-12. 16

Ibid., p. 249.9-14. 17

Ibid., p. 590.13-36. 18

Ibid., p. 590.35-36. Ackroyd, Thomas More, p. 9: “The world of More was one of status rather than of class,

where the inheritance of feudalism and authoritarian religion pre-eminently demanded the virtues of loyalty and

duty.”

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the power of the general council over the pope.19

The power of “the keys” was given to the

whole body.

As noted earlier, More allowed for changes and, for the sake of argument, he allowed that

the unified church might replace the papacy with a federal union under archbishops and

metropolitans. His implied emphasis was that there was no necessary structure for

ecclesiastical governments:

And then yf the pope were or no pope / but as I say prouyncyall patryarches,

archbysshoppes, or metropolytanes, or by what name so euer the thynge were

called: what authoryte &and what power euther he or they sholde haue among the

people, these thynges well I wyste wolde rayse among many men many mo

questyons then one. For the aduoydyng of all intrycacyon wherof / I purposely

forbare to put in the pope as parte of the dyffyncyoon of the chyrche, as a thynge

that neded not / syth yf he be the necessary hed, he is included in the name of the

hole body.20

If God moved in the church to govern differently, then the people were to respond with

obedience. For him authority ascended from the members of the institution, who would delegate

authority to representative leaders. The church is “the hole crysten people / and therefore they

call it the catholyke chyrche that is vnyuersull.”21

The Spirit had led the whole body, clerical and

lay, into truths that were to be believed and practiced. The clergy possessed the gift of preaching,

“from whose mouthe the lay people shoulde here the trouthe and be motivated to moral living.”22

More’s stress on the Spirit within the whole body of Christians buttressed his emphasis

on “common consent”; namely, that any doctrine or practice that sanctioned by a general council

was authoritative because it represented God’s guidance of the body of Christ. In his Responsio

ad Lutherum he offered a clear rejoinder on the point:

Recordare rursus, corum quae dixisti proxime, deum esse, qui in ecclesia sua

consensum operator. Ex omni parte ecclesiae late per orbem diffusae, congregate

sunt ad concilium, et quod post nec ipse megas, uiri optimip plerique ac san

ctissimi consenserunt inter se, redierunt quisque domum. Concensit in eadem fere

totum per orbem fusus populus. At per quem consentit populus christianus? An

non fassus es id per illum fieri intus docentem deum, qui habitare facit unanimes

in domo? 23

The authority was parallel to his view of the weight of tradition, the consensus of the church over

time. Again, the Assumption has been “taught vnto the chyrche by the spyryte of god, whyche

19

Jean Gerson, Oeuvres Complètes, ed. M. Glorieux (Paris, Desclee, 1965), 6.217. The conciliar position has been

described well by Brian Tierney, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1955). 20

More, Confutation, p. 577.13-21. 21

Ibid., p. 164.26-29; cf. 418.10-12. 22

Ibid., p. 615.2-3. 23

Thomas More, The Yale Edition of the Complete Works of St. Thomas More, Vol. 5: Responsio ad Lutherum, ed.

John Headley (New Haven, London: Yale Univ. Press, 1969), 1.626.30-632.5.

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ledeth the chyrche into euery trouthe / and the chyrche growen into the consent and agrement

therof by the same spiryte of concorde and agreement, which maketh all the house of one

mynde.”24

In addition, More argued that even guilty Catholics were a part of “common consent,”

because they recognized their own sin.25

When consensus was elusive, More generally specifies the orderly calling of a council,

ostensibly by the Curia though More did not provide details. The council’s authority was derived

from its representation of the whole church based on a natural-law principle that a representative

part can speak for the whole.26

The church did not accept conciliar desires out of coercion but

because that Spirit moved the representatives to agreement. The general councils were reservoirs

of collective wisdom rather than autocratic decrees. The general councils had jurisdiction over

practical demands of ecclesial life such as the Fourth Lateran Council’s reduction of degrees of

consanguinity from seven to four.27

They also could pronounce on “trouthes to be believed.” No

council, properly assembled, had ever “impugned and reproued a nother.”28

Finally, for our

present purpose, general councils could depose an errant pope as necessary. More’s expressed

his position only in general terms, probably because of the dangers of Henrys “great matter.”

As one would expect, the papal office had been traditionally accepted: “And all be it that

all these nacyons mow do and longe haue done, recognysed & knowleged the pope, not as the

bishop of rome but as the successoure of saynt Peter, to be theyr chyefe sprytuall gouernour

vnder god, and Chrystes vicar in erth,”29

The pope was given judicial authority to issue “dyuers

decretales appereth proceded to the punysshement and amendement thereof.”30

He was a sort of

“governor” who helped to maintain order and to resist tyranny. More was most explicit in a letter

to Thomas Cromwell before his imprisonment in the Tower of London.31

This plea in March of

1534 was accompanied by a “most humble suit” to Henry VIII “to tender my pore honestie, but

principally that of your accustumed goodnes, no sinister information move your noble Grace, to

haue eny more distruste of my trouth and devotion toward you.”32

The justification of the office

was to avoid schisms in the church: “Ffor that primatie is at the leist wise instituted by the corps

of Christendom and for a great vrgent cause in avoiding of seysmes and corroborate by

continuall succession more than the space of a thowsand yere at the leist ffor there are passed

24

More, Confutation, p. 285.11-16, cf. 922.33-923.5. 25

Ibid., 125.14-17. More was indebted to the centuries-old medieval conviction that the legality of an institution ,

relationship, or custom rested on the longevity of their existence. Cf. Robert S. Lopez, Birth of Europe (New York:

M. Evans, 1967), 148. 26

More, Confutation, pp. 940.33-941.8. 27

Cf. ibid., p. 284.21-23. 28

Ibid., p. 923.26. 29

Ibid., p. 576.30-33. Book five of the Confutation contains More’s complete discussion of the distinction between

the office and the officer. 30

Ibid., p. 586.27-29. 31

More was imprisoned in 1534 on the charge of “misprision of treason.” 32

Elizabeth Frances Rogers, The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1947),

489.22-26.

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almost a thowsand yere sith the tyme of holy Saynt Gregory.”33

More anticipated an appeal for a

general council from Henry VIII, which could depose the pope and appoint a suitable successor:

And verily, sith the Kyngis Highnes hath (as by the boke of his honorable

counsaile appereth) appealed to the general counsaile from the Pope . . .ffor in the

next general counsaile it may well happen, that the pope may be deposed and a

nother substituted in his rome, with whom the Kyngis Highnes may be very well

content, ffor albeit that I have for myn awne parte such opinion of the popys

primatie as I have shewed yow, yit neuer thowght I the Pope above the general

counsaile not neuer have in eny boke of myn put forth among the kyngis subgietis

in our vulgare tunge, avaunced greatly the Popis authorite. For albeit that a man

may peradventure somewhat funde therein that after the comen maner of all

Christen realmys I speke of hym as primate yit neuer do I stykke theron with

reasoning and proving to that point. And in my boke against the Maskar, I wrote

well five lynys, and yit of no mo but onely Saynt Peter hym selfe, from whose

person many take not the primatie, evyn of those that graunte it none of his

successours, and yit that boke made, prented and put forth of very trowth byfore

that eny of the bokis of the counsaile was either prented or spoken of. But where

as I had written therof at length in my confutation byfore, and for the profe therof

had compiled together all that I could fynde therefore, at such tyme as I little

loked that there shold fall bytwene the Kingis Highnes and the Pope such a breche

as is fallen synnys, whan I after sawe the thing likely to drawe toward such

displeasure bytwene theym, I suppressed it vtterly and never out word therof in to

my booke but put owt the remanaunt with owt it, which thing well declareth, that

I never entended eny thing to medle in that mater against the Kingis graciouse

pleasure, what so ever myn awne opinion were therin.34

When the king and pope polarized, More suppressed his own opinion rather than “medle in the

mater” against the king’s pleasure.

By consenting to Henry’s appeal for a general council, More risked excommunication

according to the papal bull Execrabilis, which was promulgated by Pius II in 1460. Any appeal

to a general council, the bull stated, against a standing pope was condemned. More apparently

did not take the anathema seriously. Though conciliar in his view of Catholic authority, he

defended the pope on issues of clerical celebacy, deflecting the charges to Luther’s “lechery.”

The papacy had been validated by the church’s consensus over time. However, the office was not

to dominate the masses that God was refining in the church.

More’s view also emerges when compared with that of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester,

who, like More, was martyred in the imbroglio over Henry’s marital difficulties. Fisher’s

primary writing against heresy was Assertionis Lutherenae Confutatio in 1523. For Fisher Peter

33

Ibid., p. 498.227-231. 34

Ibid., p. 499.248-500.

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was the chief apostle, even though he was not the first one called. He noted in Acts that whoever

rejected the primacy of Peter spurned Christ as well. The true church had been faithful followers

of Peter’s apostolate. The difference between More and Fisher can be illustrated with their

respective interpretations of Luke 22:32, “But I have prayed for you, that your faith fail not, and

when they are converted, strengthen you brethren.” For Fisher this was Christ’s delegation of

authority to the papacy, while for More it was a certification of authority in the church as a

whole.35

Fisher subordinated conciliar authority, while More magnified it. He revered the

episcopal see at Rome rather than a single errant individual. The whole Christian community was

superior to any prelate, and the pope should be a servant of the church rather than its master.

Who judges errant popes? More would not have advocated secular judgment over the Bishop of

Rome as practiced before the Gregorian reformers of the Eleventh Century. Thus, we would infer

that his choice for such immense power was the general council.

God’s liberty and the revelatory presence of the Spirit extended to the oral traditions of

the church beyond the Bible contrary to the reformers. For More God did not reveal his living

revelation by books alone. Christ left a people rather than a book; consequently, the church

produced the scriptures. First, he saw the Christian life as a continual sharing in a living divine

Spirit. “But now syth god entended not to gyue his new lawe by bokes, but apecyally by the

necessary poyntes thereof wryten in mennys hartes / wherof hym selfe wolde be the specall

inward mayster: he hath prouyded te scripture to serue for parte, but not to serue alone for all.”36

The revelation was given to a living community that reached across history and nations. If God

allowed any practice to go on for a long time, he must have approved of it or he would have

changed it. The church determined scripture and miracles through history, functioning as the

perpetual apostolate under Christ and animated by his Spirit: “Forget not nowe by ye way quod I

that ye styll agree that god wyll not suffer his hole chyrche to agree in any dampnable errour and

fall in a false faythe…. syth the chyrche byleueth that we sholde worship them / that kynde of

byleue can be none errour / but must medes be trewe.”37

God “ys not so bounden, but that he

may teche what he wyll and when he wyll, wyth scripture or wythout / and may commaunde yt

to be byleued not being contrary to that he hath taught all redy.”38

Again, More skirted

arbitrariness and caprice with consistency with what he had previously taught through the

church. Second, not only was the church the source of the sacred writings, it also interpreted

them, choosing the truths and rejecting the falsehoods. The writings are so difficult that the

church sometimes changed its authoritative interpretation. Truths of the church were an ever-

brightening light from the same Source, the foundations of which God had provided in all of the

prior illuminations. God’s tie to the past stabilized his revelation in spite of occasional variations.

From the church’s side, there had to be a consensus that then was honored by all Christians, a

“common consent” particularly among the holy fathers that underscored the importance of

35

More, Confutation, p. 693.20-27. On 19 May 1935, More and Fisher were canonized as saints by Pope Pius XI. 36

Ibid, p. 257.33-37. 37

More, Dialogue of Heresies, p. 239.10-20; cf. Confutation, p. 361.34-362.6., 38

More, Confutation, p. 365.30-33.

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tradition for accepted truths.39

So, scripture, correctly understood, was never contrary to accepted

Catholic dogmas.

More never tired of using historical continuity in his defense of Catholicism, pointing out

that heretical movements had been transitory departures from “the faith of the fathers.” The great

“holy doctors” of Christian antiquity served the same church that the reformers were seeking to

destroy. Chief among them, for More, were Ambrose, Augustine, Cyprian, Jerome, and Gregory

the Great.40

The heretics obviously were reacting to a corrupt ecclesiastical organization that

allegedly mediated grace. Their emphasis on “the company of the redeemed” seemed to have

reflected their amorphous peregrinations from one hiding place in Europe to another. More did

not try to systematically defend everything that the “holy fathers” wrote, for they had been

authenticated by an abiding consensus of the church. The Spirit had led the holy fathers to

magnify God’s dwelling with the church.41

Their books, accordingly, were a substantial part of

the church’s visible history.

Another validation of the church’s authority through history was the chain of miracles

that established the truths of the tradition. According to More, they happened frequently and

were visible for all to see, testifying to the irrefutable unity of Catholicism.42

The heretics, on the

contrary, had done no miracles and had fragmented into a chaotic collection of errors.

The church was foundational, but More advocated similar principles for the state.43

He

favored conciliar government with others like Fortesque, Elyot, and Starkey. He also thought of

society as a divinely authorized order in which a few people led while most obeyed. His legal

training generated fears about the ignorance and passions of the masses. Like the church, the

social order must be accepted as divinely sanctioned or the world would dissolve in a chaos of

rebellion.

He served a monarch who aspired to absolute power, but his Utopia described a mythical

kingdom with no monarch. In other words, he did not mandate an absolutely sovereign monarch,

though that could be a theoretical option. More’s suggestion of obedience to “prynce, estate, or

gouernour” implied that all governments existed under God’s direction, not because any of them

were intrinsically superior to alternatives. Whatever the government, subjects must obey for the

harmonious order of the whole. However, all subjects did not have to passively surrender their

consciences to corrupt governments. Vested leaders might work for orderly change, as More

himself had done in Parliament, but this did not substantially affect his traditional view of

authority. A citizen might follow his conscience to death, but one had no right to rebel if the state

39

Ibid., pp. 997.37-998.3. 40

Cf. Ibid., p. 590.23-32. 41

Ibid., p. 248.21-22. More emphasized that “syth we haue vppon our parte agaynste all theyr sects, all the olde

holy sayntes agreynge wyth vs in bylyefe, though we be not lyke theym in lyuynge, there is no dowte but that in

faith the comen christen people by all these agys agreef with vs also” (ibid., p. 659.28-32). 42

More, Dialogue of Heresies, pp. 90, 243-45; cf. Confutation, p. 809.30. 43

More’s support of conciliar wisdom placed him with John Forescue, Thomas Elyot, and Thomas Starkey. Alistair

Fox, Thomas More: History and Providence (New Haven, London: Yale Univ. Press, 1982), 163: “Together with

priests, kings formed one of the two most eminent orders of ‘speciall consecrate personys’ that God had ordained on

earth.”

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determined that he was a threat to society. In brief, the order which God established in church

and state is binding on every person freely determined by Christians’ wise and caring Father.

The function of the church on earth is to promote salvation, to establish canons of

morality, and to serve as a restraint on evil and chaos in society. All of these roles related to

More’s view of the church as the supreme authority in society. One of his objections to

predestination was that its “certainty” undermined peoples’ moral motivation regarding their

future. The individual Christian’s proper attitude was a mixture of hope for salvation and a dread

of God’s judgments: “And therefore as I say, god wythdraweth hys hands to shewe hys electes

and reprobates bothe, that they haue rather cause to be meke and fere a fall, then to be prowde of

theyr virtue, and make them selfe sure of theyr standynge, and thynke that they be so dere

derlinges to god of whom all good cometh, that so them selfe what they wyll, he wyll not lette

them fall.”44

The amount of good works was directly proportional to the comfort of a good hope,

“The spyryte of god bereth recorde vnto our spyryte, that is to wyt geueth our spyryte the

comforte of good hope, as longe as we so do, that we be the sonnes of god. But then on tother

syde when so euer we wax vntowarde and lyste no lenger to follow the spyryte, but fall vnto the

fleshe and walke in the works therof …then cease we to be the sonnes of god.”45

Fear, in turn,

stemmed from uncertainty: “Man must not temper his hope of goddess mercy with the drede of

his iustyce, lest his ouer bolde hope may happe to stretche in to presumpcion & occasyon of

sleyght regardyng synne.”46

He believed that numerous, biblical passages promised salvation for

good works, not merely its consequences as the reformers claimed.

Failure to maintain a steady stream of meritorious works was a problem of the will.

Unless the will is involved in evil acts, a person does not sin.47

And no one commits mortal sins

against his will. If one does not conform to Catholic beliefs, the reason is not that he cannot but

that he will not: “And I saye plainly, who so euer beynge enfourmed of any article of the faythe

whiche god byndeth us to beleue, beleueth it nat / the cause why he beleueth nat is nat bycause

he can nat, but bycause he wyll nat.”48

Though grace is necessary through the church, if one’s

will abandons such grace, then “ye seed of grace would depart out of him.”49

“Yet is there euer

more in euery such fayth the inward cause mouynge our wyll towarde the consent thereof, the

specyall ayde and helpe of the great goodnesse of god, without whyche oure wyll had neuer

walked towarde it.”50

Socially, beneficial works were a sign of God’s favor, for grace was

evident in Catholic citizens’ recognition of their social obligations. More thought it more likely

that social order would be preserved because people felt their destiny depended, at least partly,

on their works in this life. He realized, of course, from his experiences in law how fallible the

human will can be.

44

More, Confutation, p. 524.25-30. 45

Ibid., p. 757.24-30. 46

Ibid., p. 426.3-6, 47

Ibid, pp. 457.15-17, 452.32-33. 48

Ibid., p. 547. 13-17. 49

Ibid., p. 423.13-15. 50

Ibid., p. 747.28-32.

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More’s affirmation of free will moved his understanding of divine election to Christ’s

ordination of the church in the world. He wrote that “the eleccyon by whyche Cryst elected and

chose them into his chyrch in this world, into whych he chose and toke bothe fynall electes &

fynall reprebates.”51

So, More’s election is the process that makes people members of the true,

militant church. The “elect,” accordingly, must choose the works of God in the church, lest they

lose their place in heaven. The doctrines of election and insecurity were meant to underscore

peoples’ responsibility for social order. They may be good or bad, strong or weak, but their faith

in the church was the foundation of civilized societies. Stable societies develop when people

realize they have a genuine share in the commonwealth, a participation in the governance of the

state from which they receive benefits.

In the realities of statecraft, More advocated the use of force to subdue conflicting sects

which threatened their societies and the church with chaos. He reasoned that heretics actively

fomented sedition, and states must destroy them or be destroyed by their disobedient contempt

for commonwealth.52

His justification was to uphold the church of the European masses from the

blindness of “invisible” sects, whose members left the church with malice and whose obstinacy

required that they be expelled and defeated. The state was a fragile net that covered humanity’s

penchant for barbarism. Toleration of sedition and divisions would tear the net to shreds. The use

of force to suppress such dissent was the necessary defensive work of the state, for church and

state must respond only “when the heretykes began suche vyolence them selfe.”53

Hopefully in

the disciplinary process, the heretics would repent and be restored to the church instead of

persevering to eternal damnation. It was a case of Catholicism’s long history, rich traditions,

godly men, and numerous miracles against its enemies with no history, malicious men, and no

miracles. At the heart of chaos was a roiling lust that would wreck civilization if not controlled.

The root of the problem, in More’s view, was pride, the Augustinian “mother” of all sins,

“For all the heretyques be not gathered into one church / but as the chyrche of Cryste is but one

…so be all the false called the church of ye deuyll, whyche is kynge as the scripture sayth ouer

all the children of pryde, whyche pryde is as saynte Austayne sayth the very mother of

heretyques.”54

The presumption of the reformers’ claims to be right and truthful drove More to

tirades against them. Pride manifested itself in the sin of sedition, irresponsible rebellions that

promoted social turmoil and disturbed the peace and quiet of good people.55

Prime illustrations

were the Peasants’ Rebellion in 1525 in Germany and the sack of Rome in 1527, and he blamed

Lutherans for social massacres and chaos.56

His fear and loathing of pride and sedition were

rooted in notions about good and evil in the world. Good is orderly, and evil is chaotic. God

51

Ibid., p. 848.14-16. 52

Ibid., p. 29.27-29; cf. Dialogue of Heresies, p. 417. 53

More, Confutation, p. 954.21-23. 54

Ibid., p. 662.12-20; cf. Dialogue of Heresies, p. 423. 55

More, Dialogue of Heresies, p. 123: “But wyth sowing sedycyon settynge forth of errours and heresyes / and

spycynge theyr prechynge with rebukynge of preesthode and prelacy / for the peoples pleasure / they tourne many a

man to ruyne & them selfe also. And then the deuyll dysceyueth them in theyr blynde affeccyons.” Cf. p. 266 as

well. 56

Ibid., pp. 369-71.

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formed the cosmos as an orderly system; Satan rebelled against it. As the devil rebelled against

God in heaven, his minions attacked against the traditions of the church. Accordingly, the

heretics did not manifest random eruptions of malicious people, but were rather predictable

expressions of chaos striving against order. More synthesized this point as follows:

And therfore as good ye kynge of peace & vnyte, and very lorde of hostes also,

sent the tother good seed vnto his knowen catholyke chyrche, & gathered and

kepte it togyther kepe it shall spyght of all heretyques and all the greate gates of

hell: so is it no dowte but that the sower of dyssencyon and kynge of rebellion, the

prynce of pryde the great deuyll hym self, hath gathered thys flocke to hym, and

sent always now and than such darnell seed and cole to fede them.57

Given More’s intense opposition to heresy and sedition, why did he not persecute his

enemies to a greater extent than he did.58

The most obvious reason was Henry VIII’s

tergiversations over his marital difficulties. The king flirted with anyone like Tyndale or Barnes

who would support his desires. More’s tenure in governmental service was not a propitious time

for traditionalists in the church to rally against their opponents. Heresy trials required

condemnation by ecclesiastical authorities before the government could execute them. Legally,

More had no authority to curb heresy until the church initiated proceedings, and the latter was

intimidated by the king. We know that More monitored heretics’ activities, but he could not

persecute them without the cooperation of the church. His only recourse was to appeal to Henry

for the maintenance of the true Catholic faith. Throughout the Confutation More alluded to

Henry’s Assertio Septem Sacramentorum against Luther, in which he sought to call Henry back

to his first love.59

More understood that an aroused king could purge heresy from the realm.

Indeed, had Henry allowed him, More could have extirpated the “contagion.” But Henry’s

preoccupation trumped any attempt to promote a unity in Christendom.

Indeed, in eschatological terms, the heretics were harbingers of the Antichrist, “Nor neuer

shall he suffer them to do any, tyll ye great archeheretyke Antycryste come hym selfe / whyche

as helpe me god I fere be very nere hys tyme, and that Luther is his very fore goar & his baptiste,

to make redy his way in the deserte of this wreched world / and Tindale, frere Huskyn, and

Swynglius, his very fals prophetes to preache for hym.”60

Initially, he viewed Catholicism as

triumphantly marching to victory; in 1533 he feared that the heretical tide would I engulf the

world, but “Cryste shall come downe from his high mounte hym selfe, and gather hys flocke to

gether / and wyth the mightye blaste of hys own mouth shall ouerthrow and destroy the strong

saptayne of all these heretykes Antichryste hym selfe, and shall rule those ragyouse scysmatykes

57

More, Confutations, p. 728.13-20. 58

Only three men were demonstrably put to death during his administration. Cf. R. W. Chambers, Thomas More

(London: Jonathan Cape, 1935), 282. 59

For example, More, Confutation, pp. 226.28-30, 639.19-20, 675.30-32 passim. 60

Ibid., p. 271.11-15.

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wyth an iron rod.”61

Changes from More’s century have been monumental, but the world has

continued, if only in a “brave new” form.

We have seen that More viewed Catholicism as the guardian of social order. Based on the

mysteriousness and power of God, he argued that traditional beliefs were the sacramental seal

that demanded the obedience of people. In his tempestuous time of anticlericalism and the

growth of nation-states, this certainty was necessary to avoid schisms in the social fabric. The

church’s function was to motivate socially beneficial works by combining a hope for future bliss

and a dread of divine judgment.

The Authority of the Self

Robert Solomon, formerly Centennial Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas,

defined modernity succinctly and suggestively in his Introducing Philosophy: “Its central

concern is the autonomy of the individual person. This means that each one of us must be

credited with the ability to ascertain what is true and what is right, through our own thinking and

experience, without the usual appeal to outside authority: parents, teachers, popes, kings, or a

majority of peers…. This stress on autonomy stands at the very foundation of contemporary

Western thought.”62

We accept Solomon’s conclusion about modernity and will use it as the

guiding assumption in our discussion of Greene.

For More the Catholic Church was the protective guardian of social order; while in

Greene’s Catholicism God infuses the world in spite of rogue doctrine, lapsed piety, and mortal

sin. For Greene faith was always complex, never straightforward, and never comfortable in any

traditional sense. He was a thoroughly modern man in as full a sense as More was late medieval

and early modern. William Golding eulogized, “He [Greene] will be read and remembered as the

ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man’s consciousness and anxiety.”63

Though both

authors were influential English Catholics, they were so different that their connecting thread

may have been the Catholic Church, which canonized More even as it censured Greene.

Since his background was a formative influence on his life, we should note that Greene

was born in Berkhamsted in 1904. His father was a history and classics master, and his mother

was a cousin of Robert Louis Stevenson. Their home was Anglican in affiliation but without

noteworthy impact on his development. He suffered from bipolar depression and was sent to

London for psychoanalysis in 1920 at aged sixteen. He realized that it had a profound effect on

61

Ibid., p. 794.9-15. 62

Robert Solomon, Introducing Philosophy (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977), 10. 63

Cited by Cedric Watts, A Preface to Greene (London: Pearson Education, 1997), p. 84. Kevin McGowin’s

“Graham Green, The Major Novels: a Centenary” (www.electica.org/v8n4/mcgowin_greene.html, accessed spring

2013) was even more complimentary: “Graham Greene’s long life not only spanned nearly the entire twentieth

century; his over sixty books in seven decades captured, in a way, the entire scope of it. He was both the most

important, famous, and most popular English writer of the mid-twentieth century. . . . He was the greatest English

novelist of the twentieth century.” He received the Hawthornden Prize for The Power and the Glory (1940), the

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Heart of the Matter (1948), the Jerusalem Prize for his contributions to

individual freedom (1981), and Britain’s Order of Merit (1986). In collaboration with Carol Reed, his The Third

Man won First Prize at Cannes (1949). Though he never received the Nobel Prize for Literature, he was runner-up to

Ivo Andrić (1961).

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his writing. He wrote Vivian that “the disease is also one’s material.”64

He entered Balliol

College (Oxford) in 1922, and veered toward the prevailing atheism of his peers, his intellectual

influences, and his treatment in psychoanalysis. A voracious and retentive reader, he became

preoccupied with debates between Catholicism, skepticism, and Communism.65

He joined the

Communist Party for four weeks in 1922 but was quickly disillusioned by the Stalinist trials.

Around the same time, he turned to Catholicism because of his love for Vivian Darvell-

Browning, herself a recent convert, whom he married upon conversion in 1927.

Greene, contrary to More, cited disloyalty as his abiding struggle, whether to wife,

church, employment, political ideals, or a stable domicile. He traced this struggle to the

Berkhamsted school: “I was like the son of a quisling in a country under occupation …I was

surrounded by the forces of resistance, and yet I couldn’t join them without betraying my father

and my brother.”66

Its foundation was rooted in a problem with familial authority in his

disordered world. Caught between peers and family, Greene “grew clever at evasion,” or “ways

of escape” as he titled his second autobiography. Through his writing he tried to articulate his

own qualms and the divisions of the modern world, as he observed them. He became

preoccupied with human duplicity that he observed in double agents, virtuous criminals, humane

scoundrels, apostate clerics, and sinning saints. In a variety of ways, Greene perceived that he

was a double agent, whether as lover, political traveler, or fiction writer. Cedric Watts noted,

“Whatever his avowed religion, his tutelary deity was often Janus, the two-faced god who looks

both ways at once.”67

Religion, Greene found, was especially prone to anomaly and irony,

because the sacred and profane were usually intertwined in an unholy and illogical alliance. He

would later reflect, “With the approach of death I care less and less about religious truth. One

hasn’t long to wait for revelation or darkness.”68

His interest in things of God, he wrote to Vivian Deyrell-Browning, went no deeper than

the sentimental hymns in the school chapel …If I were to marry a Catholic I ought at least to

learn the nature and limits of the beliefs she held …Besides, I thought, it would kill the time.”69

Vivian, a recent convert when he met her, was a secretary for Basil Blackwell. She corrected one

64

Reported in the Sydney Morning Herald 30 (November 2007), “Book Reviews,” 2. Joseph Pearce’s critique of

Greene emphasized his view of the world as an outgrowth of his mental pathology: “Greene is often like a self-

loathing skeptic brooding over himself. . . . Perhaps the secret of his enduring popularity lies in his being a doubting

Thomas in an age of doubt” (www.catholicauthors.com/greene.html, accessed spring 2013). 65

Greene stated that he did not think that “books that one reads as an adult influence one as a writer.” At a younger

age, he was indebted to Marjorie Bowen’s Viper of Milan for his melodramatic “pattern of writing.” Specifically,

Viper impressed him that “perfect evil walks in a world where perfect good can never walk again, and only the

pendulum ensures that after all in the end justice is done.” The “pattern” meant that the world must be portrayed in a

harsh light that casts fantastic colors (www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5180/the-art-of-fiction-no-3-graham-

greene ). Later he shared an affinity with Joseph Conrad, the voyager novelist, and his erstwhile collaborator, Ford

Madox Ford. Conrad’s The Secret Agent shares a similar murky world of political crime and espionage with

Greeneland. The pessimistic irony that political action may prove counter-productive and self-destructive is

common to both writers. 66

Graham Greene, A Sort of Life ((New York: Pocket Books, 1973), 54-55. 67

Watts, Greene, p. 15, 68

Greene, Sort of Life, p. 146. 69

Ibid., p. 143.

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of his film reviews by substituting “hyperdulia” for the Virgin Mary for Greene’s “worship.”

Greene was smitten and in October of 1925 declared that he would be “the property sole and free

hold, of Miss Vivian Dayrell, to do with him as she may at any time think fit.”70

She initially

declined because of his religious skepticism.

In spite of biases against Christian faith, Greene enlisted the help of Father Trollope, a

former actor who was highly regarded in the Catholic Nottingham circle of influence. He

enjoyed his catechetical sessions, though he “cheated him from the first, not telling him of my

motive for receiving instruction or that I was engaged to marry a Roman Catholic.”71

“I became

convinced of the probable existence of something we call God,” he recalled, “though now I

dislike the word with all its anthropomorphic associations and prefer Chardin’s ‘Omega

Point’.”72

He became a communicant in February 1926 somberly and without joy: “I had made

the first move with a view to my future marriage, but now the land had given way under my feet

and I was afraid where the tide would take me.”73

The tide initially was one of the happier phases

of his life with his marriage to Vivian at St. Mary’s Church in London on 15 October 1927.

As his writing career developed from The Man Within, Greene deplored the label

“Catholic writer,” which critics assigned to him after successes like Stamboul Train, The Power

and the Glory, and The Heart of the Matter. “I am not a Catholic writer,” he emphatically

declared, “but a writer who happens to be a Catholic.”74

He would later say ironically, “I am a

Catholic agnostic.”75

What he meant by this was that he did not write out of a sense of duty to

Catholic beliefs nor as an authorized representative of the church. Rather he wrote out of a

constant battle with allegiances, first with Vivian through a series of adulterous relationships

then with Communism, and Catholicism and Christianity in general. We might say that his larger

and long-term battle was with the injustice of God’s justice, which he sought to reconcile in his

own mind. The struggle left a trail of paradoxes through his work, always with God’s way with

humanity in view.

As with More, I have selected two novels from his large body of work to illustrate the

paradox of the opaque saintliness of depraved sinners. The novels are Brighton Rock and The

70

Cited by Norman Sherry, The Life of Graham Green, 2 vols. (London: Cape, 1989), 1.230. 71

Greene, Sort of Life, p. 146. 72

Ibid. Conversions to Catholicism were not unusual at the time. Vivian and Catherine Walston, one of his preferred

mistresses, were Catholic. Evelyn Waugh converted in 1930; Joseph Conrad, one of his admired writers, was an

exile from Catholic Poland; Ford Madox Ford, another admired writer, was a member of the church. 73

Ibid., p. 147. 74

Graham Greene, Ways of Escape (London: Lester and Orpen Dennys, 1980), p. 74. He was, nevertheless,

genuinely appreciative of religion’s contribution to writing. In an interview with The Paris Review, he was asked

how his Catholicism differed from Mauriac. He responded, “Mauriac’s sinners sin against God whereas mine,

however hard they try, can never quite manage to . . .” The sentence completed would read “escape the human

condition.” He attacked modernist writers like Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster for their “dull, superficial

characters who wander about like cardboard symbols through a world that is paper thin”

(www.angelfire.com/journal/88btps/FirstThing.htm, accessed spring 2013). The religious sense raised awareness of

the soul’s struggle with consequences of damnation, the metaphysical power of evil, and the dramatic power of

divine mercy. The world is so sinful that the struggle to avoid it is doomed to failure with an unvarnished need for

mercy. 75

“Interview,” The Observer (12 March 1978), p. 35.

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Power and the Glory (1940).76

The improbable awareness of God surfaced in Brighton Rock

(1938), the first of Greene’s novels to deal directly with issues of faith. For him Brighton

juxtaposed urban squalor and tawdry opulence. The squalor was Nelson Place and Peacehaven,

the working-class ghettoes that were home to Rose and Pinkie respectively. The opulence was

the Cosmopolitan Hotel, the luxurious retreat of royalty and bosses which refused

accommodation to the young couple on their wedding night. “Rock” is a metaphor that was

based on “sticks of rock” at the pier where Hale was killed. Its deeper meaning is the harsh

reality of human darkness that Brighton represents.77

Confession and repentance may

temporarily bandage worldly corruption, but it was reassuringly consistent.

Pinkie, “the Boy” and main character, was a depraved, seventeen-year-old. His “kind of

hideous and unnatural pride” (p. 7) was satirically caricatured by his behavior and “anti-macho”

name. He was henchman of a gang of mobsters. He had killed Charles (a.k.a. “Fred”) Hale, a

fellow racketeer, and was pursued by Ida Arnold, a self-motivated investigator and companion of

“Fred,” who suspected foul play and was determined to bring Pinkie to justice. Pinkie became

entangled with Rose, a waitress with whom he shared a quasi-Catholic sense of sin and

redemption. Rose was willing to follow her love for Pinkie “as a stranger in the country of mortal

sin” (p. 189) in spite of his corruption but not at the expense of redemption. Pinkie married Rose,

who was a potential witness to his murder, for the sake of redemption but not at the expense of

sin. As evil descended upon Pinkie and his world of crime disintegrated, he sought to damn

himself through a suicide pact with Rose, a mortal sin for Catholicism. As authorities caught up

with the couple, Rose could not go through with the pact and threw the gun away. Pinkie, to the

contrary, jumped over a cliff to enact comeuppance both on earthly and heavenly justice. Greene

wrote, “They couldn’t even hear a splash …whipped away into zero—nothing” (p. 243).

In Greene’s world, the issue is not clear. The severest of sins in the church is a mix of

evil and virtue, of human despair and divine mercy. At the end of the book Rose sits in a

confessional booth, remorseful for herself—not Pinkie—for not keeping the pact. The

confessional was “a stuffy, little dark box”, which was attended by a nameless, old, sickly priest

…She had not come to confess, she had come to think” (p. 245). “I want to be like him,” she

said, “damned.” The priest responded with a parabolic story that encapsulates the paradox at the

center of the novel:

76

Other works with explicitly Catholic themes are The Heart of the Matter (1948) and The End of the Affair (1951).

We have selected Brighton Rock and the Power and the Glory because of their proximity in writing and context. In

the year of Brighton Rock’s publication, Greene travelled to Mexico to investigate alleged atrocities against

Catholics. The trip produced two books, The Lawless Roads (1939), which provided the setting for The Power and

the Glory (1940). In his words, “It was in Mexico that I corrected the proofs of Brighton Rock” (Ways of Escape, p.

60). His experiences there galvanized his sympathies for the oppressed and the pariah. 77

Graham Greene, Brighton Rock (London, New York: Penguin, 1938, 1970), 198. Greene later stated, Ways of

Escape, p. 62: “No city before the war, not London, Paris or Oxford, had such a hold on my sffections.” At Brighton

he saw her first film, Anthony Hope’s “Sophie of Kravonia,” the tale of a kitchenmaid who became a queen. “That

was the kind of book I always wanted to write: the high romantic tale, capturing us in youth with hopes that prove

illusions, to which we return again in age in order to escape the sad reality. Brighton Rock was a very poor substitute

for Kravonia, like all my books, and yet perhaps it is one of the best I ever wrote.”

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‘A Frenchman…had the same idea as you…This man decided that if any soul was

going to be damned, he would be damned too. He never took the sacraments. He

never married his wife in church. I don’t know, my child, but some think he

was—well, a saint. I think he died in what we are told is a mortal sin—I’m not

sure…’ He sighed and whistled, bending his old head. He said, ‘You can’t

conceive, my child, nor can I or anyone the…appalling strangeness of the mercy

of God…The Church does not demand that we believe any soul is cut off from

mercy.”78

The strangeness is appalling, if a murderous, spiteful, and self-damning Pinkie can evoke the

possibilities of sainthood. Is the burden of sin we carry about sufficiently forgivable to find—

even in mortal forms—favor with God? The old priest told Rose, “A Catholic is more capable of

evil than anyone.” In Greene’s calculus, “more capable of evil” translates into a greater

opportunity for mercy. Pinkie wanted to lose his life in damnation, but perhaps he saved it in a

divine mercy that he could not shake. Whatever his twisted notions about his own importance, he

knew all-to-well the differences between good and evil. In willfully damning himself, he

defiantly embraced the implication that souls ought to be damned. Besides, if Rose was pregnant,

she could hope that the child could be a saint…to pray for its father. Greene, we know, did not

believe in hell, but he could not escape the pervasiveness of evil in this world.79

If Pinkie in any

way warranted sainthood, it was because he sided with the human condition utterly and

knowingly. Rose reentered the world, hoping that the worst horror of the complete circle of her

nightmare with Pinkie was over. But in “Greeneland,” she will listen to the gramophone disc

where Pinkie would declare his hatred for her and his desire for her “to let me be.” Greene’s

argument is not only religious but also secular. Pinkie was condemned to the sleaziness into

which he has been born. Ranged against his shabby underworld were the rich and powerful, a

virtual Manichean sense of the hellish realities beneath the superficial distractions of Brighton.

God’s mercy is present but not apparent in this twisted, lapsed world.

The Power and the Glory (1940) was a widely acclaimed as Greene’s best literary work.

He referred to it as “the only novel I have written to a thesis …The book gave me more

satisfaction than any other I had written, but it waited nearly ten years for success.”80

With

Brighton Rock its background was the upheavals of war in Europe. The novels also featured

“pursuit and betrayal within a context of ideological conflict so familiar to our modern

experience.”81

Both of them stretch the limits of God’s mercy and intertwine the sacred and the

profane. The Power and the Glory features Greene’s juxtaposition of “power” (as represented by

78

Ibid., p. 246. 79

Marie-Françoise Allain, ed., The Other Man: Conversations with Graham Greene (London: Bodley Head, 1983),

pp. 157-61. 80

Greene, Ways of Escape, pp. 67-68. 81

Peter Mudford, Graham Greene (London: Northcote House, 1996), 29.

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the police lieutenant) and “glory” (as exemplified by the whisky priest).82

A part of Greene’s

thesis was the meaning of “the search for glory,” which had emerged from his close friendship

with Herbert Read. He was seeking to redefine glory in terms of his oppressed characters: “Glory

is now a discredited word …It has been spoilt by a too close association with military grandeur;

it has been confused with fame and ambition. But true glory is a private and discreet virtue, and

is only fully realized in solitariness.”83

In his last interview with the lieutenant, the priest rejected

a transfer to a common sell to escape loneliness. “No, no,” the priest replied, “I’d rather be alone

…so much to think about.”84

As Greene would have it, whisky and wine were both sacramentally powerful in the

story: “The priest was a bad priest—a whisky priest…somewhere they accumulated in secret—

the rubble of his failures…He was a damned man putting God [sacramentally] into the mouths of

men.”85

His litany of failures included abandonment of mass and prayers, addiction, and

fathering an illegitimate child: “It was all pride. Just pride because I stayed. I wasn’t any use, but

I stayed.”86

Like inseparably blended liquids, the priest in this “old corrupt God-ridden world”

offers a taste of love, “The smallest glass of love mixed with a pint pot of ditchwater.”87

At the end of the book, as the priest contemplates his execution, he is overwhelmed by a

sense of worthlessness. He had told the accusatory lieutenant, “I don’t know a thing about the

mercy of God: I don’t know how awful the human heart looks to Him. But I do know this—that

if there’s ever been a single man in this state damned, then I’ll be damned too …I wouldn’t want

it to be any different. I just want justice, that is all.”88

In a “curious dream,” he was eating a mean

in front of a high altar, observing “a God for other people not for him.” Coral Fellows, who had

sheltered him earlier, brought him wine and news. He awoke with hope, only to realize that it

was the morning of his death. Even his shadow on the cell wall “had a look of surprise and

grotesque unimportance.” Thinking of the cold faces of saints rejecting him, he “felt only an

immense disappointment because he had to go to God empty-handed, with nothing done at all.”89

A careful reading of the novel exposes a covert plot in which Greene subtlely pointed to

the contributions of the priest to other characters: Tench, Coral, the villagers, Calvert, and even

the lieutenant. His visit with Tench moved the dentist to try to reestablish his relationship with

his estranged wife. Ironically, Tench inflicts dental pain on the police chief, who had approved

the ruthless pursuit of the priest at the time of the latter’s execution, “I can’t help wondering

82

Greene attributed the designation to Dr. Roberto Fitzpatrick, whom he befriended during his travel in Mexico in

1938. Based on the trip he wrote The Lawless Raods, which describes the situations and regions in The Power and

the Glory. He experienced the long treks on mules, oppressive heat and insects, the squalor of rural villages, and the

hopelessness of impoverished people. With persecutions in countries like Germany, Russia, and Spain in addition to

Mexico, conscientious opposition to totalitarian states was a matter of life and death (Ways of Escape, p. 68). 83

Greene, Ways of Escape, p. 30. 84

Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory (New York: Viking, 1940, 1968), 268. 85

Ibid., p. 83. 86

Ibid., p. 264, cf. pp. 280-81. 87

Ibid., p. 269. 88

Ibid. Greene had noted that periodically the priest had sought “ways of escape,” p. 82. 89

Ibid., pp. 282-84.

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whether it’s the man Coral—I mean the man we sheltered.”90

Calvert, the gangster who was the

police’s bait in the capture of the priest, altruistically offers the priest a knife to defend himself as

the criminal dies. Coral, who had lost her faith when she was aged ten and was killed by Calvert,

had comforted the priest with nourishment.91

When she brought him wine in his dream, the

reader wonders if the priest had somehow restored her faith, and she, in turn, was perhaps

offering him hope after his death. The people of the priest’s village, though reticent and fearful at

first, seemed to have been strengthened by the return of “the office” to their midst,92

because the

priest was executed in a private yard rather than the public cemetery, lest a popular protest break

out against the authorities. This seems to indicate an ecclesial bond between the priest and the

villagers. Similarly, the priest responded to the supposed plea for confession by Calvert, knowing

that it was a Judas’ kiss that would entail arrest and death. So, it seems in the end that a measure

of power may belong to the church of the oppressed, since an unnamed priest arrives to take the

place of the whisky priest at the end of the novel [a “Father” with an upper case “F”]. We can

conclude that the worthless sinner-priest was not really Hell-worthy after all; in Greene’s view,

he was more “saintly” and experienced greater mercy than the hagiographic Father Juan, the

unconvincing hero of Catholicism’s propaganda machine.93

Greene’s counterpoint to the whisky priest is the atheistic lieutenant, who was “infuriated

to think that there were still people in the state who believed in a loving and merciful God.”94

He

is portrayed as a ‘secular priest,” whose lodging “looked as comfortless as a prison or a

monastery cell.”95

His characteristic posture was an authoritarian aloofness with his hand always

on his holstered gun. He told the priest, “You say—perhaps pain is a good thing, perhaps he’ll be

better for it one day. I want to let my heart speak.” “At the end of a gun,” the priest responded.

“Yes, at the end of a gun.”96

On another occasion, the lieutenant said, “No more money for

saying prayers, no more building places to say prayers in. We’ll give people food instead, teach

them to read, give them books. We’ll see they don’t suffer.” Priest, “And what happens

afterwards? I mean after everybody has got enough to eat and can read the right books—the

books you let them read [implying authoritarian censorship]?” Lieutenant, “Nothing. Death’s a

fact.” Priest, “It’s not worth bothering too much about a little pain here.”97

The capture of “the

last priest” left a void in the lieutenant’s life. As he opened the cell door to imprison the priest,

“He mechanically put his hand again upon his revolver …The spring action seemed to be broken.

He looked back on the weeks of hunting as a happy time which was over now for ever. He felt

without a purpose, as if life had drained out of the world.”98

At the execution “the crash of the

rifles shook Mr. Tench …Then there was a single shot, and opening his eyes again he saw the

90

Ibid., p. 288. 91

Ibid., pp. 52-55. 92

Ibid., pp. 58-60, 94-96. 93

Ibid., pp. 34-35, 65-69, and 295-97. 94

Ibid., p. 33. 95

Ibid., p. 32. 96

Ibid., p. 268. 97

Ibid., pp. 261-62. 98

Ibid., p. 279.

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officer stuffing his gun back into his holster, and the little man was a routine heap beside the

wall—something unimportant which had to be cleared away.”99

The novel contains two additional themes that illumine the power and the glory; namely

the human condition of the world and the role of children in the moral assessment of injustice.

Autonomy in Solomon’s modernity is transposed into abandonment in Greeneland. From the

outset of the book, abandonment is repeatedly stressed; the mirage of freedom contrasted with

the loneliness of oppression. “A little additional pain was hardly noticeable in the huge

abandonment,” Tench reasons. And the ship has abandoned the priest and thwarted his escape

from the Mexican situation.100

However, as usual in Greene’s writings, the novel offers glimmers

of hope, even for opposites like the lieutenant and the priest. They mutually agree in the end that

their adversary is “a good fellow.” Though he will kill the priest, the lieutenant illegally seeks a

confessor for him and brings him brandy to assuage his pain.

The adversaries share a concern for children, who abound in The Power and the Glory as

a second prominent theme. Two children, Luis and Brigida, are particularly vital for the book’s

counterpoints. Luis is the fourteen-year-old son of the Catholic mother who sought to

indoctrinate her children in Catholic ideals of sainthood. His younger sisters listened devoutly,

but the boy was restless and bored, asking questions about the relative virtues of Juan and the

whisky priest. His father affirmed that they had been abandoned in their small town without

meaningful representation of the church and told his son, “I don’t believe all that they write in

these books. We are all human.” He recalled that the priest was so drunk at the baptism of a poor

woman’s son that he ignored her preference for “Pedro,” changing the child’s gendered identity

with his random “Carlota,” “Well,” the husband defended the priest, “it’s a good saint’s

name.”101

It was the same kind of error that he had committed with his own daughter.102

Later

Luis reflects his father’s skepticism, “I don’t believe a word of it [Juan’s story] …We have been

deserted.”103

His real hero had been the lieutenant, who had allowed him to touch his Colt No.

5.104

However, the account of Juan and the whisky priests’ executions changed his allegiance.

The death of the priest meant “that there were no more priests and no more heroes.”105

When the

lieutenant strutted along the street, Luis spat through his window and a blob of spittle landed on

the revolver-butt.106

The martyrs were thus vindicated in the heart of a child.

The priest’s daughter is consistently portrayed as the stigma of his formication, an

indelible reminder of his priestly failures. When he returned to his “tiny village,” he felt secure

that it would be a safe haven from betrayal to the police. He was met by Maria, the mother of

their seven-year-old daughter, who called him “father” [lower case “f”]. He recalled that

99

Ibid., p. 294. 100

Ibid., pp. 24-25. 101

Ibid., p. 37. 102

Ibid., pp. 34-37. 103

Ibid., pp. 66-69. 104

Ibid., pp. 76-78. 105

Ibid., p. 298. 106

Ibid., pp. 298-99.

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they had spent no love on her [Brigida’s] conception: just fear and despair and half a

bottle of brandy and the sense of loneliness that driven him to an act which horrified him

…once for five minutes seven years ago they had been lovers—if you could give that

name to a relationship in which she had never used his baptismal name: to her, it was just

an incident, a scratch which heals completely in the healthy flesh: she was proud of

having been the priest’s woman. He alone carried a wound, as if a whole world had

ended.107

Brigida [meaning “exalted one”] and he had met with mutual non-recognition. She was a

dwarfish, demonic child, who appeared with devilry and malice beyond her age, “her dwarfed

body disguised an ugly maturity …it was like seeing his own mortal sin look back at him,

without contrition.”108

She stared at her “father” with contempt and insolence, and stuck out her

tongue in mocking rejection. When the lieutenant asked about the traitor priest, Brigida stood by

his horse, subserviently touching his boot. He said, “This child is worth more than the Pope in

Rome.”109

“Who is your father?” Brigida, “That’s him. There.” In his own little village, the

priest’s own daughter betrayed him, and a poor peasant Miguel was seized as his scapegoat!110

Later the priest was rummaging in the village dump for his sacramental case that had been

thrown away. Brigida was among the trash as well. The priest

Was appalled again by her maturity, as she whipped up a smile from a large and

varied stock. She said: “Tell me— enticingly. She sat there on the trunk of the

tree by the rubbish-tip with an effect of abandonment. The world was in her heart

already, like the small spot of decay in a fruit. She was without protection—she

had no grace, no charm to plead for her; his heart was shaken by the conviction of

loss…. I love you. I am your father and I love you…. try to understand that you

are so important. That was the difference, he had always known between his faith

and theirs, the political leaders of the people who care only for things like the

state, the republic: this child was more important than a whole continent.111

He thought about her as he approached his death, “in the moment of prayer he switched back to

his child beside the rubbish-dump, and he knew that it was only for her that he prayed. Another

failure.”112

The book was submitted by French bishops to Rome, charging that it was paradoxical,

harmful to the reputation of the priesthood, and guilty of treating extraordinary situations in the

Catholic Church as if they were ordinary. Ten years after publication, the Cardinal Archbishop of

Westminster conveyed the censure from the Holy Office to Greene. Years later, Pope Pius VI

107

Ibid., pp. 90, 93-94. 108

Ibid., pp. 86-93. 109

Ibid., p. 102. 110

Greene, The Power and the Glory, pp. 101-03 111

Ibid., pp. 110-11. 112

Ibid., p. 281.

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inquired about the condemnation. Who had condemned it? “Cardinal Pizzardo,” whom Greene

referred to as “Pissardo.” The Pope replied, “Mr. Greene, some parts of your books are certain to

offend some Catholics, but you should pay no attention to that.”113

Greene recalled, “There was

no public condemnation as the affair was allowed to drop into that peaceful oblivion which the

Church wisely reserves for unimportant issues.”114

In summary, Greene lived in a time of imperial oppression, pervasive injustices, and a

growing awareness of mortal sins. His autonomous characters were profoundly anxious about

their abandonment in the world. Regardless of their failures or crimes, they embraced their

damnation with glimmers of saintliness. While More sought certainty, Greene taught uncertainty

in a world where “the smallest glass of love mixed with a lint pot of ditchwater.”

Selected Comparisons with Conclusions

In this section we will summarize occasional similarities and numerous differences as mentioned

in the paper: personal, political, theological, and philosophical. Then we will attempt to show

how their struggles amid change can illumine our understanding of the world. Personally, More’s

reputation points to his contrary impulses. Robert Bolt’s “A Man for All Seasons” (1960) and

Zinnemann’s film of the same name (1966, which won six Academy Awards) was “a man of

learning, virtue, and integrity, who was brilliant in wit, wise, and harmful to none.”115

Close

scrutiny of More’s writings erode the impression of unruffled affability with “a capacity for

severe melancholy …extremely perturbed by a tragic sense of the apparent futility, injustice, and

absurdity of the world, the victim of conflicts within his own personality, and highly unresolved

as to whether he should laugh or cry at the world, repudiate or join it.”116

Fox concluded, “With

the advantage of hindsight, one can see that More, whether he knew it or not, was attributing to

the world, and the church in particular, characteristics derived from his own sense of himself.”117

Consistently, he held that governance must be traditional, representative (in a conciliar sense

with a fear of tyranny), and Catholic. His unquestioning loyalty was to these allegiances. His

horizons were London and Europe to the extent that his utopia was crafted according to their

template. This paper cannot trace the evolutions of More and Greene, but De Tristitia Christi

was More’s final contemplation of the meaning of his impending death. He tried to avoid it

because of the terror of physical pain and its irreconcilable choice between meritorious death for

Christ and damnable suicide.

Greene admitted his problems with loyalty and his aversion to the boredom of tradition.

He attempted suicide at least twice in his youth and failed. His characters succeeded. In one of

his later productions, “The Living Room,” the girl committed suicide. She was lost between the

unhappiness of her past and her hope in a mirage of happiness in her future. The play is an

113

Greene, Ways of Escape, pp. 68-69. 114

Greene, The Power and the Glory, p. 5. 115

John Guy, Thomas More (London: Hodder Arnold, 2000), 3. Guy’s summarizing analysis of More in Chapter 11

is balanced and articulate. 116

Alistair Fox, History & Providence, p. 9. 117

Ibid., p. 166.

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appeal to believe in God who may not exist as voiced by her confessor Father Browne. We recall

that Pinkie was “saintly,” because in death he courageously sided with the human condition.

Whether he was conscious of it or not, Greene the novelist was a beneficiary of an

emergent realism in the wake of revolutions that signaled modernity. In this development, the

modern novel came of age and portrayed “ordinary” characters with wide-spread appeal. Greene

travelled the world from Africa through the Caribbean to Asia to relate to his characters, “They

come out of his [the author’s] body as a child comes from the womb, then the umbilical cord is

cut, and they grow into independence.”118

He gained critical acclaim and a vast international

readership with his novels, short stories, plays, film scripts, poems, essays, autobiographical

works, and travelogues. He patronized brothels and drug dens; he befriended dictators and

paupers. Perhaps Greene is most appreciated for his empathies for the downtrodden in in the

world’s deep pools of injustice and inequality. He reminded us that literature of one of the most

powerful ways to explore the human condition.

Theologically, More wrote as a lawyer, defending an inscrutable God and his church.

Marius captured his view of the human condition inimitably, “He died for an ancient and noble

hope, not merely that God had spoken to the Catholic Church but that a God as mysterious and

as terrifying as a God of this strange world must be had spoken at all to frail and faltering

humankind, erring creatures blinded by their perversity and stumbling miserably in the dark they

had made for themselves.”119

More’s was a world in the grip of evil and in need of law and order

through the certain and secure authorities of church and state.

Greene wrote of the mysteries of God who refused to allow a rampantly unjust world to

self-destruct without a whiff of his mercy. Sin and its consequences were inescapable, so some

saintliness could be found even in mortal evils. He explored the blurry edges of beliefs with

characters who breathed the sooty air of the fallen world; doctrine is contaminated yet dimly

efficacious in the grime. His political views were anti-imperialistic and his anti-Americanism

was well-known. In the end, the older Greene declared, “I’m for Socialism with a human face. It

is not possible to create a New Man, so all one can expect is a change in conditions so that the

poor are less poor and the rich are less rich. I am for more humanity, not for a new concept of

humanity.”120

Philosophically, More and Greene were revolutions apart. “Modern” has been variously

defined, but here we have used Solomon to refer to an increasingly scientific and post-

Nietzchean phase of Western history. Intellectual and cultural historians trace its evolutionary

emergence to the advent of the Enlightenment, the emancipation of reason from revelation. This

opened the way for scientific progress and its naturalism and transferred authority to humanity’s

ability to regulate the world through secular systems. The price for the transfer was the loss of

“the great chain of being” in a divinely ordered universe. In Arthur Lovejoy’s words, “Thus, at

last, the Platonic scheme of the universe is turned upside down. Not only had the originally

118

Greene, Ways of Escape, p. 8. 119

Richard Marius, Thomas More, A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 515. 120

Quoted in Dinesh D’Souza, “Graham Greene’s Two Conversions,” The World & I (April 1988) , pp. 640-41.

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complete and immutable Chain of Being been converted into a Becoming, in which all genuine

possibilities are, indeed, destined to realization grade after grade, yet only through a vast, slow

unfolding in time; but now God himself is placed in, or identified with, this Becoming.”121

Collins must be cited alongside Lovejoy to further align Lovejoy and Solomon:

By relocating order in a representative sovereign state Hobbes redeemed self-in-

society noneschatologically. It was the state as it manifested the creating principle

of election, not the state-as-being, which ordered reality and provided a nexus for

positive self-society relations. For Hobbes, order resided in definition, and

definition was a function of continual choosing and creating. Meaning, order, and

redemption for self-in-society were becoming, not being…. Man self-consciously

articulates secular order and chooses to translate responsibility from self to state

in representation. At the same time that he transfers this responsibility, he

alienates self from representative. Yet by the nature of its articulating capacity,

self-consciousness retains original authorship, and consequently, authority for

social order. Man, then, redefines self just as he redefines God.”122

With the transfer came a mood of skepticism and despair, such as we find in Conrad and Greene.

The mood infiltrated the academic world with an acute epistemological uncertainty. Nietzsche’s

rejection of all metaphysical consolations was affirmed by a Hobbesian view of the human

condition, a cosmological pessimism, a nihilistic view of knowledge as illusion, and a vision of

the artist as a muse of untruths. Greene admired Conrad, who in reaction was trying to find a

foothold in a world that was slipping away. He took The Heart of Darkness on his trip into the

heart of Africa. Perhaps, we suggest, the move to modernity was akin to the dislocation of values

in early modern England: the abandonment of canon law and traditional authorities in the

universities, Henry’s promulgation of his nation-state, the lexical transfer of res publica to state,

and the rise of industrial prosperity and scientific progress. As Marius expressed these changes,

“The age of More was coming to its close.”123

Now we are experiencing seismic shifts in a global village that compresses the world’s

billions with technological innovations and an unprecedented awareness of bewildering issues.

How long can we speak with any certainty of “majorities,” when powerful “minorities” threaten

stability with homemade bombs and cyber invasions? How do we establish policies for national

well-being, when individuals can invade public places to spread their anger and despair? Perhaps

policy challenges are gravitating toward the exponential flow of data that consumes the energies

of competing interests. Many people feel that all information should somehow be made public—

that humanity is sufficiently peaceful to share all “secrets.” Opinions are sharply divided on

whether this is desirable or necessary. We know that the sheer volume of “hot cultural

121

Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (Cambridge, London: Harvard

Univ. Press, 1936, 1964), 325-26. 122

Collins, From Divine Cosmos to Sovereign State, pp. 167-68. 123

Marius, Thomas More, p. 234.

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memory”—memory with the power to shape culture—markedly depreciates it. We may be

awash in “cool cultural memory,” which is transitory and disposable like biodegradable plastic.

Should we concern ourselves with policy that cannot be enforced with micromachines in private

hands? What should we do with competing interests in our computer-driven world?

We are tempted to say that More represents a bygone era that is symbolized by a

shattered chain, one that has been replaced by secular autonomy. If we acknowledge the stunning

changes and do not quibble about labels, we see masses of the world who order their regions on

religious foundations. Acts of terror destroy cultural symbols, whether “secular” skyscrapers or

sacred shrines. Reactions to past imperialisms seem to couch new imperialisms with religious

and ethnic values at their center. Perhaps secular states have underestimated these forces as they

assumed that abstractions like freedom and equality and concrete ideals like prosperity could

achieve a peaceful coexistence between hostile factions. Can policies be formulated to

accommodate violent ideologies that pay little attention to altruistic ideals?

Cities of the world remain as volatile and polarized as ever. Greene’s vision of a “richer

poor” and a “poorer rich” has been mired in the realities of self-interest around the world. His

Brighton may be caricatured, but its polarities have spread to every major urban area on the

globe. Can the bankruptcy of a large city effect a change that will lead to a different, better city

in the foreseeable future? Is the care of our cities a state, regional, or federal responsibility? Why

did Detroit fail, when its large corporations seemed to be in a state of recovery?

Do the nations of the world want representative or conciliar governance, or are they

content with the ideal of a benevolent despot, as oxymoronic as the notion seems to be? More’s

hope hinged on an obedient populace. What happens when a heightened sense of self and rights

veers toward chaos and anarchy? What happens when our authors’ fear of egotistical masses turn

on the world that has nurtured them, outstripping the earth’s ability to replenish itself? Is the

sensitivity of one nation effective, when other nations are insensitive to their impact on the

environment? Can international cooperation be undergirded with policies that effectively

overcome destructive national interests? Why do states ignore the dangers of nuclear

proliferation and pursue expensive weaponry when their populations live in poverty? What are

the limits of persuasion and negotiation, and when must states use force or be discredited?

Advanced in neuroscience, in particular, indicate that there are millions of Pinkies in the

world. In the ecology of the mind, problems seem to go beyond legal acts and consequences to

pathologies that terrorize children and turn recreation into carnage. Available statistics on suicide

indicate, contra Greene, depression and despair rather than courage.

Masses of the world still strut about with their heart at the end of a gun like Greene’s

lieutenant. With authoritarian aloofness their hands massage their holsters. On the other hand, we

still have a mass of priests who bring sips of loving hope to the hopeless who are drowning in

ditchwater. Greene was profound when he described the alienation and abandonment of

modernity. At times, by his own admission, this made him more “catholic” than “Catholic.” He

observed an abiding condition that is still with us.

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I leave the paper with a desire to analyze Greene from the perspective of the “modern

temper” more thoroughly. The Twentieth Century was bifurcated in a bewildering way. On the

basis of the Nineteenth Century, it witnessed the birth of airplanes and space travel; digital

technology where global communication is webbed in our hands; television and the

entertainment industry which have virtualized our world; subatomic physics which explores the

vital forces of the universe; biological advances which have helped medicine to address

proliferating pathologies, and so much more. At the same time, it was an age of incomparable

catastrophes, natural and manmade: Verdun and Stalingrad, Auschwitz and the Gulag

Archipelago, Hiroshima and Chernobyl. These tragedies represent unimaginable tragedies in the

modern world. More and Greene have impressed this student with the possibility that we are in a

moment that could signal extraordinary changes in our perceptions of modernity on earth. I hear

the echo of Greene’s priest: “ ‘Pray for me, my child.’ She [Rose] said, ‘Yes, oh yes.’ Outside

she looked up at the name on the confessional box—it wasn’t any name she remembered. Priests

come and go.”

Suggested Readings

For Greene:

Allain, Marie-Françoise. The Other Man: Conversations with Graham Greene (London: Bodley

Head, 1983.

Bergonzi, Bernard. A Study in Greene: Graham Greene and the Art of the Novel. Oxford: Oxford

Univ. Press, 2006.

Greene, Graham. A Sort of Life (London: Bodley Head, 1969); Ways of Escape (London: Bodley

Head, 1980).

Mudford, Peter. Graham Greene (London: Northcote House, 1996).

Sherry, Norman. The Life of Graham Greene, 3 vols. New York, London: Viking/Penguin, 1989

-2004.

Watts, Cedric. A Preface to Greene (London: Longman, 1966.

For More:

The Yale Edition of the Complete Works of St. Thomas More. 14 vols. New Haven, London: Yale

Univ. Press, 1963 --. Volumes 6-8 are the concern of this paper.

Ackroyd, Peter. The Life of Thomas More. London: Chatto & Winders; New York: Doubleday,

1998.

Fox, Alistair. Thomas More: History and Providence. New Haven, London: Yale Univ. Press,

1982.

Guy, John. The Public Career of Sir Thomas More. New Haven, London: Yale Univ. Press,

1980.

Guy, John. Thomas More. London: Hodder Arnold, 2000.

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Marius, Richard. Thomas More, A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984.

Rogers, Elizabeth Frances. The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More. Princeton: Princeton Univ.

Press, 1947.

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