The Spiritual Experience of Eating

Catholic Movie Night: Babette's Feast

(In honor of Thanksgiving)

    This is your how-to for today...bread stew: hot, mushy, and brown. First take a loaf of old bread and tear it into pieces. Let it soak in water with a little beer for an hour. Next boil for an hour. When desired goopy texture achieved, give to all needy in the area first, and then serve yourself last. It will be a quiet, humble meal, and you will eat it the rest of your life. The odd fish will grace the table, and it will be exceedingly pleasant. A rare treat. Who would want this life you ask? Why would they ever choose it? It's so...dull. Well, there are two little old ladies that chose it. They grew up under a strict father, and both were given an opportunity to live more well-fed and fabulous lives. Yet they chose to stay. They have no wants because they accepted their consciously-made decisions. The unexpected things like the elegant Frenchwoman that now helps them is certainly unusual, but she says little, works hard, and well. So when she asks for one thing, just one thing,  and even offers to pay for it, they say yes:

“Please, let me make you

a real French meal.”

   This is Babette's stage, her moment, that will forever be imprinted in the eater's memory. Babette, a French chef by training, fled France because of civil war. She lost everything: her family, her home, and the money to cook beautiful meals. But through a twist of luck, she has literally won the lottery and been awarded 10,000 lire. Does she start her life anew? No, she makes a banquet for 12 people worth 10,000 lire exactly. The food is perfection. And not a penny is left over. 
  Okay.
  Why the heck would anyone do this? 
  Because it's a nice gesture. 
  Yeah, well so is a fruit basket. 

  Consider for a moment Babette's situation more carefully. Perhaps she doesn't wish to return to France. Her old life is gone, and she can't bring her family back from the dead. The two little old ladies that she is now maid and cook for gave her a roof over her head when she had none. They ignored her papist history and let a stranger stay in their home. In a strange way, they became her family. Two proxy-aunts in need of a younger person's support.
   But they didn't pay her for her cooking or cleaning!?
   No, but they didn't have the money to pay her, and she also declined payment. So when this winning lottery ticket comes around, it is an opportunity to give these women, who have been exceptionally kind, a feast pushed by creative love. So while Babette's actions have the scent of the widow with two coins:

Luke 21:1-4 

1The Widow’s Offering1 As Jesus looked up, he saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. ² He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. ³ “Truly I tell you,” he said, “this poor widow has put in more than all the others. ⁴ All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on."

Let us look to other biblical feasts to expand upon Babette's banquet. Specifically the Last Supper and the feeding of the 5000. At the Last Supper, Jesus gave the 12 apostles and the world the gift of the Eucharist. (Notice 12 apostles and 12 guests at Babette's banquet. A bit of parallelism just for you.) Babette may not be giving her guests the Eucharist, and the meal she prepares may be a temporary filling in their bellies, but through her extraordinary cooking, she makes food beyond comprehension, beyond her friends' mortal imagination. Like the Eucharist received at Mass, the food she prepares is a brief window into something higher, beyond the everyday grasp of bread stew. It's a taste meant to sustain and to continue to give life after consumption. Food is necessary for the physical life, but Babette pushes it into an arena where it feeds a spiritual need. Through the glory of the communal meal, healing occurs between villagers, and they remember what it is to give and be loved.
      In addition to the parallels to the Last Supper, I would like to also recognized the feeding of the 5000:

John 6:1-15
6 Some time after this, Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee (that is, the Sea of Tiberias), ² and a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the signs he had performed by healing the sick. ³ Then Jesus went up on a mountainside and sat down with his disciples. ⁴ The Jewish Passover Festival was near.⁵ When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?” ⁶ He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do.⁷ Philip answered him, “It would take more than half a year’s wages^[a] to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!”⁸ Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother,spoke up, ⁹ “Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?”
¹⁰ Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” There was plenty of grass in that place, and they sat down (about five thousand men were there). ¹¹ Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks,and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish.¹² When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.” ¹³ So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten.

Again there is that physical and spiritual hunger being satisfied, but here there is a connection that the Last Supper lacks to Babette's Feast. After the Last Supper, the events did not slow but sped up, moving with a terrifying three day whirlwind of betrayal and pain ending with Jesus' bloody crucifixion. Compare this to the 5000 that were fed by Jesus. They ate. He left, and so did they. They had an extraordinary day and meal, preceded and followed by thousands of ordinary ones. For a brief moment, true community was theirs. The love of Christ was tangible. Anxiety and loneliness set aside and the gifts accepted. A day lifted out of the ordinary by something as necessary to life as food. For Babette the entire meal from the selection of finest foods to the careful preparation and delicate presentation, the dishes of pheasant and glasses of wine represent her love. The setting is wrapped in her love. When the guests walk home in the snowy night, they sing quietly in the way that they had long forgotten. Her love, like Christ's love, reminded them of what it meant to be spiritually warmed to the gift of one another. For they returned to joy, and while I cannot say how long this happiness lasted, hours, days, perhaps longer, it shook them from their dullness. And if they can be shaken once, it can happen again and again.

How to Write a Grammatically-Correct Infallible Papal Pronouncement

To non-Catholics, one of the most confusing, misunderstood, and even controversial dogmas of the Catholic faith is that of papal infallibility. Catholic theology holds that when five conditions are simultaneously present, the pope is, quite simply, infallible; that is, protected by the Holy Spirit from promulgating falsehood.

These conditions are best summarized as follows: 1) The pope, when 2) he defines 3) a doctrine concerning faith or morals 4) to be held by the entire Church 5) using his teaching authority as supreme teacher of all Christians, speaks infallibly.

This Divine protection, seen as always belonging to the Deposit of Faith and thus always believed at least implicitly, was explicitly defined (note: not invented) at the First Vatican Council in 1870. In the entire history of the Church, it has been formally invoked only twice--in 1854 by Pope Pius IX to define the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, and in 1950 by Pope Pius XII to define the dogma of the Assumption.

Following the theme of this blog, I would like to examine the writing style--in particular the grammar--used by the aforementioned popes in their infallible definitions. Through their sentence structure and choice of words, these pontifical "Modern Catholic Writers" have, in essence, created a standardized grammatical formula to convey to the world with the utmost clarity both their intention to invoke this infallibility and the defined dogma whose veracity is now forever beyond reproach.

Let's first examine Pius IX's infallible pronouncement on the Immaculate Conception. It is contained in his encyclical Ineffabilis Deus. Below are the two paragraphs containing the definition itself, color-coded for future reference: (Am I the only one who gets the chills when I read this?)

Accordingly, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, for the honor of the Holy and undivided Trinity, for the glory and adornment of the Virgin Mother of God, for the exaltation of the Catholic Faith, and for the furtherance of the Catholic religion, by the authority of Jesus Christ our Lord, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own: "We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful."

Hence, if anyone shall dare -- which God forbid! -- to think otherwise than as has been defined by us, let him know and understand that he is condemned by his own judgment; that he has suffered shipwreck in the faith; that he has separated from the unity of the Church...

So, we already see a very clearly-defined sentence structure. First, we see an invocation of the authority of the Trinity, the Virgin Mary, the Church, the apostles Peter and Paul, and--equally important in this context--the pope himself, who is making it clear that he is invoking his teaching authority as successor to those apostles (condition #5). Then, we have the three key words--proclaim, declare, define (condition #2)--followed by the dogma itself, which we can see clearly pertains to a matter of faith (condition #3). The last sentence of the first paragraph leaves no doubt that this dogma is to be believed by the entire Church (condition #4).

According to Catholic teaching, this pronouncement is not--cannot be--wrong. Hence the stern warning in the last paragraph to not put one's own judgement over that of Christ speaking through His Vicar on Earth. Don't mess with Pio Nono!

Now let's fast forward 96 years and five more popes to Pope Pius XII's infallible pronouncement on the Assumption. Once again, we provide the relevant two paragraphs from Pope Pius XII's apostolic constitution, Munificentissimus Deus. Watch for the correspondence!

44. For which reason, after we have poured forth prayers of supplication again and again to God, and have invoked the light of the Spirit of Truth, for the glory of Almighty God who has lavished his special affection upon the Virgin Mary, for the honor of her Son, the immortal King of the Ages and the Victor over sin and death, for the increase of the glory of that same august Mother, and for the joy and exultation of the entire Church; by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.

45. Hence if anyone, which God forbid, should dare willfully to deny or to call into doubt that which we have defined, let him know that he has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic Faith.
 

Amazing, isn't it! Or am I the only one who things so? In any event, if you're ever elected pope you now know how to write an infallible statement. Just make sure it's true--otherwise, you'll likely be struck dead before you get it down on paper...

Before we conclude, let's briefly examine a papal statement that, in and of itself, is not an infallible pronouncement. Once again, the grammar is the giveaway.

Below is the conclusion of Pope John Paul II's 1994 Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (On Ordination to the Priesthood), written in response to demands by some within the church that women be allowed to be ordained priests:

Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.
 

See what's missing? For one, nowhere to be found is the word "define" (condition #3). It's also quite a stretch to equate the pope's "ministry of confirming the brethren" with his supreme teaching authority as teacher of all Christians (condition #5). If Pope John Paul II had intended to issue an infallible pronouncement, it would certainly behoove him to use the formula described above.

So, the teaching on the impossibility of women's ordination is up for grabs? Actually, not at all. This is a classic example of a pronouncement being infallible while not being an infallible pronouncement. For example, I can make an infallible statement: "Two plus two equals four." Even if the pope himself "pronounced, declared, and defined" that two pus two equals four, it wouldn't be considered an infallible pronouncement because math has nothing to do with faith and morals. But the statement is still true because math says so, and that's the point.

In the case of women's ordination, its impossibility--due to the fact that Christ chose only men as His apostles so as to establish a mystical spousal relationship between His priests and His bride the Church--is already maintained by what is called the ordinary magistarium of the Church (as opposed to the extraordinary magistarium of infallible papal statements and dogmatic councils). This constant teaching of the Church throughout the centuries is also infallible. Thus, in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis Pope John Paul II was simply repeating something already infallible, something true because the ordinary magistarium says so, and that's the point.

After all, if Catholics only had to believe those two things--namely, the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption--infallibly defined by popes, Catholicism would be one boring (and meaningless) religion indeed.

 

 

Thank you for the Light

I just wanted to give everyone a heads up that this week's copy of the New Yorker (August 6, 2012) has a never-before-released short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Apparently, he wrote the story in 1936, and it was recently rediscovered in his papers. While Fitzgerald is remembered as one of the first Catholics to make it into the red-blooded, historically Protestant, American canon, he was what many would consider lapsed because it was a rare thing for him to go to Mass or pray the rosary. However, there is evidence in his letters to his daughter towards the end of his life (1940) that suggests his Catholicism was less of a practice and more of a constant thought, which wavered from background to foreground.* This particular story is witty, undoubtedly Catholic, and one magazine page long. If you're not near a news stand, here's the link: "Thank you for the Light"


*Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Crack-Up. Online. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 
            1945. 305. eBook. <http://books.google.com/>.

How to delegate like your life depended on it.

 (Because that is totally possible.)

God cannot seriously believe that Mr. Ferraro needs to put more individual effort into his life. That would be ridiculous. If Mr. Ferraro did not delegate, he would be left with no time to enjoy those death-duty-alleviating paintings that hang in his living room. They are gorgeously expensive and just so practical too, and since God made man in his image, it is really quite generous to say that, “it was not unreasonable for [Mr. Ferraro] to return the compliment and to regard God as the director of some supreme business which yet depended for certain of its operations on Ferraro & Smith” (24).  The projection of God as businessman seems only natural, and this ideology revolves around efficiency, where clean accounting books equal clean souls. Well…all I can say to that is, “Mr. Ferraro, you’re daffy, and I don’t mean the funny duck.” Permit me a moment to explain my irreverence of this character. He’s a profoundly misguided Catholic that seriously needs spiritual direction, but he’s far too arrogant to ask for help even when it’s a living room door away! Graham Greene so effectively skewers Mr. Ferraro by using this business-driven mentality in the short story Special Duties to make the man’s failures so ironic as to merit an anti-epiphany.

While first a businessman and always a businessman, Mr. Ferraro religious views take an incarnational twist by believing quite firmly that he and God share the same businessman mindset. While a more humble individual would have pondered upon the awesomeness of being made in God’s image, Mr. Ferraro is not that humble man. He is quite comfortable as he—thank you very much. Everything, from the running of his business to the practice of his religion, is carefully delegated, and from the delegation, Mr. Ferraro can spend more time on becoming more efficient. He focuses on efficiency to such an extent that he loses sense of what it means to be a faithful participant in life and Catholicism. He can never quite let the workplace go. He is married, but his wife lives on the other side of the house. Neither makes the effort to speak to one another beyond a telephone call by proxy. Mr. Ferraro gives the minimum amount of attention to her, and this attitude of giving the least of one’s self echoes in his spirituality. When asked if he would like to have anything additional done for his faith and his wife’s faith, his answer comes out colder than a London winter, “We are taught…to pay first attention to our own souls. My wife should be looking after her own indulgences” (27).  While he may not have abandoned his religion, his own words demonstrate that he has no interest in pursuing a course that would interfere with his own interests. He has no traces of the communal spirit about him as evidenced by his vocal rejection of his wife. Therefore, he opposes the communal nature of Catholicism and breaks down the religious traditions into a systematic, distant enterprise, which he then can outsource to his secretary.

After a case of double pneumonia three years ago, instead of reaching out to his wife or a priest for comfort, Mr. Ferraro hires a new and very particular kind of secretary. How he found her is not revealed by Greene explicitly, but her rather unusual list of credentials is perhaps more revealing of Mr. Ferraro’s lack of sacramentality than of the secretary. He thinks that he knows what holiness is, and his “assistant confidential secretary” Miss Saunders fits the good-little-Catholic-girl stereotype. She has won awards for piety. She has volunteered for the poor. She provides all of her references with bits of religious kitsch like “a little triptych of Our Lady with a background of blue silk” (25). And not only does she have the icons, but she has that special, unassuming look of humility about her with “indeterminate hair and eyes of a startling clear blue” (25). She looked like one of the “holy statue[s]” that she carries about as evidence of her goodness (25). However, despite all of her emissions of piety, there is a hole in her story. The convent school where she was head girl is called “St. Latitudinaria” (25). There are many obscure saints with funny names, and to an outsider to Catholicism, they may seem practically weird, but let me assure you that there has never been a St. Latitudinaria. For all of her pious appearances, Miss Saunders lacks substance, and the fact that the fictional St. Latitudinaria escapes Mr. Ferraro’s notice confirms that while Mr. Ferraro attempts to follow Catholic Church teaching, his minimalistic style hinders him from seeing truth. He has the knowledge but not the understanding to see past his own stereotypes. The holiness that Miss Saunders portrays is like a trick of the light when exposed in the light of day, it is revealed to be a nothing.  Essentially, Miss Saunders’ shallowness mirrors Mr. Ferraro’s own lack of spiritual depth. A façade of holiness revealed to be empty of what could have actually made them half-way decent people. Mr. Ferraro would have done well to learn his saints but that would have meant his own participation, which would have cut into his oh-so-efficient-business.

For the reader, the made-up saint signals that the trusted assistant confidential secretary has been lying since the beginning of her employment. The Convent of St. Latitudinaria was part of her resume after all. Worse though, Mr. Ferraro entrusted this supposedly holy individual with the care of his spiritual business, but unfortunately, spirituality cannot be parlayed out, but he fails to understand this. Interestingly, he genuinely believes in God and has a distinct fear of Him. Otherwise, he would not go to such trouble having indulgences fulfilled in his name. But his understanding of Him is such that he is like God, and God is like him.

So he makes a very private, personal file, which only his assistant confidential secretary Miss Saunders knows the details. The contents of this file are rather unique to a practical businessman like Mr. Ferraro, but at the same time fit him all the more perfectly because in his mind, he and God understand one another. Within the file lies three years’ data of indulgences. Through the help of secretary Miss Saunders, Mr. Ferraro has taken 36,892 days out of his stay in purgatory (28). Miss Saunders goes to the church in a “state of grace”, prays, and leaves, and those prayers at those specific churches are the indulgences that will get Mr. Ferraro out of purgatory more efficiently. Or so he believes. His warped vision of God as a businessman has God keeping a careful log of His children and their activities. For Mr. Ferraro, this means that God is keeping the books as closely as he is, matching him with every column and checking every note. For this businessman, the clarity and upkeep of such personal files as his “indulgence” records are as important as the everyday workings of Ferraro & Smith. More importantly, since God is such a respectable businessman (like Mr. Ferraro), he would recognize the need for delegation through an assistant confidential secretary.

Sadly, Mr. Ferraro cannot escape irony. Those “local” churches, which Miss Saunders traveled to, do not and never have existed. She scribbles in the fantastical St. Praxted in the second column and takes a paid holiday with her lover. The cold realization, “that not even the requirements of the indulgence were met,” washes over Mr. Ferraro when he sees an ill-clad Miss Saunders gently pulled from the window by the familiar arm of a man (29). Mr. Ferraro had invested in Miss Saunders like he had invested in his death-duty paintings. They were meant to help alleviate his anxieties about death. But in the end, they won’t get him through purgatory any faster because he does not realize that indulgences were meant to be performed as a genuine and personal act of faith and love towards God.  Those 36,892 days were intended to make his stay in purgatory short, but now, they mean nothing because all of his calculated precautions have been exposed as just little numbers and notes in a worthless paper file.

Yet here is the joke: Mr. Ferraro does not change. When he sees Miss Saunders in the window, and his reality is shattered, instead of reaching out for advice or comfort from his wife or a priest or even stepping into a Catholic church himself, his end decision, “is to find a really reliable secretary” (29).   Graham Greene teases the reader describing how Mr. Ferraro slips quietly home and sits with his fingers intertwined in “the shape some people use for prayer,” but then the metaphorical door is slammed in the reader’s face by that damning remark for a reliable secretary (29). Considering that Mr. Ferraro seriously thought that Miss Saunders was the epitome of holiness, this anti-epiphany, this realization that Mr. Ferraro has not changed falls somewhere between the comical and the tragic. How on earth does he plan to check for holiness? Look for a halo? Peek for wings? He learned nothing from his experience with Miss Saunders, which makes him a fool, but his own self-deceit is so chilling in that it keeps himself from learning and growing.

A true epiphany would have involved him stepping into a confessional and offering his confusion to a priest, but the reality remains that if Mr. Ferraro would have gone to a confessional in that moment of deciding the next step (between firing and hiring), he would not have known what to say. Words would have escaped him because he firmly believes that he has been done nothing wrong. He does not need to change. Clearly for him, the only right thing to do is to get a better secretary. However, from the reader’s perspective this is just so hopelessly the wrong answer to Mr. Ferraro’s problem because there is no test for devotion other than perhaps martyrdom, which I don’t think that Mr. Ferraro would be up to since it would distract him from his daily tasks of going to work and coming home from work. All in all, at the end of the day Mr. Ferraro is still the same businessman, and tomorrow, he shall have a new secretary.

Work out your salvation with...pocketbook and calculator?

For mortal sins, please dial 1-800-NO-HELL.
For mortal sins already forgiven, please dial 1-800-NO-PURGETORY.
If none of these options is applicable to you, please dial 1-800-TO-HEAVEN and we'll get you a direct line.

          Sixty days in one day. One thousand five hundred fifty-six days in one month. And 36,892 days in three years. By his own meticulous accounting, this is the amount of time Mr. William Ferraro has spared himself from purgatory since investing in a personal secretary to attend to the price of his soul. But not just any secretary would do—Miss Saunders’ credentials testify to her saintliness. A former head girl at the nearby Convent of Saint Latitudinaria, three-time recipient of the same convent’s annual piety award, and long-time Child of Mary, Miss Saunders is more than qualified for her job of getting Ferraro as many indulgences as possible. In this way, the wealthy London entrepreneur “look[s] after his own salvation,” albeit “in a more independent fashion” than that of his mentally ill wife, who has spent the last ten years trading good wine and strong whisky for emergency access to a resident liquor-loving Dominican (24).

            In his “Special Duties,” Graham Greene paints a character whose businesslike approach to secular life extends to his spiritual life. Ferraro, whose days consist of little more than spending his fortune on costly paintings in order to reduce his own death-duties, thinks he can work out his salvation in the same manner as his finances. After discovering that Miss Saunders has routinely forgone her spiritual duties to carry on a romantic affair, Ferraro immediately sets to work replacing her with a more reliable employee. Such a shocking lack of self-awareness reflects Ferraro’s profound misunderstanding of his Catholic faith, a notion Greene highlights throughout by his own sacramental imagination. However, unlike those in orthodox Catholic literature, Greene’s characters are pervaded by an inverted notion of sacramentality. Rather than symbolizing a deeper inward truth, in “Special Duties” an outward appearance of depth is instead reflective of a shallower, superficial reality.

            Greene’s portrayal of Ferraro immediately reveals that his apparent concern for his soul is in reality more businesslike than pious, but this initial transparency is perhaps less visible in Miss Saunders. Even the alert reader is quite likely surprised when her piety is exposed as a fantasy—that is, unless he took immediate notice of the inverted sacramental imagination. A reader with this in mind cannot help but feel more and more cynical with every passing paragraph. In every case throughout the short story, descriptions and actions of devotion are subsequently proven to be false. The more pious the description, the more impious the expectation of reality becomes.

            As in the Tantum Ergo, in “Special Duties” sensuum defectui—that is, the senses fail. When Ferraro asks Miss Saunders if she pays close attention to the conditions of the indulgence to be gained, she replies that being in the necessary “state of grace” is “not very difficult” in her case (26). Later, after witnessing her extra-marital affair, Ferraro muses that “not even the conditions for an indulgence had been properly fulfilled,” let alone the indulgence itself (29). In a similar manner, the convent’s awarding of piety prizes also reflects Greene’s notion of the superficial. Even to unchurched ears, the idea of convents handing out piety awards should sound bizarre. Degree of holiness is something that can only be measured from the inside; judging piety externally must then out of necessity constitute a human attempt to play the divine. In other words, there is a lack of fides supplementum—that is, of faith to supplement human deficiency.

            The other side of Ferraro’s mansion is also not immune to this distorted notion of sacramentality. Ferraro’s wife always has at her service a priest to attend to her, should any given day be her last. However, the resident priests seem more intent on gaining the material services she provides than on giving the spiritual services they were ordained to provide. Yet again, Greene portrays as inauthentic someone ordinarily capable of being an effective channel of the authentic. The person who should be a transmitter of God’s grace is instead reduced to an interferer with the divine.

            The superficiality that plagues the characters in “Special Duties” is a result of profound misunderstandings of the Catholic faith. Most glaring is Ferraro’s ignorance regarding the proper understanding and correct use of indulgences. An indulgence is not a “get-into-heaven-free card,” nor does it provide license to do whatever one pleases while on earth. Rather, an indulgence is the remission—either partial or entire—of temporal punishment due to sins already forgiven. Furthermore, the number of days attached to an indulgence does not represent the time off purgatory awarded to the recipient; it corresponds instead to the approximate length of an equivalent penance in the early Church. Nowhere is this mischaracterization of indulgences greater than when Ferraro expresses his delight at gaining “five plenary indulgences and 1565 days” during April, utterly unaware that a single plenary—meaning “full and complete”—indulgence is alone sufficient for remission of all purgatory time (26).[1] In addition, Ferraro would have never sent Miss Saunders to another city for “a mere sixty days’ indulgence” if he had known that simply saying “my Jesus, mercy” reverently is worth one hundred (26).[2] One has to wonder, too, what Ferraro would have done to himself had he known that indulgences in the name of others can only be applied posthumously.

            In some ways, then, Greene is using the character of Ferraro to satirize the effect of taking aspects of the “Catholic worldview” to an extreme. While Catholic teaching stresses the importance of the community, Greene’s writing hints that this should not come at the cost of striving for individual holiness. While indulgences are an encouraged form of reparation for sin, they are meritless without a proper desire to amend one’s life. And while the Protestant understanding of “saved by faith alone” is deficient, equally so is Ferraro’s understanding of salvation “by works alone,” much especially works commissioned as by a contractor and recorded as by an accountant.

            To foster such an understanding, Greene masterfully paints several new critical techniques into the background of his short story portrait. Specifically, Greene’s characters’ appearances, words, and actions repeatedly combine throughout the story to create irony, ambiguity, tension, and paradox. Ferraro’s dialogue to Miss Saunders, for example, is as ironic as it is hypocritical. His half-hearted admittance, “If I were less occupied here, I could attend to some of these indulgences myself,” comes on the very day that he cannot find anything better to do than visit Miss Saunders as she attempts to gain them (26). His similar dismissal of gaining indulgences for his wife—“We are taught, Miss Saunders, to pay first attention to our own souls...I employ you to look after mine.”—reveals the insurmountable contradiction on which the story’s entire plot, theme, and tone is founded (27).

            “Special Duties” is also littered with phrases that suggest multiple meanings. For example, the fact that Miss Saunders says “I was late home last night” to explain the missing indulgences for the month of June could indicate two possibilities (26). On one hand, she truly was late coming home because she was away at another church gaining a plenary indulgence. Alternatively, she was home late because she was visiting her lover, in which case the listing she manages to produce is as authentic as her piety sincere. Such ambiguity thus highlights a prevailing tension between Miss Saunders and Ferraro and, by extension, between religious fervor and complacency. Miss Saunders is complacent in her feigned fervency, reinforcing her double life as both saint and deceiver. Ferraro, on the other hand, is fervent in his commercialized complacency, reinforcing his own double life as both Catholic and Pharisee.

            Ultimately, Greene’s purposefully-inverted Catholic imagination is the epitome of paradox—a sacramental paradox, that is. The outward sign no longer corresponds to an inward reality. Rather, the actual inward state of being is entirely opposed to the characteristic portrayed. In the same way that we would in conventional Catholic literature search for the deeper meaning behind an ordinary symbol, Greene forces us instead to expose the superficiality behind the symbol of depth.  In “Special Duties” such a Catholic imagination is rooted in misrepresentations of every sort—from indulgences to salvation to faith and works. But what, we might ask, is at the root of all this misunderstanding? Ignorance alone cannot explain Ferraro’s endeavor to work out his salvation with calculator and pocketbook rather than “with fear and trembling.” It cannot explain Miss Saunders’ motivation in accepting her shameful position in the first place. And it certainly cannot explain Ferraro’s plenary failure to recognize the errors of his ways, for by definition ignorance repeated is insanity.

            Graham Greene, perhaps, would shift the focus from the man and the woman to the Creator of man and woman. When the former yield their lives to participate in That of the Latter, the two co-operate to create a divinized self-awareness, a sacrament. But when the former place themselves on center-stage, the lip service paid to the Latter—if He is remembered at all—can only create a mortal unawareness, a pseudo-sacrament—a great façade.

---

[1] Aside from performing the indulgence itself, there are several conditions that must be fulfilled in order to gain a plenary indulgence. Perhaps the most difficult requirement of the person seeking the plenary indulgence is that he be free from all attachment or desire to sin, even venially. Thus depending on the person, a plenary indulgence may in practice be very difficult to gain. This seems to be especially true for Greene’s character Ferraro.

[2] Raccolta 61.

Watch me because I'm awesome.

Catholic Movie Night: I Confess (1953)

        Directed by the man who was endlessly creative, the great Alfred Hitchcock, I Confess brings to life what I had always thought of as an old wives' tale. The priest hears a murderer's confession, refuses to break the seal of confession, and the police suspecting that the priest is actually trying to hide his killer instincts take him to court. For me, this story, this old wives' tale, has always been my go-to hypothetical for trying to explain to non-Catholics the seal of the confessional. No matter what the priest hears during confession, aka the sacrament of Reconciliation, he can never disclose to anyone what he has heard. Canon law dictates, "The sacramental seal is inviolable; therefore it is absolutely forbidden for a confessor to betray in any way a penitent in words or in any manner and for any reason." (983 §1) Basically, whether the sin is venial or mortal, the priest can never repeat to another soul what has been told to him. If he does, he will be ex-communicated, and probably used as a cautionary tale by his superiors to explain to seminarians how the act of confession requires a huge amount of trust and faith between priest and penitent that the preservation of the seal is also part of the preservation of the relationship between the ordained and the rest of the Body of Christ. 

       So hear we have the great moral quandary played out in dramatic chiaroscuro. A young handsome priest, a regular Father What-A-Waste, beloved by peers and parishioners, must choose between protecting his vocation or saving his neck. The cops have him on the chopping block, and their knifes gleam cold and sharp. They want a suspect, and they found one in the guy, who can't claim an alibi, because he was hearing the murderer's confession. But while their physical eyes follow him through the tree-lined avenues of Quebec, Hitchcock (who was a practicing Catholic) and his cinematographer Robert Burks create a presence through camera angles and lighting that is outside of the events taking place and yet everywhere in them. It's practically omniscient. As the camera tilts down upon the head of the suspected priest, it gazes through the crooks of a massive statue depicting Jesus carrying the cross. In the courtroom during the priest's trial,  Jesus stretches out in agony on the wall beside the priest. It's more than metaphorical weight on the priest's shoulders, he is literally taking on another man's burden, another man's crime. The poor guy is already a Christ figure from his vocation, but from a literary perspective he fits the bill perfectly from his age, celibacy, humility, and self-sacrifice.  So while this priest suffers, the viewer is always reminded that this suffering is nothing new. The contorted body on the crucifix is evidence enough of that. There were no guarantees of a happily-ever-after, of it being easier than other paths. But also, the viewer can see that the priest does not suffer alone. God does not abandon him, and the priest does not abandon God.

POETRY TALKS: An interview with Tony Zick

Tony Zick is a poet and student living in southeastern Michigan—no, not Detroit. While his studies at Eastern Michigan University keep him on his toes, he continues to write and perform his own poetry. He has competed with the Ann Arbor Youth Poetry Slam team and was featured in HBO’s Brave New Voices documentary series. The National Youth Poetry Slam Festival featured one of his poems in the Speak Green competition sponsored by the Sundance Institute. According to his mentor Jeff Kass, “(Tony) read a poem called ‘The Pundit’ in Washington D.C., and [he had] the audience rolling with laughter, and Joshua Bennett, one of the foremost youth poets in the country, would shake his head and say, ‘this guy’s brilliant.’”* Currently, Tony balances family, school, and work, drawing inspiration for his poetry from personal experience and his imagination.

MCW: Hi Tony.

Zick: Hi, Renee. Thank you for interviewing me today.

MCW: Of course. Out of curiosity, as a slam poet, has a poem ever gotten you into or out of a fight?

Zick: (Laughs) No. Never.

MCW: Just checking. When did you realize that you wanted to write poetry? Did you write creatively before?

Zick: In elementary and middle school, we had poetry and creative units. I always liked those, and I noticed I was pretty good at it.  I guess I had a kind of “aha” moment when I was in 7^th or 8^thgrade, and I had just finished a story by J.R.R. Tolkien. I think it was called the “Tale of Aragorn and Arwen” or something like that. I was pretty moved by it, and I thought to myself, “I want to be a writer!” In high school, taking creative writing classes with Jeff Kass and participating in the Ann Arbor youth poetry community took my love of poetry to a new level to say the least. This past year, I’ve done a lot of thinking about my life goals, and I’ve realized more that I want to try and make writing poetry a part of my life mission. So yeah. That’s that.

MCW: Would you consider yourself a Catholic poet?

Zick: In the sense that I am a Catholic who is also a poet, definitely.

MCW: OK, so if I were to attach the adjective “modern” as a descriptor for you—now, you're a modern Catholic poet—what would you say?

Zick: I’m not sure where to draw the line between Catholic and non-Catholic literature, if such a line can be drawn. Hmm, me a modern Catholic poet. I guess I am having a hard time answering this question.

MCW: Allow me to modify the question...would calling you a modern Catholic poet feel oxymoronic?

Zick: No, not at all.

MCW: Why not?

Zick: Faith doesn’t diminish one’s ability to be an artist. I would think that it would increase it because it allows you to see the world more accurately.

MCW: Does religion inform your worldview?

Zick: Yes, it’s the center of my life. My aim, whether or not I live up to it, is for every aspect of my life to accept and respond to God’s Love.

MCW: Within your poetry and writing are there particular themes that you find interesting or challenging to work with?

Zick: The theme of failed hopes is for sure both interesting and challenging for me…also, excitement and gratefulness in small things.

MCW: How have you used them in your poems?

Zick: Well, “The Raccoon” starts with me in the middle of custodial work, feeling unhappy because it’s hard to rejoice or dance or be excited while working. Then it sort of says, “well, you can dance even in the midst of inglorious things because you have an inherent dignity given by God, regardless of your surrounds or your failed hopes.” So I guess it’s lost one hope and found another hope in that situation. Though I should add that I like being a custodian.

MCW: Is there anything else that you would like readers to know about you and your poetry?

Zick: Sure. For some reason, I often write outlandish scenarios, such as going to visit a mountain goat that represents nostalgia or listening to a talking raccoon speak to God about me. At other times, I use hyper-musical language, similar to Hopkins, which is all to say that “strangeness” is often a springboard for my work. 

The Raccoon

They say fast music makes you work faster

I say it just makes you dance

and you can't dance

not at work

not for show,

or even in the bathroom

where suddenly your cover could be blown

And the night goes on

like a relative projecting red-bomb warnings

and the headphones sing away

someone else's lovesick heart

or blue-suede blues

and, as I'm changing the bag in the day-care diaper pail

I am only moving on duty

the kind of duty with a “t” and a “y”

the kind of duty that doesn't feel like a gift

but an obstacle to Oblivion

and Oblivion is sexy as hell

Except that it is Hell.

I take up the last trash bags to the dumpsters

and open the lid

in reasonable peace, for a done day

and I see

a raccoon in the shadow of the bin,

it's face paranoid and sad

But regal it rakes itself out of the can

Slumps its loaf body over the edge

Points its wet nose straight at my chest

and sings, in perfect tune

“Oh ignominious Night! Fold your darkness away!

Alive! Alive am I! A paranoid rodent!

Royal black stripes on greasy grey fur!

The king or the Queen of all Raccoons

For all this suburban boy knows.  But more!

God gives him gapes at the living!

For who is the giver of living?

Break him, oh Beauty

banish the crown of his heart and humble it hard

On a fleeting, sad-back animal feeding

on old crackers and yogurt in trash-bags, dancing

in this dumpster, singing praises, listening

for the sermons in our skin.”

*Source: Kass, Jeff. "The Curious Case of Anthony Zick."AnnArbor.com, 11 Feb 2010. Web. 1 May 2012. <http://www.annarbor.com/news/education/the-curious-case-of-anthony-zick/>.