"Un-Modern Catholic Doubters?"--Silence, Part II

I'll admit, reading the first few chapters of Silence gave me the chills. Sitting well-fed in my comfortable swivel chair inside a heated and sheltered house, I could not help but be stuck by the magnitude of the faith of the missionary priests. Not just of Rodrigues and his companions, but also the hundreds of Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans, etc. who made the same journey before. The reader will notice that Rodrigues also constantly reflects on those who have gone before him, especially in times of danger and hardship.

At the time, I thought the novel--more than any other text we've read thus far--demonstrated most profoundly the wide gap between the often-juxtaposed terms "Modern" and "Catholic." Today in the twenty-first century, the notion of "converting" others to one's own creed is as foreign--and, some might say, as threatening--to modern society as Christianity was to Japanese society in the seventeenth. For better or for worse, belief in a universal and objective truth has today largely been replaced by a particularistic and subjective belief in tolerance as the highest truth.

The opening pages of Silence demonstrate that this juxtaposition between "Modern" and "Catholic" is relevant even within the Church. The "un-Modern" Rodrigues and his missionary cohorts would have never traveled halfway around the world and endured such hardships if they did not truly believe that by their work they were saving souls that would otherwise be eternally lost.

Now, however, after reaching page 153 in the book, I see my thesis weakening as fast as Rodrigues’ faith. Page by page, the priest’s once black-and-white distinction between believers and unbelievers—equivalent, perhaps, to my distinction between “Modern” and “Catholic”—is becoming gray. Rogrigues increasingly begins to ask himself questions he would have previously only expected from unbelievers. After witnessing his Christian companions undergo hauntingly-silent martyrdoms, Rodrigues goes so far as to ask:

Did God really exist? If not, how ludicrous was half of his life spent traversing the limitless seas to come and plant the tiny seed in this barren island! How ludicrous the life of the one-eyed man executed while the cicada sang in the full light of the day! (p. 138)

Over time, Rodrigues’ doubts extend even to believers. After his agonizing conversation with former Father Christovao Ferreira, heroic Jesuit superior of Japan—now Sawano Chuan, apostate author of a book refuting Christianity—Rodrigues begins to question even the sincerity of the Christian converts.

“And supposing the God whom the Japanese believed in was not the God of Christian teaching…”

“You are denying the undeniable.”

“Not at all. What the Japanese of that time believed in was not our God. It was their own gods. For a long time we failed to realize this and firmly believed that they had become Christians.” (p. 147)

Indeed, Rodrigues’ once-unshakable faith has been shaken. His once-unbreakable spirit is in the process of breaking. And, worst of all, his once-glorious God has been silent.

Rodrigues knows what is happening as much as we do. While we may not be able to guess the exact details, I think we all know what is coming. It is only a matter of time, and for this reason I cannot imagine an ending to Silence that is anything but heart-wrenching.