One unsolvable problem that religions have always had is that their leaders are as human as the rest of us, which leads to all sorts of difficulties and sometimes horrors. The priest who is the subject of this novel has a lot of trouble accepting his humanness, his faults and needs and sins, and makes for quite the tortured hero.

The story is based on the Mexican state of Tabasco in the 1930s, where religion was outlawed and priests were forced to flee, marry and abandon the church, or go underground and risk capture and execution. Eight years after the anti-clerical laws were passed there is one underground priest left. He is called the 'whiskey priest' due to the drinking problem his nerves have led him into. He is the first to tell everyone he runs into that he is a bad priest, not only a drunk but also having fathered a child. He is passionately pursued by a police lieutenant driven by a fierce hatred of the church. The lieutenant blames the church for exploiting the poor and the priests for living well on the money they pitilessly extract from the peasantry.

The priest would in fact like to flee the state, but he feels compelled to be yoked to it by the need to save souls, which after all is far more important than any earthly pain or danger, though he cannot help being fearful of it. Yet he also condemns himself for his unwillingness to flee, calling it a sin of pride, and he legitimately wonders if he is doing any good. Then he also feels resentment towards the people he is staying to help, for if it wasn't for them he could be somewhere else, comfortable and safe. So he drinks as much brandy as possible.

If the priest is conflicted and full of self-doubt, the lieutenant is his opposite in this regard as well, for he feels none. He is certain in his vision of a bleak existence that ends in mortal death, and he would like us to get through it without suffering from religious superstition or poverty. If that necessitates killing some people, so be it.

Both men of course feel they are doing what is best for their fellow man, and they'll get the chance to discuss their clash of ideals by the end of the novel.

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This was my second read. I found this on my mothers bureau in high school. we all struggle with faith I guess. The trials of a whiskey priest are told by Greene in his most powerful and personal book. Greene debates his Catholicism through the thoughts and actions of wayward priest in 1930's depression era Mexico. Laced with metaphor when I think of literature I think of this type of prose. Loaded with thought and meaning the priest as sinner and inadvertent seeker of redemption is portrayed by Greene as a Catholic Everyman. Trying to do what he thinks is right but never attaining the standard. This is also a hard look at Mexico and is definitely not a cultural soft sell. Major complaint is the overuse of the word giggle. ( )

About a little-known (in the USA) period in Mexican history, the Cristero War (La Cristiada, in Spanish, I believe). In the late 1920s, the Mexican government sought to abolish the Catholic Church. The story tells of the last few months in the life of a so-called “whiskey priest,” a man torn between his calling and the way he has lived his life. A deserved classic. ( )

An escape story heavy with the remains of two ideologies in crisis: atheistic communism and Latin Catholicism. The unnamed whiskey priest is on the run from Marxist forces in rural Mexico, and while eluding several near-captures he struggles with his conscience, knowing full well the futility of his rebellion and carrying the weight of his sins. "The Power and the Glory" is a meditation on the role of religion in a society where most of the people are living on the edge of survival, exploited by those in power and waiting for the comforts of the afterlife. ( )

At a time when the Mexican government has outlawed the Catholic church, the last priest in an unnamed state (apparently Tabasco) wanders hopelessly one step ahead of the officials who would end his life. An alcoholic with an illegitimate child, the priest is consumed by his unworthiness for his office, yet his sense of duty compels him to perform the rites of the church when asked to do so. Who else is there to do it if not him?

The priest reminds me a lot of the priest in Endo’s Silence. Both priests wrestle with the perverse choice they must make between their obligation to God in the form of religious duty and their duty to their fellow sufferers. Fulfilling their religious duty means death for those to whom they would minister, while renouncing their faith will spare the lives of their fellow sufferers.

The audio was more difficult to follow than most audiobooks I listen to because of the slow pace of the novel. When I’m ready to revisit this novel, I’ll read a print version so I can pick up what I missed the first time. ( )