“Greene’s dark novel and its deeply flawed protagonist offer a richer way to think of faith and self-reflection—one that average Christians might find more accessible and realistic than romantic narratives about belief.”
“Dramatizing the Lenten struggle between doubt and faith, complacency and reflection, Greene’s novel examines what happens when an unfit believer is made responsible for the wellbeing of an entire community. Because the government has destroyed the physical artifacts of Catholicism, the priest must turn inward and confront his own doubts, and as the only remaining face of the church, he’s forced to air his private demons. But rather than reveling in these sins, the priest is crushed by their significance and seeks to replace greed with grace. “It was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful,” the priest reflects, before the novel’s tragic end. The world “needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt.” It’s the novel’s empathy for “the half-hearted and the corrupt”—and its recognition that even those people are worthy of salvation—that makes the story an unlikely but ideal one to revisit in the weeks before Easter.”