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Re: Kabu
thank you so much. That was so wonderful of you to write that about me. 
posted by
Kabu
on August 7, 2018 at 9:47 AM
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Re: Thanks, Anib....
What else other than the topmost 
, dear GM? You deserve, and do make my brain cells active and vibrant. I was wondering why at times I become provocative and intentionally bring things that would generate disagreements alongside its queries. But then, I am comfortable with myself as it is. Today being a no-class day, I just wrote another on autocracy with its different strokes of evil it can perpetrate.
posted by
anib
on August 7, 2018 at 12:22 AM
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Thanks, Anib....
.... so what grade would you give me on my book report, if I were a student in your class? I suppose I would have to be wearing a wig and a dress, or just claim to "identify" as a female, but let us not get into that, LOL 
posted by
GoldenMean
on August 6, 2018 at 10:51 PM
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Re: A proper comment....
Excellent analysis, GM, and I'm happy you bring from your research, some more interesting/valuable facts to add life to the novel's understanding. My grateful thanks for this. I knew that the write would invoke comments and yours are singularly well thought of! and I concur with your views fully. But as teacher I have some limitations, I can not talk to my students about these aspects freely, although I can often not help myself from doing so, because there is a prescribed norm nowadays that the critics' opinion will be considered as standard. BTW, I'll bring in for discussion another equally interesting play by G B Shaw regarding the 15 th century French Military figure, a young girl, Joan of Arc, of whom you reminded me in your previous comment as to how our Blogit friend by the same name would have reacted. Cheers, GM!
posted by
anib
on August 6, 2018 at 10:39 PM
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Re: OOPS
Not at all GM, it so often happens ... so what?
posted by
anib
on August 6, 2018 at 9:51 PM
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OOPS
Anib, I inadvertently clicked the "add comment" button twice. You can delete one of my comments, because they are both identical, and this one too, if you like. Sorry about that.
posted by
GoldenMean
on August 6, 2018 at 9:02 PM
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A proper comment....
.... now that I have the time. I do not see this story as conflicting ideas of goodness. The priest is good, the lieutenant (LT) is evil..... pure and simple.
Sure the priest has his faults, but he does serve the people as a priest. He even cares for the soul of the LT. The villain is the LT, who is a socialist and an atheist. He has a "passion" for "reform", with both words in a highly negative sense. He wanted to wipe out religion in Mexico!!... following the orders of his atheist President Calles. His passion for reform is the same as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, etc.
The LT takes hostages from the villages and shoots them, as you say, in cold blood. He is a evil predator and a monster, regardless of his passion or his puritanism or his propaganda about himself. I would not call him "morally irreproachable", by which I suppose you mean he does not lie, does his duty, and he has no vices such as sex, alcohol, etc. But sadly his "duty" is an evil one. And his vice is the worst one of all..... the power to terrorize and murder, so he did not need any lesser vices.
There are many evil people in the world who try to present themselves as honorable, honest, pure, etc., while they are exterminating enemies like animals. The LT is just one petty example of this. He was following his idea of utopia, by pursuing socialism and destroying religion, and killing Christians for their faith. Anyone who harbors a belief that the LT was "good" in any real way, has fallen for his evil propaganda.
The story ends, I think, with the LT re-capturing the priest and executing him.... after they have spent the whole story baring their souls to each other, and the LT said that he had nothing against the priest as a man. It just goes to show the extent of the LT's predatory evil, and the evil of his "moral duty".
Thanks for bringing this novel to light! I will now be looking for the movie that was made from it.
posted by
GoldenMean
on August 6, 2018 at 9:00 PM
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A proper comment....
.... now that I have the time. I do not see this story as conflicting ideas of goodness. The priest is good, the lieutenant (LT) is evil..... pure and simple.
Sure the priest has his faults, but he does serve the people as a priest. He even cares for the soul of the LT. The villain is the LT, who is a socialist and an atheist. He has a "passion" for "reform", with both words in a highly negative sense. He wanted to wipe out religion in Mexico!!... following the orders of his atheist President Calles. His passion for reform is the same as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, etc.
The LT takes hostages from the villages and shoots them, as you say, in cold blood. He is a evil predator and a monster, regardless of his passion or his puritanism or his propaganda about himself. I would not call him "morally irreproachable", by which I suppose you mean he does not lie, does his duty, and he has no vices such as sex, alcohol, etc. But sadly his "duty" is an evil one. And his vice is the worst one of all..... the power to terrorize and murder, so he did not need any lesser vices.
There are many evil people in the world who try to present themselves as honorable, honest, pure, etc., while they are exterminating enemies like animals. The LT is just one petty example of this. He was following his idea of utopia, by pursuing socialism and destroying religion, and killing Christians for their faith. Anyone who harbors a belief that the LT was "good" in any real way, has fallen for his evil propaganda.
The story ends, I think, with the LT re-capturing the priest and executing him.... after they have spent the whole story baring their souls to each other, and the LT said that he had nothing against the priest as a man. It just goes to show the extent of the LT's predatory evil, and the evil of his "moral duty".
Thanks for bringing this novel to light! I will now be looking for the movie that was made from it.
posted by
GoldenMean
on August 6, 2018 at 9:00 PM
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Very interestingly, deep in the spider's web, President Calles was honored by the Freemasons in Mexico.... "In May 1926, Calles was awarded a medal of merit from the head of Mexico's Scottish Rite of Freemasonry in recognition of his actions against the Catholic Church."
I thought the Freemasons were generally in agreement with the Catholic Church. But in Mexico at that time, apparently, they were not. But I suspect they were being compelled by other deadly problems to award such a cartoonish medal, which was concocted at the time, for the needs of the time.......
I hope our Blogit friend JoanofArc does not find this post and comment...... she would have a feast of hate with this....... because she hates the Freemasons
posted by
GoldenMean
on August 6, 2018 at 3:20 AM
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This is a very tangled spiders-web of stories. The book written by Graham Greene, about the priest and the lieutenant, is cast in a time dictated by the Mexican President Calles, who had quite a dramatic and spectacular career.
He seems to have been atheist and secular in his early life, heavily influenced by his uncle. He became president, and enacted his views to an extreme. He tried to suppress or eliminate the influence of the Catholic Church, which was a very stupid and futile idea in Mexico. That is what produced the conflicts that Graham Greene stumbled into, as an observant writer visiting Mexico.
That is just part of the back-story of the book "The Power And The Glory", and my next comment will focus in on the issues of the novel itself.
For those who are interested, here is a link to the story about President Calles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutarco_El%C3%ADas_Calles
posted by
GoldenMean
on August 6, 2018 at 3:03 AM
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Re: Aba brother to Presta sister
I too admire your ability to see things deeply an hit the nail right on the head. Well commented 
posted by
anib
on August 5, 2018 at 10:12 PM
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Aba brother
I admire your ability to see and share both sides of a concept, as you did here. When both sides of the coin are equal, yet different, it is still a coin in the end. I would like to see the very best of both worlds advance in humanity, and the worst of both to recede. First though, as in this write, must come the awareness of the dichotomy shown between the priest and the police lieutenant, which you have done. Well done and thank you.
posted by
Sea_Gypsy
on August 4, 2018 at 8:54 PM
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Re: My Crafty Friend Anib
Firstly, how I love that word 'crafty', which, I suppose, I am. My knowledge of literature is because I have to teach these to my students in the university, and which I thoroughly enjoy. And so do they, I suppose. And mind you it is an all girls' univ. So, al the more reason for being crafty 
Ha ha..... Chee_szzzzz.
posted by
anib
on August 4, 2018 at 6:05 PM
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Kabu
That was so sweet of you to write. This is a great quality of yours that whatever you do you do it from your heart, very pure heart.
posted by
anib
on August 4, 2018 at 5:33 PM
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Re: For the moment....Wow
Dear GM, that was a typo again, since I have developed this 'new' habit, I'll have to be more careful In future. Obviously, it has to be after Greene spent some time over in Mexico in 1938, so novel was published in 1940. Thank you for the observation and suggestion. I'm immediately correcting the error.
posted by
anib
on August 4, 2018 at 5:28 PM
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Thank you. I have read some of Graham Green...long time ago.
I cannot hope to keep up with my teachers' intellect, I am in awe of your grasp of all things phylaosphical.
For my simple mind this passage seems to say that neither the priest nor the lieutenant are either right nor wrong...but My leaning would be ...I am not sure. I think that in most ways that I am centralist. Does that make me a fence sitter? I don't think so. I believe in all change that creates a better way for all God's creatures to live in harmony;both great and small, and I include the human race.
To me though, radical change one way or the other is not well thought out. I prefer gradual and continuous growth towards love, equality and the better meant for all.
posted by
Kabu
on August 4, 2018 at 11:19 AM
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For the moment....
..... you should correct your year reference from 1900 to 1940, for the book. I see that this is a famous book, that was made into a movie. A very powerful story.
posted by
GoldenMean
on August 4, 2018 at 7:38 AM
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My Crafty Friend Anib
I am greatly impressed, as always, by your amazing breadth and depth of literary knowledge. I had no idea that religion was banned in Mexico in 1938. But I am a bit puzzled by this new direction of yours. I will have to study it, to see how it ties in.
Our readers might be a bit puzzled also, but for a different reason, that being that our discussion is happening both here and over in my blog The Golden View, in News and Politics, where I have a series of posts about Jesus and Karma and Grace. In hindsight, I should have put them here, in Religion and Spirituality.
I am always of a split mind on where to put my posts, because they deal with history and philosophy, but Blogit does not give us a category for history or philosophy, though I have complained about it many times. I feel as if I am a literary orphan, wandering about with no proper place to write, and some of your writing strikes me as orphan-like as well. We transcend the labels, and have to fend for ourselves.
As for this post, I will have to return to read it better, and give a proper comment. Cheers!!
posted by
GoldenMean
on August 4, 2018 at 7:14 AM
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