The Diary of a Country Priest by George Bernanos

Yes, indeed, how foolish! I hoped that this diary might help me concentrate my thoughts, which will go wandering on the few occasions I have some chance to think a little. I had thought it might become a kind of communion between God and myself, an extension of prayer, a way of easing the difficulties of verbal expression which always seem insurmountable to me, due no doubt to the twinges of pain in my inside. Instead I have been made to realize what a huge inordinate part of my life is taken up with the hundred and one little daily worries which at times I used to think I had shaken off for good. Of course Our Lord takes His share of all our troubles, even the paltriest, and scorns nothing. But why record in black and white matters which should be dismissed as fast as they happen? The worst of it is I find in these outpourings such solace that this alone should suffice to put me on my guard. As I sit here scribbling in the lamplight, pages no one will ever read, I get the feeling of an invisible presence which surely could not be God--rather a friend made in my image, although distinct from me, a separate entity.

A young priest is assigned to a small village in the north of France whose residents he describes as "spiritually bored." His servant is a drunkard and thief, and the smartest teen in his catechism class tries scandalously to flirt with him in order to stir up trouble. He dedicates himself to prying into the spiritual life of the town's local nobility, the Comte, and the Comte's wife and daughter, both of whom have foresworn a spiritual life because of the immense suffering they carry within them: le Comtesse, because of the loss of her infant son many years ago, and the Comtesse's daughter because of the alienation of her mother's affections. The priest is plagued by feelings of inadequacy, as well as intensifying stomach pains, which the townsfolk attribute to a drinking problem, though they may signify a much graver physical--and spiritual--crisis.

I'd bet any amount of money that Marilynne Robinson has read The Diary of a Country Priest. Though the Reverend Ames from Gilead is old, not young, he suffers from many of the same spiritual problems: a belief in his own insufficiency when compared with God's aims, and a compulsion toward spiritual intervention that seems directed by God. And of course there's the whole "country" part of it. But whereas Ames is, in some respect, nagged by the suspicion that the love and esteem afforded him are unjustified, Bernanos' Cure is truly despised. The Comte hates his meddling, the Comte's daughter his rectitude; the people of the village believe he's a lush; Serephita mocks his probity with her sexual teasing, and spreads rumors behind his back; his superiors are suspicious of his unwillingness to get along. Once, he has a bit of spiritual success, convincing the Comtesse to embrace God's love for the first time since her son's death, but she dies hours later, taking any account of his aid to the grave.

The language of The Diary of a Country Priest is elevated, Gothic, at times even hyperbolic; the spiritual crises are as severe and intensely wrought as the stomach pains. The whole thing is one very very long dark night of the soul. And truth be told, though I found the priest himself, and the hate he inspires, compelling, half the time I didn't know what he or anyone else was talking about. The book is all disputations--priest and mentor, priest and superior, priest and doctor, priest and soldier--but the disputations are so crowded with metaphorical language it left me unsure about what some of the ideological or theological stakes of the book are. I do know that the book is interested in questions like, "Is there a spiritual honor in being poor?" and, "Is suicide truly unforgiveable?" but I am much less certain how the priest, much less Bernanos, would answer them.