Religious Duty Theme Analysis

“We’re poor, Meggie, that’s the main reason. The nuns always hate poor pupils. After you’ve been in Sister Ag’s moldy old school a few days you’ll see it’s not only the Clearys she takes it out on, but the Marshalls and the MacDonalds as well. We’re all poor. Now, if we were rich and rode to school in a big carriage like the O’Briens, they’d be all over us like a rash. But we can’t donate organs to the church, or gold vestments to the sacristy, or a new horse and buggy to the nuns. So we don’t matter. They can do what they like to us.”

He kept his resentment from showing in his face; this parish had been excellent for his self-control. If once he was offered the chance to rise out of the obscurity his temper had landed him in, he would not again make the same mistake. And if he played his cards well, this old woman might be the answer to his prayers.

Curious, how many priests were handsome as Adonis, had the sexual magnetism of Don Juan. Did they espouse celibacy as a refuge from the consequences?

“Why not? I’m tired of living, Ralph, and I’m going to stop.” Her hard eyes mocked. “Do you doubt me? For over seventy years I’ve done precisely what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it, so if Death thinks he’s the one to choose the time of my going, he’s very much mistaken. I’ll die when I choose the time, and no suicide, either. It’s our will to live keeps us kicking, Ralph; it isn’t hard to stop if we really want to. I’m tired, and I want to stop. Very simple.”

After you’ve read the will, you’ll understand what I mean. While I burn in Hell beyond the borders of this life I know now, you’ll still be in that life, but burning in a hell with fiercer flames than any God could possibly manufacture. Oh, my Ralph, I’ve gauged you to a nicety! If I never knew how to do anything else, I’ve always known how to make the ones I love suffer. And you’re far better game than my dear departed Michael ever was.

Father Ralph moved restlessly. He had not stopped to shed his Requiem vestments, nor had he taken a chair; like a dark and beautiful sorcerer he stood half in the shadows at the back of the room, isolated, his hands hidden beneath the black chasuble, his face still, and at the back of the distant blue eyes a horrified, stunned resentment. There was not even going to be the longed-for chastisement of rage or contempt; Paddy was going to hand it all to him on a golden plate of goodwill, and thank him for relieving the Clearys of a burden.

Pain was forgotten, Church was forgotten, God was forgotten. He found her mouth, forced it open hungrily, wanting more and more of her, not able to hold her close enough to assuage the ghastly drive growing in him. She gave him her neck, bared her shoulders where the skin was cool, smoother and glossier than satin; it was like drowning, sinking deeper and deeper, gasping and helpless. Mortality pressed down on him, a great weight crushing his soul, liberating the bitter dark wine of his senses in a sudden flood. He wanted to weep; the last of his desire trickled away under the burden of his mortality, and he wrenched her arms from about his wretched body, sat back on his heels with his head sunken forward, seeming to become utterly absorbed in watching his hands tremble on his knees. Meggie, what have you done to me, what might you do to me if I let you?

“You will not leave, Ralph, and you know it well. You belong to the Church, you always have and you always will. The vocation for you is a true one. We shall pray now, and I shall add the Rose to my prayers for the rest of my life. Our Dear Lord sends us many griefs and much pain during our progress to eternal life. We must learn to bear it, I as much as you.”

Oh, dear God, dear God! No, not dear God! What’s God ever done for me, except deprive me of Ralph? We’re not too fond of each other, God and I. And do You know something, God? You don’t frighten me the way You used to. How much I feared You, Your punishment! All my life I’ve trodden the straight and narrow, from fear of You. And what’s it got me? Not one scrap more than if I’d broken every rule in Your book. You’re a fraud, God, a demon of fear. You treat us like children, dangling punishment. But You don’t frighten me anymore. Because it isn’t Ralph I ought to be hating, it’s You.

Because at last he understood that what he had aimed to be was not a man. Not a man, never a man; something far greater, something beyond the fate of a mere man. Yet after all his fate was here under his hands, struck quivering and alight with him, her man. A man, forever a man. Dear Lord, couldst Thou not have kept this from me? I am a man, I can never be God; it was a delusion, that life in search of godhead. Are we all the same, we priests, yearning to be God? We abjure the one act which irrefutably proves us men.

“Each of us has something within us which won’t be denied, even if it makes us scream aloud to die. We are what we are, that’s all. Like the old Celtic legend of the bird with the thorn in its breast, singing its heart out and dying. Because it has to, it’s driven to. We can know what we do wrong even before we do it, but self-knowledge can’t affect or change the outcome, can it? Everyone singing his own little song, convinced it’s the most wonderful song the world has ever heard. Don’t you see? We create our own thorns, and never stop to count the cost. All we can do is suffer the pain, and tell ourselves it was well worth it.”

“I’m going to be a priest,” said Dane. “I’m going to enter His service completely, offer everything I have and am to Him, as His priest. Poverty, chastity and obedience. He demands no less than all from His chosen servants. It won’t be easy, but I’m going to do it.”

The look in her eyes! As if he had killed her, ground her into the dust beneath his foot. That he should have to suffer this he hadn’t known, dreaming only of her pride in him, her pleasure at giving her son to God. They said she’d be thrilled, uplifted, completely in accord. Instead she was staring at him as if the prospect of his priesthood was her death sentence.

Dane’s eyes, yet not Dane’s eyes. Looking at her; bewildered, full of pain, helpless.

“I have no son,” he said, “but among the many, many things I learned from yours was that no matter how hard it is, my first and only allegiance is to Almighty God.”

“Dane was your son too,” said Meggie.

He stared at her blankly. “What?”

“I said, Dane was your son too. When I left Matlock Island I was pregnant. Dane was yours, not Luke O’Neill’s.”