Word: cawder
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Great Diamond." As The Encounter begins, Father Cawder is glumly refusing a gift of pew cushions from a wealthy widow in his Maryland parish. The incident reveals the man: he suspects comfort as the devil's lure, believes the essence of faith is self-denial. Yet, while Father Cawder lives by his ascetic creed, he tortures himself with the suspicion that his attitude is rooted in vanity...
...takes him out of his narrow parochial routine comes in a dream: he feels urged to visit a carnival performer known as "The Great Diamond," whose name he has seen on a poster. He finds a ratty little man living with a dissolute young girl. The girl asks Father Cawder to find a place in a convent for her illegitimate child; when he upbraids her, she flounces...
...reflection, Father Cawder senses his defeat: he has denied the lowly. Though the carnival has left town, he starts in laborious search of Diamond and Stella, determined to persuade them that Christian charity is for them too. Before he is through, the priest has waded through a world of sordid crime and violent death. But Father Cawder has learned the force of the words he had once mechanically spoken to Diamond: "It's no part of a priest's business to pass on people like a judge. A priest has no means of doing so even...