Word: declan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...novel becomes fascinatingly logical and intellectually gripping. No better fiction on the world of the Vatican is now in print. Murphy, a Princeton law professor, is a compulsive storyteller, and in The Vicar of Christ he tells three tales that could have made books in themselves. Part 1, reliving Declan Walsh's military adventures in Korea through the ripely phrased recollections of a Marine master gunnery sergeant, is a crisp, realistic novella. Part 2, narrated in the fastidious accents of an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, makes the arcane milieu of the Nine Old Men for once intelligible...
...approving eyes of Cabinet ministers, Francesco revives medieval precedent and threatens to place the entire country under interdict unless the culprits are punished. When a cabal of Cardinals plots to depose him, he dispatches them into exile with all the brutal efficiency of a Nixonian Saturday Night Massacre. "Declan, Declan," warns a purged friend on another occasion, "because you love no one, you think you love...
Despite his autocratic methods, the Pope remains a theological liberal, a doubting Declan carrying the keys of the Kingdom. Sensitive to the anguish of Catholic couples, he adroitly bypasses the birth control ban of Pope Paul VI's Humanae vitae. He sets afoot a plan to bring divorced and remarried Catholics back to the sacraments from which they are barred. He admits that "every intelligent human has some doubts about an afterlife." But his messages can be demanding. Visiting the U.S., he becomes a Savonarola, exhorting Americans to repent and share their wealth with poorer countries. Finally, this onetime...
...novel that contains him is without great flaws. The barracks vulgarity of Part 1 is as tedious as basic training, and the narrator's stilted diction in Part 2 is hardly more en dearing. Women serve principally as walk-ons in The Vicar of Christ, including Declan's wife Kate, whose tragic death drives him to the monastery...
Still, the religious attitudes of the main characters do not necessarily reflect Murphy's. The Marine gunnery sergeant, the Associate Justice and Declan Walsh himself a11 express some distress at the new Roman Catholic ritual, with its abandonment of the old music and the Latin. Murphy and his wife Terry (their two daughters now live in other parts of the country) regularly go to an English-language folk Mass...