The Bishop's Man

Although The Bishop's Man isn't a genre I usually dally in, this book caught my attention and I decided to give it a try. It is written by a Candian author, Linden MacIntyre, and it is a recipient of the Governor General's Literary Choice Award.

The book itself is about a priest in the Roman Catholic Church who has, over his career, been given the responsibility of dealing with corruption in the priesthood. Known among his peers as "the exorcist", it is his duty to go to places where priest have been engaged in less than priestly behaviours (notably child molestation), and do the clean-up work before the media gets involved. At the point in time that this book begins, the media is getting a little too close for comfort on some of the church's dirty secrets, and so the priest is sent to a small town parish in Nova Scotia by his bishop to lie low and be the local priest. Now that the priest finds himself surrounded with silence and solitude, however, he begins to process and struggle with events that happened in the past. In the meantime, there are those within the little town who are not without their own problems.

If you like fast paced, action and adventure filled novels, this story is not for you. If you like happy stories, or stories that at least end on a happy note, then this isn't for you either. If you like linear stories that have a clear beginning and end and proceed linearly throughout the book, then this isn't for you either. In retrospect, I definitely wasn't the person who should have been reading this book. Very little actually happens in the entire story; rather it reads like an internal monologue and the priest processes the events of the past and what is happening around him. The story, since it follows his train of thought, does not hesitate to jump around in time frequently, and without warning. The protagonist will be out doing something and then suddenly a completely unrelated paragraph from events five years earlier will interject. These multiple layers of story are revealed parallel to each other, so the book in some ways reads like a mystery, with things being alluded to that are never actually explicitly spelled out. This means that the reader has to be constantly connecting the dots; if you don't you will get lost, real fast.

Writing style aside, I found the approach of the book to also be weird and adverse to my own way of thinking. Although this was a novel dealing primarily with religious characters, a religious background and religious concepts, the idea of God was almost absent from the entirety of the novel. In contrast, liquor appeared on almost every page. The author's approach to the church was a secular one from a completely institutional standpoint. If God was ever mentioned, it was in passing; and the church's purpose was not to serve God first, but rather to be an institution that was self-sanctioned to take care of the souls of people. The church was presented as very self-focused, and there was more concern on the part of the ecclesiastical officials in the book with preserving the reputation of the church than bringing truth, life and God to the people. I admit that this presentation, especially the latter part about the church being concerned with its reputation, is valid, for some church institutions. There are some Christians who approach religion like this. It disturbs me, however, that someone can write a 400 page book about the church and not have God enter the conversation at all. This is completely opposite from my own experience of religion and I felt like it was a distorted view of the Roman Catholic religion as well. In fact, the author all but agreed with this sentiment when the protagonist wondered to himself why every priest he had ever met was some wonderful example of perversion and corruption when there were so many priests out there who were actually good and holy people. It should also be noted that this book presented a very poignant and completely one sided argument against celibacy. Although I myself am not a fan of institutionalized celibacy, I felt the book failed to recognize the true depth of reasoning and tradition behind this lifestyle choice. It would be a hard thing to explain, however, without bringing God into the picture.

Despite all of my misgivings about this book, I cannot say that I regret reading it. It is good to know what people are reading. This is popular, secular literature: this is how people see the church. It is interesting to consider how this book will be the basis of understanding that many have for the church. To this book's credit however, the author did try to stress the point that priests are just human too, with problems like the rest of us. This at least is true of any person, regardless of whether God enters the picture or not.