The Grand Inquisitor

The Grand Inquisitor
John Zmirak and Carla Millar.
Crossroad; 2008.
76p.  First reading.

“Hey, what’s that you’re reading, there?  Looks interesting.”

“It’s a blank-verse graphic novel in which we discover that religious modernism is in fact a dark conspiracy.”

“I… okay.”

There’s really no way to sell Zmirak and Millar’s The Grand Inquisitor to anyone without being up-front about how utterly bizarre it is.  If there’s another graphic novel out there in which the text is presented in blank verse, I’ve yet to encounter it, and I’m pretty sure no one else has traced the progressivist movement in Catholicism back to the sinister machinations of one man whose conscience has become so twisted around over the last fifty years that it’s almost pointing in the right direction again.  Almost.

The story is simple enough: a young black African priest, who had won a certain degree of celebrity a few years earlier for leading his people in a non-violent protest against Islamist forces intent upon massacring them, is unexpectedly summoned to Rome to become the candidate that breaks the deadlock for the conclave which had convened to find a replacement for the just-dead Pope Paul VIII.  The situation is tense; modernizers within the conclave have become more bold and insistent upon reforms (along the predictable lines of making the Church more democratic, ordaining women, shifting positions on contraception and abortion, and so on), while those in the camp of the Ratzingers and Sartos of old refuse entirely to give way.  Neither side can wholeheartedly point to the agenda of the late pontiff in support of its position; as a news report notes, “This pope changed his hue to suit all eyes, / pleased none, fell ill and, hated, died.”

I’ll hide the rest below the fold, as it would be impossible to discuss the issues this work raises without offering extensive spoilers.

When the African priest arrives in Rome, though, he is met by the police.  Convinced that he’s a dangerous lunatic, they swiftly transport him to a Catholic mental hospital specializing in the treatment of those with pontifical delusions.  As an attending cardinal unhappily informs the African:

What complex of delusions stirs the hopes
of pious men to meddle with ancient
institutions that lie beyond their ken?

One pope wants to sell off our artworks,
and give all to the poor.

Another demands
we seize the Papal States from Italy;
a pope just excommunicated me
for insisting he take his Thorazine.
He was only eighteen years old, from Maine.

The rest of the piece sees the African contend with this cardinal over what the Faith demands, what the Catholic metaphysic entails, what the average man can know and believe and do, and what conscience, in the end, demands of and allows us.  If this seems boring to you, you’re probably reading the wrong blog.

One of the weaknesses of the work is that the contentious cardinal bears the improbable name of Primo Dangeli without actually being Lucifer.  No, he’s just a man – more horrifying and plausible, perhaps, but less justified in light of the name that Zmirak has chosen to append to him.  He’s a positively Satanic individual, to be sure, but still just human for all of that.  We must consider him.

Dangeli, confident that the African will have his “manias” wiped away by electroshock therapy, cheerfully tells him the truth about what he (Dangeli) has been doing in Rome for the last fifty years or so.  Never willing to step into the light and be recognized, he has instead been content to stand behind the scenes governing things in such a way that they end up suiting his aims without him ever having to announce them.  Those aims are among the most absolutely fiendish I have ever encounted in fiction without them being explicitly meant to destroy the entire world, but there’s much in them – and in the perspective that fosters them – that is strangely compelling.

The Grand Inquisitor is prefaced by a passage from an address delivered by Cardinal Ratzinger in 1991.  In it, he relates the story of how he once found himself amidst a group of clerics who gradually managed to lead each other to believe that acts of even the most appalling evil, if perpetrated by those who were utterly convinced that those acts were morally just, could not possibly be sufficient to damn a soul.  To put it bluntly: even those who have committed genocide, provided they thought genocide was good, could be assured a place in Heaven.  And so:

There is no doubting the fact that Hitler and his accomplices who were deeply convinced of their cause, could not have acted otherwise.  Therefore, the objective terribleness of their deeds notwithstanding, they acted morally, subjectively speaking.  Since they followed their albeit mistaken consciences, one would have to recognize their conduct as moral and, as a result, should not doubt their eternal salvation.

Since that conversation, I knew with complete certainty that something was wrong with the theory…

It is from the conviction espoused in that final sentence that The Grand Inquisitor springs.

Dangeli reveals to the African that he (Dangeli) has been subtly manipulating papal and curial politics over the last fifty years in a bid to make all modern Catholics as completely ignorant of the Faith as possible.  All of the stupid progressivist, modernist, heretical bullshit that’s been proposed by various people over the last five decades stems from the agenda of this most silent of silent partners – from a man determined to warp the appearance of the Church to such an extent that there will be nothing left of Her that a Christian might recognize.

Why is he doing this, though?  How could anyone be so evil?  The answer is frankly shocking.

While Dangeli is ultimately behind every ounce of the awful changes that have been inflicted upon the Liturgy, and every inch of the calls for the Faith to suddenly start accommodating social catastrophes, he does not want any of these things in and of themselves.  He’s as aware of how awful they are as even the staunchest conservative.  Indeed, he has for many years been tormented with visions of a very real and very well-populated Hell, and is powerless to reject the reality of it.

This being the case, the reason for what he ends up doing is the sort of thing that might have descended upon me while I was drunk, and, finding a foothold, refused to leave with the rising of the sun.  Convinced that it’s a disgrace that anyone should go to Hell – which, again, he fully accepts as being real – and all too aware of the grinding difficulties facing the devout in the day-to-day, Dangeli is determined to save the souls of mankind from the opposite direction.  That is: since heroic virtue is impossible, he will instead become a champion of invincible ignorance.

To preach the gospel (he argues) is to create a set of expectations when it comes to those who hear it that are literally impossible to meet.  Hardly anyone can actually do the things it demands, and there are many people who will resent hearing it in the first place.  Those who fail, those who hesitate, those who scorn – all are damned, says Dangeli.  He offers up a depressing parable, turning the African’s past back upon him:

There once was a pastor in Africa
whose flock was on the verge of being lost
to a conquering faith – let’s say, Islam.
A long, slow persecution wore them down,
their faint faith guttered and apostasy
seemed likely over time.  The priest was soon
to be withdrawn, and never to return.
He stood one final Sunday before them,
the dregs – a third – of his congregation
(and glad to see the last of him, he thought),
to preach a final homily at Mass.
He had it written out, a sober speech
explaining the grace of perseverance
to the flashing glories of martyrdom,
- and the penalty for apostasy -
with an eloquence worthy of Newman.
No one in the place, however dim,
could after this doubt where his duty lay,
that Christ demanded steadfast faith, or else
the lake of fire.

He stands there, holding
the extraordinary sermon rolled
in sweating hands, to watch the dusty forms
shuffling into his parish that day.
Distracted men eye the girls, while women
critique each other’s clothes.  The children talk
like little pagans the whole time.  Even
the pious old ladies look jaded as
bored movie extras on the nineteenth take.
The priest looks over the opening lines:
They are magnificent.  A shameful waste
not to use them.

He looks back at the mob
he must instruct.  How many of them, he thinks,
will have a martyr’s strength to persevere?
A few, perhaps a twentieth or tenth,
will stand up through the long, slow misery,
clinging to the Faith the world despises.
At best, a tenth will shoot into Heaven
like rockets from their gory beds, and make
Rome’s calendar richer by one red feast.
And what of the rest, the ninety percent,
who cast off Christ and saved their little lives?
What of the cowards, the lukewarm, the weak?
The huge majority will flee the Church
as they did in England, when things got tough.
It’s obvious the same will happen here
to men in full knowledge of just how grave
a sin it is that they commit.  They’ll know
in exquisite detail worthy of Bossuet,
exactly what they do and why it’s wrong,
and what eternal punishment they earn.
Not one of these poor souls can make the plea
of ignorance – thanks to this holy priest.
He will have burdened them down with the truth,
then left them to sink beneath the Gospel,
tied as to a millstone.  While his conscience
still shines like a beacon.  His small elect
of saints will kneel wbefore the Throne of God
to pray for him – and he too will be saved,
for climbing to Heaven on a ladder
of skeletons, a pyramid of skulls.

All of this being so, he argues, it is far better, then, to keep them in (or drive them into) a state in which they couldn’t accurately tell you what the gospel or the natural law entailed with a gun to their head.  They may sincerely believe in something, but because the truth of the Faith has been deliberately kept from them it will not be their fault when they fail.  The African justly balks at this, aware that his own story ended quite differently – with the march of his unarmed congregation against the conquering powers, arraying their crosses against the AK-47s.  But Dangeli sees a different possibility:

[Dangeli]
[. . . ] And yet he waits, and mulls
whether or not to read his homily
- until at last he puts his notes aside.

Do you know what he reads to them instead?
An ecumenical memorandum
cobbled together by a committee,
full of reassuring words for Moslems:
These men too profess Abraham’s Faith,
and thus they share Divine Revelation,
honoring Jesus and even Mary.
Their ethics are superior, he adds,
to those of the depraved, secular West.

Then he recites from memory a prayer
he learned once at an interfaith retreat
he went through with Moslems, Animists and Jews.
He has the congregation memorize
the prayer, then chants the one farewell Latin Creed,
and leaves the town with a heavy conscience,
and a light heart.  Behind him, trailing clouds
of unknowing glory are happy souls
fit for Heaven.  I ask you, was he not
a better neighbor to those men than you
would be?

[The African]
You’re speaking blank insanity.
I will not pretend to reason with you.

[Dangeli]
Tell me, if you were him, what would you do?

[The African]
A priest’s job and no more.  See that they knew
the laws of God, the means of Grace, His love
for them, that He became a man and died
in horrid agony for them, and so
deserves at least that they should risk the same
- rather than spit on Him and curse His name.
I’d leave them with what tools of Grace I could
then entrust their efficacy to Him.

[Dangeli]
Or hustle them to sudden martyrdom,
before they lost their nerve.

This is the accusation that Dangeli flings at the African – that the grandiose gesture of marching his impoverished flock against the militia was never meant to succeed.  He made the best of it when the Islamists unexpectedly relented and eased off their campaign, but the plan had been for all of them to be martyred outside the gates of Khartoum.  The African can offer no response.

It is in this, then, that the book more or less grows into its title.  Dangeli’s presence serves to challenge the African’s certainty about his own motives (and how they weigh on his conscience), and the utter, ruthless perception with which he describes the spiritual state of most of the world is very close to the African’s own perspective without producing anything like the same conclusions.  Dangeli drives the point home still further:

[Dangeli]
I think it irresponsible to allow
men to face eternity damned for my
virtues, my delicate qualms of conscience.

[The African]
Explain yourself.  In the literal sense.
These yellow fogs and fevers dull my brain.

[Dangeli]
I am not the one obliged to explain!
I am not poised to climb on Peter’s throne.
From this night on, whether or not you reign,
you will be responsible.  So if your
accession spawns a schism on the Left
and sends those souls to Hell, it is on your
conscience to explain it.  If turning down
the throne, you leave Africa dejected,
dunging the ground for Islam – you will explain.
On Judgment Day, all those eyes, all those souls
who fell because of your mistakes will gaze
at you, awaiting an Explanation.
What will you say to them?

[The African]
That, to the end,
I bent my back working and left the rest
to God.

[Dangeli]
Then dance your way to Heaven, shod
with the skulls of the flock you used to guard?
You think that will be enough?  And when the screams
of the lambs reach you even in the midst
of Christ’s own bosom, begging for mercy,
Is that how you hope to satisfy them?
“You could have spared me this, had you been wise!”
“Why don’t you come down and suffer instead,
O Vicar of the damned,” you’ll hear them cry.
And you will look in their tormented eyes,
shrug, and say that you tried?

[The African]
And that I prayed.
There’s nothing else.  The rest is Mystery.

In the hope of avoiding at least SOME spoilers I’ll leave off describing exactly how the book ends, but it’s worth noting that the possibility of Dangeli being right about all of this goes off the rails in some to-be-expected ways.  The worst is what all of it has done to his own soul; since he alone knows what he has done to the rest of the world, he alone of all the people in that world will actually be damned.  He looks upon himself as a new – and better – saviour, willingly submitting himself to Hell so that nobody else will have to.  In this, he hopes to shame God into admitting that the first saviour was insufficient.

It is a mania that cannot long be maintained, given how easily it would fall apart under interrogation.  The complete isolation in which Dangeli conducted his campaign allows it to blossom unhindered, but also without ever being subjected to an intellect other than his own.  When we look upon it from the African’s perspective – or, indeed, from any perspective other than Dangeli’s – we must see it for what it is: a “sad logician’s sleight of mind, / saving souls through the eye of a loophole.”  In viewing God as a tyrant who must in some sense be defied and chastened, Dangeli has forgotten to consider God as a person – a person whose first response to this plot would likely be, “Just how stupid do you think I am?”

Though The Grand Inquisitor is a short work, as these things go, it packs a great deal into its pages.  Carla Millar’s pencil work is exquisite – and often disturbing – throughout, and there’s a fair amount of Zmirak’s usual humour to be found even as the ultimate fate of mankind is being discussed.  It is an unusual, monstrous work, but one from which we may nevertheless learn a great deal.