Principalities and Powers

"Phil was weak. Monsignor Renton was strong, and Father Urban, though strong, had no desire to come between old friends. Hence his sometimes halting speech, his turning of the other cheek.

'Your ass is out, Father.'

'And yet, Monsignor.'"

It's another day of rectory politics for the careerist Father Urban--deftly persuading the old monsignor to build the bigger church neither he nor his assistant Father Phil wants--in J.F. Powers' 1963 novel "Morte D'Urban," a chronicle of small-stakes power struggles among the Catholic clergy that won the National Book Award that year.

The novel marked the apex of a long literary career for Powers (1917-1999), who, though a layman, wrote almost solely about Catholic priests. His specific subject matter was the Catholic clergy of his native Midwest during the years before the Second Vatican Council, when there was practically a surplus of priests--hence constant jockeying for parishes and perquisites--and hardly a layperson to be found in parish life, except for the ubiquitous rectory housekeeper with her perpetual novenas and unspeakable cooking.

Powers wrote most of his fiction during an era when the stories about priests that appeared in Catholic magazines were piously saccharine. Powers' stories about priests were wonderfully funny and realistic. His clerics talk like regular guys and worse ("Your ass is out, Father"), practice golf strokes when they should be counseling parishioners, smack the pastor's cat behind his back, patronize the nuns at the parish school, and pop cold beers on hot Sunday afternoons while twiddling their radio dials to sports instead of "The Catholic Hour."

Powers wrote mostly about diocesan priests and the daily penances of rectory life, but he also founded two humorously titled fictional religious orders, the Clementines (to which Father Urban belongs) and the Dolomites. In his fiction, there is always an ironic contrast between the priest as alter Christus (an "other Christ") and as an all-too-human being trying to make his way in an ecclesiastical organization Powers once described as second only to Standard Oil in its efficiency. Bishops exercise their authority whimsically, even cruelly. Father Burner, the protagonist of Powers' story "The Prince of Darkness," is a perennial assistant, waiting and longing for decades for a parish of his own. He finally has a crucial interview with his bishop, who gives him his next assignment in a sealed envelope, telling him not to open it until after Mass the next morning. Unable to wait, Father Burner tears open the envelope as soon as he gets to his car. The story ends with the text of the bishop's message: "You will report on August 8 to the Reverend Michael Furlong, to begin your duties that day as his assistant. I trust that in your new appointment you will find not peace but a sword."

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