The Seville Communion  by Arturo Pérez Reverte

      This book won the Monnet Prize for European Literature, which is considered a great achievement. The jacket describes the plot in terms of a mystery involving Father Quark, the Vatican's sophisticated investigator and Father Ferro, the unsophisticated parish priest who is trying to keep a small, traditional parish alive.

      The plot appears to center around who killed whom, and who is illegally tapping the Pope's private computer files.

      It seems to me that the real story has to do with whether faith really matters in the ongoing life of either a priest or a parish. In this case it seems that both priests are in doubt about many of the key tenets of Christian religion. One priest has ceased to care, yet continues to function for the sake of the church.  The other priest continues to care at a different level. He sees value in people having faith, whether it has substance or not.

      It is a book, in my judgment, about priests who no longer carry faith conviction, but who love the church at different levels. One loves the church at the congregational level, honoring the faith of common people who are comforted by believing. The other loves the church as an institution, although in the end he agrees with the old priest who gave his life for the simple congregants.

      Perhaps the key quotation in the book is found on page 134.

When I met Dom Priamo (Father Ferro), I saw what faith is. Faith doesn't need the
existence of God. It's a blind leap into a pair of welcoming arms. It's solace in the face of senseless fear and suffering. The child's trust in the hand that leads out of darkness." p. 134
      This is a book clergy will understand. The business of ministry is to carry on the traditions of faith even when common sense and honest scholarship declare the whole enterprise to be a crock. It is a book that affirms that the carrying on of the tradition, despite the questions and doubts, is a holy and valued task. There is a point at which personal integrity and conscience are less important than continuing traditions that have spoken to the human soul for 2,000 years.

      Those of us who have done our work in congregations recognize the gap between parish clergy and denominational leadership. In the reading of this book the gap is described. At first you may identify with Father Quart, in the end with Father Ferro.

      Perhaps I miss the central plot. For me the mystery is not about who murdered whom, but about how people of faltering faith can make a life out of serving the church.