Customer Reviews

Cardinal Galsworthy

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In creating Augustine Cardinal Galsworthy, Edward R.F. Sheehan has made a rare contribution to the growing universe of novels imagining the next conclave, that rare gathering of the Sacred College of Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church to elect a pope. "Cardinal Galsworthy" is panoramic in scope, rich and faithful in historical detail, at times beautifully written and has as its protagonist an uncommon character who is not a mere stick figure for some real-life character the author hopes will be elected to the Petrine throne. This is not yet another "Martini-for-pope" novel. It is not a philippic against the Roman Church and its current pope. It is something entirely different.

The eponymous Augustine Galsworthy is born an Englishman, but has a pronounced affinity for things French. His father, William, is an English Baronet -- a baronet being a hereditary knight, who ranks above all non-hereditary Knights of the Realm, except those illustrious but few Knight Companions of the Order of the Garter. We know this because Galsworthy, in his towering vanity and love for the theatre of life, cares very dearly about this and painstakingly explains all the minute but significant hereditaments of his English recusant family and of Roman Church through whose ranks he rises.

Sir William has one great ambition for his son - that someday he may add a "red hat" the family tree. But Augustine Galsworthy is not the poised child of the almost-aristocratic that one might expect. He trips, he falls, he runs into walls - and, worse yet, he stutters. So, Augustine spends most of his childhood and adolescence in a Benedictine monastery in France. There, a young monk befriends young Augustine and introduces him to the treasury of the Roman Church. One of his formative influences is, appropriately enough, the great French Romantic Chateaubriand and his "The Genius of Christianity."

Galsworthy begins his preternaturally successful ecclesiastical career in spiritual and moral turmoil. Does he truly believe in God? Does he want to be a priest? Can be resist the temptations that easily beset him? His struggles are set against a rich backdrop of history. We move from the end of the reign of the "Stern Pope" through the reigns of the "Sunny Pope" and the "Sad Pope," with their struggles with the Second Vatican Council, and, finally, through the reign of the "Slav Pope." The author steadfastly refuses to call these men by their real-life names, admirably reluctant to impute, even in a work of fiction, words to men who did not utter them. Still, he never strays from their personalities. (There is no "September Pope.")

Galsworthy is the close collaborator of the Sunny Pope, who raises him to archbishop at age thirty-four, thereby gratifying the protagonist's vanity. Galsworthy is an early supporter of the Sunny Pope's call of the Second Vatican Council and encourages the pope to cut through curial resistance to it. But his enthusiasm for the Council ebbs as he sees its aptitude to truncate church doctrine and scrap its liturgical traditions. Before he dies, the Sunny Pope expresses his outrage that Galsworthy turned against the Council and accuses him of vanity. Who is more vain, Galsworthy wonders: me or the Sunny Pope who desperately needs the love of the whole world?

The Sad Pope is determined to implement the directives of the Council and fulfill the legacy of the Sunny Pope. Love will conquer all, he assures Galsworthy. But Galsworthy has traveled the world, from the Middle East and Africa to the troubled Church provinces of the Netherlands. He knows better. Civil strife, guerilla warfare and the destructive impulse are not so easily regulated. The Sad Pope dies convinced that he was a failure and desperate that what he has down has helped undermine the Roman Church.

In the Slav Pope, Galsworthy is in orthodox harmony. But Galsworthy's lust gets the better of him as he chases after a woman several decades younger than him. The dénouement of his struggles with the flesh comes in a dramatic scene in New York's St. Patrick's cathedral, when homosexual activists burst in and seize the Eucharist.

This is but one of many real-life events in this novel. The author shows us the collapse of the ancien regime in Egypt, civil war in Africa and Central America, the collapse of the Roman Church in the Netherlands, the removal of the Jesuit father-general and conflicts with Marxist prelates in Nicaragua. We can also see in the author's characters the shadows of real-life characters: Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani (in the person of "Cardinal Baluardo"), Pericle Cardinal Felici ("Monsignor Samosata") and Giovanni Cardinal Benelli ("Monsignor Gianni"). The rich historical texture of this novel is unmatched in this sub-genre.

The modern reader will probably take offense at Galsworthy and the tone of this novel. Galsworthy believes in the mystery, the poetry, and the theatre and drama of the Roman Church. His is not a low-church, a congregationalist-type church that exalts a transitory sense of social justice for the real salvific work of a church. For Galsworthy, the drama of the old Latin Mass subtly admits the faithful into communion with God and awes the squalid unbelieving into silence. For Galsworthy, the traditions, doctrine and discipline of the Roman Church are the work of twenty centuries and countless martyrs, evolving slowly under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and not something to be blithely discarded in a pell-mell attempt at relevance. This will not be a popular view today. It will even be alien. Perhaps the modern reader will be partially satisfied by Augustine Cardinal Galsworthy's penultimate act of sacrifice, made in that conclave called to elect a successor to our Slav pope.

I could not put this book down. Cardinal Galsworthy is a complex, sinful (as we all are) yet pious and faithful Catholic. This is a character you will never forget.

The previous review already says it all. Ditto, Ditto, Ditto! But let me add, if you like this book, be sure to read "Innocent Darkness" by the same author, not a sequel but a companion to "Cardinal Galsworthy" in that it focuses on one of the characters from this novel. Buy 'em, read 'em, love 'em!

My husband and I thoroughly enjoyed this superbly-written tale of one man's journey of faith. Sheehan's insights into the worldy and other-wordly dimensions of the Church are outstanding. So beautifully written, you won't want to put it down.

Edward Sheehan has created a character all too rare among modern novelists: a three-dimensional priest. In a style reminiscent of an older generation of English novelists, Sheehan's protagionist sweeps through six turbulent decades in the Church and the world. The heart of the story is Galsworthy's exploration of what, ultimately, his priesthood means to him. While those who share Sheehan's skepticism about much of what is advertised as "renewal" in the modern Church will find a special treat in Cardinal Galsworthy, those who do not can and should savor the richness of the writing and the exploration of Galsworthy's character.

This sleeper of a novel is a major contibution to modern Catholic fiction in English. The author, having already made his reputation in other literary endeavors, was able to enter the fictional marketplace and surmount barriers, presenting a book both authentically Catholic in outlook and fully realistic. Unfortunately such realms rarely if ever meet.

There is really no "plot"; the book is a character study, and a rich and sometimes searing one. Galsworthy rises from indifferent youth to a commanding church figure, grandly human and with certain well-defined but understandable flaws. Some recent church history is telescoped in the background -- Vatican 2, a "Slavic pope" ala John Paul 2, the growth of the church in turbulent modern Africa. The ending is not really satisfactory but there was probably no way to end it: the Catholic viewpoint to some degree differs from conventional tragedy and is always, as Dante titled his massive work, a "Commedia."

Persons not able to appreciate the baroque may not enjoy the book. The story line twists and turns through souls, not events. Souls are magnificent if ultimately mysterious creations, so those insights delivered by the writer seem to appear out of nowhere as the Cardinal encounters and bounces off of other characters. Then as time moves on you are back in murkiness until the next meaningful encounter. As in life, not all things are resolved. But throughout, the prose is flawless, beautiful, perfectly pitched. I have recommended this book to friends both believing and unbelieving, and all have reported finding it rewarding as a reading experience.

"Cardlinal Galsworthy" has as in the foreground one man's struggle with his own sinfulness, and in the background the tumultuous changes in the Church within the past century. It is a fascinating and well-crafted story that sheds much light on the struggles over Catholic identity in the twentieth century.