Catholic Language in "Wandering Rocks"

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An excerpt from the Bible, 1 Thessalonians 5, in which God's vengeance on those outside the church is described as the coming of a "thief in the night."

Church Ideology Stylizing Father Conmee’s Thoughts in “Wandering Rocks”

Justin Heinze

 

Throughout Ulysses, Joyce employs the paraprosdokian technique of sentences that are subverted from their initial meaning in the final few words. In the “Wandering Rocks” episode Joyce parodies biblical language by ending the sentence with an allusion to 1 Thessalonians 5.

Father Conmee thought of the souls of black and brown and yellow men and of his sermon on saint Peter Claver S.J. and the African mission and of the propagation of the faith and of the millions of black and brown and yellow souls that had not received the baptism of water when their last hour came like a thief in the night. (Joyce 183).

It’s important to consider how different this sentence sounds without its addendum. To discuss the “millions of black and brown and yellow souls that had not received the baptism of water when their hour came” is far different from discussing millions of souls victimized by a “thief in the night.” The former alternative without the qualifier reflects a casual, conversational tone. Father Conmee is only thinking about the individuals in Asia, Africa, North America, and elsewhere that have never heard of Christianity. How would they be seen by God on judgment day? The “thief in the night” addition makes it very clear, however, how Father Conmee is influenced to see them, how God will see them, and what will ultimately happen to them.

In 1 Thessalonians 5 the Bible addresses the idea of vengeance upon the unbelieving. The verse encourages and comforts the faithful flock that has “no need to have anything written to” while describing the coming of God like the approach of a “thief in the night.” (The New American Bible: 1 Thessalonians 5) The timing of “thief in the night” is important in the sentence in the Bible, as well. “For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come” is a tame tone, one of gentle admonition and reminder, compared to one of threatening terror with “thief in the night” added at the end. It suddenly implies a supernatural punishment to be levied on those who are not a part of the Church.

Joyce’s positioning his Biblical parody where he does accomplishes several things. It reflects Father Conmee’s state of mind and reinforces what might have already been established: he is “thinking like” the Bible. It is an ironic twist on the words and form of the Bible which actively encourages its adherents to be more like God. The critic Trevor Williams suggests that Conmee is representative of “ideological forces (of) religion imposing a discourse” (Williams 267). But the style of Joyce’s sentence reflects the degree to which Church ideology has replaced Father Conmee’s own thoughts. “Like a thief in the night” is the Church speaking; what comes before that reflects Conmee’s own rationalizations about what he thinks should happen to souls outside of the church. The sentence is dominated by the six words of the Church just as Conmee’s thoughts, despite his own judgments, are dominated by the Church. The reader is led to agree with Conmee in the beginning of the sentence and to feel sympathetic to him. He is sparked to think of the plight of these souls because he sees a black man on the street, suggesting in the least a vague humanism about him. He is “thinking of the souls,” language which implies a degree of empathy that is substantiated by his thoughts later in the same paragraph. Conmee is more than the representative of the subjugating church that keeps the Dubliners in their place place: he is a man. Therefore Joyce’s use of Biblical language casts Conmee as a victim of the same ideological mastery he enacts over the people of Dublin. It reminds the reader that there is a man behind the institutional mask, and that though he is the agent of the religious forces at work to repress the passions of the citizens, he, too, is a citizen; but a powerless one, at that.

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A text written by a Dublin-based Irish Jesuit, Nicholas Walsh, attempting to determine the number of saved souls compared to lost souls.

Conmee’s subjugation to official Church position is hidden by a sympathetic tone that seemingly aligns him with the referenced anti-rigorist Jesuit author of Rigorism, the Number of the Chosen and the Doctrine of Salvation. However, the nature of his sympathy is unusual in that it is pointedly passionless. His argument in support of the much maligned book is exceedingly mild, a passionless language of platitudes and half-hearted Haines-like injunctions (one can imagine Conmee and Haines mildly agreeing that “it seems history is to blame” (Joyce 17)) that fails to achieve any rhetorical end. It seems doubtful, for example, that Conmee would be galvanizing any flocks of believers with such tepid rejoinders.

Joyce is not parodying the rigorists but rather the self-styled humane and mild rulers who knew in their hearts that a man should not be eternally doomed just because he lived his entire life thousands of miles away from the nearest Christian mission. There were several texts written by clergy other than the book by Auguste Castelein, S.J. referenced in Ulysses that laid out this argument in exceedingly mild terms, and it is this mildness that Joyce chiefly re-stylizes in Conmee. One example of such a text is The Comparable Number of the Saved and the Lost by Reverend Nicholas Walsh, S.J., an Irish Jesuit. Walsh argued there were more probably many more saved souls than lost souls. The American Ecclesiastical Review of 1898 described Walsh and his text as “mildist;” Father Conmee describes his own style with the same curious word: “His reign was mild.” (Joyce 184) Easily overlooked, the word is the key to the passionless way Conmee frames the debate of salvation doctrine in his own mind.

On such a divisive issue the expectation is vitriol, but Conmee delivers the opposite: “It seemed to Father Conmee a pity that they should all be lost, a waste, if one might say.” To describe the eternal damnation of billions of souls as a “pity” is a comic understatement, and to add in “a waste, if one might say” even functions with the paraprosdokian effect of emphasizing his enfeebled opinion. “It seemed to Father Conmee a pity that they should all be lost” sounds less condescending, belittling, and uncaring than it does with the unnecessary qualifier “a waste, if one might say” added to the end.

Within Walsh’s text in particular there are several moments of such mildness in the face of a question filled with such portent and fire and brimstone. His tone is almost conciliatory in places, and he takes care to excuse himself for daring to broach the subject.

It is, as all know, a question about which there is no authoritative decision of the Church, nor unanimous opinion of her Fathers or Theologians: an open question therefore, about which we may speculate, provided we do so in a reverent and religious spirit...Father Faber, in his well-known book, The Creator and, the Creature, writes on this subject in a full, fair, and learned way. There is nothing one-sided or partisan about him. He gives all the opinions, held by others, speaks of them with respect, and states his own with great moderation and modesty. (Walsh 2)

There are direct echoes of Conmee’s mild “if one might say” in Walsh’s “we may speculate” and “provided we do so.” Walsh goes on to extoll the values of moderation and modesty, traits which surely characterize Conmee’s extreme reservation in considering the eternal plight of millions of souls. Walsh’s attitude was prevailing amidst “dissenters” who wanted their voice heard. The Church’s official position on the fate of the souls of those living in the remote parts of Africa, Asia, and elsewhere was Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus – no salvation outside the church. Pope Leo XIII, who ruled until his death in 1903, seems to have made the closest official statement on the matter to the day of the events in Ulysses, June 16th, 1904. Leo decreed that “This is our last lesson to you; receive it, engrave it in your minds, all of you: by God’s commandment salvation is to be found nowhere but in the Church.” (Pope Leo XIII) And engrave it in their minds is exactly what followers did, engraving directly over their own thoughts.

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A review of Reverend Walsh's 1898 text, The Comparative Number of the Saved and the Lost, in the 1899 American Ecclesiastical Review. 

Walsh’s style is indicative of the prevailing sentiments and linguistic modes of many within the Church during that time who were exploring ways to subtly express alternatives to that doctrine, in an age hypersensitive to any hint of heresy. In the American Ecclesiastical Review that lauds Walsh’s “mildist” approach, his work is summarized by the statement “(he) concludes…that in all probability the majority of mankind are saved.” (Heuse 198) In the modern context such plain language in the face of something so apocalyptically consequential would be construed as deadpan humor. Joyce probably saw it more than just humorously, and the incarnation of this style in Conmee is important on several levels.

Such mildness, as Conmee fashions it, is his reaction to the warring consciences within him: the conscience of the individual versus the imposed ideology of the church. Conmee’s particular language, “if one might say,” seems to ask permission, to beg a brief audience for his humble opinion, and reflects the status of his individual conscience as the conquered party. Just as Walsh was begging to be excused for his opinion, and seemed hyperaware that he was treading on sensitive ground, Conmee asks to be excused, realizing, even if subconsciously, that such moderation is the only form of deviation from Church doctrine that he dares. To put it another way: Conmee would not be published in any Ecclesiastical Reviews if he styled his thoughts any differently.

After Conmee’s moment of mild support for the eternal fate of millions of souls, his very next action is a prompt exchange of salutes. “Father Conmee alighted, was saluted by the conductor and saluted in his turn.” As if whipping him back into proper, unquestioning, holy form, the false world of formal salutations beckons. Stylistically, this mechanical response functions as a paragraph-form paraprosdokian: one paragraph summarizes Conmee’s subjugated thoughts, and the paragraph immediately following places those thoughts in the larger context: Conmee is back to saluting and obeying, as he always was and always will be.

Overall, it is clear that although Joyce wants us to see Conmee as a man that is more than just the mouthpiece of the Church, he is more importantly emphasizing the inability of the man to overcome the ideology of the Church. This demonstrates the power of institutions over individuals, in particular their ability to cripple the seed of dissent before it can even be fully formulated in the mind, never mind translated into action. Conmee’s thoughts tell the Biblical story of Jonah in microcosm: a tiny, albeit less straightforward disobedience not of God, but of Church doctrine, that is nonetheless crushed just as swiftly. By highlighting the fact that moderation is the only avenue of protest, Joyce is also commenting on its insufficiencies. The moderate tone is notably devoid of human passion in a place where one would expect it the most, further representing Father Conmee’s own repressed passions within the episode and the way that the Church represses passions of the Dubliners.

 

Works Cited

1 Thessalonians. The New American Bible. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.                  Web. 16 Oct. 2014.

Bulson, Eric. “Joyce’s Geodesy.” Journal of Modern Literature 25.2 (Winter 2001-2002): Print.

Gifford, Don and Seidman, Robert. Ulysses Annotated. Berkeley: University of California                   Press, 1989.

Joyce, James. Ulysses. New York City: Random House, Inc., 1986.

Pope Leo XIII. Annum Sacrum: Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII on Consecration to the                          Sacred Heart. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1899.

"The Number of the Elect." American Ecclesiastical Review 21 (1899): 197-200. Print.

Walsh, Nicholas, S.J. The Comparative Number of the Saved and Lost: A Study. Dublin: M.H.

Gill, 1899. Archive.org. Web. 12 Oct. 2014.                                                                  <http://archive.org/stream/comparativesaved00walsuoft/comparativesaved00walsuoft_djvu.txt>.

Williams, Trevor. “‘Conmeeism’ and the Universe of Discourse in the ‘Wandering                             Rocks.’”James Joyce Quarterly 29.2 (Winter 1992): Print.

Catholic Language in "Wandering Rocks"