The Keys Of The Kingdom – A. J. Cronin, 1941 ★★½

Inheriting the Earth 

Sometimes you want to believe in something so bad it doesn't really matter if the message is a bit off. A famous novel made into a successful film starring Gregory Peck, The Keys Of The Kingdom presents an admirable message and a saintly protagonist.

But I found the story off.

I dislike Gregory Peck in nearly any movie he's in, but not having seen the film I can't blame him for not liking the book more. Still, I found myself at points visualizing Peck in the role of Father Francis, very stiff and correct, his expression a nearly inscrutable mix of charity, empathy, and perplexity. Why can't mankind just get along, you hear him saying even when the narrative isn't telling us exactly that. He's the kind of character that only exists in fiction, to which I can only add: Thank God. What a boring lot we'd be otherwise, hardly worth the saving.

The story concerns young Francis Chisholm, the product of a Scottish fishing village who after his parents' sudden passing and an unhappy adoption, seeks out to realize his lifelong calling to the Catholic priesthood. He journeys to a Spanish seminary and then the hinterlands of China, imbued with a clear passion for the Cross but employing a non-doctrinaire approach that often draws the ire of Church superiors.

In an era where organized religion is often reflexively frowned upon by a largely secularized Western society, I did find it uplifting to read a novel presenting a priest in as positive a light as The Keys Of The Kingdom. Chisholm is presented as an example of that term I used to come across studying the Middle Ages, the "Christian humanist," e. g. Erasmus or St. Thomas More. He loves his God, and wants only to serve Him well, but blanches at the more recondite details and finds himself flailing at the walls man puts around his faith.

"Which of us has any notion of God?" Father Chisholm asks near the novel's end. "Our word 'God' is a human word...expressing reverence for our Creator. If we have that reverence, we shall see God...never fear."

That dialectic between actively practicing a faith, and converting others to the same, while simultaneously avoiding excess zeal and arrogance, makes for Keys' key struggle. Cronin finds in Chisholm a vessel for exploring his theme of humanist ecumenicism, and it is certainly a worthwhile subject...for a while.

But a heroic protagonist can also be a dull one; too often that is the case here. Chisholm's personality is pretty set on his faith-based course, his Gethsemanes like Christ's inflicted entirely by the anger and venality of others. Instead of an engaging plot, the reader gets a series of picaresque incidents capturing Chisholm at various points in his journey, such as at a seminary taught by hard taskmasters or a parish where he works under a lax and paranoid pastor. Chisholm struggles with people who are at best sordid or base, and at worst outright villains with no redeemable characteristics.

There are plenty of points of action, starting with the strange accident that deprives Chisholm of his parents, but the novel lacks for a compelling interior story. Chisholm believes, because that's the way he is, taking terrible setbacks as welcome tests of faith. One seeking a bridge of understanding to who he is and what he's about will find it hard, even if they share his faith. His feet don't seem to touch the ground.

A. J. (Archibald Joseph) Cronin, Scottish physician and novelist, who produced best-selling fiction from the 1930s through the 1960s. Image from http://rateyourmusic.com/artist/a__j__cronin

Cronin's writing style is crisp and sure, but lacks for engagement. It's very dry, reminding me a lot of Hermann Hesse on the other side of the theological divide, except of course Hesse is only readable to me via translation, where you have to allow for an etiolated quality. Cronin's prose feels like a translation in its flattish way, coming to life only when he describes scenes of natural wonder. Fortunately this happens fairly often, whether our hero is tending a garden or enduring the impact of a hellacious flood.

The novel is structured curiously well. We begin at the end, with Chisholm facing involuntary retirement in Scotland. For too long he has annoyed authorities with his quiet refusal to tow the line, his disregard for Church protocol. Now he's old and losing his memory. Still, the spirit flickers when confronted by a particularly nasty-seeming priest named Sleeth, who points out Chisholm's heresies in recent sermons, like telling of an atheist he knew who enjoyed God's grace or warning a rotund parishioner: "The gates of Heaven are narrow. Eat less."

It's a fine opening, short and lively, but it's not sustained. Sleeth and the Scottish retirement disappear until nearly the end of the book. The rest of the first half deals with such things as Chisholm's painful upbringing in Scotland, his experiences trying to expose some holy bunkum that threatens to take in Church leaders, and the warm mentoring of his seminary's rector, MacNabb, who shares Chisholm's love of fishing and sees a light inside him that others miss.

"I like a young man who can knock some fun out of life," MacNabb says. "He has great depth and fire."

At the midpoint of the novel, Chisholm arrives in China. Here, the story kicks into a higher gear. There's infighting with a proud German nun, and real fighting with a robber baron terrorizing the countryside. Chisholm struggles with one rich-living bishop, a childhood acquaintance named Anselm who lords over his professed superiority. Chisholm finds himself on better terms with an atheist doctor who joins him in serving a plague-infested village, the fellow he later mentions in that sermon that so troubles Sleeth, and later by a Protestant couple as sincere in their faith as Chisholm is in his. This will go down well with modern readers, surely, but the question of why Chisholm still hangs in there as a Catholic is something for which we don't get the same type of compelling insight.

It's a decent-enough novel, with an admirable message, but something seemed lacking for me. Maybe the various episodes described felt too much like set-pieces, like New Testament parables rather than recognizable steps on a real-life journey. I wanted to like Keys Of The Kingdom, and suspect others like it because they want to, because it fills a kind of hole when it comes to fiction as well as life. But it's only fair fiction, and doesn't really seem the kind of novel one mistakes for life.