The Diary of a Country Priest: A Novel

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Summary: Tout est Grâce: Georges Bernanos' Diary of a Country Priest
Review: "The Diary of a Country Priest" by Georges Bernanos is a sad, but hopeful, novel. Set between the two world wars in rural northern France, the story takes place in Ambricourt, a village bored stiff and bereft of spiritual vitality. In spite of this, Bernanos' protagonist grows in faith, because he reaches into his soul and wrestles with some of life's biggest issues. As a priest, he is new to parish life. Suffering from poor health, he was misdiagnosed as consumptive and had spent the previous eighteen months in a sanatorium.

The priest begins his parish work at Ambricourt with sober resolve and some expectation of longevity. He strives diligently to influence his parishioners, yet he makes far more enemies than friends. Some of this he accepts as an occupational hazard, since a good priest "has no friends." He receives some moral support from the Curé de Torcy, an experienced senior priest, and from his first doctor, a suicidal physician named Maxence Delbende.

Although the priest's trials seem rather petty, the reader should not overlook the priest's physical plight and his sensitivity to the malice that lurks in people. Consider Seraphita Dumouchel. Ostensibly a bright young girl, she turns out to be a mini-vixen who attacks him behind his back with malicious slander. Loose lips not only sink ships, but they also sink reputations. The priest has to fight an uphill battle against unsubstantiated rumors, including one that he is an alcoholic.

He also has problems with Mademoiselle Chantal. Daughter of a count and countess, she takes over where Seraphita left off, vexing the priest in the spiritual realm. Even when Chantal allows herself to enter the confessional, she stubbornly refuses to confess her sins. The priest warns her of the eternal consequences, but she storms off with a curt, "That's enough!"

His good friend Dr. Delbende having committed suicide with a shotgun, the priest contacts a doctor in the large northern city of Lille. He is bleeding internally. A few days before the appointment, he happens upon an acquaintance named Monsieur Olivier, a cousin of Mademoiselle Chantal. Olivier is riding his prize motorcycle and offers the priest a ride, which he accepts. For a brief, shining moment, the priest enjoys the blessedness of youth. This is a grace that God gives him in order to boost his spirits. Even though it seems as if his life has been an abject failure, the priest gains a higher perspective and sees that he has lived his life by the grace of God. As he says at the end, "Does it matter? Grace is everywhere."
Dennis J. Mercieri, Holy Apostles Seminary, Cromwell, CT, USA


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Summary: Maybe the most influential book I ever read
Review: Along with Dorothy Day's The Long Loneliness, Diary is one of the books that helped convince me to become a Catholic. The priest's dying words--"Grace is everywhere"--sum up for me the Faith and what I want from and in my life.

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Summary: An intense touching portait of a country priest's struggles.
Review: Bernanos' classic is perhaps the most touching novel I've ever read. Its the story of a country priest whose parish is not very interested in religious matters. He deals with this, his personal problems, and Bernanos' descriptions of his struggles are profoundly emotional. I read this book a long time ago, but to this day I remember the impact it had on me. Such feeling and compassion I have never felt for any other fictional character (save Lord Jim). This work is truly a masterpeice. Reading it will change you, forever....

Rating:
Summary: An intense touching portait of a country priest's struggles.
Review: Bernanos' classic is perhaps the most touching novel I've ever read. Its the story of a country priest whose parish is not very interested in religious matters. He deals with this, his personal problems, and Bernanos' descriptions of his struggles are profoundly emotional. I read this book a long time ago, but to this day I remember the impact it had on me. Such feeling and compassion I have never felt for any other fictional character (save Lord Jim). This work is truly a masterpeice. Reading it will change you, forever....

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Summary: The agony and spiritual ecstasy of the priesthood is here.
Review: Bernanos's "Diary" represents that rarest of glimses into the clerical world: a view that is utterly convincing and completely enthralling! As the author pursues the early life and career of a French provincial Abbe, he simultaneously reveals the sufferings, triumphs, and struggles of the people that the young priest serves. Parallel to the tribulations of their lives, Bernanos lovingly shows how deeply one man, one priest can empathize with those he serves. While Bernanos never became a priest himself, his early life prepared him to write this, his greatest novel. The poignancy of this small novel is one that builds gradually. The impatient reader may, at first, not "connect" with the story, but the faithful reader will soon find that he/she cannot put it down. The last 30 pages of this work are one of the 20th century's masterpieces of spiritual prosody that I can identify.

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Summary: Concede yourself the reading of this gem!
Review: I am not religious, yet this book is a permanent source of inspiration for me. I believe this comes from the beauty of the life it describes, rather than of doctrines. This is perhaps the most relevant book I ever read, and also one of the best in whatever sense.

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Summary: overlooked classic
Review: I tried to read this book several times since I first heard of it through watching the films of Robert Bresson twenty years ago. Only now have I been able to read it, and I think it is one of those books that you have to be "ready for" before you can appreciate it. It is not easy to read and it is certainly not congenial to contemporary laissez-faire attitudes toward religion, spirituality, sin and redemption. That said, it is one of the most powerful things one can read if one can hear it. And upon reading it a second time, one marvels at how fully thought out it is. The entire book is foreshadowed in the first chapter. It really is a marvelous bit of writing. If you're the sort of person who underlines quotable passages in books, bring an extra highlighter because there's a lot to quote from in this book.

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Summary: Poignant and evocative
Review: In Journal of a country priest, Bernanos give an amazing insight into the world of a parish priest in a small french village. While everything goes terribly wrong for the priest, and all his worldly efforts fail miserably, the book ends on a note of spiritual redemption that is (amazingly) not at all at odds with the rest of the story. This is Bernanos' triumph- that he can so faithfully recreate the priest's faith in the face of failure and death that the reader can comprehend and sympathise with this faith. I myself am not religious, but it seems to me that Bernanos embodies the greatest strenghts of catholicism and religion in general

Rating:
Summary: Poignant and evocative
Review: In Journal of a country priest, Bernanos give an amazing insight into the world of a parish priest in a small french village. While everything goes terribly wrong for the priest, and all his worldly efforts fail miserably, the book ends on a note of spiritual redemption that is (amazingly) not at all at odds with the rest of the story. This is Bernanos' triumph- that he can so faithfully recreate the priest's faith in the face of failure and death that the reader can comprehend and sympathise with this faith. I myself am not religious, but it seems to me that Bernanos embodies the greatest strenghts of catholicism and religion in general

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Summary: a philosophical rather than religious journey
Review: It is saddening to read the reviews posted because this novel is not a Christian tract and in fact addresses that margin of life where one observes human behavior, including one's own, and begins to wonder where it may lead, if anywhere. It is not a religious book but in fact a philosophical one, in the guise of a journal. One can read it with Boethius, Anne Frank, Camus or maybe even John Kennedy Toole (A Confederacy of Dunces. Had to throw that oddity in...) But the point is that this book appeals even to atheists like Albert Camus, and there is a reason for that. It skims very near the glowing core of fundamental issues without lapsing into easy solutions. And it does have a plot, on some levels ironic. But irony is too often lost on the faithful, and too often the end rather than the means to understanding for the faithless. Note that in France, it is regarded as one of the top half dozen books of the 20th century.