The Shaping of Water by Ruth Hartley

Author:Ruth Hartley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
Published: 2014-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

Theology

Marielise had met Father Patrick several times on the campus before she remembered that he had been the priest in charge at the Catholic church in Siavonga. There were several occasions where they had encountered each other as adversaries during student debates of an ethical or political nature. After a while Marielise learnt that Father Patrick had actually worked in the Zambezi Valley during the resettlement of the Tonga people and she realised that he was a valuable, indeed essential person, to talk to about that time in the history of Zambia for her research project, so long delayed because of the war with Rhodesia.

Father Patrick was very happy to oblige her. Like all of the Jesuit Fathers he was an exceptionally well-educated man and even with his contacts with the university he was starved for intellectual debate on moral and ethical matters. They got into the habit of meeting for coffee and would sometimes visit the university bookshop together. It was quite an odd place at the time. Price control meant that any books on sale were likely to be very cheap but price control also made it hard for the bookshop to provide a broad selection of books. Marielise and Father Patrick would hunt through the shelves together, pointing out to each other some of the stranger books that came in but also recommending any bargains or books of special interest to each other that they saw. Father Patrick wanted to hear about Judaism from Marielise. Though his academic knowledge of the religion was greater than hers, he wanted to know what it meant to her to be half-Jewish. Marielise was amused by this because her father had not been an observant Jew at all. Nevertheless her father was an intelligent, self-taught man, who understood what he had chosen to reject.

Their most protracted arguments were on the merits of Marxism and Christianity. Father Patrick insisted that it was not enough to be civilised and altruistic, that humanism and even socialism, must fail humans. He dug out, for Marielise, a battered grey hardback written by a Catholic convert before the Second World War.

“What did you think of the book, Marielise?” he asked, fixing her with an intense blue stare from between raised eyebrows and spectacles lowered to the end of his nose. Marielise wrinkled up her own nose then smiled at her friend.

“Well I guess I am a civilised and civilising Pagan according to the author’s definition. Perhaps she is right and between material reality and human nature itself, all of us who fight – or work – for a better world must fail to an extent. Of course she isn’t suggesting that we stop trying to get rid of racism and injustice is she?”

“No indeed! What of God, though Marielise? What of God?”

Marielise gave a deep sigh.

“Oh Patrick!” she said, “You know I don’t know. If there was a God – if there is a God – then yes! It would be necessary to give him that total commitment.

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