How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph.)
Quote #1
He knew what it meant: the ship had kept to timetable: he was abandoned. He felt an unwilling hatred of the child ahead of him and the sick woman—he was unworthy of what he carried. (1.1.125)
The priest isn't just a little vexed; he's infuriated. He's mad as Hello Kitty's evil twin and…he's…just going to keep taking it. We're introduced to the priest as a man who will grudgingly make a sacrifice, despise the people he's sacrificing for, but go along because that's what he's been doing. Not exactly magnanimity.
Quote #2
Something you could almost have called horror moved him when he looked at the white muslin dresses—he remembered the smell of incense in the churches of his boyhood, the candles and the laciness and the self-esteem, the immense demands made from the altar steps by men who didn't know the meaning of sacrifice. (1.2.24)
The lieutenant has some deep wounds. We don't know exactly what happened to him as a child, but we're sure it's left him jaded. And as we learn from the old lifestyle of the priest—full of pomp and circumstance and unearned deference—the lieutenant's assessment has some merit, even if his actions do not.
Quote #3
It seemed to him like a weakness: this was his own land, and he would have walled it in if he could with steel until he had eradicated from it everything which reminded him of how it had once appeared to a miserable child. He wanted to destroy everything: to be alone without any memories at all. Life began five years ago. (1.2.49)
The lieutenant is something of a tragic figure. He could only find purpose once he was in a position to suppress the Church he grew to loathe, and his purpose is as fantastic as he deems the promises of heaven. In his heart, he's a Final Fantasy villain. In reality, he's just a man.
Quote #4
A woman screamed. "That's my boy. That's Miguel. You can't take my boy." He said dully, "Every man here is somebody's husband or somebody's son. I know that." The priest stood silently with his hands clasped; his knuckles whitened as he gripped … He could feel all around him the beginning of hate. Because he was no one's husband or son. He said, "Lieutenant…" (2.1.145-147)
Why do the villagers refuse to turn the priest over—even to save themselves? Is it honor? Superstition? Fear of God?
Quote #5
When you visualized a man or woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity—that was a quality God's image carried with it. When you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination. (2.3.117)
No wonder traitors opt to stab people in the back. Do you agree with this? If people were more imaginative, would they hate less? If so, can artists and musicians and poets help make the work less hateful?
Quote #6
"Loving God isn't any different from loving a man—or a child. It's wanting to be with Him, to be near Him." He made a hopeless gesture with his hands. "It's wanting to protect Him from yourself." (3.1.115)
Do we detect a little self-loathing on the part of the priest here? He sees the love of God as an internal conflict: wanting to be with God and away from God at the same time. It's like an addiction, or an abusive relationship. Either way, it doesn't sound like very much fun.
Quote #7
These were heretics—it never occurred to them that he was not a good man: they hadn't the prying insight of fellow Catholics. (3.1.130)
Does hate usually more personal when it's hatred of one's own? The Lehrs don't hold with the priest's religious ideas, but, unlike of the Catholics the priest encounters, they have no interest in measuring how good or bad a Catholic he is.
Quote #8
"My brother gets so angry," Miss Lehr said, "if he sees somebody go on his knees to a priest, but I don't see that it does any harm." (3.1.138)
Mr. Lehr and the lieutenant have this commonality: they both really dislike the priest's ideas and find them harmful. We might say Mr. Lehr is tolerant while the lieutenant is intolerant, but we suspect that the German protestant wouldn't mind seeing some aspects of Catholicism disappear. If he had the power of the lieutenant, what do you think he'd do?
Quote #9
"You hate the rich and love the poor. Isn't that right?"
"Yes."
"Well, if I hated you, I wouldn't want to bring up my child to be like you. It's not sense." (3.3.103-105)
Oh snap. In the lieutenant's favor, however, the priest's argument doesn't quite get at the desires of the policeman. He seems to hate the disparity between rich and poor and the suffering it causes most of all. We're not sure why he thinks getting rid of the Church will do away with this all, but there's no stopping him.
Quote #10
They lay quiet for a while in the hut. The priest thought the lieutenant was asleep until he spoke again. "You never talk straight. You say one thing to me—but to another man, or a woman, you say 'God is love.' But you think that stuff won't go down with me, so you say different things. Things you think I'll agree with."
"Oh," the priest said, "that's another thing altogether—God is love. I don't say the heart doesn't feel a taste of it, but what a taste. The smallest glass of loved mixed with a pint pot of ditch water. We wouldn't recognize that love. It might even look like hate. It would be enough to scare us—God's love. It set fire to a bush in the desert, didn't it, and smashed open graces and set the dead walking in the dark. Oh, a man like me would run a mile to get away if he felt that love around."
Notice the variation in the priest's voice. At first he's speaking objectively about God's love and what it is, but then he gets all personal, noting how someone like him would react to such love. So when he says that God's love might look like hate, is he speaking about the reality of God's love or his own perception of it?