Morality, Redemption, and the Catholic Church Theme Analysis

“Grace” begins with Tom Kernan bleeding at the bottom of a staircase in a bar, having fallen down it during his latest drinking binge. Following this event, three of Mr. Kernan’s friends come together to stage an intervention for him, arranging for the four of them to attend a Catholic retreat where Kernan can make a fresh start. It’s understandable that they would assume the Catholic Church is the answer to Kernan’s problems: in early 20th-century Dublin, where the story is set, Catholicism was the dominant belief system and was widely regarded as the moral framework of Irish society. But although the reader may initially expect that Kernan will be redeemed by becoming a more devout Catholic, the story undermines the moral authority of Catholicism, thus forcing the reader to question whether embracing Catholicism would be an improvement to Kernan’s life at all. In doing so, the story casts doubt onto the Irish Catholic Church and suggests that following its tenets may not be a surefire path to redeeming oneself or living a moral life.

Initially, it seems like “Grace” will be an archetypal Christian redemption story, in which Kernan will be saved from his alcohol abuse by embracing Catholicism. The story deliberately invokes the Christian trope of humanity’s “fall” from innocence and eventual redemption through Jesus Christ. In the Bible, Adam and Eve bring original sin upon all of humanity when they eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge against God’s prohibition, prompting God to throw them out of the Garden of Eden (paradise). This “fall” is eventually redeemed by Christ dying for humankind’s sins. The “fall” part of this trope is presented quite literally in the story: it opens with Kernan having fallen down and injured himself because he drank too much. And indeed, Kernan has recently experienced a figurative “fall from grace” as well: the reader later learns that Kernan has developed a drinking problem and has begun to falter in his once-successful career. Here, his moral descent into self-destructive behavior is reflected by his physical descent down in the stairs. In the aftermath of this incident, Kernan’s close friends Martin Cunningham, Jack Power, and Mr. M’Coy stage an intervention for Kernan, believing that taking him to a Catholic retreat will inspire him to be more devout and consequently save him from his own-self-destructive behavior. They hope that a traditional Christian (and specifically Catholic) redemption journey is what will save Kernan: if he devotes himself to Christ, he can atone for his mistakes and redeem himself in the eyes of God.

However, Kernan’s Catholic friends and family are not particularly good Catholics themselves, which implies that the Church isn’t free of hypocrisy or arrogance—and its practitioners shouldn’t necessarily be seen as the moral authority over non-believers. Martin, Power, and M’Coy make a big show of their knowledge about the Church to impress one another and convince Kernan to accompany them to the retreat. However, they get most of the facts wrong: they incorrectly cite the history of the Jesuits, for instance, and they make up nonsensical papal mottoes. By presenting these foolish men as the model churchgoers for Kernan to follow, the story questions whether they have any moral authority over the down-on-his-luck Kernan, and whether Catholicism can truly save Kernan from himself. Mr. Kernan’s wife, Mrs. Kernan, is also a lifelong Catholic—in fact, Mr. Kernan converted in order to marry her. But Mrs. Kernan also believes in “the banshee,” a fairy-like creature from Irish folklore whose wails predict the death of a loved one. By believing in the banshee, Mrs. Kernan is committing the cardinal sin of idolatry, or having faith in a pagan creature. Even as the Catholic authority in the Kernan household, Mrs. Kernan is a sinner, which complicates Kernan’s friends’ conviction that the Catholic Church is a surefire path to a moral life.

At the Catholic retreat that Kernan and his friends attend, the priest (and the sermon he gives) are further indicators that the Church may not be the moral institution in claims to be. The primary target of satire in “Grace” is not churchgoers—it is the Catholic Church itself. The main priest in the story is named Father Purdon, which is a reference to Purdon Street, where Dublin’s red-light (prostitution) district was located at the time the story is set. This sly double-meaning of the priest’s name suggests that Father Purdon is far from the moral authority that Kernan needs to guide him toward redemption. “Purdon” can also be read as a bungled version of the word “pardon,” which is the term for a priest’s absolution of a congregant’s sins. This play on words calls into question the priest’s ability to pardon Kernan of his sins, since his name is a botched version of that critical role. Purdon’s sermon itself also signals that he’s perhaps untrustworthy or immoral, as it features little of the spirituality that one might expect from a religious speech. Rather, Purdon leans heavily on soulless business metaphors, calling himself the “spiritual accountant” for the retreat attendees and stating that “Jesus Christ was not a hard taskmaster”—a strangely blunt choice of words to describe the central figure of Christianity. The priest’s metaphors present the Catholic Church as a bank where one “deposits” sin and “withdraws” redemption, rather than a place of spiritual growth and care. This transactional banking metaphor further suggests that the Catholic Church is a hypocritical institution: instead of actually making devotees into better people, the Church just facilitates a shallow, unthinking exchange of sin for redemption.

Although Kernan’s friends are hopeful that bringing Kernan to this retreat will help him better himself and recover from alcohol abuse, the story ends mid-sermon, before readers get to see whether or not this actually happens. And because “Grace” presents the Catholic Church in such condemnatory terms—making it out to be a largely hypocritical and arrogant institution—the reader is left wondering if becoming a strict Catholic wouldn’t do more harm than good for Kernan. In doing so, the story takes a provocative stand against the unquestioned dominance of Catholicism in Irish society at the beginning of the 20th century.