MDMD(8) Christ's true Pity

[Doug Millison]

>231.16 - 231.18  "for Christ's true Pity lies so beyond us, that we may
>best jump and whimper like Dogs who cannot quite catch the Trick of it."
>What is Christ's true pity?  What does this remark reveal of Fr. Maire
>and Pynchon's attitudes towards him?  (It is significant to consider this
>question in terms of Dogs we have encountered.)

Seems to me Pynchon has the good father express a fairly standard Christian
priestly insight -- Christ occupies a realm as fundamentally
incomprehensible to the human as human is incomprehensible to dog, humans
being as gods from the dog's point of view. As dogs learn to perform on the
basis of visual and verbal cues without knowing the human's deeper thoughts
or motivations, so humans try to conform behavior and belief based on what
they guess Christ wants or expects; direct experience of Christ lies on the
other side of what can be imagined, verbalized, conceived in the human
realm. Depending on how you feel about dogs, this comparison may be more or
less flattering; those who love dogs for their unselfconscious trust and
love for their masters may not be offended, while those who see dogs as
craven and servile may not like it so much.

D O U G  M I L L I S O N ||||||||||| millison at online-journalist.com