NP but Father Paneloux in The Plague. SPOILER ALERT

[Mark Kohut]

Judgment call: if you think you will ever read *The Plague, *
this post, as opposed to the graceful one, reveals key aspects
of a character and therefore of a certain slant of vision in *The Plague.*

This comes later than the 'grace' quote. "Father Paneloux held faith with
that great symbol of all suffering, the tortured body on the Cross; he
would stand fast,
his back to the wall, and face honestly the terrible problem of a child's
agony.".....

"We must believe everything or deny everything, And who among you, I ask,
would dare to deny everything".
...........Dr. Rieux remembers an historic heresy that he thinks Paneloux
is flirting with..."when it
was impossible to conceive of a venial sin". ......
......................................................................................................................
Father P in his major sermon: "the love of God is a hard love, it demands
total self-surrender, disdain of our human personality.
And yet it alone can reconcile us to suffering and the deaths of
children,,,,...we can only make God's will ours".....

A parishioner sums up his sermon later: "that it is illogical for a priest
to call in a doctor".
Tarroux, the writer, says if Paneloux will not lose his faith, he will go
"through with it [to the end]."

Fr. Paneloux goes on to say that a priest should be "one who stays" [during
a plague]. "Who must live like everyone
else". .......compressing some fine interactions, this chapter builds to
where the priest gets sick but without
any of the outward symptoms of the plague, just a fever ["the turbulent
onrush in his wrists and temples of the fever
latent in his blood for several days past".]

Rieux checks him out, even stays with him. He suffers, wants to hold a
crucifix and dies with it, still with no more symptoms.
" a doubtful case" of the plague writes the doctor about the death,
reflecting on the curious ways of the disease.
Camus leaves us with thinking he died out of overidentification perhaps.

MK: I would bet a book of historical literary criticism I have somewhere
that Camus had Simone Weil in mind with this
characterization; she who spent her life living, walking in the shoes of
others, the suffering and the worse off and who died by refusing to
eat any more than those who got the least food during the war. Death by
self-starvation by maximum empathy one might say (and it has been).

But look at Camus' Paneloux and think of Fundamentalists of all religions
as I now do. What religious limit-pushing Camus gave us.

PS:

Willie Geist
@WillieGeist
<https://twitter.com/WillieGeist>
·
10h <https://twitter.com/WillieGeist/status/1242249668622536704>
An Italian priest who gave his own respirator to a younger patient has
died. RIP.
[image: Folded hands]