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Amy sums up nicely the thrust of some of Joseph's most important observations about the reportorial style of Exiles when she says: "The bare facts of it all are dreadful and tragic. But the relating of bare facts has no intrinsic, immediately evident meaning. So the poet -- the person of faith, any human being -- draws out the meaning."

 

This, in turn, leads her to ask about the aims of Catholic fiction, and its possible effects on believers and non-believers: "Is it high literature we're looking for or simply stories with Catholic characters that affirm the truth of the Catholic faith by portraying lessons learned and dots helpfully connected?" And as Matthew highlighted in his second intervention, the scenes of death are drawn with bare, but truly present, indicators of significance. He suggests this is more noticeable in the case with the sisters than with the portrayal of Hopkins.

 

A few comments: The author allows us to hear the thoughts of the sisters as they die, and this privilege bears the weight of pointing us to the significance of these events. I suppose a non-believer (to reference Amy's question) would read those thoughts and be content to say, "Well, at least they had the consolation of their faith, though whether it is true or not is another issue."A believer, reading the same thoughts of the sisters laid bare, would likely recognize in them the signifying words that point to the reality embracing the sisters. If that sounds like a description devised out of deference to the Catholic Tradition of the Sacraments, it should. For I think sacramental signification is relevant here.

 

Thomas Aquinas says somewhere in his treatise on the Sacraments that the matter itself of a Sacrament is not sufficiently specific to signify the purposes to which the Lord, in instituting them, wills to put them. (He is elaborating Augustine here.) Thus, the words the Lord uses in instituting the Sacraments, the words the Church has custody over, are necessary in order sufficiently to signify the intended use of the matter.

 

Hence, in the Sacraments, if the matter is corrupted, even the addition of the words cannot supply for it; and if the form of the specifying words is so botched that the specification is lost, then the sign fails to signify, and the sacrament is invalid. (Think of the recent intervention from the Holy See indicating that baptisms performed in the name of the Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier are invalid: The form is corrupted, and so the divine intention is not signified.) Remember also that every deliberately conceived combination of event and word has an intended audience, for who signifies meaning into the air?

 

In any event, a Catholic author works in the world of things and events that signify in themselves, but not sufficiently clearly for us to catch their full intended significance. So the words an author uses are at the service of signifying the intentionality of life as guided providentially by God. But without the event, there is nothing for the word to specify, and without the word, the event flounders as a vehicle of meaning.

 

All this is simply to say that Catholic fiction is in some sense a work that participates in the dynamic of matter and form, thing and word. And the success or failure of a work of Catholic fiction depends on how well, how fluidly and effortlessly, the combination of event and word conspire to lead the reader to ponder the meaning of the intended sign. (In the world of an author's sub-creation, the author is lord of the matter, form, and intention, but not without responsibilities to the intended audience.)

 

 

We are, I think, wondering how Exiles works as a narrative of events conveyed to us with a minimum of words, that is to say, a minimum of intentional indicators of high meaning. Matthew did us a favor by marshaling the death scenes of the sisters, bringing to the fore in a very deliberate way the words Hansen used to specify the meaning of the event. As I already admitted, I did not initially fault the novel for lacking significant indications of meaning; rather, I wanted them to look differently than they did. In a word, I wanted more noble external signs. (I am not willing to defend the justice of my initial desire). The signs were almost all interior words put into the minds of the sisters and, in the moments leading to their deaths, very little was given us in the world outside their minds. "She remembered as she sank: Jesus wept."

 

Hopkins, I think, is more willing to give us the scene of death in noble terms (the lioness that "arose breasting the babble, / A prophetess towered in the tumult, a virginal tongue told") than Hansen is. The best light afforded me during the saloon scene is the light of the six tapers: "Six tapers were found and lit and stuck in their wax to the highest shelves."I do not know if this is a detail someone in the newspaper accounts remembered or a feature of interpretation insinuated by the author. Either way, I know that it took six candles to say a High Mass (a seventh only -- forgive me for saying it -- if a bishop were present), placed indeed on the highest shelf, the altar itself. The sacrifice was prepared in that saloon, and the wine and hosts awaited transferral through the action that would both extinguish and complete them. Perhaps I am floundering here, looking for an image to give my feet a footing from which to see more clearly in the dark; perhaps I am searching to see something noble so I can rest my imagination as it cringes to summon the scene of cold death.

 

Whether I am or not, this novel bravely bids us swim at the deep end of the pool, where the unfathomable ways of providence can be seen in their stark particularity -- that Scotistic thisness of which Hopkins was so fond. Perhaps it is necessary to keep noble imagery at bay in a novel built around anything that even touches Hopkins on the inscrutable providence of God. Maybe the aesthetic austerity permits us to confront with minimal decoration the rushing force that underlies all particular ends, so that the realism of the theme might emerge all the more starkly.

 

Such questionings lead me to an abiding sense that the overall sway of the novel would not have us linger overmuch at the level of secondary causes, but to pass with them and through them to the level of the final cause. (Pardon my scholasticisms, but I find them acutely clear.) And it is at that final level that we are helped by the tale to confront the Master of all ends as He comes for the sisters and for Hopkins (as one day for us).

 

 

I myself think Exiles is quite successful at directing us toward the consideration of human finality, and that Hansen's reticent refusal to introduce too much noble imagery and ahistorical drama (i.e., no representative of Otto's empire on the boat) served this end.

 

The success was surreptitiously insinuated, in that I did not realize its force until I was jarred out of the elfin spell by what I will call the unexpected hypothetical that appears on page 195 (there where it says "Imagine it otherwise").Of all things in this novel, this single paragraph puzzled my mind the most, and even now vexes me after the re-readings. Here we have a paragraph of pure what ifs. It is the kind of intervention that Joseph so accurately described in his first contribution to this conversation as "the narrative interrupted, the illusion destroyed." The paragraph seems out of place here or anywhere in the novel. Let me try to explain.

 

This narrative tale touches on the early death of a genuinely noble figure, a literary genius, and by all accounts an authentically spiritual man, one inured of his own free and loving will in the hard grace of the Ignatianway: "I did say yes / O at the lightning and lashed rod."This man, Hopkins, died of an illness that (so the hypothetical suggests) might have been successfully treated had those responsible not prolonged his exilic existence in Ireland.

 

In the order of discernible secondary causes (most emerging as a result of the decisions made by men), it may well be true that Hopkins could have recovered, led a happier life, influenced a generation of Catholic writers, and died peacefully in some far off 1929. We shall never know, for a recovered Hopkins might also have lost his soul to fame, something he at least saw as a specter worth fleeing. The hypothetical paragraph took my eye off the real issue: May we hope that this man did, in the end, have the grace to invite the mastering Master to embrace him in death? "Make mercy in all of us, out of us all / Mastery, but be adored, but be adored King." On the strength of the novel's predominant telling, we are permitted so to hope. That this was the predominant telling, I say, is all the more clear to me by the jarring effect of the unexpected hypothetical.

 

If I am anywhere near the ballpark on this kind of reading, then I am amazed again at the burden the author accepted in writing this tale. All novels dwell in the world of the secondary cause; their vigor draws life in this ocean. A novelist that sees with a Catholic eye has a further, particularly difficult task, though -- that of trying to render the visible world of form and motion in such a way as to help us see the unseen real through it, to help us contemplate the possibilities of grace and a significance beyond sense.

 

The task of Exiles, it seems to me, is more daunting still, for the author puts the timely action to work in such a way as to bid us pass over it, through it, and well beyond it; to bid us imagine, with sparse but real help from him, how eternity is not so much something we fall into, but is something that is rushing toward us even now. Sister Barbara may have slipped, finally, into the water, but I think Hansen wants us to see that the Master came for her on the waves, picked her up by the arm, and brought her, like Peter, to walk on the water. Hopkins slipped into death in his exile, but the happiness of which he truly spoke came toward him from the other side. I could not see the advent in the scene, but I think I saw it through the scene.

 

Forgive me, I have written too much, and have not held at bay the seminary professor in me. Finally, did I mention I enjoyed reading Exiles? I really did. And as Flannery O'Connor would say, that is a very important thing.

 

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The Most Rev. Daniel E. Flores S.T.D. has been an auxiliary bishop of Detroit since 2006.