Intimations of immortality: Catholicism in David Lodge's Paradise News

Other features of the novel critique aspects of liberal theology. The theological college where Bernard has been teaching has adapted to "the more ecumenical spirit of modern times by opening [its] doors to all denominations, indeed all faiths, and to laypeople as well as clerics" (28). Bernard compares the wide variety of courses and beliefs to the variety of products available in a modern supermarket:

On its shelves you could find everything you needed, conveniently stored and attractively packaged. But the very ease of the shopping process brought with it the risk of a certain satiety, a certain boredom. If there was so much choice, perhaps nothing mattered very much. (29)

The promise of the ecumenical movement-a deepening and enhancement of one's own religious tradition through a greater understanding of other faiths-has, in fact, eroded clarity, diminished meaning, and reduced the urgency involved in the life of faith. Bernard notes how the language of contemporary religious discourse has become vacuous and elusive. In a book on process theology, which he is reviewing, he reads a description of God as a cosmic lover: "His transcendence is in His sheer faithfulness to Himself in love, in His inexhaustibility as lover, and in His capacity for endless adaptation to circumstances in which His love may be active" (29). Bernard wonders who, apart from theologians, possibly cares about such formulations. He suspects that "the discourse of much modern radical theology [is] just as implausible and unfounded as the orthodoxy it [has] displaced" (29). Thus the contemporary Christian finds himself or herself in a kind of no-man's land, straddling two territories: the old orthodoxy, which is crippled by shame, repression, fear, and superstition-but is colorful, dramatic, and urgent; and the new ecumenism-which is enlightened, humane, and benevolent-but is abstract, boring, and vacuous.

This critique of "advanced" religion strains against the critique of traditional religion, opening up a kind of aporia in religious life. Although the old ways crippled the spirit and distorted one's sensual and emotional maturity, the new way starves the hunger for religious experience and the desire for meaningful answers to ultimate questions. Thus Lodge opens up a kind of post-modernist religious space, in which the old certainties have fallen away to leave the would-be Christian religiously "de-centered."

The cynicism and instability, however, are countered by a reconsideration of faith in terms suitable for a postmodernist age and by a sense of sacramentality. Although Bernard no longer believes in Christianity, his loss of faith recounted in his diary may be the prelude to a more genuine adult faith, for his early religious "faith" is shown to be largely derivative, immature, and fear-driven.4 If Bernard is moving toward some new kind of faith, one suspects that it may be similar to the present theological perspective of the author, which Lodge describes in the introduction to the 1993 Penguin reissue of his first novel, The Picturegoers, as "demythologized, provisional, and in many ways agnostic" (ix).5 However unsatisfying such a description may be, it is thematically important in several of Lodge's novels, including Souls and Bodies,b and Therapy. It is also a faith that resonates with St. Paul's description of faith as "the assurance of things hoped for, and the conviction of things not seen" (Hebrews 11.1). Although "assurance" (hypostasis) and "conviction" (elegchos) sound positive, they are yoked with "hope" and "things not seen," thus linking presence with absence and giving the term a destabilizing, oxymoronic ambience: an appropriate faith for our postmodern age. Furthermore, an element of doubt is seen by some contemporary theologians as essential for a healthy faith. Kenneth Leech in Experiencing God: Theology as Spirituality asserts that without "creative doubt, religion becomes hard and cruel, degenerating into the spurious security which breeds intolerance and persecution. . . . But to the eyes of conventional religion, this mingling of faith and doubt appears as atheism" (25).