What brings this to mind today is that Fitz is a lapsed Catholic. He is one that not-so-rare species: the Catholic atheist. He constantly grouses about the unrelenting strictness of Church's teaching that he experienced growing up. When the subject of Catholicism comes up, he usually makes sarcastic quips about the strictness of how he learned her teaching, making fun of it ruthlessly, thus implying a lot of negative things about people who seek to live their lives according to it, even if quite sporadically and imperfectly.
In "Men Should Weep," the last crime of the second series, and "Brotherly Love," the first of the third series, Fitz encounters Catholic priests. The priests, if I might say, are portrayed quite well. In both instances, they seem thoughtful and caring, not perfect but not unfriendly, unapproachable, that is, they seem human. In "Brotherly Love," the priest, Father Michael Harvey, who is set to preside at Fitz's mother's funeral, also turns out to be the brother and brother-in-law of murderers who killed several prostitutes. For a time, due to his charitable interactions with the prostitutes who work the precincts of his parish, Fr. Harvey is considered a possible suspect.
During her confession to the police, in which she admits to killing two prostitutes, whom her philandering husband (brother of the priest) patronized, and attempting to murder a third, Maggie Harvey, Fr. Harvey's sister-in-law, tells about the pain she experienced and the guilt she feels having aborted what would've been her fifth child. She did so because her husband convinced her they couldn't afford to support another child. Once she found out how much her husband spent on buying prostitutional services, she realized that having the baby should've not posed an existential financial problem.
Maggie tells her painful experience to Fitz with Fr. Harvey in the room. She castigates the priest for telling her that no matter what she decided vis-á-vis the abortion, she would always be welcome in the parish. She was bitter because she felt that, as her pastor, he should've opposed her having the abortion. She felt that he told her what he did because her husband was his brother. She felt that he was guilty of pastoral misfeasance. You get the vibe that Fitz, too, whose wife has just given birth to a baby boy, thinks the priest advised her wrongly- though, the way Fitz develops as a character, it seems unlikely he would be strongly opposed to elective abortion.
In another scene, Fitz, desirous of receiving communion at his Mom's funeral Mass, despite being quite outspoken about his unbelief, goes to Fr. Harvey for confession. Because Fitz had previously expressed not only his unbelief but the contempt in which he held the Church, Fr. Harvey begins by asking him why he's there, given his unbelief. Fitz tells him it's so that he can receive communion at the upcoming funeral. Fr. Harvey asks why he didn't just receive without confessing. Fitz tells him it's because the Church did such a good job on him as a child.
Fitz starts by confessing his adulterous relationship with Detective Sergeant Jane Penhaligon, which took place between the time his wife left him because of his drinking and gambling, and when she unexpectedly returned pregnant with the child they'd conceived just before her departure. Here's the rub: he tells the priest explicitly that he is not the least contrite about his adultery. He gives Fr. Harvey no context, just says he committed adultery and is not the least bit sorry for it. But, in the end, without making an Act of Contrition, Fr. Harvey grants Fitz absolution. Later, Fitz is shown receiving communion at his Mom's funeral, just prior to leading off his eulogy with his disbelief in life eternal.
I am not so bothered by these inconsistencies and contradictions, they are the stuff of pastoral life. The point I want to make, in a long way (apparently), is that many people who complain about the strictness of their Christian upbringing often don't seem to lose that strict sense of morality. It's not that they live their lives that way. In Fitz's case, quite the opposite! But when they encounter a religious person who does not adhere to the kind of rigidity with which they were raised and have clearly rejected, it's almost as if that religious person is heinous because s/he rejects the black and white.
In the view of someone possessed of such a mentality, you either have to be a moral hardass or a libertine. Like most dilemmas in this realm of life, it is a false one. Fitz had no trouble receiving absolution, despite his lack of belief and contrition, yet seemed to sit in judgment on Fr. Harvey, which strikes me as more than a bit hypocritical. I write that as someone who thinks Fr. Harvey did Maggie (and his brother, not to mention his nephew in utereo) a grave disservice. How do you pastorally encourage someone to violate her own conscience?
I know the existence of hell has become quite controversial (in a good way, it's worth a discussion, even if it tends, as most of these things do, to become polarized: universalists vs. infernalists, each making strawmen out the other's position and kicking them over with great vigor), but assuming there is a hell, as a Christian you need to understand that God is not looking for a reason to put you or anyone else in it. Quite to the contrary!
In light of what I've written, "Graceless," by The National, strikes me as a fitting traditio:
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