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Towards Christianity Without Authority: Pluralism, Skepticism, and Ecclesiastical Power in Selected Examples of Humorous Newfoundland Writing Michael Lloyd Fralic, M.A. Thesis submitted to the College of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Ph.D. in English Department of English University of Saskatchewan © Michael Lloyd Fralic, Peterborough, Canada, January 2007 Acknowledgments I gratefully acknowledge the patience, the rigour, and the critical and common sense of my dissertation supervisor Dr. Janice Fiamengo. I extend my sincerest thanks to writers Berni Stapleton, Andy Jones, Greg Malone, and Ray Guy, who have been generous with their work and their time. And to my M.A. thesis supervisor Dr. Helen Peters, whose passion and down-to-earth approach to scholarship continue to inspire me, I maintain a grateful respect. For unwavering love and support, deepest thanks to my parents Joan and Richard, my grandparents Jean, Bet, and Lloyd, and my brother Greg and his family. And to several other families and individuals, thank you for enriching my life during the years I have worked toward completion of this dissertation. In particular, I am grateful to the Tataryn family, the Regnier family, the Stares family, my Saskatoon circle of friends, and, in Ottawa, Alan Shain, Julie Hong, and my housemates at La Source. I have been very blessed to have had all of you, and many others whom I have not named, supporting me on this leg of my journey. i Abstract In recent decades in Newfoundland, a sustained interest in Christian symbols, stories, and values has been paired with increasing criticism of Christian religious institutions and agents. Newfoundland’s burgeoning tradition of professional humour has reflected this changing set of relationships to Christianity. This robust young humour tradition richly reflects the ongoing pluralization and secularization of Newfoundland culture, and abundantly exemplifies humour’s distinctive potential as a means of addressing potentially contentious or vexing issues. Yet, surprisingly, literary criticism has almost entirely avoided the prominent stream of Newfoundland humour that addresses the island’s religious legacy. This project aims to begin to correct this substantial critical omission, examining points of continuity among a number of works produced over the past four decades. It focuses on the works’ embrace of political and/or epistemological pluralism, typically married to religious skepticism and to misgivings about conventional arrangements of religious power. Chapter One provides an historical and critical context for the project, introduces subsequent chapters, and speculates on ramifications of the pluralistic current that runs through the works in the study. Chapter Two examines religious jokes in Newfoundland joke books. It emphasizes the jokes’ overall tendency toward (an often ambiguous) religious conservatism, as well as the books’ latent pluralism regarding interdenominational relations. Chapter Three focuses on journalist and playwright Ray Guy’s often fierce satire of Christian religious agents and institutions. It argues that Guy’s satire utterly rejects the legitimacy of religious authority in the ii civic realm, largely on the grounds that transcendent truthfulness is often invoked as a means of justifying otherwise objectionable power. Chapter Four explores the ecumenical religious humour of columnist and memoirist Ed Smith. It focuses on Smith’s playful efforts to harmonize Christian faith and practice with a measure of religious uncertainty presented as a necessary foundation for humane coexistence. Chapter Five examines Ed Kavanagh’s novel The Confessions of Nipper Mooney. Primarily, it explicates and examines the novel’s liberal favouring of the individual moral conscience, and the symbolic association of its religiously dissident and/or marginalized protagonists with elements of the Catholic tradition. Chapter Six discusses Berni Stapleton’s comic play The Pope and Princess Di. The chapter emphasizes the play’s presentation of symbols’ constant subjection to alteration and hybridization, and its cautious regard for valuable symbols (religious or otherwise) that nonetheless become destructive when viewed as sacrosanct. Chapter Seven concludes the study by considering the works’ participation in political, philosophical, and literary/dramatic movements that problematize long- established religious modes and support a secular-pluralist outlook. It reflects on the role of humour in movements for change and on didacticism and popular humour as features of publicly engaged literature; it discusses other works of Newfoundland humour that approach religious matters from similarly secular, though less overtly political, angles; and it speculates on some social implications of the ascendancy of liberal, pluralistic values, considering these Newfoundland works in a more general Canadian cultural context. iii Table of Contents 1. Introduction . 1 1.1 A Legacy of “Closedness:” Some Features of Newfoundland’s Religious History . 3 1.2 Contemporary Newfoundland Literature Confronts Ecclesiastical Authority . 5 1.3 Critical Context: “The Particular and the Different” in Contemporary Newfoundland Literature . 9 1.4 Outline of Chapters . 15 1.5 Closedness Under Openness: Pluralism and Shifting Intolerance in the Works in this Study . 21 2. Agonistic Amusements in Pluralistic Packaging: Religious Power and Boundaries in Newfoundland Joke Books . 27 2.1 Introduction . 27 2.2 Restless Conservatism: Jokes about Power and Roles in Religious Communities . 31 2.3 Emergent Pluralism: Jokes about Religion as Identity . 49 2.4 Conclusion . 59 3. “Unholy Writ:” Ray Guy’s Apostate Satire of Christian Religious Power . 68 3.1 Introduction . 68 3.2 Pastor Pottle and his Column Cousins: Divine Revenge and Moral Hypocrisy . 74 iv 3.3 “A Spirit of Wisdom and Grace”: Guy’s Satire of Newfoundland’s Denominational Education System . 86 3.4 “A Few Passages From Unholy Writ”: The Continuity of Guy’s Political and Religious Satire . 90 3.5 “My Steady Decline into Sin”: Guy’s Narrative Stance as a Rhetorical Alternative to Authoritarian Relations . 95 3.6 Conclusion . 98 4. Play-Wrestling With the Angel: Ed Smith’s Ecumenical Religious Humour . 106 4.1 Introduction . 106 4.2 Cultural Bonds and Ethical Axes: Scriptural References in Smith’s Humour . 112 4.3 Whose God is God?: Smith’s Ecumenism . 118 4.4 Religious Hypocrisy and Foibles: Integrity and Community in Smith’s Religious Humour . 136 4.5 Conclusion . 147 5. When the Saints Go Marching Out: Emergent Liberal Ethics and the Erosion of Catholic Authority in Ed Kavanagh’s The Confessions of Nipper Mooney . 156 5.1 Introduction . 156 5.2 Brendan O’Brien: Difference as Defect in the Church and the Village 159 5.3 Paddy Dunne: Authoritarian Relations and the Path of Dissidence . 168 5.4 Nipper Mooney: The Liberal Conscience and the Waning Authority of the Church . 180 5.5 Brigid Flynn: An Alternative Model of Power . 186 v 5.6 The Foursome: The Saints Go Marching Out . 189 5.7 Conclusion . 192 6. The Huntress and the Holy Mother: Symbolic Integration in Berni Stapleton’s The Pope and Princess Di . 201 6.1 Introduction . 201 6.2 Hardened Symbols: Bernadette, Diana, and their Idols . 205 6.3 Granny and Nurse: Complex Experiences, Simplistic Salvations . 220 6.4 The Heart Beneath the Breast: a Symbolic Reconfiguration . 226 6.5 Humbled Idols: Symbolic Integration as a Product of Relationship . 232 6.6 Conclusion . 243 7. Conclusion . 253 Works Cited . 265 vi 1. Introduction This study explores contemporary religious humour by Newfoundland writers working in a wide variety of genres. Through my discussion of diverse works that respond to Newfoundland’s Christian legacy, I address the significance of humour as a feature of these responses, and illuminate a range of themes and ethical perspectives that have been prevalent in Newfoundland writing over the past four decades. Considering a range of literary but also broadly sociological questions, I address the extent to which these writers reject the Christianity that was once so dominant in Newfoundland, and the extent to which they seek to preserve it. I discern which aspects of Newfoundland Christianity tend to be rejected, and which are embraced, as well as how these combinations shed light on Newfoundland’s religious legacy and what they suggest about changes in the island’s culture. I discuss the rhetorical effects of Newfoundland humorists’ frequent satirical depictions of Christian agents, institutions, and beliefs, and the implications of this ridicule for contemporary culture. And I consider how the writers’ use of humour as a mode of imaginative engagement reflects both the broader popularity of humour in Newfoundland writing and a particular set of relationships to Christianity. By pursuing these matters, I strive to account for the striking prominence of religion-focused humorous writing in Newfoundland in recent decades, and thus to begin to fill a considerable void in existing scholarship on Newfoundland writing. Through their humorous depictions of Christian beliefs, doctrines, institutions, and agents, and of various relationships to all of these, the works discussed in this 1 study depict Christianity in Newfoundland at an ecclesiastical and theological crisis point. The secularization of Newfoundland culture is reflected in various ways and to varying degrees in Newfoundland joke books;1 in Ray Guy’s satirical newspaper columns and his first