There's a good reason why many people think "Jaka's Story" is the high point of the book. I'm not certain we ever see this complexity and ambiguity, this sharp delineation of real human character in all its contradictions, again.
But let's move on.
There is little to say about Melmoth, although obviously it, too, deals with a subject of interest to most religious people: death. Generally, though, religion concentrates not on the act of dying, which is depicted here, but on what happens to us after death, about which "Melmoth" is silent. The only thing of religious interest here is the faithful portrayal of the Last Rites performed for the dying Oscar Wilde, and not so much those rites themselves as Dave's commentary on them:
I am not unmindful of blasphemy and its attendant consequences. While I am not specifically a church-goer, nor affiliated with any denomination of system of belief, I have an appropriate amount of respect for the Church of Rome and its attendant power and mysteries. I approached the section of the story which dealt with Oscar's baptism and the administration of Extreme Unction with a wariness and apprehension suitable to the situation. I had done no research on the subject until the day arrived that I had to begin laying out the sequence. I went to the library filled with the dread of the peril to my immortal soul and found a volume on Catholic rituals. I discovered that Extreme Unction was one of the rituals which had been simplified in several ways by the Second Vatican Council. Instead of anointing the eyes, the ears, the nostrils, the mouth, the hands and the feet, the priest now only anoints (if I recall correctly), the forehead and the hands. And whereas the anointing before had to be done with consecreated olive oil, now any vegetation-based oil could be used in a pinch.
Since the ritual had been changed, I no longer felt that I was blaspheming against the Catholic religion, but merely documenting a recently-corrected misapprehension of the late Victorian era; still an act of unsavoury aspect (or two), but far from the High Crime I feared committing.
Now remember, the Dave who wrote those words was, the current Dave would have us believe, an atheist. Let's look a bit more closely at this passage once again and examine that proposition.
I am not unmindful of blasphemy and its attendant consequences.
What exactly are the "attendant consequences" to blasphemy for an unbeliever? If you don't believe in God, if you don't believe in anything that the religion you are "blaspheming" against has to say, how can you believe that any of the consequences they might believe in could possibly happen to you?
There is, of course, the possible consequence of being burned at the stake as a heretic, but as a late-20th/early-21st Century North American Dave is pretty safe from that particular consequence.
While I am not specifically a church-goer, nor affiliated with any denomination of system of belief, I have an appropriate amount of respect for the Church of Rome and its attendant power and mysteries.
This is a pretty remarkable statement, it seems to me. It sounds suspiciously like something a Lapsed Catholic might say, frankly. Not at all like something an atheist who was the child of atheists and raised completely without religion would say, if he were still truly an atheist with no belief in God or the Hereafter. This sounds like someone who is half convinced that the Catholic Church really does have something going for it, something he almost wistfully admits he does not, perhaps cannot share, but which he recognizes as at least some part of The Truth.
I approached the section of the story which dealt with Oscar's baptism and the administration of Extreme Unction with a wariness and apprehension suitable to the situation.
Again: Wariness of what? Apprehension of what?
I had done no research on the subject until the day arrived that I had to begin laying out the sequence. I went to the library filled with the dread of the peril to my immortal soul and found a volume on Catholic rituals.
OK, did I misread that, or did our supposed atheist just state flatly that he has an immortal soul? Dave is usually a fairly careful writer on subjects like this, and he goes out of his way, it seems, by stressing it by using that word. Not just the jocular "dread of peril to my soul (if I have one)" you'd expect from a real atheist, not even the "dread of peril to my soul" you might expect from that opening, but "dread of peril to my immortal soul," a nice turn of phrase, instantly memorable as it rolls off the mental tongue, as it were, but unmistakably and undoubtedly theistic in import.
I discovered that Extreme Unction was one of the rituals which had been simplified in several ways by the Second Vatican Council. Instead of anointing the eyes, the ears, the nostrils, the mouth, the hands and the feet, the priest now only anoints (if I recall correctly), the forehead and the hands. And whereas the anointing before had to be done with consecreated olive oil, now any vegetation-based oil could be used in a pinch.
One reason why it's always fun to read Dave is how often I learn something. I probably already knew more about Islam than the average non-Muslim American before I read "Islam, My Islam," but reading that probably tripled, at least, my knowledge. You never know when you're going to run into something Dave has done research on. I found this very interesting. However:
Since the ritual had been changed, I no longer felt that I was blaspheming against the Catholic religion, but merely documenting a recently-corrected misapprehension of the late Victorian era; still an act of unsavoury aspect (or two), but far from the High Crime I feared committing.
I am still baffled by this. I don't understand exactly why he felt the depiction of Extreme Unction in his comic book would have been blasphemous in the first place. I suppose making the priest a Devotionalist administering to a fictional Oscar in a fantasy world city that may or may not be our world about six thousand years ago, as opposed to an actual documentary-style comic like Jack Jackson's histories or Joe Sacco's journalism comics, might make some people say so, but the veneer of fictional disguise here was very, very thin. This practically *was* a documentary on the death of Oscar Wilde. As far as I know, the Roman Catholic Church is not a secret society like the Masons. There is no Veil of Secrecy over its rituals. Depicting them is not forbidden, as far as I know. Some Catholics may have been offended by The Exorcist, or by the intercutting of the baptism of young Michael Rizzi with the various murders carried out at his Godfather's orders in the movie of that name -- but as far as I know there was never any official Church condemnation of the basic fact that the rituals themselves were being depicted in fiction.
And why the fact that the ritual had been changed since would affect the status of the blasphemy is even harder to understand. I mean, I understand what Dave is saying here. I understand why he thinks it matters. I just don't understand how a mind can work that way.
Wow. I thought this would would be a lot shorter than this. Of course, most of it is running Dave's quote in full twice.
