Graham Greene: Bipolar Catholic (A Handful of Catholics Book 5)

Graham Greene, the brilliant novelist who happened to be Catholic, is a fascinating character. His manic-depressive interior world was a tormented one; his critics called it “Greeneland.”

Like Saint Paul he carried a ‘Dark Angel.’ He felt compelled to create characters that were psychologically maimed, tenuous survivors in a hostile world, often flawed. They are ill-at-ease – strangers to themselves. His tormented characters are the products of Greene's own tortured soul, and he was more baffled than anyone else at the contradictions at the core of his own character and at the heart of the characters that his fertile and fetid imagination created.

His bafflement was on full display in his bipolar relationship with God and the Catholic Church. He sometimes thought of his faith as a malign virus he once caught which, despite all his efforts, he could not get rid of.

He confided to a friend, “The trouble is I don’t believe in my unbelief.” That same friend, a Catholic priest, tells us Greene found comfort in the words of Pascal, “The man who has begun looking for God has already found him.”