Having progressed to about the half-way point, I had my fill of circular discussions and even the odd self-reverential mention of the “whisky priest” (featured in Greene’s The Power and the Glory), and skimmed through the rest of the book. However, the topics of conversation and the patterns of conversation get repetitive very quickly – revolving around the wine, purple socks, and for some reason there seems to be a lot of discussion of birth control. No question, Greene does create a satirical, well written discourse. Even our friendship might have ceased without the Holy Spirit.’ Perhaps we wouldn’t have had the courage to continue our journey. We wouldn’t have been so happy without it.

‘We were not satisfied with two bottles, were we? That half bottle gave us the extra spark of life we both needed. He has always seemed to me a bit redundant.’ ‘I was never even in Salamanca able to see the point of the Holy Ghost. Whoever partakes of one partakes of all three.’ There you have God the Father and God the Son and there, in the half bottle, God the Holy Ghost. The wine they contained was of the same substance and it was born at the same time. Can you explain the Trinity to me? It was more than they could do in Salamanca.’ “What puzzles me, friend, is how you can believe in so many incompatible ideas. In the process, Quixote and Sancho discuss different aspects of life from the Catholic and the communist angles – sometimes with humorous outcomes: What Greene sets out to do is to throw both characters together on a journey through Spain in the same manner that Cervantes did with his characters.

Sancho is a communist whose faith in Marx, Engels, and Lenin is as strong as the Monsignor’s in the holy trinity. I’m describing the topic the “religious” because at the heart of the book is a dialogue between Monsignor Quixote, a Spanish priest, and Sancho, who used to be the major of the Monsignor’s home town.

Unfortunately, Monsignor Quixote is very much focused on the “religious”. It is a topic that holds little interest for me. One of the insights I have gained from reading Greene is that we do not see eye to eye when it comes to being fascinated by religion.

Monsieur quixote