15/03/2015
Pope Francis
(Credit: AP/Alessandra Tarantino)
This article originally appeared on Religion Dispatches.
Religion Dispatches The 2013 election of Pope Francis marked a number of firsts for the Catholic Church: the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas, the first to have worked as a nightclub bouncer, and the first non-European to lead the church in 1200 years.
He’s also the first pontiff to heartily recommend Lord of the World, Robert Hugh Benson’s trippy dystopian novel from 1907—a strange, intense and not entirely successful book about the rise of the anti-Christ, the demise of the Church and the end of the world.
Perhaps Pope Francis’s enthusiasm shouldn’t be so surprising. Benson, a Catholic priest, was a popular writer in his time, and his dark vision of a world destroyed by secular humanism still resonates with a small but loyal following. In a 2013 homily, Pope Francis spoke of Lord of the World “almost as though it were a prophecy.”
And what did Benson prophesy? A catalogue of early 20th century right-wing fears. In Lord of the World, religion has been subsumed to a kind of hyper-rational communism, the professions have been nationalized, and euthanasia and su***de are legal. Worst of all, Esperanto is the official language of Britain.
Julian Felsenburgh, a man of great charisma and linguistic ability, then rises from U.S. senator (from Vermont, no less) to President of the World. He encourages pogroms against Catholics and destroys Rome, which everybody goes along with, even though the guy might as well have a giant blinking Anti-Christ on his forehead.
The President of the World tracks down the last Pope and his retinue, who have taken refuge in Nazareth, and bombs them too. And that’s the end of everything. “Then this world passed, and the glory of it,” writes Benson.
With his flying boats and underground cities, Benson does create a fun kind of steampunk future, avant le lettre. But the novel’s infelicities are numerous. Benson is overfond of turgid passages wherein some character sits around thinking and praying, or praying and thinking, or merely thinking. Not to mention his fatuous conflation of Marxism, Freemasonry and Judaism. (Felsenburgh? Really?)