Go with God

BE NOT ANGRY (237 pp.)--William Michelfelder--Atheneum ($4).

Since a priest is also a man, his human appetites are apt to get in the way of his vocation. Graham Greene used this simple fact of religious life with searing effect in The Power and the Glory. In his second novel, Author William Michelfelder, onetime reporter on the New York World-Telegram and Sun, cannot stand comparison with his master, but he tries to outdo him in compassion. Greene's whisky-drinking, fornicating priest in revolution-torn Mexico could only try to make amends by persisting in God's work at the risk of his life. Father Bowles, the sinner of Michelfelder's Be Not Angry, is let off almost scot-free: since his vocation was not as strong as his male hunger for a woman, he is allowed to write off his priesthood and go with God to boot.

Father Bowles finds the troubler of his peace in Catherine Knott, "a researcher for a national news magazine," whose religiosity is so intense that "even on the hottest August days when she wore a sleeveless dress, or a thin frock, she looked like a formally attired Girl Scout." Although she seems to bear a sign, "Catholic virgin at work. Do not disturb," Father Bowles fails to heed the warning. He accepts a winter rendezvous in a secluded park corner, and when Catherine slips to her knees in the snow, Father Bowles kisses her. Like a badge of shame her lipstick announces his fall from grace when he returns to the rectory for dinner.

It is his superior, an aged and very human monsignor, who takes charge. He also carries the author's message --in purple language and in terms so unorthodox that many a Catholic will find it hard to accept. Long before he saw the lipstick, the monsignor knew that "the demon of concupiscence has been nibbling at the poor boy's glands. How do I know this? Have I not myself been chased through life by the hound of copulation?" Now he advises Bowles: "Go to her, if you must. You are a good man. There is nothing worse than self-deception in religion." Author Michelfelder is too lugubrious a writer to give the problem much dramatic force. But the book has some effective moments of rectory conversation, and earnestly pleads that human love is a work of God as surely as is the priestly vocation.

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