I have long been a fan of science fiction stories, though my reading of said stories was curtailed somewhat by my time in college. It is therefore with some pleasure that I was able to pick up one of the classics of science fiction form the last century and read it. I came across Mr Walter M Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz by reading from the blog of Mr John C Wright--himself an accomplished writer in the genre--who mentioned it as a favorite of Professor Peter Kreeft’s. Having grown up in a generation which is at time deliberately isolated from the past--sometimes by itself, sometimes by the so-called adults of our childhood, who had by-and-large consciously rebelled against tradition, authority, history, and reality--I had never heard of this book.

I picked it up expecting something extraordinary, amazing, awe-inspiring, thought-provoking, and entertaining. I was not disappointed. There are several criteria for which I look when reading a science fiction novel. First and foremost, it is a novel, and thus should contain a good and compelling story. Second, because it is a work of science fiction, there should be a sense of wonder; this also applies to fantasy stories. For science fiction, the wonder is in what a future or alternative world might hold, with the development of technology and the discoveries of new sciences; for fantasy stories, it is the wonder of a different world altogether, whether in the enchantment of the forgotten past or the magic of a different reality. Finally, the book should reveal to us something about ourselves, the world, or the ultimate truth which underlies our existence.

In its own manner, A Canticle for Leibowitz does all of these things. The story itself is split into three parts, each separated by the passage of about 500-600 years. The future envisioned by Miller is not the high-tech wonderland of many science fiction stories, but is rather the bleak period of a world once ravaged by nuclear war. In the age immediately following the devastation, the survivors returned to a philistine barbarism unseen since the barbarian invasions of Rome leading to her fall. Humanity is plunged once again into a dark age. The target of the new barbarians--the “simpletons”--is not primarily the wealth accumulated by civilization, but rather the knowledge. Books are burned, knowledge renounced or forgotten, the wise and learned are systematically wiped out.

Standing against the destruction of the new barbarians is the monastery of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz. The first part of the book centers on the young monk Brother Francis Gerard of Utah, a novice (and later fully professed monk) of the order who during his Lenten fast makes the discovery of his lifetime: a fallout shelter. The shelter contains some of the personal effects of his order’s long-dead founder, Leibowitz.

It is here that the story really picks up. He found the shelter with the help of an old man: desert vagrant, pilgrim, or a miraculous apparition? As the case for the Order’s founder begins to pick up steam, the Abbot ad the prior begin to worry: will this look like a false miracle, and will it jeopardize the chances of their founder’s ever being canonized? During a crucial dialogue between the abbot and the prior, we are given a glimpse of the difficulty of proving that a miracle is authentic:
"It’s impossible! You did the right thing to send [Brother Francis] back before he uncovered more. But of course that not the worst part. The worst part is the old man he babbles about. It’s getting too thick. I don’t know anything that could damage the case [for Leibowitz’s canonization] worse than a whole flood of improbable ‘miracles.’ A few incidents, certainly! It has to be that the intercession of the Beatus has brought about the miraculous--before canonization can occur. But there can be too much! Look at the Blessed Chang--beatified two centuries ago, but never canonized--so far. And why? His order got too eager, that’s why. Ever time somebody got over a cough, it was a miraculous cure by the Beatus. Visions in the basement, evocations at the belfry; it sounded more like a collection of ghost stories than a list of miraculous incidents. Maybe two or three incidents were really valid, but when there’s that much chaff--well?"
Indeed, in the canonization process the things of every-day life gained extraordinary value, as even a simple shopping list became evidence used ultimately to aide Leibowitz’s canonization.

Whereas the first part of the book is concerned in part with the "politics" of an isolated monastery, and indeed with the process of canonization, and the life of a monk, the second part is concerned more with the politics of a the world. Several hundred years after the canonization of "Saint Leibowitz," civilization finds itself in a "new enlightenment." The Monastery now borders a village, and has established a school there. Meanwhile, rumors of war have begun to trickle throughout Christendom as the ruler of Texarkana, Hannegan--a sort of Napoleon combined with Henry VIII--prepares to conquer the American continent.

The monastery finds for itself a new role. Once it was the preserver of human knowledge and history--much like the Benedictine monasteries in the isolated reaches of Europe after the fall of the Roman empire--with manuscripts of everything from the Bible to the Summa Theologica to the Liturgy of the Hours and fragments of a sundry textbooks, technical journals, and treatises. Then it was the educator of men, founding a school in the nearby village as civilization slowly crawled out of the new dark age. Now it would be the sanctuary of the village’s refugees from Hannegan’s invading armies, and coveted by those armies as a fortress from which to invade the rival empire of Denver.

With the dawn of the enlightment arise a new generation of intellectual scoffers, personified by the person of Hannegan’s relative, Thon (a title equivalent to "don" as in "an Oxford don") Taddeo Pfardentrott. Taddeo has his doubts that civilization is really crawling out from a dark age of its own making, that it was the pride, envy, greed, malice, wrath--indeed the sinfulness--of men who caused civilization to fall. Rather, he held like so many scoffers of today that the entire fall of civilization and the ensuing Dark Age were the fault of the Church. He moreover held that the men of his time were not the same men as who created the civilization before the apocalyptic nuclear war, but rather were created by them and rebelled against them. In one particularly telling passage, the Thon discusses the situation with Marcus Apollo, a papal delegate:

"Look [at the peasant outside the window]. Can you ring yourself to believe that that brute is the lineal descendant of men who supposedly invented machines that flew, who traveled to the moon, harnessed the forces of Nature, built machines that could talk and seemed to think? Can you believe there were such men?"
Apollo was silent.
"Look at him!" the scholar persisted. "No, but it’s too dark now. You can’t see the syphilis outbreak on his neck, the way the bridge of his nose is being eaten away. Paresis. But he was undoubtedly a moron to begin with. Illiterate, superstitious, murderous. He diseases his children. For a few coins he would kill them. He will sell them anyway, when they are old enough to be useful. Look at him, and tell me if you see the progeny of a once-mighty civilization? What doyou see?"
"The image of Christ," grated the monsignor, surprised at his own sudden anger. “What did you expect me to see?"
"…The incongruity. Men as you can observe them through any window, and men as historians would have us believe men once were. I can’t accept it. How can a great and wise civilization have destroyed itself so completely?"
"Perhaps…by being materially great and materially wise, and nothing else…."
"Perhaps," said Thon Taddeo, "but I doubt it."
"You reject all history, then, as myth?"
"Not ‘reject.’ But it must be questioned."

The fruit of this philosopher’s thinking is later revealed later, at the monastery. The Abbot of that era accuses him:
"So we are but creatures of creatures, then, Sir Philosopher? Made by lesser gods than God, and therefore understandably less than perfect--through no fault of ours, of course…."
The Abbot then quotes from the Genesis account, and is interrupted by the thon, who complains
"Oh, what’s the use? You have your account of it [the creation]."
“The ‘account’ that I was quoting, Sir Philosopher, was not an account of the manner of creation, but an account of the manner of the temptation that led to the Fall…."
"Yes, yes, but the freedom to speculate is essential--"
"No one has tried to deprive you of that. Nor is anyone offended. But to abuse intellect for reasons of pride, vanity, or escape from responsibility, is the fruit of that same tree."

The third and final part of the book finds man in a new space age. "There were spaceships again in that century" it begins. There are also nuclear weapons, possessed by mankind for a second time, and tragically used for a second time. The final part of this book--indeed the entire backdrop and setting--puts the lie to the progressive view of human history, that men will "progress" and advance forever. Man is Fallen, and paradise is not his to create nor to conquer, but only creation.
The world’s been in a habitual state of crisis for fifty years. Fifty? What am I saying? It’s been in a habitual state of crisis since the beginning--but for half a century now, almost unbearable. And why, for the love of God? What is the fundamental irritant, the essence of the tension? Political philosophies? Economics? Population pressure? Disparity of culture and creed? Ask a dozen expert, get a dozen answers. Now Lucifer [that is, nuclear weapons] again. Is the species congenitally insane, Brother? If we’re born mad, where’s the hope of Heaven? Through Faith alone? Or isn’t there any? God forgive me, I don’t mean that."

Here too, do the characters confront the problem of suffering, of evil, of death. In one of the most moving dialogues in the book, the Abbot in the third age attempts to counsel a mother whose daughter is slowly (and painfully) dying of radiation burns.

"I cannot understand a God who is pleased by my baby’s hurting!"
The priest winced. "No, no! It is not the pain that is pleasing to God, child. It is the soul’s endurance in faith and hope and love in spite of bodily afflictions that pleases Heaven. Pain is like negative temptation. God is not pleased by temptations that afflict the flesh; He is pleased when the soul rises above the temptation and says, ‘Go, Satan.’ It’s the same with pain, which is often a temptation to despair to anger, loss of faith--"
"Save your breath, Father. I’m not complaining. The baby is. But the baby doesn’t understand your sermon. She can hurt, though. She can hurt, but she can’t understand…."
The priest then recounts the painful memory of a cat he had as a boy, who was wounded and had to be put down. Everybody insisted that he put the cat down--except for the cat, which fought and struggled to live, in spite of its pain.
"Even the ancient pagans noticed that Nature imposes on you nothing that Nature doesn’t prepare you to bear. If that is true even of a cat, then is it not more perfectly true of a creature with rational intellect and will--whatever you may believe of Heaven?"
"Shut up, damn you shut up!" she hissed.
"If I am being a little brutal," said the priest, "then it is to you, not to the baby. The baby, as you say, can’t understand. And you, as you say, are not complaining. Therefore--"
"Therefore you’re asking me to let her die slowly and--"
"No! I’m not asking you. As a priest of Christ I am commanding you by the authority of Almighty God not to lay hands on you child, not to offer her life in sacrifice to a false god of expedient mercy. I do not advise you, I adjure and command you in the name of Christ the King. Is that Clear?"

Would that every priest would speak up in moment of need. This does not end the problem, however. Although the woman changes her mind in that instant, she changes it back when the strong-arm of the state steps in and (quite literally) beats the priest away from her. Still, for a time her mind is changed, as would be any other person who heard true words spoken with such gravity, such force, such conviction. This is unfortunately lost on all-too-many priests today, who fear to "step on the toes of the flock," and who use a watered down moral philosophy and speak with even less authority in the name of being "pastoral."

Walter M Miller has written a masterpiece, a blend of good story-telling, good humor, and convincing characters. The story touches upon many of the theological and philosophical questions which face us today; some have been with us since the beginning. It is a journey of over a thousand years, from Dark Ages to a new dawn, and then a tragic return at last to dusk as men who are entrapped in a futile struggle to make a paradise out of a creation which fell from God’s grace find that the will of men alone cannot overcome the power of sin. Yet even after this realization does hope remain with the seeds of a new beginning, planted by the monks of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz.