The Priest - Revision history

Eb: /* the Weekly World News for April 7, 1992 */

2026-07-30T07:34:21Z

the Weekly World News for April 7, 1992

Eb: /* Chapter 8 */

2026-07-30T07:33:59Z

Chapter 8

Eb: /* Cathars, or Albigensians, or Waldensians */

2026-07-29T01:37:19Z

Cathars, or Albigensians, or Waldensians

Eb: /* he's a lot like Philip K. Dick */

2026-07-29T01:36:39Z

he's a lot like Philip K. Dick

Eb at 01:07, 29 July 2026

2026-07-29T01:07:19Z

Eb at 01:02, 29 July 2026

2026-07-29T01:02:54Z

Eb: /* Konrad Martin, the Bishop of Paderborn */

2026-07-29T00:01:32Z

Konrad Martin, the Bishop of Paderborn

Eb: /* Chapter 16 (XVI) */

2026-07-28T23:58:09Z

Chapter 16 (XVI)

Eb at 22:51, 28 July 2026

2026-07-28T22:51:08Z

Eb at 22:50, 28 July 2026

2026-07-28T22:50:13Z

@@ Line 60: / Line 60: @@
 While Disch might not have expected that readers would one day be able to easily access a huge [https://books.google.com/books?id=b-8DAAAAMBAJ archive of that publication], this is such a specific reference that it certainly invites them to look it up—and anyone who did so would find no such cover, nor anything about a Satanic eruption in that issue.
-However, it was certainly a type of thing they did. Other ''Weekly World News'' covers about huge Satan faces appearing over various locations, both before and after ''The Priest'', include [https://books.google.com/books?id=tO0DAAAAMBAJ&source=gbs_all_issues_r&cad=1 May 25, 1993] (the Branch Davidians fire); [https://books.google.com/books?id=K_IDAAAAMBAJ&source=gbs_all_issues_r&cad=1 Feb. 1, 1994] (West Texas); [https://books.google.com/books?id=NPIDAAAAMBAJ&source=gbs_all_issues_r&cad=1 Oct. 18, 1994] (Port-au-Prince); [https://books.google.com/books?id=RfADAAAAMBAJ&source=gbs_all_issues_r&cad=1 Jan. 4, 2000] (US Capitol); [https://www.depop.com/products/greasabilly-may-2005-issue-of-weekly/ May 30, 2000] (oil well in Mexico); [https://books.google.com/books?id=evADAAAAMBAJ&source=gbs_all_issues_r&cad=1 April 3, 2001] (miscellaneous disasters)... not including any other Satan stories that may have appeared inside. The artwork for these covers was never quite as vivid as what Disch describes; it was usually more "smoky snarling monster face" than a cleary identifiable Satan caricature.
+However, it was certainly a type of thing they did. Other ''Weekly World News'' covers about huge Satan faces appearing over various locations, both before and after ''The Priest'', include [https://books.google.com/books?id=tO0DAAAAMBAJ&source=gbs_all_issues_r&cad=1 May 25, 1993] (the Branch Davidians fire); [https://books.google.com/books?id=K_IDAAAAMBAJ&source=gbs_all_issues_r&cad=1 Feb. 1, 1994] (West Texas); [https://books.google.com/books?id=NPIDAAAAMBAJ&source=gbs_all_issues_r&cad=1 Oct. 18, 1994] (Port-au-Prince); [https://books.google.com/books?id=RfADAAAAMBAJ&source=gbs_all_issues_r&cad=1 Jan. 4, 2000] (US Capitol); [https://www.depop.com/products/greasabilly-may-2005-issue-of-weekly/ May 30, 2000] (oil well in Mexico); [https://books.google.com/books?id=evADAAAAMBAJ&source=gbs_all_issues_r&cad=1 April 3, 2001] (miscellaneous disasters)... not including any other Satan stories that may have appeared inside. The artwork for these covers was never quite as vivid as what Disch describes; it was usually more "smoky snarling monster face" than a clearly identifiable Satan caricature.
 === Knightriders, which is not because of the movie ===

@@ Line 103: / Line 103: @@
 === blocked all my teenage memories of abduction ===
-The UFO aspect of Receptivism is not really elaborated on, since the "transmentation" idea is more important to the plot, but it serves to bring in another target of Disch's satire: {{wp|Whitley Strieber}}. Originally a horror writer (e.g. ''The Hunger'', which [https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2556194026 I liked a little bit of]), Strieber is now better known for the bestselling UFO abduction "memoir" ''{{wp|Communion (book)|Communion}}'' and its sequel ''Transformation''. Strieber's books repeated many details from the earlier story of Barney and Betty Hill, but were more influential in some ways: for instance, the "anal probing" theme did not really capture the public imagination until ''Communion'',<ref>{{cite article|author=Reddit user "sunagainstgold"|date=July 22, 2016|title=How did anal probing become associated with alien abductions?|url=https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4u3wqe/how_did_anal_probing_become_associated_with_alien/|publication=Reddit: r/AskHistorians|accessed=July 28, 2026}}</ref> and the most popular version of the common "grey" alien design is now the one from the book cover.
+The UFO aspect of Receptivism is not really elaborated on, since the "transmentation" idea is more important to the plot, but it serves to bring in another target of Disch's satire: {{wp|Whitley Strieber}}. Originally a horror writer (e.g. ''The Hunger'', which [https://www.librarything.com/work/51547/reviews/207077299 I liked a little bit of]), Strieber is now better known for the bestselling UFO abduction "memoir" ''{{wp|Communion (book)|Communion}}'' and its sequel ''Transformation''. Strieber's books repeated many details from the earlier story of Barney and Betty Hill, but were more influential in some ways: for instance, the "anal probing" theme did not really capture the public imagination until ''Communion'',<ref>{{cite article|author=Reddit user "sunagainstgold"|date=July 22, 2016|title=How did anal probing become associated with alien abductions?|url=https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4u3wqe/how_did_anal_probing_become_associated_with_alien/|publication=Reddit: r/AskHistorians|accessed=July 28, 2026}}</ref> and the most popular version of the common "grey" alien design is now the one from the book cover.
 Disch covered Strieber in ''The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of'' more briefly than Hubbard but no less harshly, concluding that there was evidence of a deliberate strategy of adapting previous fictional works, making Strieber a con artist rather than sincerely in distress. A specific characteristic of Strieber, as opposed to Hubbard, that will become relevant in ''The Priest'' is that he repeatedly [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/retcon retconned] previous false statements by claiming they were false memories created as part of the alien conspiracy (even when they had no apparent connection to aliens).

@@ Line 70: / Line 70: @@
 === Cathars, or Albigensians, or Waldensians ===
-Albigensians were another name for Cathars, based on the city of Albi where the sect had many followers. Waldensians were an unrelated group who were declared heretics not so much for theological reasons as for their views on clerical authority.
+Albigensians were another name for Cathars, based on the city of Albi where the sect had many followers. {{wp|Waldensians}} were an unrelated group who were declared heretics not so much for theological reasons as for their views on clerical authority.
 === the cavalry in their armor and the ''routiers'' in their rags ===

@@ Line 115: / Line 115: @@
 === he's a lot like Philip K. Dick ===
-With the previous references to Hubbard and Strieber, Disch left it to the reader to make the connections; he did the same with the earlier {{wp|Philip K. Dick}} references, but here he just openly drops Dick's name. Dick was the only one of the three that Disch had a personal connection with, of sorts: they met only briefly, but after Dick tried and failed to convince Disch of his alleged religious experiences, he integrated Disch into his paranoid belief system and accused Disch (in letters to the FBI) of being part of an elaborate Nazi conspiracy.{{ref Disch Redfern}} Like Hubbard, Dick wrote a voluminous explanation of his mystical ideas, but his ''Exegesis'' (which Disch described as an act of {{wp|hypergraphia}}) was published only posthumously, and was too long and disorganized to appeal to a wide audience.
+With the previous references to Hubbard and Strieber, Disch left it to the reader to make the connections; he did the same with the earlier {{wp|Philip K. Dick}} references, but here he just openly drops Dick's name. Dick was the only one of the three that Disch had a personal connection with, of sorts: they met only briefly, but after Dick tried and failed to convince Disch of his alleged religious experiences, he integrated Disch into his paranoid belief system and accused Disch (in letters to the FBI) of being part of an elaborate Nazi conspiracy.{{ref Disch Redfern}} Like Hubbard, Dick wrote a voluminous explanation of his mystical ideas, but his ''{{wp|The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick|Exegesis}}'' (which Disch described as an act of {{wp|hypergraphia}}) was published only posthumously, and was too long and disorganized to appeal to a wide audience.
 Disch admired much of Dick's writing, including some of the later works that increasingly focused on those mystical experiences. But, as expressed in ''The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of'', he firmly believed that none of the material Dick was presenting as nonfiction was genuine—except in terms of having genuinely experienced some hallucinations—and that Dick was on some level consciously lying, playing with ideas as a storyteller without admitting it. Still, unlike Hubbard, who persisted in his con and gained power from turning it into an actual cult, Dick was ultimately content to be seen mainly as a writer:
@@ Line 123: / Line 123: @@
 Of course, like many of Disch's strongly-expressed critical opinions in ''The Dreams'', this is speculative and contentious—and the relatively sympathetic side of his opinions on Dick there is hard to reconcile with the vitriolic parody in his final novel ''The Word of God''.<ref>{{cite book|author=Disch, Thomas M.|title=The Word of God|date=2008|publisher=Tachyon Publications|isbn=9781892391773}} Briefly, in this novel, Dick is in hell (in a miserable relationship with Joycelin Shrager, a recurring Disch character who was a parody of a certain type of bad poet) and accepts a satanic time-travel mission to erase Thomas M. Disch from existence.</ref><ref>{{cite article|author=Mckee, Gabriel|title=Disching religion: ''The Word of God''|date=July 12, 2009|url=https://sfgospel.typepad.com/sf_gospel/2009/07/disching-religion-the-word-of-god.html|publication=SF Gospel blog}} While this is an interesting piece, and Mckee's guesses as to Dick's state of mind are no less valid than Disch's, I believe Mckee mischaracterizes some specific statements that Disch made in ''The Dreams''.</ref>
 Anyway, in this scene, Peter's description of Boscage is similar to the mix of sympathy and cynicism toward Dick in ''The Dreams'': "He certainly was a bullshit artist whose bull got out of control, but I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt as to his being sincere." Later material about Boscage will both support and complicate that judgment.
 == Chapter 10 ==

@@ Line 65: / Line 65: @@
 A {{wp|Knightriders|1991 film}} by George Romero, about biker gangs in Pittsburgh.
-== Chapter 4 (IV) ==
+== Chapter IV ==
 This is one of a handful of chapters in the book that use Roman numerals, because they're in the medieval storyline. The others are XVI, XVIII, XXIII, XXIX, XXXIII, and XXXIX.
@@ Line 157: / Line 157: @@
 A reference to ''Hamlet'', in which the unfortunate Polonius hides behind a curtain to eavesdrop, and ends up being stabbed through it.
-== Chapter 16 (XVI) ==
+== Chapter XVI ==
 === not Latin, not Italian, not French, but with a flavor of each ===
@@ Line 186: / Line 186: @@
 Hal Lindsey's {{wp|The Late Great Planet Earth|1970 book}} was a bestseller well into the 1990s (even though Lindsey had claimed the world would probably end in the 80s), and popularized a particular interpretation of the {{wp|Book of Revelation}} and other Biblical texts among American right-wing evangelicals.
-== Chapter 23 (XXIII) ==
+== Chapter XXIII ==
 === I made it up, I have a good imagination ===
@@ Line 211: / Line 211: @@
 Hedwig here claims that O'Toole received a piece of the Shroud in 1949 as a gift from the Pope, but this is impossible since the Vatican didn't possess it until 1983—and wouldn't have removed a piece of it to donate to a church in Minneapolis if they did (throughout the 20th century the Church avoided taking a position on whether it was real, but referred to it as an important relic in any case). All of the things that Disch chooses to tell us about the history of O'Toole, and his Shrine of Blessed Konrad, are so blatantly inconsistent with actual history that they may be seen as winks to the reader; O'Toole seems to embody a kind of self-mythologizing confabulation that Disch associates with the religious right.
-== Chapter 33 (XXXIII) ==
+== Chapter XXXIII ==
 === the crown of thorns that had been prepared for him ===

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 {{#css:The Priest.css}}{{#addbodyclass:tiled-toc}}
 '''''The Priest: A Gothic Romance''''' (1994) is [[Thomas M. Disch]]'s third ''Supernatural Minnesota'' novel. It depicts the destruction of its main character, Catholic priest Pat Bryce, by a bizarre revenge scheme due to his molestation of teenage boys, and also by a mysterious force psychically connecting him with a 13th-century bishop in the Inquisition.
@@ Line 212: / Line 211: @@
 Hedwig here claims that O'Toole received a piece of the Shroud in 1949 as a gift from the Pope, but this is impossible since the Vatican didn't possess it until 1983—and wouldn't have removed a piece of it to donate to a church in Minneapolis if they did (throughout the 20th century the Church avoided taking a position on whether it was real, but referred to it as an important relic in any case). All of the things that Disch chooses to tell us about the history of O'Toole, and his Shrine of Blessed Konrad, are so blatantly inconsistent with actual history that they may be seen as winks to the reader; O'Toole seems to embody a kind of self-mythologizing confabulation that Disch associates with the religious right.
-== Chapter 33 (XXXIII) ===
+== Chapter 33 (XXXIII) ==
 === the crown of thorns that had been prepared for him ===

@@ Line 137: / Line 137: @@
 === Konrad Martin, the Bishop of Paderborn ===
-This is the name and title of an {{wp|Konrad Martin|actual bishop}}, but not the same one. The real Martin lived 500 years later than the one described here, and was not connected to any event like this (which seems to be a fictional one combining features of other medieval pogroms), although he did publish a work of antisemitic propaganda in 1848. In a book that also includes many accurate references to Church history, this use of very specific and easily-debunked false details may be seen as a hint that there's something wrong with the medieval storyline.
+This is the name and title of an {{wp|Konrad Martin|actual bishop}}, but not the same one. The real Martin lived 500 years later than the one described here, and was not connected to any event like this (a real pogrom that {{wp|Host desecration#Medieval_accusations_against_Jews|happened in 1337}} at Deggendorf, as described), although he did publish a work of antisemitic propaganda in 1848. In a book that also includes many accurate references to Church history, this use of very specific and easily-debunked false details may be seen as a hint that there's something wrong with the medieval storyline.
 === Monsignor O'Toole's television program ===

@@ Line 165: / Line 165: @@
 === You wish to bathe? This soon before Easter? ===
 The common belief that bathing was very rare in the Middle Ages is mostly a myth (and also a symptom of confusion between centuries within this long period of time: the mention of Easter here probably refers to the 6th-century story of {{wp|Fintan of Clonenagh}}, who supposedly bathed only once a year before Easter). By the 13th century bathing was common, and even if average people might not have had easy access to a ''hot'' bath, a prominent Church official like Silvanus would have.<ref>{{cite article|url=https://www.medievalists.net/2023/11/people-middle-ages-baths/|title=Did people in the Middle Ages take baths?|publication=Medievalists.net|date=November 2023|accessed=July 28, 2026}}</ref>
 == Chapter 17 ==

@@ Line 4: / Line 4: @@
 '''''The Priest: A Gothic Romance''''' (1994) is [[Thomas M. Disch]]'s third ''Supernatural Minnesota'' novel. It depicts the destruction of its main character, Catholic priest Pat Bryce, by a bizarre revenge scheme due to his molestation of teenage boys, and also by a mysterious force psychically connecting him with a 13th-century bishop in the Inquisition.
-All notes refer to the 2010 University of Minnesota Press edition. The introduction by Gregory Feeley in that edition makes some interesting points about the book's themes, imagery, and slippery genre—but also gives away a major plot development toward the end, so be aware of that.
+All notes refer to the 2010 University of Minnesota Press edition. The introduction by Gregory Feeley in that edition makes some interesting points about the book's themes, imagery, and slippery genre—but also gives away a major plot development toward the end, so be aware of that. For others, see '''[[/Editions/]]'''.
 == Major characters ==

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 {{#css:The Priest.css}}{{#addbodyclass:tiled-toc}}
 '''''The Priest: A Gothic Romance''''' (1994) is [[Thomas M. Disch]]'s third ''Supernatural Minnesota'' novel. It depicts the destruction of its main character, Catholic priest Pat Bryce, by a bizarre revenge scheme due to his molestation of teenage boys, and also by a mysterious force psychically connecting him with a 13th-century bishop in the Inquisition.
@@ Line 83: / Line 84: @@
 === his famulus ... who had acted today as thurifer ===
 A thurifer is anyone who prepares and carries the incense burner for a Catholic service. ''Famulus'' is not a specific religious role, but refers generally to a personal assistant or secretary.
 == Chapter 6 ==
@@ Line 155: / Line 149: @@
 == Chapter 13 ==
-=== opening a cahpter of Dignity ===
+=== opening a chapter of Dignity ===
 {{wp|DignityUSA|Dignity}} is a group founded in 1969 for LGBT support and rights advocacy within Catholicism.