The Tension Between Good and Evil in “My Father’s House”

The continued fascination with Nazi Germany in every form of art and media is, in part, rooted in the mystery and allure of evil. It is so difficult to understand how such evil could become politically articulated in a cultured nation like Germany that people never tire of reading interviews and analyses of that time. Even in the late 1930s, the work of Eric Voegelin found traction when he confronted Nazism with works such as Political Religions. Of course, people around the world who confront evil today in various cultural and political arenas are probably more concerned about their own issues than about Nazis. In the affluent West, however, where people tend blithely to overlook moral issues of good and evil in favor of their own material comfort, the Nazis are safe ground for our storytelling and our pondering of political and moral questions. Like a reverse summum bonum, the Nazi regime seems to serve as a type of measuring stick when we reflect on our own time.

Joseph O’Connor’s latest novel, My Father’s House, continues the study of good and evil with a tale based on the historical figures of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty and Paul Hauptmann, the Nazi SS Commandant of Rome in 1944. The high-stakes confrontation between these two figures occurs during the post-Mussolini, Nazi occupation of Rome, with the Monsignor organizing smuggling routes for escaped prisoners of war, and Hauptmann trying to stop him. It is an entertaining read in part because it offers a mature form of the classic spy novel. O’Connor writes with an eye to the poetic, and one strength of the novel is his ability to capture the spirit of Rome, found in its history, art, and architecture, and its culture of language and food. If the reader gets nothing else out of the book, this artful sense of the old world will invite reflections on beauty, time, and timelessness.

For those who read carefully, there are familiar themes to make note of in My Father’s House, including the play of light and shadow and the spiritual power of music. Aided by the clarity of good and evil, contrasted between O’Flaherty’s resistance movement and Hauptmann’s torture chambers, music becomes part of the divide separating those whose actions are oriented towards divine presence, and those who assert their gnostic vision in history. In the novel, music evokes a mystical experience which informs characters of beauty and brings even non-believers to God. On the other hand, music is used as a mask, meant to help the SS Commandant deal with the horrors of his interrogation cells. There is also the playing of music that strengthens a community of people trying to help those on the verge of capture and death, versus the harsh folk songs of the German troops whose bawdry cynicism demeans the artful celebration of beauty in a world ready to fall apart at the seams.

Light is explored in My Father’s House in revealing ways. Light is easily associated with God, but in the novel, light also casts a shadow that necessarily becomes part of historical existence. Furthermore, light may be illuminating, but it need not necessarily shine from a heavenly source. In My Father’s House there are the pale lights of the Nazi arc lamps that have a chemical quality to them, seeking out and trying to intimidate those who refuse to bend a knee to the Reich. The light of our certainties is also explored, light that can empower yet disorient us as we gaze approvingly upon ourselves in the mirror. These various meditations in the novel are engaging and informative.

O’Connor’s novel would have to be considered a Catholic work of literature, and it verges on the hagiographic in the telling of Monsignor O’Flaherty’s life. At the same time, the novel challenges the reader to reflect on whether belief in God is a requirement for virtuous self-sacrifice, and, importantly, whether practicing one’s faith is informative or enriching next to the experience of the atheist who may also be oriented towards the good. There are no clear answers, only the lives of the people we read about. It is noteworthy that of all the characters working in the spy network against the Nazis, it is only the Monsignor who has a running dialogue with his shadow. In My Father’s House, the shadow is identified with Satan, who seeks to undermine the Monsignor’s courage and will at the moments of greatest danger. This may suggest that faith can be informative, helping a person recognize spiritual sources of orientation and disorientation in the life of their soul.

The character of Hauptmann’s wife, Elise, a self-identified Roman Catholic, is also fascinating. She has a sense of the spiritual conflict between the Nazism of her husband and the Christian faith of her family. Her Catholicism informs her of morals beyond the sacramental. While her husband seems almost unconsciously to identify Hitler with the messianic, Elise subtly redirects his ruminations on the one perfect person back to Jesus. She desires to inform her own children of good and evil, for example through the reading of the Grimm fairytales, while her husband sees those stories as old fashioned, wishing to see his children read new stories produced by the Reich, with their predictable, ideological slant. Unsure of how to deal with this conflict in her home, Elise settles for abusing alcohol.

Perhaps the most intense pages of dialogue in My Father’s House are found when Pope Pius XII confronts Monsignor O’Flaherty over his open confrontation with Nazi soldiers. The Pope’s withering criticism of the Monsignor’s actions are inspired by the real fear that the Nazis would invade Vatican City, a neutral nation in the war, using the Monsignor’s provocations and resistance work as an excuse. Not only could the Nazis desecrate the sacred spaces in the Eternal City, they could essentially erase two thousand years of Christian culture with their cannon fire. This confrontation reveals a more subtle tension beneath the obvious. The question is this: how does a human being live and act within a larger political structure they have pledged allegiance to, if the actions of that political structure conflict with one’s own informed conscience? In the Monsignor’s case, the moral necessity of action compelled him to run a secret resistance network that not only was hidden from the eyes of the Nazis but was also hidden from the eyes of his own superiors in the Church. The question is experienced most acutely by Hauptmann’s character. As a soldier he could claim that in torturing and executing escaped prisoners he was following orders, and remaining loyal to his nation, but did he not have any moral agency when it came to his actions in the interrogation room? The example of the Monsignor would suggest he did.

Stories involving Nazis are easy to understand, because the line dividing good and evil is clearly set. In our day and age, however, one wonders if that dividing line is too easily set, especially considering that some popular movies of recent vintage invite viewers to be amused by the torture and death of Nazis. In the case of My Father’s House, there was an opportunity to explore more deeply the soul of a Nazi goon, because the story of Hauptmann is paired with the story of O’Flaherty. Yet there is an almost tiresome aspect to the relationship between O’Flaherty and Hauptmann. Hauptmann’s Satanic invitation to O’Flaherty in the confessional booth of all places is essentially a stock conversation between the devil and the tempted. The future interactions of these two characters on the streets of Rome are likewise superficial in nature.

Most enticing of all is the fact that, following World War Two, the historical Monsignor visited Hauptmann in prison numerous times, and participated in Hauptmann’s conversion to Roman Catholicism through baptism. In My Father’s House, these prison encounters, which must have been intimate and emotionally charged, are reduced to the Monsignor’s suspicion that Hauptmann was only being self-serving and dishonest in his conversion. The character of Monsignor knew his own mind and was firmly rooted in his faith, and apparently held no hope that grace could ever crack open Hauptmann’s soul. The novel suggests that the Monsignor was not even interested in acting as an agent of grace, with O’Flaherty admitting “I do not understand or even like several of my Redeemer’s teachings.” This sterile termination of the relationship between the Monsignor and the Commandant is sadly devoid of hope. In fact, it carries the clarity of heaven and hell as portrayed in the Sistine Chapel despite the fact these interactions are taking place in history, not the afterlife. This allows O’Connor the novelist to avoid the question I have heard asked since I was a schoolboy: “Can a Nazi ever get to heaven?”

After being introduced to Hauptmann’s mind and soul in the novel, the reader is ready for a debriefing of sorts, which could have occurred if O’Connor had spent more time exploring Hauptmann’s experience in prison. As it is, O’Connor’s melancholic conclusion to the novel, focusing on a trivial television show, This Is Your Life, underscores the anti-climactic nature of the novel’s end. Despite this fizzled ending, the novel’s study of Hauptmann, his wife Elise, and the Monsignor’s wrestling with the Satanic shadow on the ancient streets of Rome make My Father’s House an entertaining and worthwhile read. Borrowing from the Monsignor’s own words, the book will also, without doubt, remind readers about the ways of the world, and how we are to act in it.

My Father’s House
By Joseph O’Connor
New York: Europa Editions; 2023; 440pp

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