Wheat That Springeth Green:

...At age forty-four, he is pastor of the Church of Saints Francis and Clare, In-glenook, a comfortable suburban parish, for which he has built a school, convent, and rectory...

...He pays for these achievements in loneliness and drink and seems to be headed for spiritual drought...

...When Monsignor Toohey, a two-bit Chancery ogre, withholds from Father Joe the name of his new curate, Joe's attempts to find out, without revealing what it is he doesn't know, lead to hilarious complications...

...In the words of a habitual WHEAT THAT SPROIGETH GREEN J.F...

...This may occasion some puzzlement, until we not only give grace its due, but realize the extent to which these men cooperate with the grace given them...

...Father Urban is smarter and more verbal, Joe steadier...

...Instead of smoothing it out while waiting for the strength to be restored to his arms, he cocked his head back and read what he could of the text in its collapsed and crumpled condition, the salient items or sentences thereof, noisily wrenching up more, shifting and tightening his grip like a dog with a bone-this was hard on the paper...

...Part of his approach is to be up front with the venalities and vulgarities attendant upon institutional religion, while recording without comment unnoticed spiritual changes that take place like movements in the crust of the earth...

...telephone pest who identifies himself as Lyndon B. Johnson, "You should be his assistant...

...Powers Alfred A. Knopf, $18.95, 335 pp...

...salvation comes with a sacramental crash, Joe's comes through priestly fellowship and friction with his curate...

...Wheat That Springeth Green, his second novel, fifth book, is likewise the work of a master and, like Morte D'Urban, a comedy of spiritual salvation played out in the story of a priest...

...But this is not only a comedy of spiritual salvation...

...Just as the heart of the church is the altar, he'd say, so the heart of the rectory is, or should be, the office...

...Monsignor "Catfish Toohey," Joe's antagonist since grade sctyool, "Lefty Beeman," the eternal curate, forever seeking his own parish, forever affronting the authorities at the wrong moment, "Dollar Bill" Stock, who insists on a special collection at Joe's first Mass, and whose retirement purse is unanimously boycotted by his congregation...

...First impressions and last impressions are quite different things in the reading of Powers's novels, and a Richter scale can be handy...

...In Wheat we see a number of curates given priority over their pastors...

...Other colorful clergymen come and go, their intrigues and nicknames like decorative threads in a tapestry...

...The picture is one of charming simplicity, yet Father Felix preaches sermons straight out of the middle-European peasant imagination, spreading panic among impressionable adolescents in the parish...

...Readers of Morte D'Urban will wonder whether Wheat is not simply more of the same, but the two priests are two completely different people who probably would not warm to one another...

...Amusing as Wheat is to read, it has an underlying lapidary toughness, a seriousness of purpose...

...Walter H. Clark, Jr...

...As for character, what starts as caricature often ends as portrait, a Powers trademark...

...Father Joe Hackett, son of a prosperous coal dealer, thinks of becoming a priest from an early age...

...As thejiovel ends, we find Joe, having been "gently purged and ardently moved," volunteering for a thorny post in the inner city...

...Here is Joe's view of Father Felix, who helps out on Sundays: The monk, whose glasses still needed changing, still held the paper open in front of him, as far away from him as he could, so that it was like the prow of a ship, until his arms gave out and the whole thing came crashing down in his lap-this was hard on the paper...

...Urban struggles with the world and the devil, Joe with the flesh and the world...

...The problem Powers sets himself is not so much writing about priests, as writing about spiritual realities in an age that ignores them...

...And Joe's diplomatic endeavors to avoid being drawn into a war between the Mall merchants and the local discount house are worthy of a Kissinger...

...The metaphor seems appropriate for a novelist whose underlying subject is the life of the spirit...

...Someone once asked Powers why he restricted himself by writing about Catholic clergy, and he replied that it made for stronger beer...

...The story follows him through seminary and enthusiasm for contemplation, on into the realities of a parish curacy, and a staff position in Diocesan Charities...

...What saves Joe Hackett, or provides the occasion for his saving himself, is the arrival of his new curate, Father Bill, a priest of the sixties, whose naivete masks a sweetness and generosity of spirit that rekindle the older man...

...Who is this mild-mannered monk...

...that was the hell of it-only God knew, Joe's hope had to be that he was, without knowing it, a sleeper...

...Father Joe thinks of himself as guiding and instructing Bill, but it is actually through Bill, and his concern for Bill, that Joe comes back into contact with his vocation and his fellow man...

...Both Urban and Joe come out better than we think they deserve at a certain point in our reading...

...It's full of ridiculous incident, humorous characters, slapstick, and word play...

...Looking back at his spiritual development, he worries over the loss of youthful idealism and certainty, ". . .you never knew where you were in the spiritual life...

...Then there is Father Van Slaag (known to his housekeeper as "Slug"), who has "horny grey growths on his knees" from praying, and permits the housekeeper's dog to bite his ankles-which finally persuades young Father Joe that he is not cut out for the contemplative life...