Confessions of ‘the Weak’: The Ecclesiastical Hindrance of Determinism in Silence

Abstract

Christ imagery in Silence represents Endō’s intentional progression from ‘father-religion’ to ‘mother-religion’. This paper explicates the former as a distortive ideological belief—the determinism of the ‘strong’ and ‘weak’—that conveys Endō’s aversion for institutionalized and paternal aspects of Christianity; that sows feelings of superiority toward ‘the weak’ in Rodrigues (revealed especially as he administers confession); and that anthropomorphizes as an internal voice that accuses and haunts with fears of inadequacy. Christ’s immediacy through and sympathy for universal suffering relinquishes the categories of ‘strong’ and ‘weak,’ assures a doubting Rodrigues of forgiveness, and—along with the Christian-Buddhist foundation of Rodrigues’ self-renunciation—illustrates the interreligious nature of Endō’s mother-religion.