Greene has written a number of other "Catholic" novels, of which The Heart of the Matter is generally considered the best. In this novel, Major Scobie, basically a good and honest man, is driven to suicide by pride, love, and perhaps a mistaken sense of the duty. The religious question of the novel is whether Scobie, a Catholic, might have found salvation, despite the Church's position that suicide is an unforgivable sin. (This novel basically reworks the same question Greene considers in his earlier novel, Brighton Rock, 1938) Greene's answer, given by the priest at the conclusion of the novel, is consistent with the ethics of compassion and forgiveness evident in The Power and the Glory: "The Church knows all the rules, but it doesn't know what goes on in a single human heart."

Although the priest's words irritate Scobie's bitter and more conventional wife, they are...