All the characters in the novel—especially the whisky priest—are constantly buffeted by the competing powers of the government and the Church. While the government has undermined religious authority, it hasn’t disappeared from the hearts and minds of the people. The corruption at the core of the Church (its building wealth on the backs of the impoverished) is the justification for the government’s constraints on its practices, but this doesn’t dissuade the people or the whisky priest of its salvific power. At the same time, however, the influence of the Church and the power of the government are often conflated: They both wield the authority to condemn one to death or bless one with life.

The whisky priest struggles with these competing powers throughout the novel: His peripatetic and fearful existence is a result of the government’s criminalizing the religion he refuses to renounce. Unlike Padre José, the whisky priest won’t concede to marry and won’t desert his parishioners, even upon threat of death. Compounding this untenable position is his fallen state: “That was what made him worthy of damnation—the power he still had of turning the wafer into the flesh and blood of God. He was a sacrilege” (29).