What does LJ know of SJ...?

[desperance]

One of the joys of my job: I have been working all morning and I'd just hit not a problem but a pause, a time for thinking. Specifically, my narrator was just off to a formal reception where she simply had to be for reasons of credibility, but I didn't have a story reason for her to be there, it was going to take up pages and I couldn't see how it would advance the reader's engagement with the plot or the character or the setting; so I went for a walk. Halfway round the graveyard - of course! Among the people she meets there are the Catholic priests who will play such a significant part later on, I knew they had to turn up somewhere, obviously this is it...

So I walk on, cheerfully at one with myself and my craft; and five minutes later, in the hospital grounds, I suddenly think, oh hey, how's about if they're Jesuits? Not at all unlikely, in context, and it adds that extra layer of richness. But. Do they introduce themselves as Jesuits, is that what Jesuits do? And if not, is there a button, a pin, a ring, some outward and visible sign of their inward and spiritual grace...?

Wiki doesn't know. It says there's no particular habit of dress these days, so that's out, no identifiable cut of cassock. Does LJ know? Anyone...?

Comments

[desperance.livejournal.com]

The only time I met a Jesuit (but how would I know!) he was introduced to me as "This is Brother Guy Consolmagno, he's a Jesuit and a specialist in meteorites." (You can't put him in a book, nobody would ever believe in him.)

I believe in him already. Damn, why is it always other people who get to meet the really interesting ones...?

Or perhaps you could have some of them be Jesuits and one of them be some other variety of priest, and then you can go for the "You would say that! You're a Jesuit!" kind of rejoinder, to which your protag can then ask "Are you really a Jesuit?" and he can reply smilingly "Yes I am and so is Father James, but Brother Thomas here is a Franciscan, for his sins."

...which must obviously have been many, and very wicked. But seriously, thank you; that's neat. I can use that...

ETA (before posting, yet: see what you did, how I went so suddenly shooting off at a tangent?): Eureka! I have it - and it is the maxims of Balthasar Gracian (http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/aww/) which I have! He can quote, she can recognise - by virtue of the nuns of her upbringing - not only the source but the significance. She can accuse, he can confess, they can be quite delighted with themselves and each other for being so clever, and there we go...

Thanks, Jo.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

That's how it works. I'm glad it was the right sort of oblique angle you needed.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Of course - this being Taiwan - she could just have glanced at the business card he greets her with, and seen 'SJ' after his name. But this way is just so much more elegant, they start off outsmarting each other; only trouble now is that I have a seriously interesting character barging into the middle of my story, which is completely not ready to deal with him. God only knows what he's going to do in there, but something...