Problema aplazado, problema resuelto

“Problema aplazado, problema resuelto” names the expedient logic by which an institution treats postponement as resolution. In the novel, the phrase is most pointedly applied to the Catholic Church’s decision to avoid an immediate scandal: the Archbishop accepts Pencho Gavira’s offer to purchase and bury a report about priests in his diocese. Yet the same logic shadows the unresolved struggle over Nuestra Señora de las Lágrimas, where old privileges, slow procedures, and discreet investigations hold conflict at bay without settling it.

The phrase and its institutional setting

The expression appears in the account of Gavira’s dealings with the Archbishop. A report, not yet published, documents alleged violations of celibacy by six priests who are well liked in their parishes. Its release could provoke a serious scandal and force the Archbishop to take actions he would rather avoid. The narrator’s formulation—“In the Catholic Church, a problem postponed meant a problem solved”—gives the policy its succinct, ironic name.

Gavira has arranged the investigation through a detective agency and used his press connections to present the offer as a favor to the Archbishop. In substance, however, the transaction is blackmail: Gavira is the force behind the maneuver and offers to buy and suppress the report. The Archbishop accepts with relief, turning a potentially public crisis into a concealed one. The phrase therefore describes more than bureaucratic slowness; it exposes how a promise of future silence can serve as a practical substitute for confronting uncomfortable facts.

Delay as a mode of Church governance

The report is not the only matter held in suspension. The Archbishop has asked Rome to suspend Father Príamo Ferro from office, but the process moves slowly. He tells Lorenzo Quart that the issue is not simply one of authority: Ferro disregards his pastorals and calls to order, while suspension requires a disciplinary process. The Archbishop also links the delay to the recent computer intrusion at the Vatican, suggesting that officials there are waiting for Quart’s report. The investigation thus becomes another deferred decision, with responsibility passed along the chain of authority.

That delay is set against the precarious legal condition of Nuestra Señora de las Lágrimas. An old privilege, granted in 1687 with papal sanction, protects the church’s rights so long as Mass is celebrated there every Thursday for the soul of its benefactor, Gaspar Bruner de Lebrija. The requirement is specific: the Mass takes place at eight in the morning on the day of his death. As a result, a representative of the Archbishop and a notary paid by Gavira watch each Thursday for an irregularity or omission that could leave the church exposed to demolition. Ritual, property claims, and surveillance all turn on whether a continuing obligation is observed; the fragile arrangement postpones the threat rather than ending it.

What postponement conceals

The phrase’s irony lies in the distance between managing a problem and resolving it. Suppressing the report may avert an immediate scandal, but it does not answer the allegations or remove the pressures behind them. Likewise, the Thursday Mass keeps the church legally protected only while the condition is met; the Archbishop’s desire to discipline Ferro and the redevelopment interests pressing against the parish remain in place.

The expression also resonates with Quart’s departure from the Archbishop’s palace. As he descends past the paintings and marble stairway, he thinks of the former bishops’ prison, where disobedient priests were confined, and imagines that Ferro—and perhaps Quart himself—might once have exchanged views there while the Archbishop sent his version of events to Rome by a slow, ordinary channel. The contrast between that sluggish procedure and the modern telephone sharpens the novel’s question: new means of communication do not necessarily produce candor or decisive action. The phrase endures as a dry description of institutions that keep danger manageable by keeping judgment unfinished.