Roman Catholic Church
The Roman Catholic Church occupies a distinctive place in Dorian Gray's life as an object of aesthetic and spiritual curiosity rather than of faith. Dorian, who has been described as having a special passion for ecclesiastical vestments and everything connected with the service of the Church, stores in the long cedar chests lining the west gallery of his house many rare and beautiful specimens of what is really the raiment of the Bride of Christ. He possesses a gorgeous cope of crimson silk and gold-thread damask, another cope of green velvet embroidered with heart-shaped groups of acanthus-leaves, chasubles of amber-colored silk and blue silk and gold brocade, dalmatics of white satin and pink silk damask, altar frontals of crimson velvet and blue linen, and many corporals, chalice-veils, and sudaria. In the mystic offices to which these things are put there is something that quickens his imagination.
Attraction to Ritual and Symbolism
Dorian's engagement with the Church is primarily sensory and intellectual. It was rumored of him once that he was about to join the Roman Catholic communion, and certainly the Roman ritual always had a great attraction for him. The daily sacrifice, more awful really than all the sacrifices of the antique world, stirs him as much by its superb rejection of the evidence of the senses as by the primitive simplicity of its elements and the eternal pathos of the human tragedy that it seeks to symbolize. He loves to kneel down on the cold marble pavement, watching the priest in his stiff flowered cope slowly and with white hands moving aside the veil of the tabernacle and raising aloft the jewelled lantern-shaped monstrance with that pallid wafer that at times, one would fain think, is indeed the "panis caelestis," the bread of angels. He is equally moved by the priest robed in the garments of the Passion of Christ, breaking the Host into the chalice and smiting his breast for his sins. The fuming censers, that the grave boys in their lace and scarlet toss into the air like great gilt flowers, have their subtle fascination for him. As he passes out, he used to look with wonder at the black confessionals, and long to sit in the dim shadow of one of them and listen to men and women whispering through the tarnished grating the true story of their lives.
Intellectual Distance and Rejection of Commitment
Despite this powerful attraction, Dorian never falls into the error of arresting his intellectual development by any formal acceptance of creed or system. He refuses to mistake, for a house in which to live, an inn that is but suitable for the sojourn of a night, or for a few hours of a night in which there are no stars and the moon is in travail. Mysticism, with its marvellous power of making common things strange to us, and the subtle antinomianism that always seems to accompany it, moves him for a season; and for a season he inclines to the materialistic doctrines of the Darwinismus movement in Germany, finding a curious pleasure in tracing the thoughts and passions of men to some pearly cell in the brain, or some white nerve in the body. Yet no theory of life seems to him to be of any importance compared with life itself. He feels keenly conscious of how barren all intellectual speculation is when separated from action and experiment. He knows that the senses, no less than the soul, have their mysteries to reveal.
Narrative Significance
The Roman Catholic Church thus functions in the novel as one of the many modes through which Dorian Gray seeks to experience the full range of human sensation and thought. It represents a realm of beauty, mystery, and ritual that he can appreciate aesthetically without ever submitting to its moral authority or its demand for repentance. His refusal to commit to the Church mirrors his broader refusal to commit to any system of ethics or belief that would constrain his pursuit of pleasure. The Church's rituals and vestments become part of his collection of exquisite experiences, alongside perfumes, music, jewels, and embroideries, all serving as means of forgetfulness and escape from the fear that seems to him at times to be almost too great to be borne.
