Mary Doria Russell × James Blish

James Blish's *A Case of Conscience* (1958) and Mary Doria Russell's *The Sparrow* (1996) are the two great Jesuit-in-space novels, and they arrive at opposite catastrophes through nearly identical structures. Father Ruiz-Sanchez encounters Lithia — a world of rational, sinless beings who have no concept of God — and concludes the entire planet is a trap laid by Satan, because a creation that achieves moral perfection without grace is theologically impossible; it must be a lie. Father Emilio Sandoz encounters Rakhat — a world of apparent beauty and music — and is slowly fed through a grinder of misunderstanding until his faith isn't disproved but *emptied*, left structurally intact with nothing inside it. Blish's Jesuit has too much theology; he can classify what he sees so precisely that he destroys it. Russell's Jesuit has too much love; he is open to what he sees so completely that it destroys him. The real conversation between these books is about whether the greater danger for a believing mind encountering the alien is the reflex to systematize or the reflex to embrace. Blish wrote during the neo-Thomist revival, when Catholic intellectuals believed reason could taxonomize anything, including evil. Russell wrote after Vatican II's pastoral turn, when the Church had begun to suspect that empathy might be its own form of hubris. The forty years between these novels is the distance between a faith that fears being fooled and a faith that fears being right.