Joyce’s depiction of the Catholic Church in the story is an example of satire. After many pages of building up to the Catholic retreat that is meant to change Kernan’s life (by keeping him from drinking), the retreat itself is extremely underwhelming. Rather than helping the attendees open up spiritually and emotionally, the priest (Father Purdon) gives a sermon using transactional language that implies the Church exists to merely hold people to account for their bad behavior (as a “spiritual accountant”) rather than to motivate them through an inspiring and evocative speech to become better people.
That Joyce decides to end the story in the middle of Father Purdon’s sermon—in which he has already repeated himself several times—also speaks to his satirical intentions. By cutting the man off, Joyce implies that his speech is not worth listening to and thereby suggests that this retreat is not going to be the healing space that Kernan and his friends hope that it will be.
Overall, Joyce portrays the Catholic Church as an institution that makes large promises it is not able to keep. In this way, he is satirically highlighting the hypocrisy of the church—rather than helping practitioners like Kernan become better versions of themselves, they encourage their congregants to view the institution as a bank in which they exchange sin for redemption.
