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Father Ferreira’s character in the novel raises the question of what it means to carry out the mission of the Church. Many regard him as a model priest and a consummate theologian, able to argue intricate theses in the Christian religion, and a paragon of Catholic virtue. His standing is so revered that his peers, including Rodrigues, can’t believe that the rumors about his apostasy are true. Rodrigues is particularly dismayed because Ferreira was his former teacher. This raises serious questions for Rodrigues, for if his teacher renounced the Catholic faith, what does this say about his faith and the church that he devoted his life to? Ferreira’s rumored apostasy is the inciting incident that sets Rodrigues on his journey to discovery about not only his teacher but himself.

When Rodrigues finds that Father Ferreira has apostatized and completely assimilated into the Japanese culture, even taking on a Japanese name and writing books on astronomy for the government, Rodrigues’s faith is dealt a final blow. Ferreira’s defeat is significant because it demonstrates how the ideas of Christianity may not truly be able to survive in Japan. If someone of Ferreira’s stature can fall to Japan’s religious arguments, then the validity of Rodrigues’s claims that Christianity espouses universal truths is challenged. Ferreira argues, though half-heartedly at times, that the two major religions of the East and West—Christianity and Buddhism—are inherently compatible. Overall, Ferreira represents the complexities at play when the two cultures mix.

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