For another, I think the corruption of the papacy (which is not, as our Rad Trad bros might have it, a “Modernist” problem) probably influenced the figure of the Fisher King. The Fisher King, like St. Peter (the first pope, for those who might not know), was a fisherman. That’s kind of an icepick-in-the-forehead kind of clue. In most versions of the story, the Fisher King was wounded “in the thigh,” which implies impotence. This impotence motif provided Jessie Weston with a green light for interpreting the entire Grail tradition as a kind of Frazerian agricultural mythos. I certainly think that’s in there, but I don’t think that’s all there is to it. But while impotence is not a requirement for being elevated (what a word!) to the papacy, fertility and procreation are not exactly in the job description. - Michael Martin, Substack essay
A.E. Waite - The Hidden Church of the Holy Grail (1909): “I do not confess that it would be putting the case truly if it were said that at the period of the Graal literature the highest minds of the Church had grown weary of the Vatican and all its ways. I think that for long, and for very long indeed, there had existed an uncompetitive stream of tendency which raised no voice, but pursued its path unobtrusively towards a very high term. It had no remedies to offer on the practical side of things and it was too wise to denounce abuses which it was powerless to remedy…. At a later period I do think that the unknown mystics who wrote upon spiritual alchemy had got to see not only where the path of sanctity led, but that the Church as a whole had lost the power of leading. They were made circumspect by the anxiety of their position, and they spoke only in parables….
“… one might be disposed at first sight to conclude that the Graal Church may stand for Latin Christianity and the Rich Fisherman for its central authority. He is the Keeper of the Divine Mysteries, the possessor of the valid forms, but he and his environment have been laid waste by the spirit of the world.”