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MINERVA PRESS Holiness! All Rights Reserved No part of this book may be reproduced in any form ISBN 1 86106 004 1 First published 1996 by Printed in Great Britain
"Go on with you, you're imagining it!" He thought. "Those methods haven't been used at the Vatican for centuries. Admittedly, there was that recent case of the pope who died so suddenly and disconcertingly, and it has never really been cleared up, but it was hardly likely to have been poison. Things like that just don't happen these days." By dawn he finally managed to drop into a restless sleep. His muscles relaxed and his hands slipped from his stomach to lie calmly by his sides. What he experienced though was not the restorative sleep that follows bouts of pain, but a fuel-blown nightmare which even the most forgetful of people would remember for ever. Because he had had a visitation from... the Eternal Father in person. A religious man would have been flattered and happy. However, to the Pope religion was his career. As for practising it, that was quite another matter. Faith, which he deemed to be an instinctive manifestation, could have no truck with reason. And his reason, bolstered by erudition and years of theological study, would allow of no chink which faith could penetrate, and so enlighten the nooks and crannies of his conscience. "What on earth am I thinking of?" He said defiantly. "How can I say: It's the Holy Father! if I don't even know Him? Accustomed to daily contact with the idea of God I see this apparition before me as Him. It's no more than... well... professional habit. That's quite clear!" He concluded triumphantly. "There is no God. He doesn't exist. Man created Him solely to provide an answer to his doubts... this only justifies His validity and exculpates those who affirm that if He did not exist one should invent Him, since otherwise one would have to say, together with some Christian atheist, that if He exists one must eliminate Him." And in the turbulent dream of his restless sleep, he dreamt. A dream within a dream, in a sense. "Get away with you, how can one believe in the ridiculous myths of the Bible: the Creation, the Flood..." His stomach gurgled for an instant like the distant roll of thunder which announced that ancient event. "Naďve stories, suitable for peasant folk," he continued, after a hiccup to release the air which had been tightening his chest. "And then the patriarchs, the chosen people, the punishments of God, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah..." He suddenly felt fire and brimstone searing the pit of his stomach. "Of course," he mused, touching his stomach on an impulse to ease the pain, "man has come a long way since then, even if the Church continues to preach that God manifested His infinite omnipotence in the Creation." As a child he had been fascinated by the story of divine omnipotence. On winter evenings he remembered his mother telling him about that extraordinary power, with total conviction, almost as if she herself had borne witness to it. And any questions about it all meant trouble! "It really must be wonderful to be God..." he had naively dared to say. "When I'm grown up..." but he would stop. Her eyes would become burning coals, almost as if they were reading his heart. No questions were to be asked. "You can't mess around with God!" She would announce crossly, as though someone was criticising her person and her actions. "What on earth can you know about the mysteries of God?" Whenever his mother mentioned the mysteries of God it meant she was avoiding his questions. He had learnt early on that when the mysteries of God were invoked it was better to back off. Because mystery, which may be a starting point for he who has faith, is most certainly the conclusion for he who has none. Faced with this impenetrable barrier he therefore preferred to keep quiet and accept the ritual punishment his mother meted out. She lost no time and everything obeyed the heavenly hierarchies: one hour kneeling for posing improper questions about God and Jesus, half an hour for asking about the Virgin Mary and the Saints. How many times as an adult had he invoked those mysteries himself and avoided embarrassment by stopping the mouths of the faithful! Then there were his studies, his early discoveries and answers to queries. There were no certainties, though basically, God - like a magician's trick - was there, but invisible. He had come to the conclusion that certainties are the property of those who are besotted with faith, able to take in the most absurd of stories without batting an eyelid. Just like his mother. "My goodness! What a marvellous thing faith is!" He reflected. "You can travel in time, space and elsewhere without any difficulty. You can believe in anything by dint of elementary simplification. How reassuring simplicity is!" And so he found himself running through the stages of the Creation... Wednesday 23rd October in the year 4004, BC of course, at nine in the morning, if the calculations by that saint of a man J. Lightfoot are to be believed, God gave form to the darkness which filled the deep. Who knows how long His Spirit had inhabited that darkness before the idleness became too tedious! He divided the darkness from the light, then conceived the firmament, the earth and the sea. Pleased with His effort, because everything had worked out so well, He then created seedlings, grasses and fruit trees. And since these things had pleased Him too, He decided to go further and created lights in the heavens to illuminate the earth: the sun, the moon, and the stars... lots of stars... Quite how many there were his churning stomach told him, but he thought on. This was good, as was to be expected, so next he tried His hand at fish, birds, animals (nice tame ones) and reptiles. Because this was all so excellent, it was logical that He would now have to set Himself a really difficult task, like creating Man. This he achieved by forming man of the dust of the ground, breathing into his nostrils and... hey presto - producing a living soul. Woman had required a rather more imaginative approach, in keeping with feminine nature. However, that was clearly an off day, because He had only been able to express His male-dominated universe by means of complicated symbology. Issuing from Man and dependent on him, Eve had been made from one of Adam's ribs. God cannot have been very satisfied with the result because it is not written that He gloried in it, as He had done in His other creations. In effect, there was not much to glory in, given the disappointing behaviour of Man and Woman right from the word go... The Pope was getting confused by so many cosmic errors... "Let's get it right!" He admonished himself. "Trees and plants came before the sun, the earth was a flat island, the heavens were like a glass globe with stars stuck on like fixed lamps, working to preordained patterns: enough sun to light up the earth by day, and the moon by night. So: there was no conception of the boundless space that separates the earth from the infinity of other words? That space that telescopes monitor at a distance of millions of light-years and of whose infinite space only the threshold can be glimpsed. And Man? Ready-made. So there's certainly an abyss between the rudimentary android of millions of years ago and Homo Sapiens..." He wondered just why he was having these thoughts now. "Ah yes, the wine, that's it - the sacramental wine that Father Jacob recommended so warmly. Well, it certainly had its effect... God is quite another thing from that simplistic image conveyed by the Holy Scriptures. The form in front of me is an apparition which causes no fear, it is a figment of my imagination, a creation of a mind impaired by an upset tummy. I could have done without this apparition, though! I was just beginning to feel better, thank God - I should say - and then... there He is, the Holy Father in person!" From the depths of his dream within a dream he fell back into a restless sleep, and it pleased him to think that he had been put under a sort of spell - the succubus of an incubus. Unfortunately not! God was right there in front of him: radiating light, from the equilateral triangle of a halo glowing round His head. He stood out clearly against the pale blue wall behind the enormous black cross which was painted in relief on the wall. That cross had been the brainchild of some zealous pontiff who had preceded him to the throne of Peter. And it was black, heavy and irritating. He hadn't the heart to have it removed, and it hung there like an obstinate threat, ready to detach itself from the wall and fall down on him at any moment. Meanwhile the luminous shape was still there: an imposing figure, exactly as the artists of the Renaissance had depicted Him. He sported a thick white beard, arranged in orderly tresses like those on the Greek statues of Zeus and Poseidon. He smiled as he remembered the meticulousness of the rabbis who had counted every single one of those tresses in the Cabala: one billion seven thousand of them, to be exact. In the meantime, from the centre of the light two judgmental eyes held him in a gaze from which he could not avert his eyes. His Holiness feigned indifference. "It's only a nightmare," he told himself. "It'll disappear once the effect of the wine has worn off." But though he wouldn't admit it, he was terrified. Then he saw that God had moved. He seemed to have left the wall and glided through the arms of the cross. Now He was coming forward, floating in the shadows the way He had hovered above the deep at the beginning of time. The pale blue wall had turned dark, darker than the skies in the paintings where He floats so gracefully. "So it's true!" He realised, his heart in his mouth. "It really is God! He exists!" Then he raked through his life, hunting for guilt and sins which He would certainly not condone. He sought in his pontificate for acts carried out in God's name, checking they were in accordance with the dogma of the Church. He was racked by anxiety. For a moment he felt embarrassed and observed like a child at his first communion. But he couldn't find anything untoward. "Yes," he opined, "I have sometimes been stubborn or overbearing, but only to stress the authority of the Church through he who represents it. In fact, I've nothing to worry about except for the main controversial issues like divorce, abortion, birth control, artificial insemination, in vitro fertilisation, the condition of women, homosexuality, violence, and so forth." He had always expressed his opinions forcefully. He had always been severe and dogmatic. In short, he had shown consistency and inflexibility in the best tradition of Catholicism. As for Galileo, well, he had had to rehabilitate him. The decision could not be put off any longer; it was simply not feasible that after four hundred or so years of silence the Church should continue to ignore the fact that the Earth turns around the Sun. So he felt everything was fine. He supposed if one really wanted to be nit-picking one could find a few peccadilloes here and there - items of scant importance... like the scandal of the Vatican Bank... "Yes, the Vatican Bank, hypocritically known as the IOR, the Institute for Religious Works..." he reflected. "...with a branch in the States... The official position of the Church had always been to condemn usury, so a change of direction was needed by the Church if the bank was to be recognised. Because the IOR, despite its name, like it or not, is a bank." For a moment he felt confused, then reasoned: "The Church set up the IOR for good works, for moral reasons..." then he hesitated. "A bank with moral aims, though? The religious works of the IOR are nothing more than hot air, it's money they're after! And a lot of money! They even say it belongs to the Mafia! Religious Works indeed... Who knows if that is acceptable," he wondered. He persevered unhappily. "Of course, I liked that American cardinal who was less a man of the Church than a financier. But then the scandal broke and I had to crack down. So I sacked him without the least hesitation and sent him packing back to his prairies." He was then attacked by serious doubts about other affairs, more of state than religion, like the secret compromises made to destroy Communism. On the whole, there was nothing so dreadful in what he had done, the end fully justifying the means: it was a question of freeing oppressed peoples and lovingly escorting them back into the fold of the Church, he told himself sanctimoniously. However, he could not be easy, as though a fish bone was tickling the back of his throat. If the truth be told, he was bewildered. He found some consolation in fibbing to himself that it was not easy to telescope one's existence into so short a span. "What's more," he added, as if apologising to his own conscience, "how can one talk to Someone who usually only gives orders. My God!" He went on, invoking Him in his confusion, "how on earth can anyone say if I have acted as He would have wanted me to? What do I know of His wishes? How the devil can one know what He is thinking, when by definition His thoughts are inscrutable? What do I know about Him? Biblical descriptions of Him are so contradictory... He was merciless when He ordered Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac in the land of Moriah and then relented, yet merciful when He forgave the murderer Cain for killing Abel, letting him off with a mark that was more a passport to impunity than a sign of notoriety. Well, it just isn't easy!" He reasoned lamely. "Then, all of a sudden there He is in front of you and you know He is there. As if it were the easiest thing in the world. Tell me, how can you change the reasoning which has informed an entire existence in the twinkling of an eye. Good Lord!" He said inadvertently, "why didn't He appear before, with a gesture, a sign that might have given me a clue to His existence? I could have..." his thoughts wavered as he sought not to commit himself. "His manifestations are not exactly a daily event, are they? Has anyone actually seen His face, eh?" He tried to remember. "Unfortunately," he recalled uneasily, "those He appeared to came to a sticky end. The whole lot of them. And that's a fact!" He acknowledged, after checking his knowledge of the Bible once more. "The Old Testament is clear on this point. Horrible though it may seem you could be burnt to ashes for just having listened to His voice, while those who actually saw His face could expect an even worse fate. For who is there of all flesh that hath heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of the fire and lived? It is written in Deuteronomy. The author of Judges lays it on even thicker: We shall surely die, because we have seen God. Even Moses, who had a good rapport with God and could speak to Him as a man speaketh unto to his friend could not see His face, because - as it is told in Exodus - there shall no man see me and live. Those to whom he deigned to manifest Himself had to cover their faces so as not to be struck down. That is what Elisha did, and he was privileged. Moses though, whether he had met Him several times and had grown used to it or whether his complexion was less delicate, could face His rays without covering himself. But he had to put the veil upon his face when he went back to his own people, because due to all the energy he had absorbed the people might get burnt merely by looking at him." He thought of Michelangelo's version of Moses with those horns on his forehead; an unlikely account from Exodus says that when the liberator descended from Mount Horeb his forehead was illuminated by rays of light shining like horns... He could have gone on recollecting, but that was enough. "On the incendiary power of God," he deduced "there is plenty of worrying evidence, whether it be for men, beasts or things, if it is true that through Moses again He ordered the Israelites to stay away from Horeb and stop their herds and flocks from grazing in the vicinity." He searched his mind again and grimaced, convinced by now there was little to be optimistic about. "If that's how it was in the past, I don't see why things should have changed!" He decided. "However, thinking carefully about it, once He did appear to someone without any awful consequences. It was Jacob, the patriarch. The story can be found in Chapter 32 of Genesis!" He recalled, with a sigh of relief. "Jacob saw Him face to face - that's what it says - and wrestled with Him the whole night. While they wrestled he broke his thigh, but he survived! Very strange! ...I wonder why he was saved? And what does that story signify?" He ended lamely, as anxiety took hold of him. In the midst of these reflections an unpleasant notion came to him: none of his thoughts would escape God. He really shouldn't have any doubts about omniscience especially after his mother's punishments. "The tradition of the omniscience of the gods is a fixed feature of all religions," he told himself. "The gods are omniscient by definition. They have to be, otherwise they wouldn't be gods. Omniscience is their most important property, because it encompasses all the attributes of God." He tried not to think, since having such a poor opinion of God he could only have sinful thoughts. He was quite aware of them, and the more he thought about it, the more knew he was sinning. He suspected that his thoughts were an open book to His piercing eyes. "Don't think. But how?" He mused. And the more he tried not to think, the less he succeeded. It was like trying to cancel yourself out. Thoughts flew from his brain uncontrollably, like olives steeped in oil slipping off a fork. Involuntarily he found himself, for the fifth time, raking through his knowledge of the Bible, trying to discover some distinctive trait of His that could be exploited for his own defence. There was no doubt whatsoever (this was a totally new experience for him) that the imposing apparition, which took up quite a large area of the room and hung in the air like a threatening cloud, was judging him and he was called upon to justify his actions. The gaze was so piercing it left him in no doubt at all. "Sadly," he conceded, "usually when God appears in the Bible it is to condemn and announce doom and destruction. I'll get round it by invoking His Son and His Mother... Then we'll see. Because it is really in Their name that I have acted. Maybe I did exaggerate a bit about the Marian cult, and perhaps I did draw the attention of the faithful away from worshipping Him, but He's bound to know I meant well. And if he doesn't, what about all that mercy God is supposed to have?" At that point light blazed from the triangular halo round God's head. Then God's thought became The Word and the sound was anything but pleasant: "What has my mercy got to do with it?" The Voice vibrated. It was only to be expected. God had obviously read the mind of His Holiness. "First and foremost I'm a judge and a judge will never be sufficiently unbiased if he does not put aside his feelings. Mercy - if there should be any - comes later." The Voice seemed to rise from the unplumbed recesses of outer space. His Holiness felt he was sinking ever deeper into the cold coffin of his mattress. He lay lifeless, horror-stricken. Those words were like grave-stones toppling over and crushing him. That peevish Voice would allow of no doubt, and more importantly it did not augur well. "Ah yes," he acknowledged. "It really is God's voice and is just the type of voice that the Eternal Father would have in the Old Testament: choleric and vindictive." He had no choice but to listen and ponder what he heard. What was so shocking was the language He used right from the start. His Holiness would never have imagined such a direct approach, which lacked the subtlety that after thousands of years of practice had been honed to a fine art by the Church. He was very uneasy. Here he was - the highest religious authority on earth! He, who was so used to the time-honoured tradition of veneration by millions of believers! He would have been offended if it hadn't been for the fact that He was That He was, and he would have had something to say about it - you could bet your life on it! But he was particularly annoyed when the Lord addressed him directly, without beating about the bush... "Holiness? Where did you get that title from? You've been plying truths or half truths which neither I nor my Son have ever condoned!" "Gracious Lord, Merciful Lord, Eternal Omnipotent and Immortal God..." squeaked His Holiness, searching desperately for some other laudatory epithet, but he was rudely interrupted. "Let's get things straight, your Holiness!" Thundered God. "Cut out all this pomp and circumstance and let's get down to basics." "Right-o," His Holiness ventured self-consciously. "What should I call Him? He hasn't told me!" He knew what great mystery surrounded His name. This was an ancient tradition based on the idea that if you knew God's name you had a hold over Him. That's why He was so jealous of it and never told it to anyone. He had mysteriously informed Moses, His confidant in a manner of speaking, that He should be called: I AM THAT I AM. "Now, if I am to address Him," His Holiness pondered for a moment, "what do I call Him? You art that You art? It sounds impertinent! And it's far too long!" He decided, more disconsolate than ever. "Just call me Eternal. The gods of Greek mythology were immortal and I don't want to be tarred with the same brush as them," He said, perceiving the Pope's difficulty. "Eternal or Immortal, what difference does it make?" Thought His Holiness, but persevered nonetheless. "Eternal he started, trying to get used to that unusual title and to pronounce it with due reverence. "All I have done is to continue in the line of those who have preceded me on the throne of Peter..." "Throne of Peter!" He exclaimed crossly, while the triangle glowing round His head sent out showers of sparks. "This is just another of the lies invented by the bishops of Rome. They knew everything about me and my Son... even things I don't know. But anyway, who appointed this Peter as head of what you call the church?" "Eternal," replied His Holiness, heartened by God's apparent forgetfulness, "it was Your Son himself. The investiture took place, as you will recall, on the road to Caesarea in Philip: Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Then he added: I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. This speech by your Son is recounted in full in the Gospel according to St Matthew, chapter XVI verse 18... On this verse the Church is founded." Satisfied by this show of knowledge, he went into more detail: "On the tambour of the cathedral of St Peter's these words are written in Latin, in letters six feet high, so that the eyes of the faithful of all the world can behold them..." "I suppose you want me to compliment you on your good memory! Don't think for a moment I don't know what really happened. You forget that the verse from Matthew does not tell the whole tale! Don't be a hypocrite, Holiness, you know full well that right from the start your predecessors edited the Scriptures adding, inventing and forging information to justify the institution of the papacy. Do you know how many studies have been made, within the church and without, to give substance to that statement which is only from the first gospel? An important point like this, to which you attribute the so-called investiture of Peter, would have been written of with much greater emphasis and in concert by all the evangelists and early Christian authors. Isn't that right? But in fact only Matthew speaks about it. The others say nothing. Mark, Luke, John, Paul even Peter himself say nothing, nor do the Fathers of the Church..." and he started to number them one by one on his fingertips: "Irenaeus, Polycarp, Eusebius, Cyprian, Origen," (He stopped because He had run out of fingers) "...and lots more..." he ended evasively. "No-one, and I mean no-one, knew that Peter was bishop of Rome or had ever been to Rome. In fact not even Peter himself knew about it." "But tradition has it that St Peter governed this Church for twenty-five years. It is known that he died in Rome in 64 AD during Nero's persecution, after being cast into the Mamertine prison, and he was buried near the first milestone of the Via Cornelia on the site where thirty years later Pope Anacletus built a small oratory," His Holiness pointed out. "This is a tradition set up by your church. Not by me or by history. No chronicle of the times has ever spoken of it. But that's not important. I don't need to explain the words of my Son, who knew how to say his mind. He meant faith when he spoke of the rock. It was Peter's faith that was called the rock, not his person. "Anyway, if the Church - but the Church my Son meant - had a founder, it was my Son himself, not Peter. On this point all the Councils have agreed, from Nicaea in the 4th century to Constance in the l5th. Don't tell me you don't know that!" He paused to reflect, then holding His Holiness in a penetrating gaze, He recommenced. "Don't say you can't remember the words which Matthew said, that followed the so-called investiture. My Son told Peter to go to hell in a phrase which is the greatest condemnation of a man you say is the Vicar of Christ: Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. What else should Jesus have said, eh?" His Holiness was aghast. He certainly knew the Scriptures well enough! Hardly surprising - He inspired them! Careful now, he had to watch what he said. Eternal was capable of incinerating him merely by raising His eyebrows. "Well, I suppose St Peter was a bit stubborn," he muttered, playing on His obvious dislike of the Galilean fisherman. "But if Your Son called him Peter it was deliberate... Obduratio capitis, he was not too bright was old Peter, was he? But if I may make so bold, on that occasion Jesus was a weeny bit strict with his First Apostle. In fact, very strict, if I may say so," he ventured bravely. "But it's just my impression, take it or leave it. Though He did give him the faculty of opening and closing, binding and loosing, and in my humble opinion that's a fact." "Get away with you! My Son gave His power to all His apostles indiscriminately. In one sense, but that is quite the opposite of the way your church has interpreted it. I don't intend justifying everything He did, because I would not have wanted any of them not even as vergers, but one thing is certain, and I'm sure you know this - the church has made a mockery of the meaning of His message and His deeds. It was done for no other reason than to justify boundless ambition and the thirst for temporal power. "The people who you ask to believe in me cannot tolerate any more of your hypocrisy and I agree with them. By frightening people with stories of the eternal punishment I would hand out to those who do not worship me you have generated a society of suckers, a flock of sheep. Yes, that's right. And that's what you call them, isn't it? If I had needed to be worshipped I certainly wouldn't have chosen man - the least successful of my creations! If I had really wanted perpetual adoration I would have used dogs, because - as we well know - they are the most faithful of creatures. Not like sheep, eh?" "Uhm... not really... well sort of... if You say so," muttered His Holiness in a state of confusion. "But Eternal," he added, seeking to appease, "I had nothing to do with those contrived interpretations by the Church; it was all done long before my time." "Undoubtedly. You are no worse than the others: you did not open or close, nor did you bind or loose any more than the others. As a matter of fact, what pontiffs usually opened were coffers of gold from all corners of the earth, and what pontiffs usually bound were the necks of their poor victims, which were rarely loosed. You merely deemed it fitting to perpetuate this policy of ambiguity, which has lasted for twenty centuries. You did this in my name and you passed off as holy stratagems whose sole object was personal gain - which is anything but holy. "I cannot forgive your hypocrisy. You are intelligent and know much more than the mass of simpletons you turn to, but you continue to lie just as the others did before you. By speaking of peace and love you betray those who listen to you. You, the authoritarian, denied freedom to Küng, Hunthausen, Curran, Boff, Sweeney, Schillebeeckx and Gaillot," He was counting on five fingers again, adding an imaginary sixth and seventh digit "you denied the truth which is nourished above all by freedom..." "Eternal," His Holiness looked down averting his eyes, "if I may say so again, everything had been done by the time I got there..." "Stop flogging this dead horse of everything had already been done, will you? Don't tell me you would have liked to do something better but couldn't? If it comes to that, you did do something. Something worthy of note." He said darkly. "I'm sorry, I didn't make myself clear," His Holiness apologised ingratiatingly. "I meant I only ever preached the eternal doctrine of the Church." "Eternal doctrine! And what might that be, pray?" "Well... the adoration of the Virgin Mary, loving your neighbour, charity... You know, the eternal doctrines." "Adoration of the Virgin Mary! Loving your neighbour! Charity...!" He interrupted peevishly. "What a cheek you've got! You seem to have forgotten that I know everything - not only what you think but what you don't think, before you even express it. You have only now acknowledged my existence and yet you think you can escape my omniscient mind..." "Certainly not, Eternal. How could I, miserable creature of Yours that I am?" Parried His Holiness with indomitable hypocrisy. "Ah yes, I was forgetting you are like all the rest. So corrupted by the perverted logic on which the church is founded to be virtually dead to the truth. You were alluding to the adoration of the Virgin Mary, pretending not to know how much the church has exaggerated and corrupted the meaning of the words which the Scriptures wrote about her. Needless to say, for the sole purpose of inventing new topics for religious debate in order to condition the minds of the faithful. The accounts in the gospel about Mary are irrefutable. All I authorised to distinguish her was the label blessed among women, because she was chosen to give birth to my Son." "Eternal, with respect... it was necessary to have a female figure to enshrine the ideal prerequisites of woman, you know - modesty, chastity, grace..." "The prerequisites which man presumes distinguish woman," thundered The Voice. "You, Eternal, if we have understood Your words correctly, set man above all things and above woman, whom You deemed to be a thing. There is evidence of this in the Tenth Commandment, inscribed in the stone by Your finger for Moses on Mount Horeb: Thou shalt not desire thy neighbour's wife, nor shalt thou covet thy neighbour's house, his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or any thing that is thy neighbour's. I know this bit by heart. "Woman is a chattel, but a step up from the ox and the ass. But still a chattel under man's orders, whether father, brothers or husband. So the ideal woman must be willing and humble. Paul confirmed this when he said that the man is the head of the woman, and that she was created in the image of man, and that women could not speak at gatherings, and so on. So it is man whom you set at the centre of creation. You even have the semblance of a man..." "This is one of the inscrutable mysteries of my mind that man cannot understand..." "Another mystery..." His Holiness noted, but again he did not dwell on it. "You see, You yourself say man..." he interrupted Him. "Man as mankind, as a collective noun, part of a whole," He muttered. "As far as woman is concerned, the incorrect interpretation of her person by your church caused all the aberrations of the Middle Ages. Female saints and witches are born of the same origin, deriving from one and the same phenomenon of ecstasy, which is both mystical and demoniacal. A fine thread binds them and the only difference is their loyalty: saints to me, witches to my Adversary. "You still wonder if Joan of Arc was a witch because you burnt her as a witch in 1431, or a saint because you proclaimed her one in 1920. What differences do you think there really are between the witch Bellezza Orsini and St Catherine of Siena? The delirium of their mystic marriages, their feverish unions with my Son or Satan spring from the same manic hypersensitivity. Columbae et striges, doves and barn owls: saints as spotless as doves and witches as ugly as owls: both have experienced the ecstasy, whether spiritual or heretical..." "What is He leading up to?" His Holiness wondered, and tried to appease Him by making suitable comments: "Going back to those times to understand the mentality, aspirations, anxieties is well nigh impossible. What is certain though, is that the reason for such deviation must be sought in social conditioning, in ignorance, poverty, the dread of sin or transport of grace. Those were the origins of magic, spells, enchantments, sorcery, possession by the devil and mystic infatuation. "Don't forget that this was a period when salt was used to protect people from the evil eye much more than for cooking. If saints and witches are both victims of conditioning and upbringing - which are often hysterical conditions, as is widely recognised - then tell me why the Church is responsible for this?" The apparition paused for an instant to collect His thoughts, then answered: "Those manifestations reflect the fact that the church, because of the morbid imagination of its inquisitors, set in stone the behaviour of a saint and a witch. These creatures are thus both victims of the same tortuous process set up by the church and are both worthy of compassion rather than veneration or condemnation. It is the church which, encouraging ignorance by using images of a vindictive God and a tempting Satan, contributed to spreading superstition... It is the church again which set the trend of the mystical exhilaration of female saints and the prostration of witches, the succubus of the devilish incubus." "How on earth can one convince millions of Frenchmen and Italians that their patron saints are more worthy of compassion than veneration!" Thought His Holiness, but he went on regardless: "As there was no central female figure in the New Testament, the Middle Ages fleshed out the rather sketchy image of the Virgin Mary. This was a good thing and can be justified because this historical period was very rough and ready. Courtly love and devotion blended and little by little came together to form the cult of the Virgin Mary. She became the ideal combination of humility and modesty that was supposed to typify the mediaeval lady. Thus it was only in an attempt to exalt woman, to make her angelic, as they used to say, that she was given the ideal image of Mary, woman par excellence, Mea Domina, who subsequently became the Madonna for all believers." "It is not up to you to justify things which only I can judge. And I can't justify them," He decided. "First and foremost I will not pardon the tireless search for terms to flatter her, nor loading her with privileges and virtues which I never gave her..." "Those privileges and virtues were for consolation and supplication. They originated from the faith of simple people, and are expressions of a basic creed... old-fashioned ideas really..." said His Holiness, trying to make amends. He was more perky now, since nothing awful had happened yet. "And what about those gross exaggerations of her role which followed, like Queen of the Martyrs, Patriarchs and Saints, Queen of the Sea, of the Heavens and other places besides, Mystic Rose, Morning Star, Mother of Heaven, Most Prudent Virgin(!), Virgin of Virgins, Ivory Tower and Tower of David? And your pictures of her! You depicted her as an Egyptian Isis breast-feeding her son, treading on serpents, crushing the world under her heel, without any restraint, with grotesque realism to the extent of seven daggers in her heart, usually silver ones on a black robe." He scratched his head and went on: "But why should I be surprised? You hung, drew and quartered my Son when you painted and sculpted Him with a bleeding heart or bristling with arrows like a porcupine. Without mentioning the praise, pilgrimages, feast-days and sanctuaries in honour of the Virgin Mary." He paused again, then continued relentlessly: "There are countless prayers to her and to the saints. The only prayers dedicated to me are Our Father (which was written by my Son) and St Francis' Canticle about the animals, which is a bit old by now. It is incredible how many sanctuaries there are dedicated to Mary and churches to saints and martyrs I haven't even heard of. You even erected one to someone called St Castrese. This chap knew he didn't exist as a saint so he never had the courage to show his face in heaven. Not one little chapel has been set up in my name!" "The Hebrews dedicated their temple in Jerusalem to You," His Holiness corrected Him. "The Hebrews!" He retorted indignantly. "The Temple was built by that black sheep Herod, who had the least Jewish blood in him of all Abraham's descendants... he was an Idumaean of the odious line of Esau, whom I have never been able to bear. And what's more," He said indignantly, "once it had been destroyed by Titus nothing was done about my Temple. All that is left is a bit of decaying wall where some kind Jews go to weep and pray, and risk being shot by some trigger-happy Philistine with a sub-machine gun..." "You mean Palestinian," His Holiness interjected. "It makes no difference: same name, same race, same alms," He growled. He stopped for a moment, in a fit of rage. "Let's leave well alone," He suggested, when He had quietened down. "But I have to say there is no excuse for the excesses of the Middle Ages and still less for the excesses that followed, which opened the way to the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, the brainchild of one of your predecessors Pius IX, then the Assumption (that was Pius XII) and finally Mary Mother of the Church... Mary Co-Redeemer... Who gave them permission?" This was no more than a rhetorical question as He got himself worked up again. "What effrontery... and it looks as though we haven't seen the end of such idiocy yet." "Mary's properties are all in the same mould, Eternal. What's so bad about that? The importance of... Your Mother... has always been stressed." "My mother?" He said, with huge eyes staring. "To be sure, you've even made her my mother!" "Well, yes. The Council of Ephesus in 431 AD adopted the name Theotokos for the Virgin Mary, or Deipara, Mother of God," His Holiness pointed out, whose language was rather technical by force of habit. "It was not dialectic alchemy on the part of the Council Fathers, but the fruit of consequential reasoning. The logic of it is extremely simple: if Mary is the Mother of Jesus and Jesus is God, then Mary is automatically Mother of God... Your Mother, in fact. This seems an entirely reasonable assumption," concluded His Holiness complacently. "An equation! I am the result of your mathematical calculations, am I? You reckon that I would have made Mary - a human being with all the weaknesses of her kind - my own mother! A living creature before the Creator? You have consistently misconstrued the issue and distorted my will. You have even corrupted the meaning of the words: Mary I intended to be full of grace, meaning comely in appearance, as the Greek word kecharitoméne signifies, and this was correctly used by the evangelists. But she has become full of heavenly graces for your lot, which I certainly never intended. "And I shall not waste time on all the intricate theories invented by those learned men about the complex issue of Mary's virginity, on her conceptio per aurem, whereby the Holy Spirit entered through her ear, or the other no less ridiculous tale of the conceptio per os, whereby the Holy Spirit entered through her mouth. You have presumed to uncover mysteries and establish the truth by yourselves. You have distorted, added and mutilated the teaching of the evangelists who - at least as far as this issue is concerned - show evidence of learning from me and have sufficiently clear ideas. Yet my Son was unequivocal about His mother's position: He didn't spare her His criticisms when it was necessary." He thought for a moment then explained: "Like at the wedding feast at Cana when He criticised her in front of all the guests. Another time, while He was preaching to the multitudes she came with His brethren to speak to Him. You will no doubt remember that with scant regard for His family, He stretched out His hand towards the disciples and said: This is my mother and my brethren. Whosoever does the will of my Father that is in heaven is my brother, my sister and my mother. He was speaking of me, you will notice, not of His earthly mother. As for Mary, it's quite clear that she did not understand Jesus very well if - as Luke says - she was astonished at His understanding." "Yes, but concerning the brethren, it is well known that the ones quoted in the Gospel were in fact His cousins and half-brothers, because they were born of a previous marriage between Joseph and a sister of Mary's called Mary." "How prodigious!" He said sarcastically. "Joseph is supposed to have married a sister of Mary who incidentally was also called Mary. The truth is that this is nothing but deviousness on the part of the church, and can be put down to those two brilliant gynaecologists Ambrose and Augustin who claimed to know (which I didn't) that Mary was a virgin before, during and after the birth (hence, I suppose, Most Prudent Virgin!). You will not have forgotten that, I'm sure. Naturally, as the earthly brothers of Jesus were expressly called sons of Mary you invented the story about Joseph being previously married to another Mary, and after her death, marrying her sister, the Virgin Mary. What poor imagination! "Paul wrote one indisputable truth: that my Son was born of woman. I believe her role is clear, and the biological relationship between her and Jesus. There is firm evidence in the Gospel that Mary had other sons and daughters by Joseph, and that Jesus was only the firstborn. It is written that Joseph knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son. I do not need to explain to you the significance of the biblical know, or the difference between firstborn and only son, now do I?" |
A weight,
like a sharp stone, had moved around his stomach all night long. He had lain there with
his hands pressed down on his belly, as bloated as a wineskin, and for hours had stared at
his night light, down at the entrance, impassively standing guard over his discomfort - so
unbecoming to His Holiness, so earthly. His eyes glowed like lanterns at that little
distant light and flickered with sudden fear at the thought that he might have been
poisoned. Since time immemorial, if a pope died suddenly it was put down to poison, though
this was not always the case.