Simon’s column had been translated into English and picked up by some online religious news services, and William’s Opus Dei adviser, Mike O’Malley, had called him to rant about it. William didn’t know what to say when O’Malley suggested he’d better get Simon to tone it down. He mumbled something about the tension these days in Rome and the Church after acquiescing that some people do go too far. Reading the column had thrown William into his spinning mental cage, which always caused a sleepless night. I fear the wholesale abandonment of the Church by Catholics. My daughter did it, and even I think about leaving. The rumor is the Third Fatima Prophecy says the Church will fall, fall like a house of cards. Maybe Ratzinger is a mess and Cardinal Bertone went nuts because they know the game is up? What will happen to the world if the faith is gone?
He poured another heavy slug of Scotch, thinking about the richness of the faith when he was young. If only they’d just give us an occasional benediction with chanting, the censer swaying back and forth, wafting the church with delicious aromas. Why did the Church let it all go—Latin mass, serious Confession, and pious priests and bishops? Why? Ratzinger tried to bring back the old ways and look what a mess everything is now. He tried living in a cave while the modern world rolled along; I did too. Come on, William,’ fess up, he said to himself. You know what they did to you, did to a lot of kids. Get your head out of the sand!
And what in hell is all this end-of-the world shit? he thought while staring at a “Doonesbury” cartoon strip that made fun of the Mayan Calendar. Yeah, Trudeau is making a joke but why pay any attention at all? Here I sit here in my old and decrepit library filled with boring theological books. What could be worse than reading Aquinas, Chenu, and Lonergan? Maybe my world is ending? What the hell! He slugged down a big gulp of Scotch, almost choking. What if people stop growing and changing? Ratzinger has stayed completely the same, and look what a disaster that’s been. What was the butler squealing about, anyway?
William leaned forward in his seat and slammed down his Scotch glass rather loudly for three in the morning. He said in a loud voice, “No more Mayan Calendar!” and then sat there staring out into space. Damn, maybe smart-assed Simon is on to something. Maybe the only way out at this juncture is to laugh! I mean, really, it is funny! Garry Trudeau, another sassy smartass, is right! It is a joke! The damned pope dresses up like a pole dancer in a gay bar while his butler vomits insider politics in the curia. Why does the pope have a pretty boy who ties his shoes after spoon-feeding him the daily news? Even I was embarrassed when Vanity Fair satirized Georg Ganswein calling him “Gorgeous Georg.” Maybe there is something going on between the sheets? But Simon forgets that popes are infallible. What if this pope isn’t infallible? What if the pope is just as much of an ass-hole as I am?
He was about to get all bummed out, but there was still some holy Scotch in the decanter. So he poured it out and took out Simon’s article again. So Innocent X was tired of Olimpia and he incarcerated her. Simon hints that this is what happened to the leaky butler. Simon also hints at a gay underworld, which for me is an issue because gay priests have to hide, which makes them more prone to blackmail. Huh! What if the pope is getting blackmailed because he’s gay? Well, if that’s true then he might’ve covered up for all the abusers! His thoughts were beginning to blur from all the Scotch. Rule number one: we’re in it together and nobody gets caught no matter what they do, same thing as any Boston contractor. That’s the attitude that got me gored.
“You know what,” he said aloud as he raised his glass up to Jesus on the cross. “You know what, Jesus? You gotta come down before it’s too late. As long as they keep you up there, none of them get crucified, but they’re the ones that oughtta get nailed up, not me, not Jesus!” William stumbled up the stairs and fell onto bed in the guest bedroom, his favorite place to sleep when he stayed up too late.
PART THREE
The End of the Mayan Calendar
35
The Pope Resigns!
For Simon and Sarah, January 2013 in Rome shot by like a grouse flushed out of its nest, never to return. February was nearly half gone when Sarah curled up by the fire one night, reflecting. Simon was out on Vatican watch; he sensed something big was brewing. The 2012 Christmas season had been like a game of musical chairs when the music stops: who would be the one who can’t get a seat? I wonder whether the obsession with the end of the Mayan Calendar has made us all crazy, especially me? Sarah wondered. She’d come down with a nasty flu right after Christmas, suffering horrific backaches and a fever. Maybe being sick is what made everything seem so peculiar? She tried to recall that strange visit from Claudia, who had come to bring soup and good cheer just after Christmas while Sarah had lain aching and feverish in bed. She tried to listen to Simon and Claudia talking in the kitchen, but she couldn’t register what they were saying. Later Simon had told her Claudia believed Armando had changed in some way, that Claudia thought he was getting honest with himself. Of course Simon had also said, “So what? As far as I’m concerned, he can sling his Italian ass up a tree.”
Outside, the winter light was translucent and silvery as she thought about Armando. I can imagine him changing, but I wonder what ever got him to do it? Sarah wanted to know how evil got into the world, and knowing him was the closest she’d ever come to an encounter with a demon. She wondered if she’d even gotten the flu from listening to Claudia’s ugly story. Regardless of what Simon thought, she wanted to know if Armando had really changed. She wasn’t sure if a person could change that drastically so quickly. Yet at the same time she felt everything was in limbo and on the verge of great change.
Simon had been extremely excited during the last few weeks. It looked as if some truth might be breaking through, since accusations by victims of priestly abuse were creating a tidal wave of expensive lawsuits. Wild rumors about the Vatican flooded the Roman media. The pope’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, had finally been tried for “Vatileaks,” for leaking information to Gianluigi Nizzi for his book Your Holiness: The Secret Papers of XVI. The Tribunal convicted him, since he admitted he leaked information to Nuzzi. His lawyer said the butler had done it because he wanted to help the pope “root out evil in the heart of the Church,” which fanned the flames even higher. The Vatican hoped a swift trial would quell the ferocious media pressure, but instead it whipped up a bigger frenzy with everybody wanting to know what was going on behind closed doors. Something has definitely shifted, Sarah thought. Even though Georg Ganswein is always with the pope, Gabriele and Nuzzi got some truth out; now everybody wants more, more. The pressure on Benedict must be incredible!
The unfolding of this historic crisis in Rome made Sarah’s work on her thesis about Marcion feel urgent. People were now refusing to tolerate corruption and evil in the hierarchy. It was one thing for a politician like Silvio Berlusconi to rob the public and be sexually profligate and get caught, but such behavior was unforgivable in the clergy. Sitting down with Simon for dinner after a long day of writing, Sarah said, “I think something is going to break that will change everything; I can feel it in the air.”
“Yeah, me too,” Simon responded. “This city is about to explode! The pope’s mask has been torn away. His ridiculous liturgical pomposity draws too much attention. People wonder whether a paranoid, self-obsessed demon is leading the flock. Did you know this pope is totally obsessed with his liturgical apparel? He is a fop pruned to perfection every day by pretty boy Monsignor Ganswein, who pours wine in his glass to please him. You know, Sarah, his demonic shadow taunts the public!” His bizarre self-deification is going to crash the hierarchy; the rumor is nobody knows how to stop him! They are stuck with the tradition—he must continue until he dies.”
Simon’s comment was prophetic. He left right after breakfast the next morning, February 11, to go to the Vatican courtroom at Santa Marta Square in the center of the Vatican to write a good description of its paneled rooms. That was his excuse, but actually something drew him irresistibly to the Vatican. As he s
at in the courtroom tapping away on his laptop, he noticed some extra commotion in the hallway. He rushed to the door and saw a group of cardinals moving in a tight huddle. He could tell right away that something was very wrong. The men’s faces were pale, their lips compressed. No one spoke at all. Did the pope die?
As the morning passed, he noticed increased activity around him, guards and messengers rushing around with nervous eyes. He laid low, afraid someone would kick him out, not even leaving for lunch in the fear that he wouldn’t be let back in. Finally, late that afternoon, he saw one messenger he knew hurrying past, a young priest named Giancarlo who’d often served as an anonymous source in the past. Simon caught Giancarlo’s eye and motioned him to a secluded corner.
Giancarlo looked around to make sure no one was watching and followed him.
“What’s going on?” Simon asked in Italian. “I can tell something has happened.”
Despite his olive skin, Giancarlo looked pale and thoroughly shaken. “I do not know for sure, Simon,” he murmured in heavily accented English. “And it is nothing I can talk about. It is bad, very bad.”
Simon had to know now.
“Not for a story, then. Just for me,” he pleaded. “I won’t write about it yet. Just tell me. You know you can trust me.”
Giancarlo hesitated, but the truth was he wanted to tell someone the shocking news. “I do not know for sure, but I heard that in the morning meeting with the cardinals, the pope announced that he was going to resign.”
Simon’s mouth dropped open. Whatever he’d expected, that wasn’t it. He wasn’t aware of any pope ever resigning. You were pope until the day you died.
“Because of the scandals?” he asked.
“No, for health. His heart is not so good,” said Giancarlo. He cast another look around. “I have to go, Simon. Remember your promise!”
Simon walked out of the building in a fog. What in the world? As he was walking across St. Peter’s Square trying to process this information, people started shouting and pointing their fingers and cameras. He looked back at the Basilica’s dome, and right at that moment a huge bolt of lightning came down from high and struck it. My god, what is going on?
Simon hurried home and told Sarah what he had just found out. She shared his shock and they speculated on the reasons for Benedict’s decision. He kept his promise to Giancarlo not to write about it beforehand, but he was at the paper first thing in the morning as soon as the official statement came out with a draft he’d written the night before. The official story in L’Osservatore Romano was that Benedict was stepping down on February 28 due to poor health. Simon didn’t buy the health excuse for a second. He’d been following rumors that European powers had been considering taking criminal action against the pope for crimes against humanity and criminal conspiracy. He hadn’t taken it seriously before, but just last week he’d heard Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone was informed about a coming arrest warrant, and even that the pope had gotten a warrant and ignored it. Suddenly these stories had a lot more credibility.
Simon had researched it the night before: Benedict was only the second pope to resign in two thousand years, the last one being Pope Celestine V eight hundred years ago. Celestine had been an odd duck, a hermit who was in office for only five months. Benedict’s sudden resignation was much more significant, since he was the grand inquisitor for so many years before he became pope. He was a very powerful and sinister figure.
“I wonder what my father will think about this?” Sarah broke in as she combed through the paper. Even more interesting to Simon was that Benedict planned to return to the Vatican after a new pope was elected to live in a refurbished nunnery at the end of the Vatican gardens. That meant two popes would be in the Vatican at the same time. How could two popes both be infallible? Simon announced, “This will end up being the death of papal infallibility and the descent of power through the Petrine line no matter what kind of spin the Vatican puts on it. Would Ratzinger hang around to protect some kind of power thread that must be kept secret? Or if it was true that he was subpoenaed by a global legal entity, perhaps nobody could touch him as long as he stayed in the Vatican? Simon suspected that Benedict would go right back to his old role of being the bad guy in seclusion while the good guy—the next pope—played Mr. Nice Guy to mind-control the faithful. A new pope polished up like Eve’s apple, yet it would be the same old game. He predicted next the cardinals would choose a friendly cover-up pope who will give the people permission to keep sucking on the mother tit, but with the same old rot going on in the rectory.
Since he’d had all night to think about it, Simon filed his story in record time and headed home to Sarah. He found her paging through the official story in L’Osservatore Romano and joined her at the little table.
“I still can’t believe this!” she said. “Two popes?”
“I know,” he said. “I still can’t get the image of the lightning bolt striking the Basilica out of my head. You know, when you had the flu, Claudia and I talked for hours. She mostly wanted to tell how she believes Armando has changed. I couldn’t care less about that; however, she brought up a subject with me for the second time that I shot down last year—the idea of a midline going through Rome that the Vatican uses to control the world. Now I’m reconsidering what she told me. I tell you, Sarah, that lightning bolt was the kind of huge bolt that strikes ungrounded power stations. Also, there must have been another bolt that preceded the one I saw because the crowd in the piazza was pointing at the dome just before I turned to look. There must be some kind of fantastic power under the Vatican that discharged that day. Otherwise, I don’t see how a thick bolt like that could occur. Claudia explained again the recent scientific discoveries about her midline theory, about the midline creating some kind of telluric force, possibly plasma discharges from discontinuities between the spin of the Earth’s core and the middle tectonic region.”
Sarah got up to pour Simon a cup of coffee as he continued. “I have been watching the Church for many years and as we’ve talked about, I think they generate evil energy. The clerics who get possessed by it aren’t even aware of what they’re doing because this force is just below the threshold of their conscious minds, like a weird atavistic shadow. Now I’m more open to Claudia’s idea that human sexual energy charges deep earth forces that also link us to higher dimensions. What else explains an institution located in Rome that drives incessant global rituals and the systemic culling of sexual energy?”
Sarah put the cup in front of Simon and sat back down. “Claudia and I have discussed this midline idea, and it always rang true for me although I don’t understand it scientifically. In my own research I seek that boundary where evil penetrates the world and grabs people, the forces that obsessed the Gnostics. I think the greatest thing any one of us could do is to help redeem a person like Armando or abuser priests. If Armando has actually changed, he may know more about that boundary than any of us do. I bet he knows why he crossed that edge and how he found his way back. I think reaching out to a person who needs to draw away from evil is more important than my thesis or any article you could write.”
Simon shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about Armando after what he did to you. I’m not ready to hear about him; I probably will never be able to deal with him. But what I strongly disagree with is your statement that the redemption of one person is more important that the collective corruption you and I are exposing. Redemption can’t happen unless people understand why they do evil things.”
Sarah started to break in, but Simon held up his hand.
“Let me finish,” he said, his voice annoyed. “Nobody can change anything—themselves or corrupt institutions—without mentally comprehending why they are the way they are. Screw Armando; I think you don’t realize how important your own thesis is! You have found a central wrong turn nineteen hundred years ago when the great redeemer—Jesus Christ—was derailed. Marcion was right, and nothing is going to make sense until people understand how and why they
lost the great teacher they awaited for thousands of years. You were right, Sarah,” he said, gazing at her proudly.
“Yahweh triumphed,” Simon continued. “And now he’s seated on the Bernini throne in the Vatican. It is all about layers: Jewish wisdom and social justice were corrupted and defiled by the Christian overlay; the pure love teaching of Jesus was adulterated by attaching him to the old god; and Islam fractured into opposing sides because it was influenced by Judeo-Christian dualism. Each religion has beautiful wisdom and truth. But they haven’t been able to share their knowledge non-violently because their essential elements are polluted by alien ideas. That’s why your work matters so much! These days mystic Jews offer their wisdom by reviving the Kabbalah, Sufis invoke pure light, so now Christianity must reclaim Christ’s love and compassion. The world’s people can’t stand the inner tension, emotional pain, mental confusion, and spiritual angst in the major religions; they will abandon faith unless it liberates them.
“Claudia says she thinks the midline influence may have changed in some way on December 21. After seeing that lightning bolt, I wonder if she is right. She thinks the Maya knew this would happen. When a pope resigns and plans to reside under the wing of the next one, Catholic global control is over, just plain over. Nothing is going to be the same ever again.” He took a deep breath. “Okay, I’m finished.”
Sarah took his hand. “I’m not, Simon. Everything has changed for us! We’re going to have a child, the next generation to come and enjoy Earth’s beauty. This child will grow up in a world that’s throwing off the control of evil forces. Our child will begin in freedom and be a liberator. Your trust in my work enables me to go on, and soon we will be three seeking transcendence and joy!”
Revelations of the Ruby Crystal Page 37
