by Robin Cook
“I’m actually pleased to be here,” Jack responded equally softly, even though with the music playing there would be little chance of being heard from the kitchen. “But I feel obligated to warn you that Shawn seems hell-bent on publishing this Virgin Mary story.
I’ve tried to help as you asked me, but I’m feeling less and less optimistic that he’ll even consider not publishing, and for a kind of scary reason. Well, two scary reasons, one more so than the other.”
“What are they?” James demanded, with a sinking feeling in his stomach.
“I think he’s beginning to believe that there is a religious component involved. Several times he’s alluded to the possibility that he has been singled out by the powers that be to bring what he considers this enlightenment to the world at large.” James’s eyes opened wide. “Are you saying that he’s beginning to believe he is acting as a kind of messenger of the Lord?” James exhaled through partially open lips. To him, such thinking smacked of blasphemy, if not mental illness. He’d seen it before with certain zealots, but he hardly considered Shawn a zealot. Either way, James did not consider it a positive sign, or even healthy. “What’s the other reason?”
“Just the one we’ve already mentioned, that he sees this whole affair as his crowning contribution to archaeology and firmly believes it is going to make him famous. That’s always been his number-one goal, and until now, he’d resigned himself to the fact that as an archaeologist he’d been born a hundred years too late to achieve such a status.”
“Nectar of the gods,” Shawn announced loudly, as he came in from the kitchen with a crystal goblet nearly filled with ruby-red claret. “Your Eminence,” he said with a bow, handing James the stemware.
“How gallant,” James remarked, taking the wine. After holding up the glass in the form of a toast to his two friends, he swirled the goblet, took a whiff of the wine’s full aroma, and then tasted it. “Truly the nectar of the gods,” he agreed.
At that point the three men took seats at the points of an equilateral triangle, with James and Shawn on opposite sides of the fireplace and Jack on the sofa directly in front.
“Is Sana going to join us?” James asked.
“I believe she will after finishing the final preparations for dinner. Or maybe she’ll just give a yell when all is ready.”
“James,” Jack said. “It’s great to see you in mufti. In my mind you look better in jeans, shirt, and sweater than those Renaissance prince costumes. They are too intimidating.”
“Here, here!” Shawn said in agreement, motioning with his scotch as if making a toast.
“If it were up to me, this is how I’d dress most every day!” James said, settling back into his club chair and putting his feet up on the hassock, pretending to be relaxed instead of as tense as he was. “So bring me up to date about the contents of the ossuary!”
“It is turning out to be better and better,” Shawn said, looking back and forth between the others. “I haven’t even told you yet, Jack, but I was able to unroll with great difficulty two pages of the first scroll of the Gospel of Simon, and it is terrific.
Unfortunately, at that pace it might take more than a month to do all three.”
“In what possible way is it terrific?” James asked, studying his cuticles as if not particularly interested.
Shawn sat forward, and the firelight sparkled off the surface of his eyes. “It was like being transported mystically back to the first century as a witness to the struggles of the early Church.”
“You could more effectively do that with Henry Chadwick, The Early Church, and with a good bit more confidence in the accuracy of the material,” James said, taking a sip of his wine.
“Not the same by any stretch of the imagination,” Shawn said. “I was hearing directly from a man who was there and believed himself to be intimately involved.”
“How so? By trying to buy Peter’s powers from the Holy Ghost?” James laughed.
“James, I already know your opinion about the ossuary and its contents,” Shawn gently chided. “But I think you should hear more. You’re not going to change my mind by mocking what we have learned so far before you have even heard it.”
“I think my role is to keep your feet on the ground,” James retorted. “My sense is that you are the one who is apt to jump to conclusions.”
“Perhaps I might need a reality check at some point, but surely not before you understand what we have already learned and what we will learn from the scrolls and the bones.”
“You’re right,” James agreed. “Let’s hear what you have supposedly learned so far.”
“The gospel starts out with what I’d call a bang,” Shawn said. “Simon describes himself as Simon of Samaria, to be sure the reader differentiates him from another relatively contemporary figure, Jesus of Nazareth.”
Despite having just moments earlier resigned himself to be polite while Shawn talked, James burst out laughing. “You mean to tell me that Simon, in a sense, in his own gospel, is putting himself on equal or better footing than Jesus of Nazareth?”
“I am indeed,” Shawn said. “Simon, with obvious reverence, gives Jesus of Nazareth full credit for being the logos, or word, and for having been the redeemer in relation to sin, particularly original sin, but he also says of himself that he is gnosis, or knowledge, the great power, who has come to bring knowledge of truth and in that way supersedes Jesus just as he believed Jesus superseded the Temple and the Laws of Moses.”
“So Simon writes that he is divine?” James questioned, a wry, mocking smile of disbelief still on his face.
“Not in the same sense as Jesus of Nazareth,” Shawn continued. “I have to let you take a long look at the text and see for yourself when it is totally unrolled and fully protected under glass. Simon believed, like other Gnostics, that he had a divine spark because he’d been blessed with gnosis, or special knowledge.”
“This is early Christian Gnosticism,” James said for Jack’s benefit.
“Absolutely,” Shawn stated, now smiling himself. “It seems that Simon was perhaps the first Christian Gnostic, which is why Basilides was so eager to ask Saturninus about his master. Simon goes on to say that the violent Jewish god who created the world was not the same god as the Father of Jesus of Nazareth, who is the true God, the perfect God who has had nothing to do with the vastly imperfect and dangerous physical world.”
“So, Simon was then an early Platonist eschewing his Jewish roots.”
“Exactly,” Shawn said, still smiling. “Simon was more Paul than Peter; some thought he had more in common with Peter in his early life as far as we know, since he grew up in less-than-prosperous surroundings in Samaria, while Peter did the same in neighboring Galilee. Anyway, I find all this fascinating, and I’ve unrolled only two pages. What I find so fascinating is Simon’s idea of adding to Jesus of Nazareth’s mission, giving Jesus the credit for doing the redeeming about sin, while he, Simon, would take on the issue of knowledge. What I’m wondering is whether Simon in his gospel, when I get it completely unrolled and translated, might actually redeem himself from being the convenient whipping boy down through the ages.”
“I sincerely doubt that,” James said. The last thing James wanted at this point was for Simon Magus to redeem himself. “His perfidy is canonical and unchangeable, and certainly not by something he might have written himself.”
“Dinner, everybody,” Sana said, coming in from the kitchen and sipping a glass of wine.
The men struggled to their feet, and while Shawn tossed a couple of logs on the fire to keep it going, James and Jack followed Sana to the very back of the house, where there was a dining table in an attached greenhouse-like structure. “This ossuary mess keeps getting worse,” James mumbled to Jack, when he and Jack were sitting and when he knew neither Shawn nor Sana could hear.
Jack nodded, but from his perspective it was the opposite, although he did not let on to James, whom he could tell was clearly more anxious now than when he’d ar
rived.
A few minutes later they were all seated, and Shawn asked James for a blessing, which he was happy to provide. It was a pleasant setting, and both James and Jack commented that one would never know they were in the middle of the West Village in New York City, as quiet as it was. There was not a single siren in the distance. Shawn had switched on a group of lights that illuminated their carefully planned and enchantingly serene Japanese garden bordered by a rough-hewn cedar fence. Nothing of the enormity of New York was even vaguely visible.
“A toast to our hostess!” Jack said, lifting his wine goblet and nodding toward Sana at the right end of the table. Shawn was at the left end and James directly across. In front of each person was a plate of grilled meat with a curiously orange-colored, pungent-smelling sauce, couscous with slivered almonds, and an artichoke with a vinaigrette dip.
“We’re eating lamb loin with Indian spices,” Sana announced. “Unfortunately, the lamb got to marinate for only slightly less than two hours, whereas the minimum is supposed to be a full two hours, but I did the best I could with the time I had after getting my samples into the incubator to dry overnight.”
“I assume you are trying to obtain DNA from the ossuary bones?” James asked. With the idea the bones might be those of the Blessed Virgin, albeit a very slim chance, James felt unease about trying to isolate DNA, without knowing why he felt that way. He imagined it was a privacy issue about someone he held inordinately dear.
“That’s correct,” Sana responded. “But our current attempt is from a tooth, not from bone.”
“Is that a lengthy process?” James inquired.
“Not if we’re lucky,” Sana answered. “It should take only a few days, although maybe as much as a week. I’d rather be careful than quick. There’s lots of opportunity for DNA contamination, which I’m intent to avoid.”
“What about the bones?” James asked. “What did you learn from the anthropologist?
Are they human? Are they female? Is it more than one person?”
“Yes, yes, and no,” Shawn responded. “They are definitely human, without doubt female, and it is only one person.”
“And there is a suggestion the individual was multiparous,” Jack added. “In fact, significantly multiparous, like more than five, maybe even up to a dozen children.” James felt his pulse hammer at his temples and for a moment he was overheated, thinking of removing his sweater. After taking a sip of wine to relieve his suddenly parched throat, he asked, “What about the age of the individual?”
“That’s difficult to ascertain, but the anthropologist was willing to guess over fifty, probably more like eighty-plus.”
“I see,” James said simply. Doing a quick calculation in his head, he realized with yet another start that such an age would have been entirely appropriate for the Blessed Mother, considering Jesus’ birth around 4 BC and her death in AD 62. She would have been in her eighties.
James felt his general anxiety rising. Although he knew everything he was hearing was only circumstantial, he feared that such evidence could not help but harden Shawn’s opinion, making James’s job that much more difficult. It also suggested to him that he could not wait any longer. He had to state his case; otherwise, he would have to resort to plan B. Of course, the big problem with plan B was that there was no plan B.
With a shaking hand that he tried to hide, James took a fairly large mouthful of wine, savoring the taste, which was absolutely heavenly. Slowly he swallowed, bit by bit.
Then, sitting up straighter in his chair, he began, first by thanking his hostess.
“This has been the best dinner I’ve had since I can remember,” James said, looking to his left at Sana. “It has the most exquisite flavors and aromas, and strikingly tasty meat prepared perfectly. I salute you, young lady.” James raised his glass, and Shawn and Jack followed suit. Then, turning to Shawn, he again held up his glass. “Adding to this fine dinner has been this superb wine, which I pray did not require mortgaging the house.”
Shawn rocked forward and chortled appreciatively. “It’s been worth every penny to celebrate your birthday, which when we were in college always seemed to come at the most opportune time as an excuse to party rather than study, and to celebrate our favorite ossuary and the promise it has brought. Cheers!”
Everyone took a drink of their extraordinary wine.
“But now I must turn the conversation over to a more serious matter,” James said, looking to his right and engaging Shawn directly. “I can appreciate your excitement about the contents of the ossuary, but I must, I’m afraid, tamp your enthusiasm down a significant degree, as eventually you will come to realize as I mentioned back at the residence that this whole affair is all an elaborate fake, promulgated apparently by this mysterious Saturninus. After giving the affair considerable thought and prayer, I am even more certain this is the case. Why this individual did what he did I have no idea, nor do I care to know, for it is the work of Satan himself. Perhaps he had some personal grudge against the developing Church, most likely from the Church’s appropriate condemnation of the Gnostic heresy, which I understand his letter supports. At the same time, perhaps he was prescient about the future role of Mary as the single most important symbol of Catholic spirituality and faith, and the fact that a huge number of current-day Catho lics consider praying to her as an extraordinary aid in the search for personal holiness. Popes have always highlighted the close connection between Mary and the total acquiescence of Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of God. The Church is the people of God, and she is the Body of Christ. And for women, in general, she is the redemptrist for the sins of Eve. As much as Eve turned away from God, Mary accepted His wishes without question and bore His Son in perpetual virginity.”
“How can you possibly declare this affair a fake at this early stage of investigation?” Shawn shouted, after pounding the table hard enough for the dishes and flatware to jump noisily.
“Faith, my son,” James said authoritatively, holding up one hand like a policeman stopping traffic. “By the Holy Spirit working both through the body of the Church as sensus fidelium and through the hierarchy, particularly the pope, through sacred magisterium.”
Shawn threw his hands above his head and glanced at Jack while mockingly rolling his eyes. “Can you believe this guy? Now he’s trying to add Latin to confuse and impress me as a way of having a debate. It’s college all over again. And do you know where he is going with this? He’s going to the infallibility argument, the same one we had in college.
Certain things never change!”
Shawn redirected his attention back to James, who was still holding up his hand like a traffic cop. “Am I right, lardo? Isn’t this about to dissolve into our old argument about papal infallibility such that when he speaks ex cathedra, meaning from the his official position as Bishop of Rome and head of the Church, on matters of faith or morals he is infallible? Isn’t that what this discussion is coming down to?”
“Let me finish my major point before we get sidetracked,” James said, forcing himself to stay calm in the face of Shawn’s impertinence. “The fact of the matter is this: Any publication about the contents of the ossuary and the Blessed Virgin, the Mother of the Church, the Mother of God, according to the patriarch Cyril of Alexandria and the founder of the study of Mariology, and the Mediatrix Extraordinaire, according to Bernard of Clairvaux, will do irreparable harm to the Church in this regrettable era of low clerical authority stemming from the child-molestation crisis. Hundreds of thousands of people will have their faith challenged unreasonably. The celibacy issue, already being challenged, will be further challenged; priestly numbers will drop beyond their critical numbers today. I have over ten parishes under my authority of the Archdiocese of New York without a pastor. I don’t have enough priests as it is!”
“That’s not my problem,” Shawn snapped. “It’s the Church’s fault. They have to come out of the Dark Ages and stop painting themselves into the corner by relying on this infallibility issue ra
ther than dealing with fact. It’s like the Galileo affair all over again.”
“That affair was not about papal infallibility.”
“Well, you could have fooled me. Galileo was tried for heresy because with his telescope he proved Copernicus’s heliocentric theory to be correct, whereas Church dogma said the Earth was the center.”
“It was an issue of sacred magisterium and sensus fidelium but not papal infallibility,” James snapped back.
“Whatever,” Shawn flaunted. “It was an inexcusable disregard of fact and truth.”
“That’s your opinion.”
“Of course it’s my opinion!”
“Episodes like the Galileo affair have to be viewed in the context of the time at which they occurred.”
“I don’t think fact and truth are contingent on time,” Shawn stated, interrupting James.
His words were becoming progressively slurred from the scotch and wine, as he had started drinking before Jack and then James had arrived. “Does anyone else here besides James believe such a thing?”
Shawn glanced at both Sana and Jack and swayed slightly in the process, but neither responded. Neither wanted to take sides in an argument that clearly was not yet over, and by participating, someone’s feelings would get hurt.
“Would you please let me finish?” James demanded of Shawn.
Shawn made a spectacle of spreading his hands widely, giving James free rein to say what he wanted.
“Publishing an article about the ossuary bones being those of the Virgin Mary, therefore directly contradicting Munificentissimus Deus, Pope Pius the Twelfth’s 1950 infallible declaration regarding the Assumption of Mary, not only would have a devastating effect on the Church by undermining both the reputation of the Virgin Mary and clerical authority, but I fully believe it will have an equivalent effect on my career. As the issue is investigated, as it undoubtedly will be, it will soon come to light that it was my intervention with the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology that provided you, Shawn, access to the necropolis, which made it possible for you to steal the ossuary, which is what you have done.”
