The Third Revelation

by Ralph McInerny

  “And now you’ve come to confession.”

  “I’m going to change.”

  “I couldn’t give you absolution otherwise.”

  For his penance he was to say the rosary every day for a week. Laura had got one for him, the first day he returned to the office. “Yes, Father.”

  “Now thank God for the grace of this confession.”

  When he went into the church and knelt it was with the feeling that scales had fallen from his eyes. He looked at the altar, at the sanctuary light flickering there. God had made him rich, and now he would use his wealth to honor God. And Mary his Blessed Mother.

  It was then that he resolved to put the bulk of his fortune into a foundation, the Refuge of Sinners Foundation. Who would run it? He couldn’t spare Ray or Laura. He prayed that he would find the right person as director, then flew home.

  II

  “What do they pay you?”

  Ignatius Hannan was wearing jeans, loafers, and a Notre Dame sweatshirt when Laura ushered her brother John and Father Crowe into his office. The loafers were propped on the waste-basket: he sat deep in his chair, his face in his hands, facing the window through which the grotto was visible. A contemplative moment. When he sat up and swung toward them, Laura was almost relieved that he didn’t have a rosary in his hands.

  “The Roman delegation,” she announced.

  Immediately, he was on his feet and rounding the desk, and on his face was the great smile he reserved for competitors whose company he intended to buy.

  “Welcome to Empedocles!”

  Brendan Crowe smiled, although he would have seen the name of the enterprise any number of times during the drive up the private road to the administration building.

  “I suppose you would like wine?”

  It was midmorning. Laura intervened, offering coffee, mineral water, a soft drink. Coffee it was, and soon they were all seated at the big table in the conference room and Nate was telling his clerical guests about his new dream. Refuge of Sinners.

  “A rest home?” Crowe asked. He had the look of someone trying to get used to aliens from another planet.

  Hannan looked at him. “It does suggest that, doesn’t it? I am open to other names for it.”

  John asked what the aim was, and Nate was once more in full flight. Enthusiasm is contagious, but the enthusiasm of Ignatius Hannan was in a league by itself. Laura watched the wariness fade from Crowe’s face. John of course was easily won, but it was important that Crowe be sympathetic.

  John had faxed ahead the preliminary list of paintings that Crowe had drawn up, including subject, artist, current location.

  “No prices?” Nate had asked.

  “They’re all in museums.”

  Nate asked, “Don’t museums buy their stuff?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Then they’ll sell it,” Nate said.

  Laura wasn’t going to argue with him. She had some sense of the lack of realism in Nate’s assumption that whatever he wanted was for sale and he could afford to buy it.

  “A kind of museum?” Crowe asked.

  Nate frowned. “It’s what they represent, mysteries of the rosary. I want Refuge of Sinners—assuming we keep that name—to sell devotion to the Blessed Virgin with every marketing technique available. I have several people at work designing a building. What do you think of our present buildings?”

  “Very impressive.”

  “ ‘Monuments to mediocrity.’ Duncan Stroik told me that.”

  Laura had been there when the young Notre Dame architect made this dismissive judgment. She had feared that Nate would undo the young man’s bow tie and drape it over his ears.

  “He’s right,” Nate said now. “I want something different, a building appropriate to the purpose of the foundation.”

  The luncheon that eventually followed was also dominated by Nate, and the two priests were beginning to show strain. Whether it was ESP or simply belatedly remembered courtesy, Nate suddenly switched gears.

  “Father Crowe, tell me what you do?”

  He wanted a job description, and he got it, low key, self-deprecatory, but in a tone that conveyed to Nate that he was listening to a man who spoke with authority.

  “I liked the list you made out.”

  “Anyone could have done that.”

  John protested. He seemed worried that Crowe would be taken on his own self-effacing description. “Father Crowe is second in command in the Vatican Library and head of the archives as well. He will very likely succeed Cardinal Maguire as prefect.”

  “Good Lord, John,” Crowe said.

  “It’s true.”

  “What do they pay you?” Nate asked.

  Silence fell. Crowe hadn’t gotten much opportunity to speak before this, but now he was rendered speechless. He looked at John. John looked at him. In that setting, in the atmosphere of Empedocles where worth and wealth were two names for the same quality, the two men were nonetheless astounded by the directness of the question.

  “Don’t answer,” Nate said, holding up a hand. “Whatever it is, I’ll multiply it by as many factors as you wish.”

  “Nate,” Laura pleaded. “Father Crowe is not looking for a job.”

  “That’s why he’s the man for the job.”

  In preliminary conversations, once they knew John was bringing Father Crowe with him, Ray had made the point that the Vatican librarian would doubtless be able to suggest names for the new post of forming and developing Refuge of Sinners. It had never entered Laura’s mind that Nate would actually offer the job to Crowe. What wasn’t surprising was that he assumed a large enough salary would overcome any reluctance.

  “Father Crowe could act as a consultant,” John said. “You could do that, couldn’t you, Brendan?”

  Crowe tried to laugh away this onslaught, he tried being serious, he tried everything, and Laura could see that he was flattered. And weakening. Of course, he couldn’t be expected to pull up his roots in the Vatican and relocate to New England, but the role of senior consultant would not entail that.

  “You could fly in every other week,” Nate said. “You can keep an eye on things here from there. We’ll provide state of the art access and make that easy.”

  Laura was instructed to draw up a memo indicating the current planning on the project. Planning? There had been effusions from Nate, excited and disconnected thoughts that might be considered the elements of what he was proposing to Brendan Crowe. Nate took Crowe out to the see the grotto, and Laura turned to John.

  “Did I hear him agree, John?”

  “He didn’t say no.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I feel I’ve been witnessing a seduction.”

  Through the course of the day, it was obvious that Brendan Crowe had an effect on Nate. It did take persuasion to get him away from the idea that he could simply buy up the list of paintings Crowe had prepared.

  “But I know I’ve seen several of these.”

  “In books.”

  “On walls.”

  “Reproductions. Copies.”

  “They look real enough to me.”

  “They’re real enough. They’re just not the originals. Nowadays it’s almost impossible to tell the difference.”

  And so emerged the idea that the new foundation would commission reproductions of the great works of art on Brendan Crowe’s list. Crowe assured him that this would entail a healthy expenditure, and the deal was done. Brendan Crowe had already earned his title of chief consultant.

  III

  Hannan liked the little lecture on Thomas Aquinas.

  Brendan Crowe felt that he had been taken to the pinnacle of the temple and shown all the good things of the world, good things that could all be his if only he would bend his will to that of Ignatius Hannan. When the exuberant tycoon rose from his knees at the grotto, he turned to the man he hoped he had gotten to join his team and said, “What do you think of it?”

  He meant the grotto. Brendan found
words to express his admiration for the exact replica. Americans were more amazing than he had thought. Hadn’t one of the Rockefellers transported a medieval monastery stone by stone from Europe to New York? Hadn’t the London Bridge been brought to Texas?

  “It’s more accurate than the one at Notre Dame,” Hannan said, admiring what he had wrought.

  Crowe had no words for that.

  “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

  “Why would I think a thing like that?”

  “Father, the only sure way to learn that money isn’t the answer is to have it. I have it. More than I myself know. Of course my value fluctuates all the time, but it is a rising line. Where does it lead? How much more will be enough?”

  Crowe, who for the first time in his life was in a position where he had only to reach out his hand and have things he had never really wanted before, nodded. “Saint Thomas Aquinas says much the same thing.”

  “Tell me about it. Come, let’s walk.”

  Hannan led the way along a path that would take them to the building in which guests were lodged, while Crowe, feeling at once ridiculous and wise, gave Hannan a sketch of Thomas’s discussion of all the things that cannot make us happy, cannot fulfill our desires. Wealth, fame, power, pleasure.

  “After the abstract arguments against any of these, or all of them, being the happiness we seek, he adds what you just said. Having them is the best argument against them.”

  “Because it’s God we want.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And God came to us as a human being and to do that he needed a mother. He came to us through Mary. She’s the way we go to him.”

  Sound doctrine, of course, but Brendan would never have imagined he would hear it preached in such a setting.

  Hannan said, “Why do I have money? There’s got to be a reason besides just having it. Well, I finally saw the reason and I want to do something about it. That’s the point of Refuge of Sinners.”

  He made it easier, putting it like that. After all, why else was Brendan Crowe a priest if not to lead people to God? Being a priest had become his studies, his work in the Vatican Library, helping Maguire administer the museums, the archives, the library. And of course saying his daily Mass at the Domus, reciting the office each day. If Hannan’s life seemed odd to him, what must his own seem to Hannan? He thought of the almost childish pleasure Cardinal Maguire had taken in his rooftop villa, and the garden he had there.

  Then of course he thought of what had happened to the cardinal in that redoubt of peace. And he thought of Traeger. He was the man’s prey, he was sure of it. And even if he weren’t, Traeger’s investigation would turn up things about Father Crowe, his connection with Catena, and that would be the end of his Vatican career. It was fear that had prompted him to agree to this incredible trip. It meant respite from Traeger’s incessant and unsettling questions. And now he was being offered permanent refuge. In the Refuge of Sinners.

  Cardinal Maguire’s little rooftop garden had been transported from Ireland the way Hannan had made a replica of Lourdes here in New Hampshire. Hannan had been to Lourdes and to Fatima. Again, Crowe was struck by the power of the man. No need to make arrangements for flights, bend his schedule to that of airlines. He had only to call for his private plane—one of his private planes, as it turned out—and off he went. What must it be like to be able to act immediately on any impulse like that? What kind of person would he himself be in such circumstances?

  Most moneyed people were self-indulgent libertines, forming marriages, breaking them up, finally not even bothering to marry. Nouveaux riches, actors and actresses, athletes. Money seemed to sweep aside all inhibitions; it certainly swept aside most obstacles to instant gratification. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. Carpe diem. Go for all the gusto you can get. Had Hannan gone down any of those other paths before he got religion? Apparently not.

  Earlier, when Laura was taking them to Hannan’s office, showing them the Empedocles complex, as she called it—it sounded vaguely Freudian—Crowe had said, “It’s like a religious community.”

  “And Nate is our abbot.”

  “What was he like before he returned to the faith?”

  “He’s always been a monk. He didn’t have to change much.”

  Crowe had sensed Laura’s distance from her boss’s religious enthusiasms. Nothing overt, no condescension. More like a wistful envy of his simplicity. What was her own life like, he wondered. John seemed to assume that Laura was just a lovely young woman who had been too busy to marry yet, but Crowe guessed something else when Ray Sinclair was with them. Not that he would ever bring up the subject with John, of course.

  Hannan liked the little lecture on Thomas Aquinas. They sat on one of the benches that were positioned at intervals along the path.

  “I want you in on this, Father.”

  “That’s very flattering, of course.”

  “I’ll be frank. Maybe there are others who know as much as you. I doubt it, but say there are. You’ve got the Roman connection.”

  “Exactly. And that’s why your offer is unrealistic.”

  “I thought we settled that.”

  “Did we?” He found himself wishing that they had.

  “You could be the chief consultant. You don’t have to move here. You can get back and forth as often as needed. It won’t interfere with your life.”

  He seemed actually to believe that. He was offering him a kind of instant mobility not even the pope could command. A double life.

  But what else had he been living for years? He had been ready to respond to Bishop Catena, had shared the dissident prelate’s conviction that things had gone woefully wrong in the Church as a result of the Council. That conviction had weakened under John Paul II, weakened but not gone entirely away. Some of the bishops that had been named! The madder heretics untouched by discipline or even scolding. The long patience of Rome, that was the usual explanation. But under Benedict a new intellectual rigor had been introduced. Crowe had come to think that a quiet revolution was going on. He remembered the hope that had risen at the time of Cardinal Ratzinger’s interview with Vittorio Messori, the Ratzinger Report. The hopes raised had not been realized. But now Ratzinger was Benedict XVI. It was possible to believe that the decades of tumult were coming to an end. John Paul II had been a tireless cheerleader for the Council through his papacy. Benedict had spoken frankly of wrong turns taken, turns that had to be reversed.

  “Why doesn’t he just do it then?” Catena had said, his voice heavy with skepticism.

  Crowe had sought out a meeting with Catena, to see if the confraternity was changing its attitude toward the papacy under the new regime.

  “You can’t just reestablish the Latin liturgy overnight.”

  “Why not?”

  “If the people have been confused during these decades, what would a sudden change like that do to them?”

  Catena obviously relished the thought of such an upheaval. He seemed to long for an immediate separation of the sheep from the goats.

  “And don’t forget the trickery about the third secret.”

  All that had flared up again when Cardinal Bertone published The Last Seer of Fatima. In the book he claimed that Sister Lucia agreed that what he and his then boss Cardinal Ratzinger had released in 2000 was all there was to the third secret. But zealots had immediately attacked Bertone for lying to the faithful. Scocci, Trepanier. And of course Catena.

  They had met on the parapet of the Castel Sant’Angelo, the huge mausoleum that had been built to contain the remains of the emperor Hadrian. Two millennia had passed and the building still stood, a feature in much of the intervening history of the Eternal City, now a tame station on the tourist rounds. Crowe looked at the stern profile of Catena. He was glaring at the dome of Saint Peter’s half a mile off, as if at the camp of the enemy. Crowe was suddenly weary of it all. Had he actually ever thought that this grumpy American knew something the Holy Father didn’t?

  Cate
na rehearsed all the familiar complaints. What had been made public could not be the whole secret. It did not connect with the text that had been long known, broken at the point where Lucia had been told to tell the rest only to the Holy Father. “In Portugal, the faith will . . .” Why hadn’t the text Ratzinger had made public continued from that point?

  “We know why.”

  What Catena knew, or thought he knew, was that the text had gone on to speak of the travails the faith would know in lands other than Portugal. It would have spoken of the ravages that had been wrought on the Church by Vatican II. That of course had to be suppressed. The prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was not likely to make public the Blessed Mother’s rejection of the Council. That was the key. The status quo had to be protected, no matter the desires of the Mother of God.

  “You must have looked at the secret,” Catena said. He had turned toward Crowe and studied his face.

  “No.”

  “Surely you could.”

  “It is under the direct control of the prefect. And the Holy Father.”

  “Of course.”

  The beauty of Catena’s theory was that everything fit into it.

  The memory of that meeting at the Castel Sant’Angelo had come back when he found the documents on Cardinal Maguire’s bedside table. It had taken no lengthy inner debate to take them and put them in his briefcase and spirit them out of the library. He had no desire at all to read the documents. His motive was to keep them away from people like Catena. Or Remi Pouvoir. Let the matter be closed, once and for all. That must have been Ratzinger’s thought in 2000 when he had made public what he had.

  Now Brendan Crowe sat on a bench with Ignatius Hannan in the Empedocles Complex in New Hampshire and the subject came up again.

  “What do you think of these people who claim that parts of it were suppressed?” Hannan asked.

  “Not much.”

  “Where is the thing kept?”

  “In the Vatican Archives.”

  “Where you work?”

  “Yes.” Brendan got out a cigarette and lit it. Hannan watched with fascination.