The Heretics of St. Possenti

by Rolf Nelson

  He started meeting the regulars at the pub, dojo, and other surrounding eateries and dives, earning a reputation as a good listener and confessor and someone honestly trying to understand and help people, spreading the Word but not being obnoxiously preachy about it. He heard quite an earful about relationship dynamics, the role of family and financial problems in other problems, and the objections people had about faith versus practical skills and applications of knowledge that people needed in daily life.

  The late-evening meetings after dojo sparring practice became a frequent occurrence, with far-ranging debates and discussions, covering everything from “would an AI have a soul?” to the time requirements of various martial disciplines, which often turned into hours of library research in the following days, so much that he started taking notes. That, of course, led him to get a reputation as a bit of a geek, even among the compu-jockeys; who on earth takes notes at a bull-session?

  Talisman

  Owning a handgun doesn’t make you armed any more than owning a guitar makes you a musician.

  —Col. Jeff Cooper

  Thomas Cranberry sat in the Howling Puffin at his now customary chair in more casual clothing than he typically wore, but still with the clerical collar. Across from him was Mickey Finnegan, and with them was one of the bishop’s many new acquaintances. The two were, as was Mickey’s was wont, talking guns and politics.

  “Why do jihadis blow themselves up? Because that is their best option.”

  “Don’t be absurd,” objected Thomas.

  “No. Really. It is. No job. No prospects. No respect. Often no wife and can’t get laid, not even supposed to play with themselves. Their life is shit, but they keep getting told they are great, going to inherit the whole world, but all they see is shit, shit, and more shit. They see us as decadent, soft, unworthy, weak, completely self-indulgent, and immoral. We put a man on the moon, soon it looks like we’ll be sending people to the stars, and they still can’t even make toilet paper, yet they look down on us!”

  “They just envy us.”

  “Well, that, too, but that just makes the resentment all the more toxic. They can get concubines if they fight and think they’ll get a room full of virgins if they die for the cause even if modern scholarship says a better translation is raisins rather than virgins.”

  “Raisins? Really?”

  “Really. Context of the day, diacritical marks, and all that. Prophet or not, Mohammad had a good grasp of the psychology of what motivates young men—and people in general—and structured things accordingly. Praying five times a day is a powerful psychological conditioning tool. Saying all your sins are forgiven if you die for the cause is a powerful motivation when they are constantly harping on all the sins people commit. They have the sword on their flags, and they are martyrs for their cause of taking over the world!”

  “They are deluded fools,” replied Thomas sadly.

  “Any more so than a third-century Christian choosing to get thrown to the lions rather than recant? You call them martyrs, too, do you not?”

  “But that’s different!”

  “Is it? You don’t arm yourself, you preach peace, and theirs is the way of the sword. If you were a testosterone-filled young man, which symbol would attract you more, a gun, or a lamb? I mean, unless you wanted to shag the lamb, slaughter it, and roast some kebabs afterward? Same for gang-bangers. They see the cops don’t let the good guys pack heat and tell folks to not fight the bad guys. Let the cops go after them. Let the insurance cover the losses. The guys in the hood see the law-abiding as weak, chumps, nothing but chumps or—if you’ll excuse the expression—sheep to be shorn.”

  “But nonviolence works in the long run. I mean, look at Gandhi. His nonviolence worked very well—within his lifetime!—and freed India from England.”

  “But he also said… Wait. Just a second. Got the quote… right… here.” He rapidly found it on the screen of his tablet. “He who cannot protect himself or his nearest and dearest or their honor by nonviolently facing death may and ought to do so by violently dealing with the oppressor. He who can do neither of the two is a burden. He has no business to be the head of a family. He must either hide himself, or must rest content to live forever in helplessness and be prepared to crawl like a worm at the bidding of a bully. Even your number-two hero knew that some people can’t be reasoned with, only dealt with at their own level.”

  Finnegan added, “He also said that nonviolence would only work with a just and moral people like the English, and The sword makes men equal. Clearly nonviolent protest and letter-writing didn’t help the kulaks against Stalin.”

  “But that isn’t Jesus’ way.”

  “Hey, I didn’t bring up Gandhi.”

  “Well, yes. But that isn’t the path of the Bible.”

  “Truth isn’t always comfortable, Padre. It is what it is.”

  “But guns are a symbol of violence,” said Cranberry firmly.

  “No, they are not,” shot back Finnegan, just as firmly.

  “Sure they are.”

  “No, they are a symbol of worldly power. An amplifier of the intent of the user. In the hands of a nongovernment employee with a good heart, a symbol of freedom. In the hands of a good government, they represent law and order. In the hands of an evil man, a symbol of oppression and crime.”

  Thomas had never considered that particular distinction. The vast majority of the previous conversations he’d listened in on had been of much more technical nature. “Possibly, but that doesn’t feel right. Far too many murders, wars, robberies, and suicides happen with them.”

  “All of which happened before gunpowder showed up. Jaw of an ass sound familiar? The fact that… Wait. Let me get Old Testament here, I know I’ve got that quote somewhere…. Ah, here. Maimonides. Truth does not become truer by virtue of the fact that the entire world agrees with it, nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it.”

  “Maimonides wasn’t Old Testament. He was Middle Ages,” Cranberry pointed out. “And Jewish.”

  “Ah, whatever. So was Jesus. Exact year is irrelevant. He’s an old-time scholarly dude. And he’s right. Doesn’t make a tinker’s fart in a tornado how the truth makes you feel. True is true. It may be inconvenient that three plus three is six, but there it is. Lifeboat math and figuring out who gets tossed over or fished out is never easy for a sane man.”

  “But good men of Christian faith should not murder.”

  “Agreed. But killing isn’t necessarily the same as murder. The commandment is Thou Shall Not Murder, not Kill. One is not just. The other is. Do cops and soldiers, even Christian ones, carry guns?”

  “But soldiers and police are different!”

  “Nope. They are people, too. Same rights, same commandments. Did the Knights Templar and the other chivalric orders carry swords much as the Saracen did or rely only on prayer while blessed by the Church and fighting to keep the Holy Lands safe for Christians? Did William Marshal, first Earl of Pembroke and pinnacle of the chivalric ideals, carry only words when asked by the pope to protect the young heir to the English throne to prevent war? He was so bad-ass even into his 70s that nobody was willing to challenge him to combat, so he secured the life of the future king of England and the Magna Carta. He was even offered a plenary indulgence for any sin he might ever commit in the future in exchange, for God’s sake! A spiritual blank check to do anything he wanted. But he turned it down. He was a good man and carried a sword doing his knightly duty for many long years.”

  “But that was a long time ago!”

  “So was Jesus. Does that make his words any less true?”

  “Point taken.”

  “Is the Church of today exactly the same as it was fifteen hundred years ago? Any new developments in that time?” Mickey asked.

  “Well, yes, of course! Benedictine Monks and the Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits, and the various nuns’ orders. We adopted local languages in place of Latin. Other practical things like that. Times change, but t
he Word does not.”

  “Not to mention some guy named Martin Luther…. But let’s not go there right now. So why were the monastic orders founded?”

  “Monastic history is not my strong suit,” the bishop said, “but as I recall, once Christianity became the more-or-less official religion of the Roman Empire under Constantine, it wasn’t a great act of courage to be Christian. Some sought the hard life of a desert hermit to prove their devotion to God. Early Benedictines attempted to recreate that ascetic life, at least to a degree, and imitated Christ, who fasted in the desert before he started his ministry.”

  “So a new order was founded to meet an unmet need?”

  “Yes, I guess that is one way to look at it.”

  “And the Templars?”

  “To keep Pilgrims to the Holy Land safe, as you said, and retake it from the Islamic conquest. But this is totally different.”

  “Maybe so. Maybe not.” Finnegan thought a moment, then leaned back. “Hey, Mike,” he called to a man at a nearby table. “What sort of shooting iron would a modern Templar carry, you think? Rifle, shotgun, or sidearm?”

  “Oh, definitely a 30-caliber rifle and a .45,” Mike responded immediately, tabling his drink and joining them.

  The debate that followed was every bit as much a matter of faith as anything Bishop Thomas Cranberry had ever been involved in, albeit with significantly more statistics and rigorously testable conjectures.

  “No question, the classic 1911 feels good in your hand. A marvel of early twentieth century design. And a .45 caliber hole is damn hard—’scusing the phrase, Father—not to notice. Besides, you can’t get a more Biblical than Revelations 19:11. ‘I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war.’ The white horse of war is a 19:11,” said Finnegan. “But they are not as reliable as newer designs, and with modern hollow-points bore diameter isn’t nearly as important as it was a hundred years ago. 10mm is more powerful, and a 9mm or 40 cal stacks a lot more ammo in a mag. A Five-Seven may as well be belt fed.”

  “Maybe so,” Mike replied, “but the lower pressure makes it much more amenable to suppression, and I’m pretty sure that when you are facing down the business end, it’ll look big enough to crawl down, and the fight might be over without a shot fired. Works for magnum revolvers, too, if you want to go old-school.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” responded Thomas, cautiously. He usually avoided trying to add anything to these discussion (which sometimes seemed every bit as religious and fervent as Catholic versus Lutheran), finding he knew little about the technology and less about the articles of faith many of the gunnies argued over. The two looked at him in surprise.

  “Sadly, people do not always behave as you appear to expect,” he continued.

  “Are you implying that someone might look at a gun pointed at him and just ignore it?” Mike shook his head. “Not very likely, I wouldn’t think.”

  With a rueful smile, Thomas briefly told of his one time holding a gun in self-defense. But now, with the distance of time and retelling and his comfort around the working-class men, he explained in much more detail than ever before. Instead of his usual bland “I was unfamiliar with guns, and it was pulled out of my hand by a sudden and apparently well-practiced move,” Thomas drove deeper.

  “It was as if the gun were calling me. I knew that I did not know how to use it, but I have had drummed into me my whole life that anything you point a gun at dies. Guns make grown men urinate. The police use them to bring the bad guys to justice. A gun makes good men cower in fear when a robber points it at them. It was action at a distance. I just knew that if I drew it, he’d run. I was trembling. I don’t think I’ve ever made a threat in fear or anger since childhood, and here I was reaching for a tool that meant life and death. But it felt like a perfect fit. Like an… I don’t know, an inside-out glove. It was just meant for a hand my size. But somehow that terrified me even more, like realizing you are comfortable around evil. It was strange, and I understood even more clearly why people want to ban them. That sense of power it conferred was… different… from anything else I’ve ever experienced.”

  The other two watched him in silence, waiting for the punchline. “He smiled. He laughed at me and told me to give him the gun, too. In the crudest terms. It was as if he could read my mind; he just knew that I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, hurt him. After it was in his hands, he told me that guns are not much good when they are not loaded. If anything, my having a gun made him even more contemptuous of me.”

  Mickey’s eyebrows raised, and he pursed his lips. “Revolver, you said?” Thomas nodded. “Unloaded?”

  The bishop shrugged. “I am not sure, to be honest. I didn’t check, but it didn’t fire when I pulled the trigger, an act I’ll be forever shameful of. I wouldn’t even know how to check.”

  “Well, that is a downside to revolvers: you can look at the front and see if they are loaded by looking into the cylinder. He could likely see empty chambers.”

  “Yeah, I suppose so,” admitted Mike, “as much as I like them. Embarrassing, I’d expect. But no gun is a magic talisman. Neither the best nor worst gun does anything that the operator can’t tell it to do with his hands and body language. It could just be he saw your body language, saw you were not a predator, and the gun was no more meaningful than a necklace of claws around a sheep’s neck. It’s the person who is dangerous, or not, not the tools.”

  “Hmmm,” was Cranberry’s noncommittal reply.

  “You know what? We have to get you to the range.” Mickey’s expression was earnest.

  “I don’t believe that’s really necessary,” said Thomas.

  “Oh, no, I think it absolutely is. You have a lot of seriously screwed up notions about guns. We need to dispose of them. A bit of range time will be just the thing. Nothing like personal experience to dispel myths.”

  Thomas frowned at the flippancy of his tone. “I don’t need personal experience to understand that some things are bad. Suicide, for instance.”

  “I hope I don’t have to spell out all the ways that is a really poor analogy, Padre.”

  Retorts died on his lips as he saw all the obvious problems. But the thought was distinctly uncomfortable. “I believe I need to use the restroom. Back in a minute.” He rose and headed for the back of the pub.

  As he walked away, the other two watched him go. “Well, you dangled the bait out there pretty well. Think he’ll bite, so you can set the hook?” asked Tony.

  “Don’t know. His experience is definitely eating at him. I think he will. Likely not today, but… yeah, I think he will.”

  Gripe Table

  For if the disciple obeys with an ill will, and murmurs, not only with lips but also in his heart, even though he fulfill the command, yet it will not be acceptable to God, who regards the heart of the murmurer. And for such an action he acquires no reward; rather he incurred the penalty of murmurers, unless he makes satisfactory amendment.

  —The Holy Rule of Saint Benedict, Ch. V (Obedience)

  Thomas Cranberry sat in the Howling Puffin at a small table near the entrance with a plaque that read “Deposit gripes, complaints, and grumbles here.” He was trying an experiment. He sat with a cup of coffee and a pad of paper, making notes of his thoughts, occasionally looking up to glance as customers moved past.

  A few regulars nodded a greeting before a new face passed him, paused ever so briefly to read the sign, and then went to the bar and ordered. Fortyish, graying hair, two-day stubble, pro-casual tech-sector clothes. After sipping it for a minute, from the corner of his eye Thomas saw him glance his way a time or two before standing up and approaching. He pulled the chair opposite the priest out and sat down quietly.

  The stranger set his drink on the table—it looked like a lager, Thomas thought absently, amused by the idea he had spent enough time in a pub to begin recognizing drinks by the color and head—and didn’t speak for a while. He slow
ly slumped down, and his expression fell. He frowned and looked like he was rolling thoughts around in his head, trying to put them into words. Thomas, after the barest of nods in recognition initially, gave him as much time as he needed to compose himself.

  Finally, after a couple of songs had played though, he began.

  “I’m tired.” The stranger’s voice was flat, unemotional. “Of everything. The daily grind. An unending list of things to do: take one off, someone adds two. Little things. Big things. Trivial things that just need an input or detail. Important things. Meeting scheduled here. List to take care of there. Boss takes ten hours a day, five or six days a week. Family trips take planning, organizing, and an infinite number of details taken care of so everyone else has fun. I end up cleaning up after the dog while they go play on the beach.

  “I’m tired of having to walk on eggshells at work, where if I’m polite to a female, I don’t know, I might get a talking to about sexual harassment, but if I cover my ass by never interacting with them outside the presence of at least one other person, I’ll be accused of creating a hostile, untrusting environment. If I am asked for help by some new clueless affirmative-action hire and I do it, then I’ll end up with all her work dumped me, too, but if I don’t, she’ll accuse me of not being a team player. If I ask them to prove they can do the job, I’m either being argumentative or else I’ll be yelled at for being condescending. I’m tired of having yet another page added to my folder in HR.

  “I’m tired of getting called a racist for acknowledging facts about the crime rate, school dropout rates, or welfare rates. I’m tired of being told I should be thankful for my ‘privilege.’ I’m tired of being the one called to pick up the slack when the wife or kids are sick, but every other year when I do get sick, I’m told to get over myself. I’m sick and tired of having being told to pick up the pace when I move to the lowest common denominator in everything and make sure to be inclusive, but then get yelled at for going too fast when someone gets left behind.