by Alex Thomas
Not everyone in Rome misunderstands or despises your writings. Real church reform needs someone like you. I myself do not possess the same courage or quick-wittedness as you do, but I should like to offer you my friendship and support along the rocky path you have chosen. I would be thrilled to have the opportunity to meet you in person before you leave and to chat with you directly. No matter what the Congregation’s decision will be, their interrogation of you will alter the thinking of many. You are doing the Church a favour, even if they don’t see it that way just yet. If you should like, I would ask that you visit me next Thursday for the evening. I would be very pleased should you agree to our meeting.
Your Sister in Jesus Christ
Thea
Catherine had answered the email straight away and had asked if she might be allowed to visit the Vatican’s Internet office. At the moment she found herself on the way there through hectic centuries old Rome in which nothing went according to plan and yet as if by magic everything seemed to work out anyway.
She had decided on a dark, comfortable pantsuit and a blue blouse. Without realising it, her outfit, combined with her blonde ponytail, high cheekbones and light eyes, made her look rather athletic and energetic.
Pausing in the middle of the bridge looking over the brown flow of the Tiber, she reminded herself that just a few days ago she had already pushed her way into the innermost part of the Vatican.
She had entered past the walls and gates that kept customary visitors at bay, thanks also to the guards in their historic garb or the Vatican police. After entering the Saint Anna gate, she stopped by the Vatican pharmacy for some ointment and then later at an ATM with instructions in Latin – which made her smile every time – in order to pick up some money for groceries at a nearby supermarket.
And then she had seen Benjamin Hawlett again. Ben!
Father Darius and he had become more and more like family to her ever since she had started living at the Institute and her mother had begun to distance herself from her and her inexplicable gift. Sometimes Catherine thought her mother had hated her gift as much as she had hated Catherine’s father about whom she never spoke. Since the beginning of time, her father had been a big mystery, a taboo topic never to be mentioned. But then Father Darius and Ben had entered her life like a father and brother. And there stood Ben before her once again.
After all these years, the sadness remained in his dark eyes. He had gotten older, just as she had, but the past decade had made him more mature and even more interesting than before. The tiny wrinkles around his eyes and mouth revealed that, despite his melancholy tendency, he had not lost his sense of humour. Then in a moment of emotional adoration in which she briefly lost control over her gift, she was able to see his aura for a few moments. It was still filled with the heavenly white and blue she had known when he was a child. Every now and again a few red-orange sparks flickered through it, showing that behind his cool exterior lay a flame of excitement. It took all she could not to hug him right then and there in the middle of the chaste church state and plant a kiss on his cheek for the sheer joy of seeing him once again.
As he accompanied her along the marble corridors, she admired the paintings and sculptures in the Secretariat of State’s office along with the extraordinary view of the Damasus Courtyard and St. Peter’s Square through the high glass windowpanes. It was breath taking. Finally, they had visited the Sistine Chapel, Catherine’s declared favourite spot in the Vatican. It was simply incredible how colourfully the frescos from Perugino, Botticelli or Signorelli glowed on the sidewalls after their restoration, not to mention Michelangelo’s altar fresco, "The Last Judgement".
"You’re glowing like a child beneath a Christmas tree," said Ben with amusement. "Perhaps you should come to Rome more often."
"For a less formal occasion, anytime!" She added with a wink: "I question however how much I can trust an employee of the Palazzo del Sant’Uffizio."
"Well, I’m not a spy, and I’m also not Ben the Avenger."
Catherine laughed softly. "I beg your pardon. That was a dumb thing I said." She knew all too well that Ben’s aura was without trickery or evil.
He shook his head. "Not after all you’ve been through." After a brief pause, he added: "What do you say we leave all this behind us for a few hours. What would you think of a city tour? Just the two of us? Of course, so that I can thoroughly spy on you."
Despite their noble surroundings, she couldn’t help but grin. A city tour that would help her forget the past few days was just the thing. They spent the afternoon in the city with its domes, towers and old facades, allowing themselves to wander through the Roman chaos with its cars and lightning fast Vespas, passing white-cuffed policemen with their gauntlet gloves who tried all the while and quite unsuccessfully to manage the uncontrollable tangle of traffic.
They made plans to meet for dinner the following evening at a cosy rustic restaurant called Matricianella close to the Palazzo Borghese. Catherine could nearly taste the fried porcini mushrooms, sardines, vegetables and mozzarella melting on her tongue when Ben had to cancel last-minute. An urgent business matter called him away to another country. He wasn’t able to say more than that. But the young nun knew that his superior Cardinal Ciban was behind the sudden assignment.
Ciban…
As Catherine entered the Vatican now, she stayed away from the cold office building of the Holy Inquisition that stood to the left of St. Peter’s Square in front of the papal audience hall.
In the past few weeks, she had defended her position as a woman and theologian during the multiple meetings with the smartest minds of the Inquisition along with the guardians of the faith including the exigent head guardian, Marc Abott Cardinal Ciban. Even though they no longer burned people at the stake in the twenty-first century, these men could turn their victims’ souls to ashes.
In the first series of meetings, they had checked off every point Catherine had ever made about contraception, celibacy, euthanasia, abortion, papal infallibility or marriage and divorce. She herself was rather surprised that she had raised her voice on so many different issues. Then the tribunal had moved on to her opinions regarding the gospels, in which Catherine’s doubt about the virgin birth of Jesus Christ was the most welcomed point of criticism. Maria had one of the must unbelievable biographies in world history. An illiterate Jewish woman became the mother of God’s child and remained a virgin forevermore!
Not even the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith’s prefect seemed to be bothered by it. Cardinal Ciban had even written in his book Christianity that Jesus’ divinity would not be altered even if he had been the product of normal marital intercourse between husband and wife. According to Ciban, God’s sonship was not a biological, but rather an ontological reality, an occurrence in God’s eternal grace. Catherine had selected this exact passage from Ciban’s book to support her point. And it was exactly her daring quote from the book that altered the course of the entire interrogation.
To her surprise, the tribunal that had questioned the young nun was suddenly absolved of its duties and replaced with a new one. Cardinal Ciban, who had up to this point not participated in a single meeting, suddenly sat before her. Catherine expected that he would explain to her in his cold, distant way that she had no right to proclaim his opinion in the name of the Church and that she quite obviously misunderstood his position entirely, but nothing of the sort happened at all. Instead, Ciban introduced her to a new jury, placed her current book The Disenchanted God on the table and opened up the book to a page with a highlighted passage. As he did so, he cast her a look that was so inhuman that, for a moment, she had to ask herself if he were on drugs.
"In your book you make the distinction between internal psychic experiences and objective facts, Sister Catherine. Please explain the difference to the commission."
The "commission" as Ciban called the jury was made up of just four representatives of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith and sat on an elevated platform
behind the judge’s bench whilst Catherine sat alone at her table. She tried to read the faces of the newly appointed jurors. The only focal point she had was Father Michael Sorti from Lux Domini, a tiny, mouse-faced man whom she thought looked as though he awaited a revolutionary revelation – or perhaps a desecration – from her.
"We human beings like to project an internal psychic perception onto the outside world," she explained. "Let’s take the Marian apparition as an example. A religious experience takes shape in the material world as a type of ghostly appearance which gives warning and predicts the future."
Father Sorti cleared his throat and sat up straight in his chair. "You speak of an error, Sister Catherine. But isn’t Christianity a religion of revelations in which God reveals himself to share his will with humanity? Thousands experienced the Maria apparition in Fatima. An appearance of light that majestically soared through the room. Not to mention the miracle of the sun there. How can you speak of an experience that can be traced back solely to the brain’s metabolic processes? That is not at all compatible with the Biblical image of God."
Catherine knew very well that the canonical process that was documented and declared credible in 1917 was completed in 1930. Fatima became – just like Lourdes – a Catholic pilgrimage site to which millions of people made a pilgrimage. Fatima and Lourdes only strengthened the Catholic position.
"Why not, Father? God is not material from which hopeless promises should be made, seemingly realised dreams in the world. Apostle Paul once said: ‘The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.’ To me that means nothing other than that God reveals himself in the deepest parts of man. And that is very well compatible with the truth of God and the truth of man."
The young nun could literally see how Sorti followed her internally. The fact that she claimed God wanted to reveal himself inside each and every human being made her sound like a Protestant even though she was a Catholic. But it wasn’t Sorti who spoke next.
"Then you do not see the work of God in the real world through the wonders of Fatima or Lourdes?" The question came from Ciban, in passing as he flipped through several papers, almost as if they were irrelevant to the conversation.
Catherine recognised the sinister nature of his question nonetheless: "Is your confession of faith a lie, Sister?"
"I believe in the power of the Holy Ghost. I believe that we must have faith, that we are downright predestined to be spiritual. It is written in the Holy Word and it is written in our genetic code. We are the image of God. We are God’s children. As man and woman."
Ciban took hold of the book, got up and walked down from the platform to Catherine’s table. In that moment, only the young woman could see his steel-grey eyes. The unnatural silence reflected in his eyes made her shiver inside and gave her cause to be even more alert than before. It was her very first direct confrontation with the General Inquisitor and most likely not her last. She instinctively moved back in her chair. The cardinal stood directly in front of her table and placed the book before her.
"What about those children of God who have neither such vivid imaginations nor this genetic code, Sister?"
Catherine couldn’t interpret his tone of voice. "As I said, our consciousness is formed according to His likeness. In order to deny him, we must first confirm that he exists."
In that moment, Catherine realised something was awry with the nature of this meeting. None of the jurors recorded the minutes. Or was there a recording device hidden somewhere?
Father Sorti spoke once again. "You are a Christian woman, Sister Catherine. In addition, you are a Catholic nun and have made an oath. But when I read the thoughts you’ve recorded in your book, you believe in any old religion."
Catherine nodded as she noticed how her mouth suddenly ran dry. "I cannot imagine that God would exclude a person simply because he is not baptised." It was equally ridiculous to claim that the Roman Catholic Church was the custodian of absolute religious truth. Why should a person of faith not be able to practice his belief the way he should like? God had so many faces.
Ciban, who had glanced at Sorti, turned his back to the committee to confront Catherine once again with his eyes’ spooky silence. She felt as if an icy shadow was cast upon her soul.
"What do you really think, Sister?" he asked forcefully. "You live the Catholic faith, you are a part of the Church, you made a vow, but you manifest an entirely different faith in your books. What do you know? What do you believe? What do you believe to know?"
Catherine reached for the book without opening it. She didn’t break the cardinal’s gaze, but she needed something to hold onto, even if it was Ciban’s copy of her book.
"If matter is nothing more than condensed energy, Eminence, then differentiating between an imaginary and material world makes no sense, right? It makes equally no sense then to differentiate between God’s human world in Catholic and non-Catholic. We are all in the same boat. Is that really heresy?"
Catherine knew that her words were like throwing steak into a lion pit, but none of the black-robed men behind the judge’s bench took the bait. Not even Ciban. What was going on here?
"As this committee knows, you have the ability to see the world in a way that other people cannot," continued Ciban as if the prior moment had not taken place. "How would you classify your God-given ‘privilege’? As a completely internal experience or as objective reality?"
Catherine gave the cardinal a stunned look. Was her gift on trial? Her departure from Lux Domini? The brainwashing of which they mercifully spared her? Or did they want to get to Darius through her?
"I view my gift as an objective fact. I can’t simply explain away the reality of my expanded awareness."
"No one expects that of you, Sister. What interests us more is whether or not your gift is a miracle?" Ciban stood in the middle of the hall, both measured and threatening at the same time.
Catherine tensely pushed herself forward in her chair as she peered at the group before her. She asked herself once again what was going on here. Was this a jury instigated by Lux Domini? But why would a conservative man such as Ciban want to actively cooperate with a progressive order such as Lux? Was Lux no longer under the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith because the order had become too powerful within the Church? Or was the cardinal himself a medium?
The jury awaited her response.
"There are scientific studies and real world experiences that extend well beyond a fundamental hypothesis of pure metaphysics. It is true that my gift is no illusion."
"You haven’t answered the question," said Ciban without flinching. "What is your gift? Just an evolutionary peculiarity, a coincidence, a mutation – or a part of God’s plan?"
"I don’t know what God’s plan is, Eminence. But does the one have to exclude the other?"
Ciban gave her a nearly kind look. "Whether you know it or not, Sister, you are about to drift away from the truth, despite your gift."
"Then you know God’s plan, Eminence?" She looked straight into Ciban’s unwavering eyes and thought for a moment that she might have seen a slight ironic flash in them. But a second later only his customary coldness and distance remained.
"Believe me. There are truths that not even you would wish to know."
Later Catherine would feel an icy cold shiver run down her spine every time she recalled this meeting. What did Ciban mean by that? Was it a threat? She couldn’t be certain. There was much more subtext to his words than she could decipher. She could feel it. But if the cardinal thought he could intimidate her that way, he was sadly mistaken. Catherine’s strength lay in that fact that as an author and soon-to-be ex-nun she was a very prominent victim of the modern Inquisition and that the global press paid great attention to her case. The time when the Church could completely suppress thoughts and ideas was long over.
As she walked through the Saint Anna gate to the Vatican, she pushed aside her thoughts about the trial and Ciban as best she could. She
dug through her pocket for her entrance permit and walked past both Swiss guards and the sentinels of the Vigilanza. Up until yesterday, she had had no idea that the Internet office was located directly in the Apostolic Palace. Life was full of surprises. She was intrigued to meet Sister Thea. Given her current situation, it took a lot of courage to extend Catherine an official invitation.
11
Rome, The Vatican, Apostolic Palace, Internet Office
The Vatican’s Internet office was located three floors down from the papal chambers. Glistening neon lights fell upon a half dozen desks and three times as many computers. The quiet whirring of the air conditioner sounded to Catherine like the humming of a swarm of insects. A tiny figure got up from one of the computers and walked through a tight passageway to approach the visitor. The woman wore a brown habit and a black veil, much like Catherine had worn up until recently. The Franciscan nun was the only woman in the entire Internet office.
"Sister Catherine, I am Sister Thea. I am so glad you’ve come."
Catherine shook the nun’s hand. "Thank you for your kind invitation. Your email, well, let’s just say it surprised me."
A smile swept across Sister Thea’s face.
"Well, I have read all of your books and writings and definitely wanted to meet the author before she left Rome. Tea or coffee?"
"Coffee, please, if it’s not any trouble."
Sister Thea turned to one of the young men, who quickly jumped up to fetch some fresh coffee. She then turned back to Catherine. "We can speak in my office undisturbed."
The room was sparsely furnished. A portrait of the Pope as well as an image of Jesus hung on the walls. A crucifix hung about the door in such a way that the Franciscan nun could see it at all times from her modern workspace. Catherine sat next to Sister Thea on an old, extremely comfortable leather couch that looked as though it had been around since the times of Pius XII. The door opened and a young priest came in with a serving tray carrying two simple office cups and a pot of hot coffee. He placed the tray on a small table in front of the two women. Sister Thea thanked him.