by T K Kenyon
The white card had landed face-up with the keys and tiara of St. Peter in the top left hand corner. His full name and titles scribbled a black line of minute type in the center. His affiliations were smaller, below his name. “You have entered dangerous territory, religion and science. You might need to discuss something, or need an opinion, or protection. You can call me, if you need to talk.”
She flopped her hand near her side, indicating everything. “I don’t think so.”
“Nevertheless, if you want to talk about anything, about science, about Sean, if you need a priest, call.”
Her chin notched down. “So you aren’t leaving the Church.”
“No.” Never.
Dante felt like he had turned down dark, long road and begun walking.
“Good,” she said and gazed down and at her foot or the floor. Her voice was flat with suppression. There must be a thousand things she wanted to scream at him.
The printer ground out a last page—light will be thrown upon the origins of religion—reset itself with a firm clack, and began printing the bibliography.
Darwin, at the end of Origins of Species, had written a similar line about light being thrown upon the origins of man, and Watson and Crick in their seminal DNA paper had referred to that by saying that light would be thrown upon the replication mechanism of DNA.
Such lovely intelligence floated in her.
“I should go,” he said.
The door behind him was too close. Which was appropriate for a spurned lover: a kiss, a handshake, a wave, or merely turning and walking out?
“Yeah.” She set down her ashtray and walked around the basket of plants.
Her slight form led him through the smooth, smoky air toward the door. She was leaving tomorrow for New York, and the hurt children here needed counseling, and then he would return to Roma.
The door gaped open like a portal to the rest of the world.
A kiss from her would fortify him against his long, cold life ahead. Her body in his arms and his bed seemed like wine and oxygen, but she wasn’t the type of woman to be owned. She was a more dedicated, celibate priest than he was.
Forcing a kiss would enrage her and she would slam him against the wall and throw him out the door and burn his card and phone numbers in her metal ashtray. There was no doubt she could inflict physical damage. Conroy’s dead, oiled body had borne livid bruises, and Dante would not hurt her to defend himself.
She had wrenched Dante’s own arm and jabbed pressure points when he had provoked her.
And, she had to keep that card.
There had to be a chance, however slight, that someday he would speak to her again.
Despicable thoughts wormed in his mind.
She had softened in Dante’s arms that night in her bed, afterward, when he had held her. Balancing gentleness with a hint of anger, a suggestion of angry was worse, would tip her into bed.
He could have her tonight, if he used what he knew about her to manipulate her.
Dante was truly damned if he did that.
At the door, Leila unlocked the several clattering, clicking mechanisms and held her hand between their chests primly for a handshake. “Good-bye, then, Father.”
“Just Dante.” His hand slid past her fingers, and their palms touched. “For you, I am just Dante.”
An odd softness suffused her voice and her chin tipped up. “Just Dante.”
Dante’s joints locked like an engine raced without oil. That tip-up was an invitation to press her back against the blank foyer wall and show her that he could do things for her and to her. He had seen many women do that.
He wanted to touch her.
His head inclined left.
Yet she might be testing his protestation about remaining a priest. If he ducked his head and grabbed her body, she would toss his phone numbers away with the little bits of moving trash in the corners of her sparse apartment, and he would never hear from her again.
No one would ever understand his jokes and his science and the world like she did.
But remaining a priest was impossible when his body locked in rigor mortis at the sight of her slim neck arching the slightest bit. Celibacy and chastity were impossible around her.
She moved one foot toward him, an extension with her toe, a ballet tendu.
The option of passivity presented itself, of allowing her to come to him, yet this did not appeal to him in the same way as crushing her lithe body between his flesh and the wall.
She leaned on the toe and moved closer to his body, rising toward his face. Trembling started in his left leg and crawled up his groin, tightening his skin.
But what of Leila? A few minutes ago, she had fallen backward off her sleeping bag trying to get away when he had stretched a few fingers toward her. She had paced and kept most of the apartment and the laundry basket and airbed as impediments between them.
Why on earth would she close her espresso eyes as her face leveled with his?
Perhaps she was trying to overcome her aversion to priests. Desensitization therapy.
How altruistic of him to help her.
He was still a cad, un donnaiolo.
Her hand slipped from his and she touched his shoulder.
Maybe she was testing his resolve.
Maybe this was one last kiss goodbye.
So complicated.
Her lips touched his, and she kissed him.
All those nights in Roma, if he had felt like this with a woman, so quiet inside, he would never have become a priest. His arm slipped around her waist just to steady her, not to control her, and he held the kiss a moment.
He let go with his lips and leaned back.
Her gaze was steady. Her large brown eyes hadn’t become drunk with lust nor misty with emotion. She searched for something in his eyes.
His moment of quiet was the sigh of retreating wind before a tornado rips through a house.
His body roared. He whirled with her, slammed the door shut with one hand, and pinned her to the wall and kissed her hard, as hard as he could without hurting her. She held him around the neck and lifted herself up, climbing, and her legs clasped around his waist. He buried his face in her neck, perfume and brimstone smoke. Her skin under his mouth was tight, and her black hair swished beside his eyes.
He pushed her hair back from her neck and ears, and his hand came away wet.
He looked at his damp hand and her face. Tears rolled out of her shut eyes, but she didn’t gasp, and she didn’t tremble.
She touched his neck where he had torn the white plastic tab out of his collar, and her fingers crawled back.
She was submitting to him. Even though she had made the first move, it was a feint to draw his inevitable attack and seek some semblance of control.
She didn’t love him.
He might be a cad. He might still be un donnaiolo. All that was true.
But he would not hurt her. He had not hit her to escape from her when she had handcuffed him to her bed. He would not hurt her like this, either.
In that way, at least in that way, he was not un donnaiolo anymore.
He let that part of himself go. For a moment, he missed being that out-of-control beast because he could blame so much on it, that the women were too beautiful, that he couldn’t help himself, but he felt stronger.
“Call me.” Hormones and blood thickened his voice and he steadied her on her feet before he released her waist. “If you want to talk, call me.”
He opened the door and stepped into the white hallway.
The door shut behind him, and a thunk sounded through the door, like a body falling against it or a fist driven at the wood.
The empty hall stretched away from him in both directions, and he turned and walked away.
~~~~~
The email was distributed from New Hamilton at two in the morning to computers in the Vatican, where it was dawn, and it contained the same message, Rosetta-like, in English, Italian, Spanish, and Latin.
The computer tech, a novice from Korea, watched the identical email appear in the email boxes of all the users in the server, including V01, the head honcho, and wondered if it was spam or a virus. He scanned it with anti-virus software, but it didn’t read like a malicious program so he let everyone find it the next morning, and the uproar started.
To my Brothers in Christ:
The Enemy is again among us, and It seeks to destroy the Holy Catholic Church by infiltrating us with pedophile priests.
Our lawyers’ advice to deny the abuse, to admit nothing, to cajole or threaten victims to sign away their rights or go away quietly while allowing the abuses to mount by reassigning priests with known pedophilia crimes, has damaged the reputation of the Church and threatens our own souls.
There is talk in America of bishops and cardinals being prosecuted and, if guilty, being sent to prison for not complying with mandatory reporting laws and for facilitating these crimes (accomplice before and after the fact.)
Our policies have also resulted in yet more victims of crimes with stronger civil cases against us. It is estimated that there are at least 3000 priests who have committed crimes against children in the United States. Each pedophile priest victimizes anywhere from a few children to, in the cases of John Geoghan and James Porter, hundreds each. Cases settled out of court cost us $100,000 to $400,000, not including of lawyer fees. Losses in court can cost us up to $30 million per case, again exclusive of attorney fees.
The problem of pedophile priests will likely cost the Church two trillion dollars.
If all the abuse stops right now. If there are no further cases.
In addition to legal and financial liabilities we incur by allowing any pedophile priest to continue in any form of ministry, the spiritual ramifications to the victims are extensive. We are risking the victims’ souls by allowing them to be exposed to the Adversary and his minions.
Thus, I propose the following reorganizations to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Holy Roman Catholic Church:
1) The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Institute for External Affairs must be autonomous, as they were before the reorganization of the Holy Office in 1908. Sometimes, force must be used in service of the truth. Any means necessary to obtain information from those detained and to ensure that they never offend again must be employed. Information is our weapon in this war against the Great Diabolical among us.
2) Pedophilia stems from carnal lust, which in men, as we all know, is insatiable. Any priest, including bishops or cardinals, accused of any paraphilia must be immediately recalled to the Dominican brothers. Any priest sheltering an accused priest or not forthcoming with information relating to pedophile priests must also be detained.
3) Pedophilia is not merely a sin or a crime; it is also a compulsion and an addiction. Penance, heartfelt sorrow, drugs, or electroshock or behavioral modification therapies have no effect. It is incurable. If any of the detained priests ever leave the Dominican monasteries, they will rape more children. It is the nature of the beast that they will sin again, in practice if they can, in their minds if they cannot. They will again betray the grace of ordination. We must give them an opportunity to go and sin no more.
The Sacrament of Reconciliation is a divine gift from God. It allows one who has made a good confession and truly repented to stand again in the good grace of Our Lord and attain salvation. To this end, we should grant the good Dominican brothers full authority to do what they must to extract a good confession and exact proper penance.
As part of the pedophiles’ penance, they should be given the option of a method to go and sin no more and avoid all occasion of their sin. We must take care in the context of the penance. It must be presented and accepted as part of the admonition to go and sin no more.
However, if the verifiably guilty pedophile does not accept the penance, we know that he has not made a good and full confession, and the Dominican brothers should invite him to more reflection and self-inquiry more until he is fully repentant.
4) The Church was created by Our Lord, Jesus Christ, to save souls, not lives. Pedophiles’ sins endanger children’s souls. Even if we are wrong about the nature of reconciliation and the administration of penance and the Divinity does consider the pedophiles to be suicides, we will save the souls of their future victims, perhaps hundreds of souls per pedophile. See the enclosed case studies for details concerning the effects of sexual abuse on victims.
5) We must suspend all operations at all seminaries. Admission standards now are perhaps the most perfectly derived guidelines for rejecting healthy human beings and selecting men who exhibit dangerous personality traits. We reject heterosexual men who might want to have a family. We reject homosexual men who are attracted to other adult men. We admit to seminaries only childlike men who believe in their own partial divinity, who believe that they are beyond ordinary mortals, and who repress their own human sexuality and attraction to any other adult and are thus at the greatest risk to delude themselves that their abuse of a child is not child rape.
Sincerely in Christ,
Reverend Monsignor Dante Maria Petrocchi-Bianchi
~~~~~
Cardinal Piotr Ivanovich recoiled from the description of Luke Dietrich’s rape via candelabra and the pedophile’s ejaculation into a consecrated communion chalice. The paper crumpled in his spotted hands, horrified at the heresy that the priest had committed.
Bishop Tomas Aguirre ran from his computer screen and vomited in the bathroom, retching and spitting last night’s broth and unchewed pasta, when he read the account of John Williams’s obscene reenactment of the Stations of the Cross. His own abuser had raped him in his bedroom while his parents were outside the house, cooling themselves on the porch.
Cardinal Francesco Delfino deleted the email after he read the first few lines. Just another one of those crybabies whining for attention. In ancient Greece it was de rigueur for a man to take a boy or a youth under his wing for mutual amusement.
The Pope, however, liked action plans. When he had been assigned to the CDF, he had been stymied by the mystic Pope who wafted within clouds of divine grace but did not understand the reality of cash flow and department politics. To Pope John Paul the Second, the godless Communists were still the enemy. The current Pope’s view was far more pragmatic. Even His Holiness Pope Benedict the Sixteenth, even though he had also headed the CDF, had blinded himself to the enormity of the sin and evil within the Church.
The current Pope, however, was not European. His life had not been a cloistered, mystical existence where men kissed his ring in deference. He had led a revolución from a dirt-floor prison cell, a year and half that he still considered his greatest achievement.
This Pope took action and smiled, knowing he was doing the dirty work of God.
Within a month, thousands of priests including Cardinal Francesco Delfino were jailed with the Dominicans in the Italian Alps and the new witch hunts had begun.
Two months later, the seminaries closed.
Six months later, the Reverend Monsignor Dante Maria Petrocchi-Bianchi was in charge of the hunt for pedophiles within the Church.
~~~~~
To some extent, Dante’s memorandum had been calculated. Churches do not survive for two thousand years if they are threatened by bankruptcy.
In the 1920’s, the Vatican was insolvent. Rats were destroying the holy walls of Roma.
The Vatican forged concordats with Mussolini and Hitler to help them consolidate their dictatorships for a substantial amount of money.
After World War II, the Church ferried 50,000 SS officers, Ustashe, and other Nazis via ‘rat lines’ to safety and provided them with laundered money, new identities, and Vatican passports, for the money. Klaus Barbie. Ante Pavelic. The Commandants of the death camps Treblinka and Sobibor. Eichmann. Mengele.
The Vatican is like a pauper with a windfall. It jealously protects every penny in its coffers. It remembers what it was like to be poor.<
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John Geoghan, the defrocked Catholic priest and convicted pedophile, was killed in prison by another inmate, Joseph Druce, and the court wiped his criminal record clean because he was still in the appeals process. Civil suits are harder to wage without a conviction, and they get less money. The Church learned a lesson from Geoghan, and Dante’s proposal swept through the Curia like a fogbank, enshrouding all those trapped in it.
The Church would not waste two trillion dollars to protect a few, inconsequential, guilty priests.
~~~~~
Every time Cardinal Dante Petrocchi-Bianchi signed a gold-embossed arrest warrant or a finding of guilt, he checked his phone, hoping that Leila still had his card, that she might call.
Her abuser, Sean, had recanted his sins readily, under moderate pressure.
The website for her new lab at Columbia listed her name and email address. She must feel secure to have listed them publicly.
Sloan’s lab’s webpage had never made any mention of her, and her scientific papers all bore only her initials and last name.
She must know.
In his wallet, a card bore her phone number and email, though he did not allow himself to pursue her, but holding her phone number in his hand was not pursuit.
He had cut his hair when he had returned to Roma in a practical, close-cropped style that attracted less attention from the lithe, lissome Roman women, in whose every step and bend and curve lurked Leila, Leila.
~~~~~
Chapter Twenty-Three: Leila
Leila’s forehead thunked against the door as Dante walked away from her apartment. A blue flash popped into her vision, obscured the white-painted door, and spun away.