by Declan Finn
The Pope nodded and smiled. He had been prepared for this. While the French had given him a little time to prepare his own defense, he had been granted restricted Internet and library access, and that was all he needed.
The Pope rose, smoothed out his white robes, and looked at Dr. Cantor pointedly, but not harshly. “Dr. Cantor, you say you are pro-‘Choice,’ correct? That people should have options, down to whether or not life should be allowed to grow?”
Cantor smiled politely. “Life isn’t an issue here. Brain death, even by your own Church’s standard, is a criterion for death—and embryos don’t even have brains.”
Pius XIII’s eyes narrowed, and he cocked his head slightly, the amused gleam in his eye not dwindling. “That was not the question. My question was that you say you are pro-Choice.”
“Correct.”
“In your country, Congressman David Weldon proposed a law to protect doctors and insurance companies from being forced to participate in performing, paying for, or making referrals for abortion. You objected to that law, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Why is that?”
“Because it treated women worse than criminals.”
Pius cocked his head. “And you support the ‘healthcare’ mandate that requires any Catholic institution to pay for employees’ abortions and sterilizations?”
“Of course.”
The Pope blinked, shook his head as though to clear it, and said, “Strange how the right to choose does not apply to those who do not wish to be involved in any step of that process.” He shrugged. “You say you’re a Catholic, is that correct?”
“I am a Catholic,” she stressed with disdain.
The Pope smiled politely. “Roman Catholic or American Catholic?”
There was a bolt of involuntary laughter after the translation went through. She answered, “American Catholic.”
“Dr. Cantor, are you familiar with the play Man of La Mancha?” Pius asked, not even rising from his chair.
She nodded. “Yes, and?”
“There is a line in the play that states that, maybe, it is madness to see the world the way it is, instead of the way it ought to be.” He looked up from his desk. “So, I suppose you would see it differently?”
Cantor sniffed. “To see the world other than it is counts as the definition of insanity.”
He shrugged casually. “I suppose it is. You see, my faith believes that we should lay down ideals of what behavior should be, not is. Just because human beings murder one another does not mean that we should repeal laws against such crimes, correct?”
Cantor cocked her head and smirked. “But murder isn’t natural, sex is.”
The Pope blinked. “Natural? Really? Interesting.” He smiled. “That is amusing, since Pope St. John Paul the Great once argued that the natural purpose of sex was to procreate. He was given some trouble for that observation.” He rose from his desk and steamed onward, not even allowing for a pause so anyone could object. He moved halfway between his desk and the witness stand, then slowly paced the width of the courtroom. “But as far as what is and what ought to be…you obviously believe that people ought to have as much sex as is desired, yes? Or have I misunderstood?”
“You have the general idea…for a priest.”
He nodded. “And so, essentially, you are not creating, evaluating, or even sustaining a morality. You are simply blessing what is.”
Cantor’s eyes narrowed. “We bless nothing, we just acknowledge reality.”
“Ah…” He furrowed his brow, as though confused. “Really?”
* * *
Ireland.
Deaglan Lynch smiled as the man screamed.
The redheaded psychopath lay strapped to the table as Deaglan’s man Thomas Healy held him down.
“What have you bastards been up to lately?” he asked. “You’ve been going around killing priests, haven’t you? Killed two of me men while you were at it, son?”
The nutcase smiled. There were annoying bastards, but this psycho took the cake. Some sort of Communist sociopath killing priests.
“Tell me what you’re going to do,” Healy continued, “and I’ll make it all stop. Why did you kill that nice Fr. Harrington down in Dublin, hmm?”
He said nothing, and made no noise.
Lynch sighed. “Okay. Tom, you work on him a bit. I’ve got to go make some preparations.”
Healy raised a brow. “Oh?”
“Well, Belgium is just across the river, ain’t it laddie? We might as well go to save the Pope.”
* * *
The Pope looked confused with the answer he received. Not even the people who knew him could tell if he was faking it or not. “You say the Church is malevolent because it bans condoms, yes? Because we—I, as Pope—cannot expect people to exercise self-control and not have sex before marriage.”
She nodded. “That is what I said.”
“Can you tell me how many various versions of sexually transmitted diseases are out there?”
Cantor shook her head, confused. “I’m not entirely certain.”
“Not a problem,” Joshua told her. “Would twenty-five diseases sound right? Maybe fifty with various viral strains?”
She shrugged. “I suppose.”
He nodded, pacing away from her slowly. “And how effective are condoms at birth prevention?”
“They’re in the high 80%”
The Pope stopped and turned. “Only in the eightieth-percentile? You do know that there are such things known as micropores in condoms? They allow the skin to breathe, and such.”
Patricia sighed, bored now. “Yes. And?”
“Do you know that a sperm cell—only some 80% of which are stopped by your condoms—are hundreds of times larger than a virus? And that viruses can slip between those micropores? Withdrawn!” He leaned in, saying, “What I really wish to know is, with over fifty different sexual diseases in the world, at large, would it not be natural to assume that people ought to wait for marriage to have sex, in order to avoid such things?”
She leaned forward, “And you think that even married couples who have had too many children are supposed to suffer through more because they can’t have condoms?”
The Pope smiled. “I personally never thought that children were a cause of suffering, but there is still something called natural family planning, isn’t there?”
Dr. Cantor scoffed and leaned back in her seat. “You mean the rhythm method? You know what we called women who use that? Pregnant.”
He laughed, walking back towards his desk. “Yes, most amusing. I have also heard that—one of my Jesuit colleagues told me that last week. No, natural family planning is 98% effective, and essentially uses a woman’s own bio-signs as evidence of when ovulation is to occur. And, interestingly, it does not taint the body with chemicals like certain pills. What are the side effects of what you call ‘birth prevention medication’?”
She eyed him. “Birth control pills? I’m not really sure.”
“It can tamper with biochemistry and cause the body to overproduce blood clots.” He shook his head and waved it off. “My apologies, never mind, I suppose it does not matter. So, you believe, as I do, in the dignity of the human body? That it is glorious.”
The bioethics professor raised a brow. “After a fashion. We don’t have the same ideals.”
“Oh, I would expect not. When, for you, would human life begin?”
“Around birth.”
“Indeed? At birth, after birth, just before birth?”
She smiled, amused at him now. “After, of course.”
“Ah… so, even though it had a brain, a heart, and the form of a human being, you would say that it is not a human being?”
“Of course not.”
Joshua nodded slowly. “Of course not…” he murmured, almost to himself. “The American Supreme Court case known as the Dred Scott decision had a similar ruling about blacks,” he said, in almost a stage whisper—but the court reporter coul
d hear him clearly, as could the cameras. “So, you say life begins after birth…how long after birth?”
“Very quickly,” she replied, at the speed of her own adjectives.
“That is interesting, because you wrote only a few years ago that children under the age of five could be ‘retroactively aborted’ at will. I suppose that is a ‘very quick’ life.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Better that than the lives you want for homosexuals.”
The Pope paused, and a careful smile crossed his features. “Oh, how so?”
“You would deny them sex, you would deny them a life.”
“I did not know that the two were so closely intertwined.”
She gave out a sound that was half gasp, half laugh. “You condemn them for who they are, and what they are. You condemn their entire existence. What would you call it?”
The Pope considered her for a moment. She really did believe what she was saying. And while he was the one who asked all the questions, the rules of evidence and court order seemed to have been thrown out if it would make the prosecution look good. All he needed now was to put on a good show for the show trial…but that didn’t mean he couldn’t put on a performance. “Then you do not acknowledge a difference between the person and their acts?”
“Of course I do,” she sniffed. “Who doesn’t?”
“Then you see the difference between the Church condemning homosexual acts and not homosexuality?”
“You mean there’s a difference?” she joked.
“One is a person, the other is an action by a person. You are familiar with Andy Warhol?”
She nodded. “He was an artist.”
“Yes…a homosexual, Catholic, celibate who went to church daily.” There was only a beat of silence before the pope continued: “You are familiar with the playwright Harvey Fierstein, and the lawyer and author Tammy Bruce?”
“Yes. Both are gay.”
“Do you know where they and the Catholic Church agree?”
“You all like to wear dresses?”
The audience chuckled, and even the Pope smiled. “I am a Jesuit, not a Markist brother.” He received some polite laughs. “No,” Joshua continued, “we are all three of us concerned about a certain homosexual urban subculture where AIDS infection is a rite of passage, and a lifestyle where triple-digit partners are the rule. Fierstein has raised objections to it in numerous news articles, even a play, and Bruce has written a book including that subject.”
She nodded curtly, as though both acknowledging the point, and dismissing that it matters. “Yet you still forbid gay marriage.”
“Politically, as an American issue, civil marriage is not my concern. However, when I get reports that gay couples take their newly-issued licenses and ram them down the throats of my priests, I object. If they truly want to get married in a Church, they can go to a church that wants to marry them. In case you have not noticed, Catholic marriages are a contract to keep sex open for the procreation of children, and homosexuals cannot fulfill such a contract. To return to our earlier conversation, who do you think is a good model of your version of how to treat the human body?”
Cantor blinked, trying to keep up with the mental ricochets. “Europe.”
The Pope cocked his head and moved closer, in for the kill. He slipped a piece of paper from his robes and unfolded it slowly. “Truly?” He handed Cantor the paper. “Could you read the highlighted portions?”
Cantor nodded, and frowned. “In the French heat wave of 2003, over 14,000 elderly died from heat exhaustion; none of their offspring came home to bury them, lest they stop their vacation. The French government needed massive refrigerator units to house the bodies. In Germany, the dead are buried without notice in the news, no funeral, and no memorial service. Sweden has a service in which the dead are flash frozen, and then used for fertilizer—”
The Pope held out his hand. “That may be enough, Dr. Cantor. What on that list matches your ideals about the glories of the human body?”
The bioethics Chair blinked. “Obviously, none of that.”
The Pope blinked, as though confused. “Obviously? Dr. Cantor, the Netherlands have considered that they can euthanize patients for anorexia. In the United States, the state of Oregon will use state funds to pay for assisted suicide, but not a heart transplant. Dutch physicians ‘involuntarily’ suicided over 6,000 patients in 1990 alone—they killed their own patients without any request for assisted suicides. How are the differences obvious?”
“Obvious as in I do not agree with any of it. However, Europe and I do share similarities in other areas.”
“Such as?”
She smiled, and said in a stage whisper—so loud even the recorders heard it—“It’s our attitude on sex. You may want to move on now, we wouldn’t want to scandalize your followers.”
* * *
Ioseph Mikhailov glared at the television screen. He didn’t like what he saw. The witness had a few good lines, but was obviously not scoring any real points.
On another screen, there was that … author on the news. This little punk had been irritating since the start of the most active phase of this project. The problem with a celebrity is that they couldn’t be killed quietly, unless there were natural causes or a drug problem to work with.
That had made the author as irritating as almost any victim Mikhailov had sanctioned. This writer didn’t even have a drinking problem. He lived a clean life, and his medical records said that, while overweight, he wasn’t at risk for a heart attack for another thirty years or more.
Not only that, but the man sent to execute the author had been taken out, which meant that this character was either lucky or skilled or both. Now he’d been brought into the conspiracy against him.
“I dislike him. And the Pope doesn’t need even more help making fun of the ‘witnesses’ for the prosecution.” He looked over his shoulder at his son. “We have people left in North America, da? Send him a message…through his wife.” He smiled. “Take her, if possible. If not, sign her corpse ‘From Russia with love.’ ”
* * *
The Pope smiled, and answered in the same stage whisper as the witness. “I took confessions in parts of the world that make Afghanistan look like a playground. I think they’re already scandalized.” He straightened and continued normally. “Now, as for sex, as in you support demographic suicide?”
Dr. Cantor blinked. “How so?”
“You just said that you and European policies on sex concur. However, in the past decade, Europe’s population decreased faster than during the Black Death. Eighteen European countries have more deaths than births each year. No western European country has a birthrate that would replace their population. They have effectively refused to create a next generation. Is that what you mean by sex?”
“We have similar ideals in terms of birth control.”
“Sorry, I’m terribly old fashioned, I thought that sex led to children. I must be getting older than I thought.”
Dr. Cantor smiled. “I won’t comment on that, but yes, both believe in a woman’s right to choose.”
He furrowed his brows in apparent confusion. “To choose what?”
She spoke as if trying to prompt him. “To choose to have children or not?”
“Ah,” he said, as though having a great truth presented to him. “And how do you exercise that right?”
“Through contraception and abortion, mainly. The pill, condoms, that sort of thing, as they do with planned parenthood.”
“Really? Sounds like preventing parenthood to me. But I’m only a priest, what do I know, right? This actually brings me back to what I asked before. With natural family planning? You never answered me before.”
She sighed at the regurgitated topic. “It’s still the same thing—Catholic celibates telling women what to do with our bodies. Well it’s our bodies—”
Pope Pius XIII raised his hand, as if in surrender. “No, you misunderstand me, ma’am. It is for both men and women—the men
have to ‘keep it zipped,’ as it were. It’s proven to be 98% effective. Would it surprise you to hear that the Planned Parenthood website says that condoms are 15% ineffective against pregnancy?”
Dr. Cantor gritted her teeth, her patience becoming strained. “I know what you’re doing. You’re dictating morality. Again. You’re telling people they have to fight against their natural urges. You’re telling them they can’t have sex when they want to! It’s unnatural!”
“Am I? If restraint were unnatural, sociopaths would be kings of morality.” He waved it off. “Now, tell me, what are the top two reasons for allowing abortion, in your view?”
“Rape and incest,” she blew off casually, annoyed now.
“And How many abortions have taken place in America since your Roe vs. Wade decision?”
“About fifty-five million.”
“Wow,” he said with awe. “So there were over one million, five hundred thousand cases of rape and incest in America each year for more than thirty years? Are there so many rapists and pedophiles? I only remember a hundred American priests who were pedophiles in all that time. Surely they couldn’t have gotten around that much.”
She dismissed it with a wave of her hand. “They weren’t all rape and incest.”
He cocked his head. “But only 30% of Americans support abortion as it stands now, and many of those that do are only allowing for rape and incest. The old canard about a medical abortion to save the life of the mother, the argument 50 years ago, does not happen much, if at all anymore, does it? And isn’t it true that there are, at most, 300,000 rapes a year in the United States?”
She nodded, impressed at his memory for numbers. “That takes into account the possibilities of unreported rapes... I mean yes, for the record.”
“You are aware, I’m certain, that fewer than one in every thousand rapes result in pregnancy. That means...” he paused, as if dividing 300,000 and 1,000 in his head. “There should only be only three hundred pregnancies from rape every year, at most, if one were estimating upward. That leaves over one million, four hundred and ninety-seven thousand abortions unaccounted for.”