Robert Blair Kaiser's summary of last week's chapter: In the last chapter, Cardinal Mahony laid out the case for an autochthonous Church in America. He did so in a huge news conference that was televised live around the world. When a reporter says his plan sounds too political, the cardinal points out that the Church has always been political—under various forms of governance. "Today, the Church in Rome has a monarchical form of governance under a kind of constitution called canon law. Romans are proud of it, possibly because it is modeled on ancient Roman law and is therefore part of their own Roman culture. Americans do not quite understand it. Nor will we ever. It is a charter for tyranny, actually, designed to make its secret orders stick by the sheer power of an absolute sovereign, who makes all the laws, interprets all the laws, and enforces all the laws. That's one form of governance. One kind of politics, really. But it is not the kind of politics that commends Christ to his people, not any more, not today. Not in California. Not in the United States.". Now here's Chapter Sixteen...

Chapter 16: Grandeur

INSIDE THE THIRD FLOOR OFFICE of the secretary of state in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone and his staff and three other Curial cardinals—and Cardinal Grandeur who was visiting from Philadelphia—had been watching the Mahony news conference with fascination.

Cardinal Gianbattista Re said, "The uprising in California becomes very clear. Now."

"Was his Holiness watching this?" asked Bertone.

Cardinal James Stafford said, "I hope not. If he was, he will know that our bluff didn't work."

"Our bluff?" said Re.

Stafford reddened. "We leaked a piece of disinformation to the Los Angeles Times, suggesting we might put the whole state of California under interdict. The Times story said we had already done so."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why did you resort to disinformation?"

"We thought a Page One story in the Los Angeles Times would bring Mahony to his knees. He's always paid more attention to the Times than he has to us."

Re said, "It didn't quite bring him to his knees."

"No. Something seems to have made him bolder."

Bertone said, "And it made us look like idiots. Che brutta figura! Perhaps you saw the results of your fumbling little move in this morning's La Repubblica? A denial from the Vatican Press Office itself, which said it knew nothing of an interdict in California." He raised his palms. "Gentlemen, we got caught leaking a lie."

"Not so fast," said Grandeur.

"Huh?" said Stafford.

"What?" said Re.

Grandeur spoke to them as if they were fourth graders. "I don't think you've read Canon 1378 very carefully. We don't have to put California under an interdict. The people up and down the state of California who participate in this liturgical enactment put themselves under interdict automatically." Grandeur repeated "automatically" in Italian. He liked the way the word rolled off his tongue. Automaticamente. He smiled at them and said it again. Automaticamente. "That means we don't have to promulgate anything."

Bertone turned to his daily compendium of the world press, news clippings that his staff had Xeroxed and compiled for him this morning in a neat stack, six inches thick. He said, "Because of Sister Phoebe's rashness, aided and abetted by the Internet, priestless Catholic communities all over the world are doing their own liturgies today. We're faced with an epidemic of, of, of freedom. No! I will not call it freedom. I call it license! People writing their own Eucharistic liturgies! The Internet is full of new liturgies. New texts have popped up overnight, like mushrooms. People are celebrating something called the 'Thomas Mass' that eliminates what they call 'Roman accretions' and sticks more closely to Scripture."

"Why 'the Thomas Mass?'" asked Re.

Bertone sighed. "Something, apparently, that can appeal to even the doubting Thomases in the Church! Madonn'!" He turned back to his notes. "I have an ad from the Internet about another kind of Mass. It says a publishing company in Australia has a text for a new Mass written by someone named Michael Morwood. A defrocked priest!"

"I've seen that text," said Stafford. "It is very poetic and very scriptural. But it doesn't sound much like our Roman Mass."

"Why even discuss it?" asked Grandeur. "It's completely illicit and invalid."

Bertone raised a hand to regain the floor. He wasn't finished. "There's more. The Washington Post reported yesterday the existence of thirty-four 'intentional faith communities' in the Washington area that are doing their own liturgies. Without the presence of a priest. If there are that many of these liturgical communities in the American capital, there must be similar communities all over the United States. All over the world, for all I know." He pointed at Grandeur. "So I need to ask you, Eminenza. Have all these people, perhaps hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, put themselves under interdict?"

Grandeur blurted, "That's what the canon says." He raised his copy of the canon, a single sheet of paper. "How could canon law make it any clearer?"

"Let's not get too legalistic, Fog." This from the American who headed the Holy Office, Cardinal William Levada, who had been a classmate of Mahony in their Southern California seminary "Don't you think we have a duty to tell these folks what they are doing before we tell them they're excommunicating themselves?"

Bertone said, "You mean we should threaten them? You know the faithful don't take very kindly to canonical threats."

"Well, maybe ask them at least what they think they are doing?" said Levada. "We would look more kind, more gentle if we did. More Christlike maybe?"

When Grandeur rolled his eyes, Levada sat up straighter. If the cardinal from Philadelphia wasn't buying into scripture, maybe Levada would meet him on his own ground, canon law. He asked Grandeur for his copy of the canon, and, after he had parsed the language in Canon 1378, uttered a small cry of surprise.

"What?" asked Grandeur.

"Maybe, Fog, you haven't read this canon very carefully either."

"Huh?" said Grandeur. He was blushing.

"It says here," said Levada, "that folks come under an automatic interdict if they"—he made little quote marks in the air—'enact the liturgical action of the Eucharistic Sacrifice.' My question is, Are they really doing that?"

"Not sure I understand," said Grandeur.

"I mean their actions seem Eucharistic enough. But 'Sacrifice?' From what I've read in the New York Times, these Phoebe types are not claiming they're offering the Sacrifice of the Mass. They say they are only doing what Jesus told his followers to do at the Last Supper. They say they're following the opinion of some modern theologians like Schillebeeckx, who has written a good deal about the meaning of a Greek word used in the early Church: anamnesis."

Re repeated the word carefully: "A-nam-KNEE-sis?"

"Yes," said Levada. "I can give you a copy of a book on the subject by Bruce Morrill, a Jesuit from New England. Morrill claims that when the first followers of Jesus were engaged in a liturgical remembering of the Last Supper, they were not thinking sacrifice at all—not as it was later defined by the anti-Luther theologians at Trent. They were thinking about a meal, a highly significant communal meal, but a meal nonetheless."

Stafford nodded. He had read the same book. "Impressive scholarship."

Grandeur was speechless. After some moments, after he had composed himself, Grandeur admitted he was no theologian. "Just a canon lawyer."

"Aren't we all?" said Re. Re knew there were few real theologians in the higher reaches of the Roman Curia. They had risen to their eminence in the highly juridicized modern Church simply because they had doctorates in canon law. "If we really want to be honest, we are no match for Jesuit historians like Morrill. Or for the Dominican theologian Father Schillebeeckx."

"Theology aside," said Bertone, "we must decide how we respond to these." He reached for a sheaf of e-mail messages on his desk.

"What are they?" asked Stafford.

"A surge of some episcopal support for Mahony," he said. "Seventeen American bishops e-mailed Mahony after his televised news conference and sent my office blind copies." He ticked them off—using not their names but the names of their sees. "Portland, Fall River, Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, Denver, Des Moines, Baton Rouge, Santa Fe, Tucson, Great Falls, Montana, San Francisco, another Portland. You get the idea." He picked up another stack. "Same kind of notes here from other spots around the world: Quite a few from Canada. Montreal. Quebec. Toronto. Bogotá, Cape Town, Jakarta, Yokohama." His voice trailed off.

"Damn Internet," said Stafford. "One news cycle, and everyone in the world knows everything."

Re asked Bertone about Boston, Newark, St. Louis.

"Oh, we got their support. Of course."

"Of course," said Re. "We expect loyalty from O'Malley, Myers, and Burke. I didn't hear you mention Chicago?"

"Haven't heard from Chicago."

A rustle of activity at the door of Bertone's office. One of his aides rushed in with a half-dozen copies of Time magazine under his arm. He said, Scuza, Eminenza, ma deve guardare questo. "Excuse me, Eminence, but you have to look at this." He slapped the copies down on Bertone's desk. Bertone took one and invited the others to help themselves.

The smiling, almost exuberant face of a fair, freckled woman with short red hair graced Time's cover under the headline, "Sister Phoebe McNulty: A People's Church in America."

"Oh my God!" said Stafford. He opened to the middle of the magazine. "They've even got some pictures of her 'at play.' Here's one of her in tennis shorts. Time says she was once a tennis star. Played at Wimbledon in 1991. And another, my God, in a bathing suit. Looks like a Playboy centerfold." He held up the magazine for all to see.

Grandeur waved his copy of the magazine and cried, "I can't believe this. Roger's lesbian nun!"

"Modernity hits the California convent!" said Re with a chuckle.

I'm going to the pope!" said Grandeur, clutching his copy of Time. "He will understand the gravity of this, even if you do not."

GRANDEUR, THE HURRY-UP AMERICAN in a Rome that likes to take its time. He stewed for two days at the Minerva before a Vatican messenger finally showed up at his hotel with a large, ornate envelope, wax-sealed with the papal coat of arms. Inside, he found what he had been waiting for, a hand-written invitation for him—pranzo in the papal apartment at 8:00 PM Saturday.

GRANDEUR PRESENTED HIMSELF ON TIME. The pope was late, offering his apologies as he strode into the ingresso of his apartment. He sighed as he led the way directly to his dinner table, noting the copy of Time in Grandeur's hand. "America!" he said. Often enough for him, Time mirrored America. "A fraction of the family. But its concerns seem to take up half my days."

Grandeur doubted that, but he conceded it as fact and said nothing. The best he could do was remind the pope that the U.S. also came up every year with 45 percent of the Vatican's financial support.

"Yes," the pope said with a straight face. "That should keep me in Pradas."

Grandeur did a double take. The pope had to be kidding about his expensive, high-heeled red shoes. But if he was, then he was showing a self- deprecating, even wry, sense of humor he'd never manifested before—in Grandeur's presence, at least. In some confusion, Grandeur gave the pope a half-hearted smile. And then as he took his seat at the table, he saw the pope throw back his head in a broad, silent laugh. That didn't make Grandeur any more comfortable. Was the pope laughing at him? Not sure what to say, he let the Holy Father have the next word.

The pope didn't speak for some moments. At length, after a small glass of sherry had been served, he asked, "Does this Time cover story indicate a swell of popular support for your people's Church in America?"

"My people's Church!" protested Grandeur. "Not my idea. you know that!"

"I know." The pope regarded Grandeur with some curiosity. He could never get used to the too-well-tailored American bishops. They exuded an air of prosperity that was quite alien to most of the world's other bishops, with the possible exception of his own German bishops. "It's Roger Mahony's idea. But we have to try to, how do they say it in the American Southwest? 'Judge no man until we walk a mile in his moccasins?' He has had a great deal of stress. Kidnapped. Put on trial before the whole world. And then to be caught up in a military massacre."

Grandeur wondered where the pope had come up with the "walk-a- mile-in-his-moccasins" quote. He nodded agreement. "But does our sympathy for him mean we have to stand by and watch him try to overturn the divinely instituted hierarchical constitution of the Church?"

"There was no hierarchy in the early Church," snapped the pope. "There was no hierarchy at Pentecost. Hierarchy came later. Men set it up, not God."

Grandeur shifted nervously in his seat and toyed with his pasta in brodo. Three days ago, he had a new theology of the Eucharist rammed down his throat. Now the pope himself was giving him a new theology of the Church. At his age, and at his eminence, he asked himself, did he have to start learning theology all over again? Not a pleasant prospect.

"I grant you," continued the pope, "we have enjoyed a royal papacy for a thousand years. The question is, can we afford to keep running the Church like this for another thousand years? Or even another ten years?"

This surprised Grandeur. Papa Wojtyla never talked this way. Neither did Cardinal Ratzinger. But now that Ratzinger had become the pope, he was beginning to sound like Hans Küng, his former colleague at Tübingen, who actually dared to write in his recent memoir, "The royalty of Christ means democracy." Grandeur told the pope, "I am not sure what you have in mind." Cautious now. He had to be cautious.

"The Church-as-monarchy," said the pope, "cannot survive. In my youth, which lasted for me until I became pope—imagine, a young man until I reached the age of 78!—I thought numbers didn't matter. I wanted a more controlling Church, and if that meant a smaller Church, that was fine with me, because that would give us a more faithful Church. Now that I am pope, I cannot think this way any longer. I am starting to become something of a missionary."

Grandeur nodded, trying to process this, uh, well, he told himself, he'd have to call this a conversion. "I thought I could count on you," he said, "for your support." They had finished their soup course, and were being served now with a thin slice of veal and some underdone squash. Grandeur thought he might have to stop for a pizza at Il Fornaio on his way back to the Minerva.

The pope put down his fork for a moment, and took a sip of red wine. His cool blue eyes bore into Grandeur. "Tell me, Cardinal Grandeur, what kind of support do you want from me?"

"Well, first, you can withhold your approval of a national synod in the United States. This is not the time for a national synod."

The pope said quietly, "A pity. I remember you were the one asking for a synod only a few weeks ago. I have already approved a Fourth Council of Baltimore for the United States. It will commence this summer."

Grandeur paused, processed the pope's words, and tried to recover. "Well then, you can at least veto Mahony's notion that our national synod has to become an open gathering, with voting delegates there who are not even bishops."

"You want me to tell the American bishops they should hold a gathering of the American Church with only bishops in attendance?"

"Yes. Only bishops attended the three Councils of Baltimore—in 1844, 1866, and 1884. All you have to do is say the word—that we will follow tradition."

"The people-at-large shouldn't concern themselves, then, with things that are none of their business?"

"Exactly," said Grandeur, not quite catching the papal irony. "And you should tell the American bishops to keep the press out, too."

"The press would only arouse public opinion? For no good reason?"

Grandeur stared at the pope. He blotted his lips with a snow-white linen napkin. Was the pope putting him on? No. Not possible. "Exactly," he said. "Press coverage can only hurt us."

A white-coated waiter appeared with two carafes. The pope turned to Grandeur. "Coffee?" he asked. "Decaf?"

Grandeur opted for the decaf.

They sipped their coffees in silence. Then the pope said with some finality, "I will make no rules for your national synod that are not already codified in canon law. I am inclined to let the American bishops work out all the other rules they think they need." He made a lazy gesture with his left hand. "Subsidiarity and all that."

Again Grandeur had a hard time hiding his surprise.

The pope tried to reassure him, "I am sure you can get what you want. you undoubtedly have support from a majority of the American bishops?"

"At last count," said Grandeur, "I have approximately 105 of them— forty percent. That is the number who asked for a national synod a few years back."

"So few!"

"There may be more today."

"I would think so. You are not telling me Cardinal Mahony may have the rest of the bishops?" The pope did a swift mental calculation. "One hundred and eighty-seven bishops—sixty percent—on his side?"

Grandeur smiled. "I will put my 40 percent up against his 60 percent any day. If he has 60 percent, which I doubt. We are much more sure of ourselves. And, you must know, hugely funded, too." He proceeded to tell the pope about the financial help he was getting from Richard John Neuhaus, George Weigel, and Michael Novak.

"I know Novak."

"Yes, of course you do. Well, out of his Washington-based think tank, the Institute on Religion and Democracy—which Novak founded in 1985 with a gift from the Mellon Foundation of several hundred thousand dollars—"

"So little?" asked the pope. "I would think—"

"The Mellon family could have given more? Yes, and you would be right, your Holiness. Since 1985, Novak and company have raised more than forty million dollars in their campaign to overturn the socialism promoted by the mainline Protestant churches in America. Now, Novak and his people have a new campaign—to block this movement for a people's Church. They are kicking it off next week with a black-tie dinner at the Waldorf."

"A black-tie affair?" said the pope. "At the Waldorf? Tell me, will the affluent guests coming to this event even understand why they are there?"

"Probably not. But they love Rome, and they love the Church they have always known. That's enough for them. But when our speakers help them understand how much their Church is in danger . . ."

He waited for a nod from the pope. When he didn't get one, he took the pope's silence as an invitation to tell him the names of the speakers he had lined up to help the $1,000-a-plate dinner guests understand. He pulled a list from the inner breast pocket of his charcoal black cashmere jacket, and proceeded to read out a lineup that might have been culled from a Who's Who of the Catholic Church's right wing in America. "Neuhaus. Weigel, and Novak will speak, of course. Robert George of Princeton. Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard. (Harvard and Princeton!) Tom Monaghan, the pizza king who is building Ave Maria University in Florida. Patrick Reilly, whose vigilance has kept pseudo-Catholics away from Catholic podiums. John McCloskey, the Opus Dei priest from Washington who stands so strongly behind our nation's militant priests."

The pope raised an eyebrow. "Militant priests?"

Grandeur plunged on. "Yes, your Holiness. Just the other day, Father McCloskey described these American priests as 'the Navy Seals, the Army Rangers, the green Berets of the Catholic Church.' And, your Holiness, you know how sorely the Church needs militant priests today."

Not sure the pope was convinced, Grandeur continued. "I don't think I have to tell you, Holy Father, there's more than a whiff of revolution here in this so-called people's Church in America? There's something subversive about it, something decidedly socialistic."

"But the early Church was built on a communist model, was it not?"

Grandeur spluttered. Now he knew the pope was toying with him. As Cardinal Ratzinger, he had done all he could to spike the liberation theologians— because he had been persuaded they were communists. "Well, your Holiness, Michael Novak has proven that the future of the world, and the future of the Church, lies in capitalism."

"Novak has proven?" The pope frowned. "I thought history itself has already delivered its verdict on the future of communism? I also thought the future of the Church did not lie in any, ummm, -ism, but in our following Jesus, who loved us and wanted us to follow his way, his truth, and his life. 'I have come that you may have life, and have it more abundantly?'"

"Of course," said Grandeur, with an impatient wave of his hand. "But that abundant life statement could mean anything. I think Mahony might want to turn it into some kind of socialist manifesto, or maybe I should say a call for liberation."

"Perhaps." The pope took a sip of red wine, and stared at Grandeur, and marveled at his efforts to manipulate him with the word "liberation." Grandeur knew he had never liked the so-called liberation theologians, because they always seemed to care more about liberation than they did about theology. He changed the subject, now tired, perhaps, of sparring with his capitalist cardinal, whom he liked even less than the liberation theologians. "Perhaps you could get Mr. Novak's publisher to send me a copy of his latest book, Blessed Are the Rich for They Shall See God?"

As he rose to leave, Grandeur remembered the hundred dollar bills he had brought as a little gift for the pope. Most bishops from affluent western nations did this as a matter of course on their periodic ad limina visits. The cardinal-archbishop of affluent Philadelphia brought greenbacks on every visit. He reached into his cashmere jacket, produced a large, long white envelope, waved his gift, handed it over, and said, "Peter can no longer say, 'gold and silver have I none.'"

"No," said the pope, taking the envelope and, without looking at its contents, slipped it into a pocket of his cassock. "And neither can he now say, 'Rise and walk.'"

Grandeur wondered what the hell the pope meant by that. Nevertheless, he, Grandeur, did rise and walk—right out of the room.

"CARDINAL MAHONY – A NOVEL" now serialised in Spanish HERE

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Other books by Robert Blair Kaiser:
A Church in Search of Itself
Clerical Error
The Politics of Sex and Religion
“R.F.K. Must Die!”
Pope, Council and World
Co-author (with Tim Smith): Jubilee 2000, A Musical Comedy

[Index of this serialisation of Cardinal Mahony — A Novel]