Robert Blair Kaiser's summary of last week's chapter: During a retreat at the Phoenician, Arizona's poshest resort, the U.S. bishops voted down Cardinal Mahony's proposal that each bishop bring one elected delegate to the Fourth Council of Baltimore. Instead, each bishop will bring one appointed delegate, to observe but not to vote. Back in LA, the news sends Rackham and Pike into a state of gloom. Pike says, "We've got a national campaign headquarters here. And no real campaign." He nodded toward the screen of his laptop. "And, to make things worse, Roger says they tabled his proposal to allow the press into the Baltimore meetings." The press will be on the outside looking in. That will make our job ten times harder." Rackham is more confident than Pike. He says, "The Holy Spirit will think of something." Pike observes that Rackham, a Jew, doesn't even believe in the Holy Spirit. Rackham replies, "If She comes to the rescue here, I could believe in Her." Now here's Chapter Nineteen...

Chapter 19: Moore

THE HOLY SPIRIT SURELY HAD a sense of humor, coming to the rescue as She did through the instrumentality of a comedian named Michael Moore.

In the hit documentary Roger and Me, released by Warner Bros. in 2001, Moore had chronicled his unsuccessful pursuit of Roger Smith, the board chairman of General Motors, who eluded him and his camera crew for months on end after GM closed its plant in Flint, Michigan, terminating some 40,000 workers, and turning Moore's hometown into a wasteland. Moore got few words from Smith, the runaround from Smith's lieutenants, and a lecture on capitalism from one of GM's p.r. people (who later lost his own job). Moore demonstrated that GM gave less of a damn about its poor fired workers in Flint than it did for its corporate profits. By implication, Roger and Me also skewered America's ruling class.

In a project with the tentative title The Bishops and Me, Moore intended to skewer the American Church's ruling class, but now, eight technology-driven years later, he could do so much more than he did in Roger and Me. He didn't need a camera crew with him when he visited the American bishops' retreat at the Phoenician in Scottsdale in March 2009. He was outfitted with a mini-cam the size of a quarter; it looked like a button on his denim shirt. Under his shirt, a wire ran down from that camera to a three-by-five-inch transmitter in the pocket of Moore's baggy jeans—which sent his material to a command truck parked a half-mile away, where an associate recorded every sound, every image.

Moore did not record the bishops at prayer, of which there was very little on this so-called retreat. He caught them at play, in a venue they had chosen for its privacy. Only when Cardinal Grandeur and a few of his helper-bishops in Philadelphia saw Moore's rough cut some weeks later—given them by a friend at Fox Television News—did they realize that Moore had been able to wander around the Phoenician with his hidden camera for almost two hours before he was found out by four security guards and thrown off the property.

The networks, which had copies of Moore's rough cut, refused to buy—no matter how much editing he might promise to do on it. They had what they called "ethical and legal and commercial reasons." They were probably right. The bishops hardly ever appeared in public without their medieval costumes, their funny hats, and their tall curved sticks called "crosiers." Moore caught them in their Bermuda shorts with their golf clubs and their tennis rackets and their dry martinis—a self-satisfied, pompous lot relaxing in the kind of splendor enjoyed only by America's corporate elite.

A producer at PBS told Moore, "you invaded the bishops' privacy in Scottsdale. We cannot risk a lawsuit. Or a Congressional inquiry either." A vice president at CBS told Moore, "you can do kamikaze journalism on the president of General Motors. You can do attack journalism on the president of the United States. But you can't do that to the cardinal-archbishop of Philadelphia. Do you know that one out of every four Americans is a Catholic? Seventy-five million Catholics in this country?"

"I'm a Catholic, too," protested Moore. "That's why I can have a little fun at the bishops' expense. I think at least half of that seventy-five million will laugh along with me."

"Half?" said the man from CBS. "The other half will kill us. We can't risk that."

Moore did no better with the other networks. A friendly p.r. man at ABC told him, "In September 2006, we spent thirty million dollars on a two-night docudrama about 9/11 and produced something that alienated half our audience. We'll never, ever do that again." Bill O'Reilly confessed to Moore—off the record—that Fox had lost $38 million in advertising revenue after he presented his show with Monsignor Rountree and Father James Kowalski, a show that helped kick-start the movement for a people's Church.

"How did you lose thirty-eight mill?" asked Moore.

O'Reilly said Fox had ad contracts with most of corporate America. Pillsbury. Procter and Gamble. Exxon. Ford. "Apparently, most of these big companies all have conservative Catholics on their boards. We don't have their ad business any more."

Moore rolled his eyes. In the capitalist world that supported Fox, what could he expect? Well, he could be a capitalist, too. The hell with the networks. He could distribute his ninety-minute documentary to movie theaters across the land. He'd done that with two of his other productions. One of them had even won him an Oscar. But a theatrical release would take months to mount. And this subject was hot right now, wasn't it?

MOORE DIDN'T KNOW HOW HOT until he was invited to visit the Wilshire Boulevard campaign headquarters of the people's Church in Los Angeles—and asked to bring a copy of his tape. Moore remembered that Bill O'Reilly had told him something about a movement for a people's Church in America. He had considered that a quixotic dream. The bishops were as thoroughly entrenched as any corporate board, and nothing, he thought, would ever move them toward a sharing of their power with the people, who weren't even stockholders. But now, as he was parking his SUV along the curb on Wilshire and noting a red, white, and blue sign in the window that read CAMPAIGN FOR A PEOPLE'S CHURCH, he was wishing he had been paying more attention to what was going on—in the Church of Los Angeles, at least.

Juana Margarita Obregón met him at the door and brought him through a huge almost empty outer room to a single windowless inner office in the back. It had a bare linoleum floor, a flickering fluorescent fixture in the ceiling, and was furnished with one desk, one telephone, one small TV, and four chairs.

"I guess you know who this is?" she said to Pike and Rackham and Sunnyhill. How could they not? Amply overweight with a scruffy brown beard, Moore was wearing his trademark costume—baggy jeans, an oversize Navy blue jacket, Nikes on his feet, a John Deere cap on his crown.

With a straight face, Pike looked up at Juana Margarita Obregón and said, "Does he have an appointment?"

Rackham turned his wheelchair toward Moore. "If you'd like to fill out this form," he said with a frown, "we'll see if we can get you on our schedule. We'll take it under advisement."

Moore's face dropped. Then when Pike and Rackham roared with laughter, he got the joke—that he wasn't going to get the same reception here that he had received at General Motors when he was trying, in vain, to see Chairman Roger Smith. But then, this bare campaign headquarters didn't much resemble the chairman's suite at General Motors.

Pike offered Moore one of the chairs, introduced him to Rackham and Juana Margarita Obregón and Sunnyhill—only their names, no titles—and got right to the point. "We've heard you can't sell your documentary," he said.

Moore didn't bother asking which documentary. "Where'd you hear that?" he said.

"On the Hollywood grapevine," said Rackham.

"The grapevine has it right. TV networks won't touch it."

Pike asked, "How about cable? HBO?"

"HBO is Time-Warner. Time-Warner won't touch it either." Moore spread his hands. "None of the other cable outfits would even look at it, not when I told 'em what I had."

"Can we look at it?" asked Pike.

"It's only a rough cut. I got this tape." He waved a small plastic bag at them. "you got a VHS player?"

They turned their chairs toward the TV in the corner of the office and watched Moore's tape. It started out with a slow, nostalgic look back at the Church Moore had known as a skinny Irish kid growing up as part of a large Catholic family in Flint, Michigan. His camera lingered on family snapshots—close-ups of the smiling nuns who taught him at St. Bridget's, his Irish pastor wearing a Detroit Tigers baseball cap, and a portrait of the St. Bridget's eighth-grade basketball team. Thirteen-year-old Michael Moore knelt in the front row, next to his nun-coach standing over her charges in a black serge habit and starched white wimple.

His opening narrative featured interviews with old-timers who fondly remembered the discipline and the devotion of the Church they knew, and it recalled Hollywood's reverent treatment of a long line of Catholic heroes and nun-heroines, as played by some of its most beloved stars—Loretta Young in Come to the Stable, Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary's, and Audrey Hepburn in A Nun's Story.

Moore's tape followed those shots with footage of Bing Crosby in a Roman collar crooning a lullaby in Going My Way, of Barry Fitzgerald, an Irish-brogue pastor in the same movie, and, no surprise, Spencer Tracy in his classic role—as Father Flanagan in Boys Town, slapping around a snotty orphan played by Mickey Rooney. He also had a clip of Pat O'Brien as Knute Rockne, giving a fiery pep talk to George Gipp (played by Ronald Reagan) and his teammates at Notre Dame. "Rockne wasn't a Catholic when he got to Notre Dame," observed Moore in his voice-over, "but his presence on the campus at Notre Dame showed how smart those Holy Cross priests were, to hire a guy who knew how to inspire winners on the gridiron."

The film cut to a close-up of Moore himself on camera. "But then," he said, "something happened to the Church in America. Many of the nuns and priests we knew and loved quit their orders. And some of the priests who remained at their altars turned out to be scoundrels. Worse, much worse, their superiors and their bishops who knew they were abusing children covered up for them.

"One of the scoundrel priests was Paul Shanley, a member of NAMBLA, the North American Man Boy Love Association, who was convicted of raping several young men before he fled Boston to set up a gay bed-and-breakfast establishment in Palm Springs, California." Here Moore's viewers saw a police mug shot of a shifty-eyed Shanley, then footage of a handsome, white-haired Irish priest outside the fence of a children's playground. "This is Oliver O'Grady, a priest from Stockton, California, now living in exile in Ireland. In California, he was found guilty of raping young children in his rectory, one as young as nine months old. A court found that his malefactions were covered up by the man who was then bishop of Stockton, Roger Michael Mahony." More quick shots of O'Grady, then of Mahony.

"What happened?" asked Moore. "These priests and bishops forgot who they were and why they'd taken their sacred vows in the first place, not to dominate over their flocks, but to serve them. The bishops were afflicted with an Edifice Complex, building lots of churches and schools, but acting more like CEOs of General Motors, aloof from the people, and unaccountable, very unaccountable for their actions."

The camera cut from Moore to a series of police mug shots, all confessed or convicted priest-pedophiles. Then some shots of bishops in their purple. "Several bishops were indicted for raping young boys, and one archbishop was found paying four hundred fifty thousand in hush money to a former gay lover. He didn't use his own cash. He had none. He was a Benedictine abbot with a vow of poverty, but he was able to sign a check out of a slush fund given him (perhaps unknowingly) by the good Catholics of Milwaukee. Other priests were caught with their hands in the collection plate. One pastor in Santa Barbara stole more than a million from his affluent parish in Montecito. And when an independent auditor went over the books at a parish in Darien, Connecticut, he found the pastor had racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in credit card charges (billed to the parish) for vacation trips to the Bahamas with his lover. The bishop suspended the priest who turned him in, telling him he'd only made the situation worse by blowing the whistle."

How did the whistle-blower make the situation worse? He said to Moore's camera, "The bishop told me I was suspended because I made the system look bad."

"Better, I guess," said Moore, by way of comment, "not to let the people know they were being screwed by the system. For more than four years now, the bishops haven't done much to fix the system. Many young Catholics haven't lost their faith in Jesus. But they have lost their faith in the bishops, whom they do not trust, and in the Church, which puzzles them. They're less and less likely to show up at Mass on Sunday, and even less likely to drop any money in their parishes' collection baskets. Meanwhile, the bishops keep on trying to pass state laws prohibiting abortion and same-sex marriage. A few bishops threaten their people with excommunication if they insist on voting for Democrats.

"On a personal level, they look like a comfortable lot, carrying on with business as usual. To show you how they carry on in fine style, I visited a meeting of the American bishops recently in Scottsdale, Arizona, where they were on one of their quadrennial retreats. They met in a palmy resort called the Phoenician."

On the screen, Pike, Rackham, Sunnyhill, and Juana Margarita Obregón saw lingering cameo shots of the Phoenician. Its yellow birds of paradise, begonias, chaparral sage, and red yucca, its heated swimming pools, its twenty-seven-hole golf course, its twelve tennis courts, its bowling green and croquet lawn, its health center and spa, its eleven restaurants, its spectacular views of the desert and the mountains surrounding the resort.

"Thanks to the latest video technology," Moore was saying, "I rigged myself with a miniature lens no bigger than a quarter." Close-up of a button-sized camera. "This little button-camera made it possible for me to slip into some places that I could hardly visit with an old-fashioned camera crew."

On the screen: a ten-second shot of an unidentified bishop covered with a tiny towel as his pink corpulence was being kneaded and pummeled by a young, bosomy, blonde masseuse. The camera cut back to Moore, mischievously smiling at his own button-camera, held out at arm's length. He was in a sort of disguise. Freshly barbered for the occasion. Hair cut. Close shave. Trim button-down shirt. "More significantly," he said, "I was able to get candid interviews from some of the bishops."

The screen cut to the face of Raymond Burke, the archbishop of St. Louis, coming off the Phoenician's practice-putting green in a screaming Hawaiian shirt, pink Bermuda shorts and a pair of pink leather sandals. Burke thought Moore was the new auxiliary bishop from Detroit. Moore knew who Burke was, from the name tag pinned to his Hawaiian shirt.

When Moore ambled up to him, he was surprised by Burke's friendly nod and, sizing up the situation, decided to see if he could draw Burke out. Moore asked him what kind of reactions he had gotten for excommunicating all those who had voted for the Democrat in the November election. Burke said, "My people supported me on that. That was a no-brainer. Catholics cannot vote for candidates who are pro-abortion."

"As I understand it," said Moore, "The candidate wasn't pro-abortion. The candidate was pro-choice."

"Same thing," said Burke.

"Right!" said Moore, as if in agreement, though he couldn't have disagreed more. He changed the subject, asking Burke for an update on the Polish Catholics in St. Louis whom he had excommunicated for refusing to give him the deed to their church and school and hand him some $12 million in savings they'd accumulated over the years. It was the kind of shop talk, Moore correctly imagined, that bishops engage in when they're "on retreat." He carried it off quite well.

"I haven't seen the twelve mill yet," Burke assured him. "But I'll get it. you'll see. These Polacks are good Catholics. They won't challenge my authority forever. They know why. I have my name on the deed of every other church in my archdiocese. Why not their church, too?"

Moore nodded and smiled, hoping Burke would think he agreed with Burke's highhandedness. "But what do you tell your Polacks when they say they've owned their own church for more than a hundred years?"

"That doesn't make it right," he said. "They have no reason to expect I will deal with them any differently than I deal with all the other churches in St. Louis—with absolute power to teach, sanctify, and rule. As a new bishop, you ought to know that. That's the way it is in the Roman Catholic Church. Always has been. Always will be."

"But Ray—" To carry on with the charade, Moore decided to call the bishop by his first name. "But Ray, what do you say when reporters remind you about lord Acton's famous remark about absolute power corrupting absolutely?"

"Acton!" exclaimed Burke. "The same lord Acton who opposed the declaration of papal infallibility at Vatican I? Well, you know who won that battle? The infallibilists." It was a difficult word, but it rolled smoothly off Burke's tongue. "The infallibilists won. After Vatican I, in fact, some of those in Acton's crowd who opposed them were excommunicated for their cheekiness."

Moore realized that his next question might make himself less than affable. But what the hell? No telling how Burke might flame forth. Hoping he would, Moore asked his question. "Are American Catholics cheeky for wanting accountable bishops?"

Burke growled, "We're accountable to God—and to the pope."

"But don't they have a right—"

Burke cut him off. "American Catholics are being cheeky when they start demanding their rights. Pius X put it quite well way back in the first part of the twentieth century. 'The laity have no other rights than to let themselves be guided and so follow their pastors in docility.'"

"Some say the laity ought to have a voice and a vote."

Burke flared at this. "The Church is not a democracy. But you know that, don't you?" He looked at Moore, now more curiously than he did at the outset of this conversation. "Have we met yet?"

Moore extended his hand. "Moore of Flint."

"Oh yes," said Burke, not flashing on the name, but offering his right hand anyway. "The new auxiliary in Detroit, right? Now, if you'll excuse me. I have to change for dinner. See you later?"

Moore said he hoped so. "Maybe at cocktails."

In the documentary, Ignatius Dreedle, the bishop of Buffalo Tooth, Nebraska, appeared in a white, no-collar, clerical shirt, black shorts, black knee-high socks, and black shoes. He was playing gin rummy and having a preprandial martini with another bishop at a small table alongside one of the resort's swimming pools.

Dreedle was downright hostile. "You're Michael Moore, aren't you? How did you get in here?"

Moore said he was hoping he could have fifteen minutes with him. He looked at his watch. "Maybe before dinner? Or after breakfast in the morning?"

"What for?" demanded Dreedle.

"I'm doing a documentary on the American Church," said Moore. There, he wasn't hiding anything now. He was being quite upfront.

"For whom?" asked Dreedle. "CBS? NBC? ABC?"

"Not sure yet. We'll have to see."

"Uh huh. Hoping to sell us to the networks? good luck with that." He took a nervous sip of his martini. "Now if you don't represent anybody, you'd better scram out of here. Or do I have to call security?"

His gin-partner said, "Of course we call security. This is a private meeting." He rose to his feet and raised a fist. "Michael Moore?" he said. "Michael Moore! You've got a lot of damned nerve coming here. You're a Democrat, aren't you? Member of the party of death? The party that advocates abortion, buggery, contraception, divorce, euthanasia, radical feminism, genetic experimentation, and mutilation?"

Moore smiled. Some days before, he had seen this tirade on the Internet, part of a pastoral letter penned for Catholics in Rockford, Illinois. Now he was overjoyed to get the author of that pastoral letter on tape. "I didn't get your name, your Excellency?"

"None of your damn business," he growled. He'd obviously forgotten he was wearing a name tag. In Moore's rough cut, he was clearly identified by a super at the bottom of the screen. "BISHOP THOMAS DORAN ROCKFORD, ILLINOIS."

The bishop's picture faded as Moore retreated, but Pike, Rackham, Sunnyhill and Juana Margarita Obregón didn't need to hear any more to appreciate what Moore had done. The bishops' words were quite enough. great sound bites. And the visuals weren't half bad either. Doran was wearing a black T-shirt with white lettering that said:

ROPE. TREE. JOURNALIST. SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED.

MOORE HAD ONE MORE ENCOUNTER ON TAPE—with Francis Oliver Grandeur, the cardinal-archbishop of Philadelphia. Moore found him near the entrance of the resort, strolling out of the main building wearing charcoal slacks and a Hawaiian shirt. He was looking toward a line of limousines parked at the curb.

"Going off campus for dinner, your Eminence?" said Moore.

Grandeur nodded. "One of these chariots is mine," he said, waving at the line of limos.

"Just wanted to ask you," said Moore. "Is Cardinal Mahony here?"

Grandeur regarded Moore with some curiosity. "Have we met?" he asked.

"Don't think so," said Moore.

"You look familiar." Grandeur paused. "You look something like Michael Moore."

"Yeah, I guess I do."

"Are you Michael Moore?"

"Yes, your Eminence, I am." Moore rubbed his nose.

Grandeur glanced to his right and to his left, looking for, maybe, a camera in the distance with a long lens. Seeing none, he proceeded. "Tell me why you're interested in Cardinal Mahony."

"He's been a spokesman for the American bishops for some time."

"Have you talked to Cardinal Mahony?"

"No," said Moore. "But I'd like to. Is he here?"

"He is. But I don't think he'll want to talk to you. He's on retreat here with the other bishops." Grandeur's limo was pulling up to the curb, but he couldn't help asking Moore whether he was here on business or pleasure.

"I'd like to do a story on the Church in America. It's going through some hard times."

Grandeur said he had to agree with that. "But why focus on Cardinal Mahony?" Grandeur knew it was a little vain of him. If Moore wants to interview an American cardinal, he ought to interview me, Fog Grandeur. "Why not me?"

"Well," said Moore, "I wanna do that. How about tomorrow morning?"

Grandeur paused, briefly tempted to take Moore on. "I'll think about it. Call me. Call me about nine? We should talk. you could tell me—"

"Exactly," said Moore.

"—tell me what areas you want to explore. I don't want to talk about pelvic issues. You press people always want to talk about birth control, abortion."

"No, no, no. I want to ask you what you think about a people's Church in America."

Grandeur frowned, then laughed. "Where'd you come up with that line? The Catholic Church in America has always been a people's Church. What's there to talk about?"

"Well, for one thing, the Church's financial situation."

"What's wrong with it?"

"Some say few dioceses could stand an honest audit. Some say, 'The people don't know—'"

"What people? I am transparent to the best possible people. So when you say 'The people don't know,' I say, 'Well, my people know.' Some of the best financial minds in Philadelphia. The rest of the people don't need to know."

"Other bishops have published their financial reports. Chicago, Boston, Brooklyn. Cardinal Mahony has done it in Los Angeles. For his Church, which he says is 'a Church of and for the people.'"

"Cardinal Mahony!" Right then, Grandeur could have ended the encounter by stepping into his limo, but he didn't want to offend Moore, and he felt he needed to make a point. "I know what Cardinal Mahony's been saying. Well, he can probably create a Church of and for the people. But let me tell you this. To do that, he'd have to wipe out canon law. Good luck with that." He laughed as he climbed into the limo and said, just before he slammed the door, "Cardinal Mahony could have an American Church all right. But it wouldn't be Catholic."

"THAT' S WHAT I'VE GOT SO FAR," Moore told the quartet. "But I have one more bit to show you." He hit a button on the controller. "Here's some footage. Security guards surrounding me. you can see 'em, hear 'em, watch 'em patting me down until finally, they find my button-camera and rip it off, and yank the transmitter out of my pocket."

The quartet watched the assault with fascination, with laughter, and with tears as the screen went to black.

"Make a great ending," said Moore. "Action. A little violence."

"Agreed," said Rackham, spinning his wheelchair back to face Moore, "as long as the violence doesn't take away from the message."

"What do you think?" Moore asked Pike. "Will the violence take away from the message?"

"No," said Pike. "With the right musical score, you can make the seizure into a piece of comedy. Comedy violence is okay."

Moore raised an eyebrow and said to Pike, "You aren't as dumb as you look!"

"Aw shucks," said Pike. "But let me give you a compliment in return. You really nailed these bishops."

"Well," Moore said, "they sorta nailed themselves. That's what people tend to do when I show up anywhere asking my innocent questions."

"Sometimes not-so-innocent questions," said Rackham.

"What you did, mate, really worked," said Sunnyhill.

"Almost," said Pike.

Moore said, "Almost? you think maybe I was too hard on Mahony? Saying he was one of the cover-up bishops?"

"No," said Pike. "He'll be good with that. He's already confessed his complicity in the sex scandals. He was only one among many. And our whole campaign is designed to make clerical accountability more than a mere word."

Rackham said, "But your documentary doesn't go nearly far enough. you're mostly telling an old story."

Pike said, "You were just starting to get into the real story during that exchange with Cardinal Grandeur."

"You mean the stuff about a people's Church?"

"Precisely," said Sunnyhill. "Cardinal Mahony wants to give ownership of the Church back to the people."

Moore said, "But how's he gonna do that? The Church isn't his to give away, is it?"

Pike said, "It is in Los Angeles. legally, the cardinal owns all the churches and most of the schools. And he's taking steps right now to turn over the management of all that to the people. giving ownership of the parishes to the people of the parish, promoting elected boards and commissions in every parish—and in the archdiocese as well. If they're elected by the people, these boards and commissions will be accountable to the people in ways that the cardinal isn't accountable right now."

"Okay, if you say so. But that's only in LA. What about the rest of the country?"

"That's the political task ahead," said Sunnyhill. "Roger has to persuade the rest of the hierarchy to do the same thing."

"Oh," said Moore, snapping his fingers, "just like that, huh? Where and when will he do that?"

"At the Fourth Council of Baltimore," said Pike. "Big battle ahead there. It'll be something like the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia. Your documentary will help frame the struggle."

Moore whistled. "I had no idea. I started out to make some fun. Now you want me to make some history."

"Hell of a story, isn't it?" said Pike. "A movement for a people's Church, led surprisingly enough by the same Roger Michael Mahony who was protecting that priest-rapist in Stockton, California, as we just saw on your tape. The same Roger Michael Mahony who had a miraculous conversion after he was kidnapped by some liberation theologians, put on trial for his sins, convicted by a jury of his peers, and then almost killed by Mexican commandos—with some help from the U.S. Army Special Forces. You can tell most of that story in your documentary. You can buy some of the trial footage from Fox."

"Sheesh," said Moore. He pushed back the bill of his cap and studied this group. A guy in a three-piece suit, another guy in a wheelchair dressed as casually as he was (but with no John Deere cap), a priest with an Australian accent in a Roman collar, and a Chicana with nice tits in high heels and a pants suit. "Who are you guys anyway? What's your interest in this?"

Pike said, "look around you. What does this place look like?"

Moore scratched his nose. "Like a campaign headquarters, I guess."

"Yes. We're trying to launch a campaign. Frankly, a political campaign."

"Yeah, I see," said Moore. He gestured toward the large room, mostly empty floor space, its walls and plate glass windows hung with red, white, and blue banners that read:

CAMPAIGN FOR A PEOPLE'S CHURCH.
TAKE BACK OUR CHURCH.
AN AMERICAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.

"We are just getting started," said Juana Margarita Obregón. "We do not even have our phones yet, or our computers."

Moore looked dubious. "Tell me. Is Cardinal Mahony backing you on this?"

The group exchanged glances. Finally, Pike said, "We're backing him. This was more our idea than his. He's just getting comfortable with the revolution."

"Well," said Sunnyhill, "I wouldn't exactly say comfortable. He's under a great deal of stress."

"Who are you?" asked Moore, curious about the priest's accent.

"Sean Sunnyhill. I'm a Jesuit from Melbourne.

"Cardinal know you? Know what you're doing here?"

"The cardinal knows me," Sunnyhill allowed.

Pike said, "Sean can give you some very necessary background on Catholic history. In the beginning, the Church looked something like a democracy."

Moore laughed. "Okay, fine. But I need some face time with Cardinal Mahony—on camera."

Pike shook his head. "We don't want anyone to think he set you up to do this documentary. Or even cooperated with it."

"He's leading this movement for a people's Church. I need him on camera saying that."

"He's already on record saying that."

"On film?"

"On tape. C-SPAN recorded all of the cardinal's news conference on January 28 when he gave his rationale for a people's Church. you can get the footage you need from C-SPAN." Moore gave Pike a long look. "you ever think of becoming a TV producer, Nick?"

Pike ignored that, and turned to the others. "Any other thoughts for Mr. Moore?"

"At the Phoenician," asked Juana Margarita Obregón, "did you talk to any of our friendly bishops?"

"No," said Moore. "Who are your friendly bishops?"

"We'll set you up with some of them," said Pike. "Bootkoski of Metuchen, New Jersey. Aymond of Austin. Weigand of Sacramento. Kicanas of Tucson. Good idea, Juana. We don't want people to think all the bishops are against a people's Church."

Sunnyhill had a footnote to that. "They will also tell you they have one job—to serve the people. They may be ready to go on the record with you."

Moore rubbed his hands together and nodded. "Good. This is gonna be even better than I thought."

Rackham said, "I only have one question."

"Yes?" said Moore.

"Who was the naked bishop you got on tape?"

Moore laughed. "The fat guy getting the massage? I don't know! I'm not even a hundred percent sure he was a bishop."

Juana Margarita Obregón said, "To me, it looked like the bare backside of Ignatius Dreedle."

Moore did a double take. He said to her, "How would you know?"

Juana Margarita Obregón winked at him. She was kidding. The fat ass could have belonged to any of a hundred bishops. Or maybe not to a bishop at all. Obviously, this whole room was full of kidders.

"So you liked what I did?" asked Moore.

"As far as it goes," said Sunnyhill. "you're an answer to prayer."

"Okay, thank you," said Moore, "Nobody ever told me I was anyone's answer to prayer. But hey, that won't mean a damn thing if I can't get this show on the air."

"Have you thought of a theatrical release?" asked Pike. "like you did with Roger and Me?"

"Warner Brothers put up some big financing for that. But Warner Brothers isn't going to finance The Bishops and Me." Moore paused. "None of the other studios either. The Jews in Hollywood—" Moore made a face— "have never put up big money to finance anything that even remotely looked like an attack on the Catholic Church."

"But this is not an attack on the Church," said Juana Margarita Obregón. "On the hierarchy maybe. But the hierarchy is not the Church!"

Moore said, "Hollywood doesn't know that."

"We may have a better idea," said Rackham.

"We could go straight to DVD," said Pike.

"What do you mean, 'we?'" said Moore.

Rackham said, "What would you think about giving us distribution rights for a DVD? For starters, we can dub a million DVDs overnight for less than fifty cents a copy. We have the man-and-woman-power to put a disk in a million Catholic homes every week for the next twelve weeks. We'll sell twelve million of 'em at nineteen ninety-five a copy for a gross of two hundred forty million dollars."

"Could be a lot more," said Pike, "if things go as we hope they will. Sales will soar when bits from the documentary start getting passed around on the Internet."

Rackham said, "We could net a half billion."

"Well," said Moore. "I don't know. I'm not sure if—"

Rackham said, "We'll give you half of the net."

"Of the DVD rights?"

Pike said, "And we'll take half of the theatrical rights, too, if there is a theatrical release. Share and share alike on the promotional costs."

Moore turned to Pike. He seemed like the guy in charge. "The cardinal knows you want to distribute this DVD? Some of his brother bishops will want to kill him if they find out he's behind this."

"His office will not be distributing the DVD," said Pike.

"Better," said Juana Margarita Obregón, "that the cardinal not even know—everything. We like to give him some deniability. With his brother bishops."

Moore smiled. "So Church politics is a lot like presidential politics!"

Rackham gave Moore a smiling, middle-finger salute. "And the horse you rode in on!"

Moore laughed, then asked, "So, what's your hurry? You got a deadline?"

"We've got a crisis," said Pike. "The bishops are headed to the Fourth Council of Baltimore. It ought to be a meeting of the people's Church. Instead, it's shaping up like a meeting of the clerical Church. Under some pressure, the bishops voted to bring their own appointed lay delegates."

Rackham said, "We can't have an open convention of the people's Church with 193 bishops and 193 yes-men. Not unless we can stir up the people and get a tsunami of support to send some independent-minded Catholics to Baltimore."

Pike added, "As delegates with a voice and a vote, not just observers."

Moore said, "And you're all thinking this documentary might just start a tidal wave of public opinion?"

"Well, duh!" they all said in a loud chorus.

Moore reflected for more than a few moments. "I will need some help to do a final cut, produce a musical score."

"How much help?" asked Pike.

Moore said, "A million bucks? No more than that. I'd like Bob Dylan and maybe Sting to do a few songs for us."

Pike, Rackham, and Sunnyhill turned to Juana Margarita Obregón. "Bob Dylan?" she said with a smile. "Sting? All right! yes. yes, I think we have a million for Mr. Moore."

"Okay," Moore said. "Deal."

"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]