Robert Blair Kaiser's summary of last week's chapter: In the last chapter, we saw that Michael Moore, Hollywood's most exciting documentary film maker, invaded the bishops' retreat at the Phoenician and come back with a series of delicious interviews that have them coming off as a bunch of arrogant lords. But, since Moore cannot sell his idea, either to Hollywood, or to the TV networks, he is amenable to joining forces with Pike and Rackham and company to produce a documentary called The Bishops and Me and market it as a DVD. They plan to sell a million copies (splitting the proceeds with Moore, 50-50) and start a tidal wave of public opinion to send some independent-minded Catholics to Baltimore—as delegates with a voice and a vote, not just observers."The Fourth Council of Baltimore," says Pike, "ought to be a meeting of the people's Church. Instead, it's shaping up like a meeting of the clerical Church." Moore okays the deal, if the campaign for a people's Church can come up with the $1 million he needs to produce a musical score. Says Moore: "I'd like Bob Dylan and maybe Sting to do a few songs for us." Juana Margarita Obregón okays the $1 million. Now here's Chapter Twenty...

Chapter 20: Tsunami

MOORE'S FINAL EDITS caught the spirit of the campaign. After he added extensive footage of Cardinal Mahony's trial in Chiapas, and his impassioned news conference at Our Lady Queen of Angels Hospital on January 28, Moore ended up with a new title, The Bishops and Me: A People's Church. His score, which included three songs by Sting and two by Bob Dylan, had half the nation singing the message. Three of the songs became hits in their own right. In an MP3 format, Apple downloaded eight million copies of Sting's "It's Our Church, Too," thirteen million copies of his "God's Human Hands," and six million copies of Dylan's "American Catholic."

Needless to say, the film also did wonders for the campaign. In fact, at first, Moore's documentary was the campaign. Once the DVD was finished, Pike asked Sister Phoebe McNulty to handle the distribution.

As a Time magazine cover subject, Phoebe had no trouble recruiting volunteers. "Celebrity has its costs," she told Pike, thinking of the vicious e-mail notes she had fielded from Catholics who were outraged to see a nun in tennis shorts in the pages of Time. "But it has its benefits, too. I did a recruiting video and put it out on youTube, billing myself as 'the take-charge nun.' I got almost three thousand youngsters wanting to sign up. So many I can hardly use 'em all. They want to take charge—of themselves and of their Church."

Phoebe ordered a hundred desks delivered to the campaign headquarters, a hundred phones, and fifty computers. From the length and breadth of California, and then from all over America, orders started to pour in, and DVDs sailed out, a million the first week, then two million the second week, partly because The Bishops and Me: A People's Church became the media flavor of the month. A review in The Hollywood Reporter before the film's release said it "achieved notes of pathos and high passion." Pieces from the film ended up being beamed all over the world on youTube. For at least three days, thousands of kids on Facebook were buzzing about it, and planning film parties to see it together.

For their own ethical and commercial reasons, the TV networks didn't carry the documentary. But commentators on their news and feature shows couldn't help talking about it. Fairness aside, its popularity alone made it, simply, news. And, once the film became news, it accelerated the campaign for a people's Church. Indeed, the news accelerated time itself. A new idea, or a cause that might have taken weeks or months to penetrate the nation's consciousness in Woodrow Wilson's America (before the broadcast media and long before the Internet) now flashed across the country in milliseconds. Editors and broadcast producers trained to see trends long before they became trends gave the spinning top of American Catholicism some extra twists of their own.

CNN ran cuts from the show. Entertainment Tonight did a special on it, and NBC Dateline produced a profile on the mischievous Michael Moore for holding yet another venerable institution up to his good-natured scorn. On April 19, Daniel Schorr did his Saturday morning commentary on National Public Radio about Moore's documentary—and its aftermath. He summed up the situation in a few choice words that raced through the Internet. "Kamikaze journalism has never been employed in a better cause, the democratization of the Catholic Church."

BY NOON LOS ANGELES TIME, Cardinal Grandeur was on the phone to Hawkslaw. "You heard what Daniel Schorr said this morning on NPR?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Hawk, the Church is not a democracy."

"Uh huh." Hawkslaw was cautious, wondering what the cardinal would ask of him now. He was uncomfortable enough serving as Grandeur's spy in la. He just couldn't afford any exposure as a spy.

"We can't have people like Daniel Schorr saying it ought to be. This does great harm to the Church—Dan Schorr calling this 'a cause.'" Schorr's words rolled off Grandeur's tongue. "'The democratization of the Church!'"

Hawkslaw surprised himself by defending Mahony. "Roger never uses the word 'democracy.' Neither does his team."

"Well Dan Schorr's using it."

"We can't exactly stop Dan Schorr. He says what he wants to say."

"Not suggesting we should, Hawk. We do have to stop Roger Mahony. There wouldn't be a cause at all if your boss wasn't leading the charge."

"So how do we stop him? The pope's already said he wouldn't put California under interdict."

Grandeur sputtered. "We've got to be a little more creative. Get something personal on Mahony."

"Something personal?" Hawkslaw stiffened. This was something that could backfire on him. "What do you have in mind?"

"Have him followed? What about your friends in LA? The supernumeraries from Opus Dei who work for the FBI?"

"They don't have any heart for that."

"If they found he had a girlfriend? Or a boyfriend?"

"He's seventy-three years old for Godsake. And he's not well either. Goes at least once a week to this clinic on Wilshire Boulevard—just down the street from my apartment."

"Treatments?"

"Uh huh."

"For what?"

"He says dialysis."

"Kidney condition?"

"That's what he says."

"You believe him?"

That gave Hawkslaw pause. He wondered what Grandeur was driving at. "Yes," he lied. "But let me see what I can find out at the clinic."

THE CHATTERING CLASSES were all having their say about Michael Moore's documentary, pro and con. But to Pike, the important thing was this: that everyone had an opinion about a people's Church. Newspapers carried critical comment—"a piece of advocacy journalism at best," said an editorial in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and readers reacted both pro and con. Jan Novotna of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, wrote a letter to the editor. "Thank God, Moore had the courage to look in on the bishops at play. How refreshing to know they are not little Gods." Another reader, Patrick O'Connell, wrote: "Fantasy, pure fantasy. A people's Church is not in God's providence."

John Harrison of the Washington Post sneered at "Moore's Freak Show Theology." Giuseppe Capodanno wrote in First Things, "Michael Moore hasn't been to Mass in years. Need we say more?"

Editors of the Wall Street Journal came out against the film's "intrusion on the bishops' sacred space," and wondered what other hallowed institution Moore might be aiming at next. "Watch out for this guy," the Journal told its business readers. "He's a menace." Time reviewed the show with grudging approval, not for what it revealed about the affluent lifestyle of the American bishops, but for "the strong case it made for a people's Church." Jon Meacham of Newsweek said it was "high time Catholics started rebelling against their clerical Church."

For a time, Rush Limbaugh didn't know what to think. But his populist and largely blue-collar audiences finally won over their host. "Folks," announced Limbaugh, "it looks like the people are speaking up. Catholics! Catholics who used to say there's nothing they could do about their Church's medieval ways. They're demanding a voice and a vote." Over on the left-hand side of the radio dial, Al Franken, to his chagrin, couldn't think of any reasons to oppose Limbaugh on this one. He said he particularly liked the battle cry, "Take Back Our Church." In a commentary on April 21, Franken said he had detected something new in the air—a spirit of exasperation with the way things are. "People feel they've lost something precious and they want it back."

Maybe, he said, this was only an echo of the "take back our country" movement started by John Mellencamp, the recording artist, and his wife, Elaine, appealing to people to take back their country from political agendas, corporate greed, and government lies. There was a movement to "take back our kids," another called "take back our time," another called "take back our rights," and yet another called "take back our media." Franken said, "Maybe this 'take back' rhetoric started with Howard Dean's bestseller back in 2005 called You Have the Power: How to Take Back our Country and Restore Democracy in America." Whatever. He noted that Barack Obama picked up on Howard Dean, and talked throughout his campaign about the need for people "to take their country back."

A NOTE IN PUBLISHERS WEEKLY said Howard Zinn had just signed a contract with Doubleday to write A People's History of the American Catholic Church.

CRISIS MAGAZINE gave its Internet readers "Ten Reasons Why We Can't Have a People's Church in America." Commonweal's editors ran long, thumb-sucking demurrers to Mahony's platform, and the Jesuits at America magazine, unsure what their own general in Rome would think about this people's revolt in the U.S. (for that's what it was becoming), carried not one word about it, or about Moore's documentary either.

But the Jesuits could hardly claim no involvement. Sean Sunnyhill, an Australian Jesuit, made the cover of People magazine and CBS Sunday Morning did a feature on him, giving him time to talk about the democratic structures in the Church during its first ten centuries. "The Benedictine monks have always elected their own abbots," said Sunnyhill, "and the youngest monks were given active voice in their community deliberations on matters great and small." Medieval masterpieces provided a backdrop for Sunnyhill's talk, illustrated by paintings of some of the most famous abbeys in Christendom. Then, while the CBS cameras cut to a long shot of a cathedral in Switzerland, viewers heard Sunnyhill's report: "In Switzerland, the people in at least two cantons elect their own bishops, and the Vatican accepts them. The Swiss government won't let the Vatican interfere."

LOCAL NEWSPAPERS EVERYWHERE soon decided to start reporting on their cities' reactions to the campaign for a people's Church. Local television news shows produced a great many man-in-the-street stories. And local Sunday morning television started airing earnest panel discussions with Catholics debating the pros and cons of a people's Church. Program directors were pleased they could get rabbis and Protestant ministers to come on these shows with Catholics, a move that staved off most demands for equal time, except of course from their cities' atheists, who didn't know what to think, or say, about all the time being devoted to—well, not to God—but to Church politics. Presbyterian pastors, Episcopalians, Methodists, even Unitarians, pointed out that, as far as they could remember, their congregations had always had a voice and a vote.

The History Channel featured an interview with Mark Noll, a respected American evangelical, an historian, who told its upscale viewers that the Catholic Church was finally catching up with a trend that began among American Protestants early in U.S. history. "Almost from the beginning," he said, "the Protestants were developing a theology of democracy. By 1830, Alexis de Tocqueville was already noting that American Christianity almost always took the side of democracy. This was in marked contrast to what had happened in Europe, where Christianity most often identified with the political status quo, with established churches (both Catholic and Protestant) loyally supporting monarchical government and aristocratic values.

"But American theologians moved in another direction. They reimagined Christianity in a democratic context as they built a Christian civilization in the American wilderness." Noll noted that, for a variety of reasons, mainly out of loyalty to the Holy See, Catholic theologians weren't doing that—until 1964, when the Jesuit Father John Courtney Murray succeeded in getting the U.S. Constitution baptized at Vatican II. "Now, more than forty years later," Noll said, "it seems that American Catholics are finally getting the message—that they can be in communion with Rome and run their Church on democratic principles, from the bottom up, not from the top down."

HISPANIC TALK RADIO JOINED IN to promote the cause of a people's Church. Those listening to the populist commentators on Mexican radio stations in Southern California had always known that Cardinal Mahony (even before his conversion) had been reaching out to Hispanics, whether documented or not, in all their needs. Out of simple loyalty to him, the radio guys encouraged the Chicanos of Los Angeles (who relied on radio more than on any other medium) to support Roger Mahony's new moves to give the Church back to the people. They passed the word to their aunts and uncles and cousins in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Illinois, and New Jersey. They, too, started approaching their pastors and bishops with petitions for an iglesia popular.

INEVITABLY, A HOST OF BLOGGERS weighed in with carping comments about a people's Church. The people's Church was "a cant phrase" that was "too facile" for Rocco Palmo, whose blog, Whispers in the Loggia, had a host of fans in every American chancery. Anne Coulter wrote, "Now we see that Cardinal Mahony is finally living up to the name Pope John Paul II gave him years ago: 'Holy-vood.' He's worked out an imaginative, unreal theology. I'd call it Disneyland theology."

On the Fox Network, Bill O'Reilly scorned what he called "the new American Catholic revolution"—and reported some gossip that alarmed Pike. On April 1, he told his viewers, "Sources say Mahony's revolution is being funded by Para los otros, the very outfit that kidnapped him in November. Sources say the Los Angeles lawyer who founded Para los otros and a Chicana who might have escaped the massacre at Chiapas have key roles in the management of Mahony's populist uprising."

Rackham told Pike about O'Reilly's comment. "I heard about it," he snapped. "I can hardly wait to see what comes next." He was even more alarmed when Matt Drudge logged 1,345,746 hits on his relay of O'Reilly's revelation—ending with the ominous note ". . . developing."

PIKE TOOK HEART, HOWEVER, when Phoebe brought him the news that people were watching Moore's DVD two and three times, and then bringing friends into their living rooms to watch the documentary for themselves, to discuss it, and to sign petitions demanding ownership and citizenship in their Church. They were signing two different petitions—signed with names and ages, and e-mail addresses. One asked the bishops to transfer legal ownership of the parishes to the parishioners, with laypeople sitting on every parish board, and on the boards and commissions of every diocese as well. The second petition urged that each bishop take a delegate—elected by the people, not appointed by the bishop—to the Fourth Council of Baltimore.

RACKHAM HAD WONDERED how much cooperation they could expect from the pastors of every parish. "If the pastor doesn't get the petitions into the hands of the bishops," he asked, "what good are they? What if the pastors just burn 'em?"

Pike said, "When they see 'em, they won't burn 'em." Pike was right. Many pastors pored over hundreds, sometimes thousands of petitions, and saw names they didn't recognize, and the names of parishioners they did recognize who hadn't been to Mass in years. Pastors compared notes and expressed surprise over the ages of many petitioners, men and women in their twenties and thirties, who they surmised, had given up on the Church long ago. Now they were coming back to Sunday Mass.

"They're filling up seats that have been empty for a long long time," Pastor Sean Maley of St. Stephen's Church in Sacramento told a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. "And filling up the baskets, too,"

"Are collections up?"

"Thirty percent! For the last three Sundays, they're up thirty percent over the previous Sunday."

"Are you getting their names on the parish rolls?"

"That, too."

"What do you hear from the other pastors in town?"

"Same deal."

"And they're sending the petitions in to the bishop?"

"No. Not sending them. They're taking them downtown themselves, in person."

AT THE BEGINNING OF MAY, Mahony,who had yet to visit the campaign headquarters on Wilshire, paid a call on his team. He was surprised by the buzz of activity in the big room, more than a hundred men and women of all ages on the phones, but he said nothing at first, until finally his curiosity overcame him. In the back office with his team—Pike, Rackham, Sunnyhill, and Juana Margarita Obregón—he asked, "Who's paying for all this?"

"All volunteers here," said Pike. "Recruited by Sister Phoebe. She's out there." He waved toward the big room in front.

Mahony said he hadn't seen her when he walked in. "Great! But who's paying the rent here? Paying for all the desks and the computers and the telephones?"

The team members exchanged glances. It was obvious to Mahony that no one wanted to speak up. The others seemed to be looking at Pike. Mahony turned to Pike. "Well?"

"We've got some funds," said Pike.

"Funds from where?"

Pike didn't reply. Finally, he said, "you don't need to know."

"I don't?"

"Let's say, better you not know."

Mahony turned to Juana Margarita Obregón. "You know?" She glared at him, eyes burning, and said nothing. "You do know!" he said. It was almost an accusation. like, Why didn't you—of all people—tell me?

Rackham had some tough words. "Much as you hate to think this, Roger, we're in a game here. It's called 'politics.' A new kind of game for you, maybe, but not for me, and not, I think, for Pike either."

Pike's words were softer. "You need deniability, Roger. you need to be able to say honestly, if anyone challenges, 'I don't know. I never knew.'"

Mahony frowned and shook his head. "I see trouble ahead."

"When have you not seen trouble ahead?" asked Pike. "You jump-started this uh, this revolution (there's no better word for it) and you recruited us to lead it. So, we're leading it. You have to let us lead it."

"I recruited you?" demanded Mahony. "Looking back now, I wonder if you didn't actually recruit me?"

Pike was piqued. He said, "As I recall, first time we met, you came to visit me at the federal prison on Terminal Island. I didn't invite you there. I'd never seen you before. And then all of a sudden you were asking me for my help."

Mahony sighed. "You're right. I did come to you first. Sorry."

Juana Margarita Obregón smiled her approval, and Mahony nodded. That broke the tension in the room. She changed the subject. "Tell them," she said to Mahony, "about the e-mail messages you are starting to get from many of the bishops who had voted against you in Scottsdale?"

Mahony brightened. "Cardinal George tells me he already has more than a million signatures piled up in his office in Chicago demanding 'people's reps' at Baltimore." He said he had a report from Bishop Michael Morrissey of Davenport, Iowa. His people were aghast when he had to declare bankruptcy toward the end of 2006. Now they are demanding the diocese hold an election to send "a man we can trust" to Baltimore. Mahony waved printouts from George and Morrissey. "I like your strategy," wrote Morrisey. "Now, when I need the financial support of my people more than ever, what better way to get it than tell them this is their Church?"

Pike was not pleased with that. He grabbed Morrissey's e-mail note and almost shouted. "He's saying tell the people this is their Church? We don't just tell 'em this is their Church. We give them ownership of it, and citizenship in it."

Rackham said, "I think the time has come to tell all the bishops—the good guys at least—what we are doing in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to drive that message home. Tell 'em we've started a voter-registration drive, signing up Catholics from Santa Barbara on down to Disneyland. Tell 'em how we're getting the word out—not only in our parish bulletins, and in the diocesan papers, but in the general media as well."

Pike said, "This is important. The people who aren't going to Mass any more have to know. We want to give them a voice and a vote. Then they'll know. This is their Church."

"But get this," said Rackham. "If they want a voice and a vote, they have to sign in on the parish rolls."

"And this is working?" said Mahony.

"Rather well," said Sunnyhill, who had been delegated to supervise the campaign outreach to the pastors in the LA Basin.

"Our campaign is less than eight weeks old," said Juana Margarita Obregón, "But spot checks tell us that some Los Angeles parishes have already doubled in size. They do not have enough priests to say the Masses." She laughed. "But they do have a great many Sister Phoebes to lead them in their own people's liturgies."

Pike said, "I wish we could take credit for planning it this way. We wanted to give the people a voice and a vote. Once we started doing that, they started coming back to Mass. That will mean a lot to Cardinal George— and all the other bishops—those, at least, who want to know. We hope they will follow our example."

"Then what?" asked Mahony. "Electing delegates to Baltimore is going to be fairly complicated."

"Not any more complicated than electing reps to the state legislatures," said Rackham. "In fact, for us, it will be simpler. Eventually, we're going to register everyone online. And let 'em vote online, too. Or on their cellphones."

"We have already worked out a simple one-two-three formula for the guidance of the pastors and their associates," said Juana Margarita Obregón. She took Mahony over to her computer in the main room. Over the hum of a hundred voices, she told him, "Step Number One. We get the pastors to ask their people for their nominations, people they trust—good, intelligent people of faith. Step Number Two. Town Halls in every parish, where the nominees speak up, one by one, and tell their parishioners who they are and what they think they can bring to the table in Baltimore."

Mahony said, "Hey, we had Town Hall meetings in every parish back in 2000 and 2001."

"But if I am not mistaken," said Juana Margarita Obregón, "you put constraints on them right from the start. The people never felt free to say what they really wanted."

"True enough," said Mahony.

"We are giving these Town Hall meetings some power, power to cast their votes for Baltimore. Each parish Town Hall will vote for the delegate they want."

Mahony said the plan seemed too daunting, "Okay. We have 287 parishes in the archdiocese. Every parish picks one man, or one woman. What then?"

Juana Magarita Obregón said, "That takes us to Step Number Three. Then we have those 287 nominees come to one of six Town Hall meetings, one in each of our six vicariates. The nominees will have another chance to speak up—a little less than fifty of them in each Town Hall. Then those fifty folks each vote—for the one man or woman who can best represent them. Six vicariates. Six representatives. Those are the people you take with you to Baltimore."

Sunnyhill said, "First time I heard of this plan. I thought we decided on one delegate per diocese. Now you're saying Los Angeles would have six delegates?"

"Sorry," said Pike. "We've got so much going on, it's hard to keep everyone informed on every new development. But, Sean, Ted Rackham made a pretty good case the day before yesterday. This is the only fair way to proceed. Big Catholic cities will have a number of delegates based on their Catholic population. Smaller cities will have one. What's evolving here is a rough approximation of the U.S. House of Representatives, one Congressman for so many registered voters. If this makes sense, the other bishops should follow our plan—insofar as they can."

"No reason," said Rackham, "why Chicago can't follow our plan."

"Or," Pike said, "they can come up with their own plans. We won't presume to tell any bishop what to do."

Mahony laughed and clapped Pike on the back. "Nick, it would do more harm than good if we even tried."

ON MAY 14, A CBS NEWS-GALLUP POLL reported that 74 percent of the nation's Catholics were urging the bishops to bring laymen and laywomen delegates (not priests) to the upcoming convention in Baltimore. Among Catholics who regularly attended Sunday Mass, the number rose to 81 percent. They were asked a second question: "Should the delegates be appointed by their bishops or elected by the people?" Some 38 percent of the respondents chose "appointed," 35 percent opted for "elected" and 27 percent were "undecided."

"What does this mean?" asked Sunnyhill.

"It means," said Pike, "that American Catholics are split on this issue. Nothing new about that. For decades now, Catholics have been split on a lotta things."

They were eating burgers at their hole-in-the-wall on Third Street— parked at Rackham's favored spot in a corner of the restaurant, where he could keep his wheelchair out of the foot traffic. Juana Margarita Obregón and the cardinal were still putting lettuce and tomato slices on their hamburgers at the condiment table.

Pike shook his head and frowned. "We may be split, but not split as before, on conservative versus liberal lines. There's something new going on. We've got seventy-four percent of the Catholics in America opting for something that wasn't even a possibility a few weeks ago. Think about it. Almost three-fourths of the Catholics in America don't want the bishops at the Baltimore convention making all the decisions themselves."

"Maybe the respondents in this poll," said Rackham, "never knew it was a possibility until Gallup asked 'em about it."

Sunnyhill said, "Those people are accounted for in the results of the poll. The people who never knew? They're the undecided twenty-seven percent."

Pike said, "If they read the papers or watch television, even some of that twenty-seven percent will know more when they go to bed tonight than they did last night. The very fact that CBS and Gallup are asking this question tells even the 'don't knows' this is an issue."

Rackham was skeptical about the sudden turn things had taken in this campaign, "If they even care," he said.

"Yes," said Pike. "Maybe some don't care—now. But that's our job. To make 'em care."

The three of them were still noodling the question when Juana Margarita Obregón and the cardinal joined them. "What's this argument about?" asked Mahony. He rather enjoyed his team's disagreements. They generally led to more enlightened action.

Pike said, "We're talking about the CBS-Gallup Poll. What's it really mean? Ted says it doesn't mean anything. I say it's an important barometer of Catholic opinion. It means that, for the first time, Catholics are thinking their opinions can matter."

"Can matter," said Mahony. "Need not matter if the bishops aren't listening."

"How can they not be listening?" asked Juana Margarita Obregón.

Mahony shook his head. "Some bishops have a habit of not listening. It makes their lives easier."

"So tell us," said Juana Margarita Obregón. "What will the bishops think about this?"

Mahony took a few moments to ponder his reply. Finally, he said, "This could be a turning point for the American bishops. Most of them 'made bishop' (as they say) because they demonstrated a remarkable ability not to think for themselves, but to get along by going along."

"Going along in this case," said Pike, "means obedience, a virtue when the institution is good, and wise, and just, but a vice when that institution is corrupt."

Mahony bristled. "Out of touch, maybe. But not corrupt."

Sunnyhill disagreed. "When the official Church is more interested in protecting its institutional interests than it is in serving the people, it's a corrupt institution."

Mahony said, "I don't think most of the bishops would admit that."

Sunnyhill said, "With all due respect, Roger, I think most of the bishops have been kidding themselves."

Mahony reddened.

Pike agreed with Sunnyhill. "The people of God are forcing the bishops to take a look at themselves, and at something much more concrete than Rome's authority. They're listening to the people. And when they start doing that, they will give the people a new kind of authority."

"If you want to call that'authority,'"said Rackham."Maybe the bishops are just caving in to public opinion."

Pike said, "I don't care what we call it. What matters is what the bishops do right now. The CBS-Gallup Poll gave them a nudge. They can ignore the message. Or they can join the revolution."

Mahony clucked over that. "Nick, I don't think many of the bishops will join anything called 'the revolution.' Bishops aren't built that way."

"Okay," said Pike, "you know 'em better than I do,"

"I know them," said Mahony, "because I once thought and felt as they do. Until I had my crisis. And my conversion. And I have to confess I keep wondering if I've done the right thing."

Juana Margarita Obregón gave him a look of dismay.

"I'm sorry," said Mahony. "But you don't know all the pressure I am under—from my fellow bishops. None of you can really know how I feel."

Pike nodded. "Okay, Roger. I'm glad you can admit this now. We need to know how you feel."

"You have to keep telling us," said Sunnyhill.

MAHONY'S FEARS DIMINISHED on May 28, when he received a news note from the monsignor in charge of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Surprisingly enough, about half of the U.S. bishops had decided to bring elected delegates to the Council. Pike suspected their decision had been dictated by a strong shift in public opinion. Michael Moore's documentary— Hollywood pundits said it would win an Oscar nomination—had triggered a swell of popular support for a people's Church, an idea whose time had come, for the people, and for the more-pastorally-minded bishops, whose sense of crisis over the shaky state of American Catholicism compelled them to start "thinking outside the box." It was a cliché that worked for them. A number of these bishops met at an exclusive site in cyberspace called "OUTSIDE THE BOX," where many of them agreed to work along the lines of something they started calling "the Mahony Plan"—one elected delegate for every U.S. diocese under a million members, and one extra delegate for every additional million Catholics in larger U.S. cities.

Cardinal Grandeur had access to the site, of course, which told him there was a sea change among the American bishops. He reacted with an angry e-mail note to colleagues who were still on his side. "Everyone knows the Church is not a democracy. Everyone except Mahony and his crowd. If they get their way, they will bring to the Council of Baltimore everything that's wrong with American politics: deceptive sloganeering, lobbyists, maybe even television ads full of blatant deception, wild claims, and outright lies. And dirty tricks."

Grandeur's reaction was a classic case of paranoia—his forefinger pointing at another, his other three fingers pointing back at him. He had already launched his own plan to derail Mahony's movement for a people's Church with his own department of dirty tricks, recruiting members of the FBI who were also supernumeraries in Opus Dei to start snooping into the banking records of the Campaign for a People's Church. "Only one way to keep control," Grandeur told Jeremiah Hawkslaw. "Bring this movement down, whatever it takes."

"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]