LATROCINIA

The terrible thing is not that there is a conspiracy, it is that we are not involved.

He was powerful so powerful that he would grow to fear his own power, me I did not fear my power I wanted more! But he could feel the dangers of his powers so much so as to fear them, so much so as not to use them, so much so as to die of weakness and failures.

He was The Archbishop and I was but a mere Cardinal-priest, and I had maxed-out my rank. Maxed-out my political skills to accomplish more prestige within the Christian faith. I would die a Cardinal-priest, when you don’t get promoted by the pope your chances of being promoted by God are a lot less; that was when my soul joined Archbishop Domenico, I joined him when I realized that my powers were maxed-out.

He was an old man already and he would die an old man just like the rest of us, but he was a visionary, a man who fought for the faith that he won, a man of magnificent stature and character, a man that was promoted by the Pope not because he was political but because the Pope did not have a choice, given the option the Pope would not have raised him, plenty of reasons, he, Archbishop Domenico, had a questionable background, his real name was unknown, the Vatican doubted his Italian credentials, but there are men that are so beyond the system and its archaic structure that their luminosity alone promotes them. Archbishop Domenico was neither a good man nor a bad man, he was simply a great man.

I flew to find him in Puta Madre; a chilly town in the southern tip of Chile, unknown by name to anyone except the villagers that inhabit it, and even they do not use the name, they don’t need to, they are there. I had traveled far to be with him, he was now in exiled retirement, his whereabouts unknown to all but a few of his followers, myself being one of the more devout, thought I was critical of him, not quite a fan, I had joined him merely because I wanted more power than I could have won on my own. But I grew to admire him, not because of his convictions but because of his honest madness.

We sat upon a wooden bench table, weathered wood that had been exposed to everything that the environment could dish out yet still retaining its dignity; a table but a good table. We both had wine, not holy wine, it had been a long time since we could drink anything that was holy, we who had persisted towards our faith with duty and righteousness on our side were now unable to bless even our wine. The wine still has the same effect, chaliced or not, it was difficult to discern what the blessed wine did that the pagan wine did not, but then so much is feeling, and the old man and I had lost that magic feeling. We drank heatedly, we did not laugh, the reunion after a long decade of absence did not call us to rejoice, we had failed, and for us failure was not accepting of notice and neither could we ignore it.

It all started with the damn Jews, as so much and, hell! everything that has to do with Christianity, the Jews had their doings in it and yet somehow remained innocent yet not through innocence. And what makes it all more ironic is that Archbishop Domenico and I had more in common with the Jews than with the damn Christians! Every Jew I ever met yielded a better friendship, a better conversation, and moreover emitted a warmth that comes to a soul that feels that the promised land has not been delivered, that the savior has not cometh from the heavens, and that the exodus paces on and on… it was these same spiritual comrades that made our methods and path necessary, and, by so urging also made our grief.

Archbishop Domenico and I were not rebels. We were conservatives, we were for a stronger centralized Church, we wanted to clamp down on all the dissenters. There were, for instance, bells ringing to allow women into the priesthood, we were absolutely against it; we went as far back into Christian history as was safe to do so, to prove our point; as far back but not all the way back, you go back enough on anything and the whole damn thing will reverse itself. The Archbishop and I were not into fucking ourselves. Oh, and behold there were bells ringing for letting the priest fuck and marry. We were both adamant that that ought not be so ordained. The Archbishop was a celibate man, he had settled into a strange comfort zone which I don’t think men are generally capable of obtaining, an indifference to the sexual, an irrepressible desire it is, but he had reached a kind of marriage with himself, he did not need sex, he did not need to reproduce, he did not need to obtain the pleasures of woman and man so temporal to his menacing soul, for his soul was a menace, it was imperial, it aroused souls, it had no other cause. Cardinal-priest, I, was for fucking, I was what you could call a strenuously deliberate desire for sexual emancipation within the confines of absolute secrecy. I enjoyed everything about sex, the cross, the cross by the hand, crossing on the cross, or crossing with the cross. Women, I could sink into any aspect of their being, so serious, so absolute, so willing to reconcile their differences with god through me and with ingrained rosary beads, me, fatherly protectorate of appeals to god, the confessions slipping myself while handing out penance and forgiveness, the appeal of the violations of the sacred book, and more the unspeakable pleasure of the forced silence of nuns. Coerced innocents, Nuns are women that are required to remain innocent, they are not, but our faith calls for innocence, it was the perfect church for a naïve humanity, it is a miracle of purity to be a catholic, it is to always be innocent, in one’s own eyes, in the eyes of all, and more in the eyes of god. Men, oh with a fat O I loved to tease the men, oh the men, I was such a girl tease, I felt the power of the seductress when among my flock; and there were plenty to be had and pluck, not enough time to dwell on attachments, every encounter was the first and last, virgins of the pleasantries of relationships, dancing in the night and day, where every eye is out to snitch on you, you exploit the instant and hide, we don’t talk about it, though sermons often have those passion infested messages, I was never cold in my worships. Children oh the kiss of innocence, the notion of not being aware that you can harm is theirs and not for long, a blossom that rots so quickly must be pricked, the rose bushes, the bath water, to enlarge the eyes to the world and to perverse a life with memories of one’s adoring spanking tickles. Again for us in the church it is all about innocence, children are the absolute representation of our innocence, of our purity, and not all of them, there are plenty of rotten eight year olds that seem born with wit and savvy which was ugly and deniable. Boys are always more innocent than girls, our faith preferred boys, you can spoil the innocence of boys many times, girls only once. But regardless of all that I was a liberal in that I had ideas about altar girls, I was open to them. But my most favorite were my rare moments, when I would disguise with black suit, beard, wig and glasses, of orthodox appearance, but I meant no offence by it, it was just an easy disguise, and then I would trump out into the streets of our unholy city; and into the hermaphrodite and transvestite bars, vodka, vodka, and more vodka, my nerves drank that liquid down as fast as they could, the thought of being stripped of my disguise was severe, the tension circling bloodmobiles in all of my veins, the girls were wonderful, the ugliness beautiful and a kind of estrange breaking with the world. Hiding their masculinity an impossibility, but the girls were willing to be girls for us, to tease us and be in control and equally easy; and we would lure the teasers like ladies, and venture into the entanglement with false reservations, agitated desires robbing for themselves satisfaction; pleasures that could not exists beyond the bounds of this bar. I was particularly enamoured with one Yolanda, she was a herm, my absolute favorite, I liked the crossdressers but hermaphrodites were for me the life and joy and pure expression of what all beings ought be. Yolanda and I saw each other for almost three months, she lived in a dingy room, half occupied by a piano, she would play that out of tune piano and I would still like her; one night she wanted me to slap the shit out of her, I walked out, I couldn’t do it anymore. Her face against the window of abandonment, I never went back. But not to derail from our aim, I was against allowing marriage for the servants of our god, commitment is a problem, a priest is more qualified to discuss a marriage because he has not entered into union, those that are married get all tangled up in their idea of marriage, a priest is an idealism! Our faith was bound to purity and innocence thus refreshing itself by what we would not do. It was pedestrian to think that marriage was a necessity or a desire, or worthy! Saints stand alone, just like a hermaphrodite that has no choice, I wanted all of our priests to have a chance at Sainthood!

There were bells ringing to allow abortions, even just life threatening abortion, the type where you can guess which to save the mother or the baby, we were for risking both, all or nothing! We wrote hundreds of papers on the matter, the best, of course, were never made public, remaining locked somewhere in Vatican archives.

Let me explain the treacherous time our Church was enduring. Take the Mormons; they were being assisted by well-to-do capitalism, so that they were not only procreating but also reproducing the faith with the already born. It is one thing to bring a child into the world, but to get them to believe and be charitable with alms, and kindness requires a huge structure of moral, psychological and financial massiveness. We had a lot of real estate from any angle of the equation, but the success of capitalism catered more to faiths that were parsimonious on sacrifice and more symbolic in practice than in breath. That meant that, while we as Catholics had to convert a soul to our faith, all that the Mormons had to do was to convince all of those ambitious middleclass kids to call themselves Mormons and that was that. There was no formidable soul conflicts to resolve, a Mormon temple is a sort of lavish middle class home in Vegas, a sort of tripling of richness, lavished with ultra-whiteness more than hinting at the purity acquired through wealth, and then adorning itself with hard-core symbolism, you can worship the gold, the carpet is kept clean from your muddy shoes, where no sinner shall walk call it a prejudice cleansing of the soul, only believers move in those grounds. And like middle class managers, they are flexible, they now accept Blacks into the faith, an incredible exorcise considering that blacks were once heralded as the apparition of evilness; but if the executive office will have them the Mormons will follow suit. When the government decided that polygamy was not conforming to centralized hierarchical structures the Mormons were, though against their doctrine, willing to comply. And how could the system not love them? They don’t have holy wine, no drinking, no smoking and no damn swearing, and they wear suits when they preach, an intended contrast to our Christian rags, and the most superbly manifested contrast in that they are willing to mandate a Check to Temple Program, calculating percentages based on financial success, a sort of faithful adjustment to inflation.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are the same thing as Mormons, just the poorer cousins, Mormons gather the faithful white-collar brethren while Jehovah’s Witnesses, keepers of the secret name of God, gather the blue-collar workers.

The Mormons can afford to go abroad on long two year proselytizing missions, God’s long arm, while Jehovah’s Witnesses being lower class opt to stand in heavily trafficked city streets and hand out their tabloid battle for Christ. “Are you ready for the end?” Who is? “Will Satan have your soul?” Fair questions that make you speculate on the durability of canned foods, but my point is that these two spiritual food groups are not just building a church with newborn believers, but that they are converting a lot of Catholics that have grown weary of earthly sacrifice! Everyone wants to make life easier, the Mormons even claim to take care of their own, to nurture responsibility; such earthly discipline does not encourage a separation of church a state. A Mormon is easily 100 percent more productive than a catholic. Bottom line, the fun of being a catholic became no longer fun. Archbishop Domenico and I, and a few others, wanted to put the fear of god back to work for us; you know life is not easy, don’t have or enjoy sex before marriage, be hard on yourself, kindness to a fault, and prescribe yourself a rosary of illusions. But again there was that problem of keeping the believers in a harshly competitive environment.

The only religious sect that does not have competition are the damn Jews! You see they begun it all. Before their god there was nothing, after the God of the Jews, we and the other gods amount to no more than errant Jews. Christian and prodigal are synonyms. The whole thing about MONOTHEISM was the doing of the Jews! Before the Jews there were many gods, thousands of gods, gods could be born and banished, gods could be good and evil, gods could even marry humans, improving the blood line substantially. Before the Jews gods could do anything, after the Jews they could only be good tyrants. After the Jews there was only one supreme being, and not by accident but by design, he turned out to be the God of the Jews! Christ was not the first deity put to death by the Jews, he just had the honor of being the last one on record. They don’t bother with Buddha because Buddha is self destructive, Buddha accepts his lot in life. But any other vibrant gods have long ago been put to sleep the good sleep. You see, this is because no one questions the Jews; people don’t go around saying that there isn’t this one god thing, people assume there is only one god; the Old Testament is sort of a birth certificate that authenticates the whole holiness deal and after that it is just a question of when god would walk among men and women again. That was the act that got Jesus Christ the cross, he said he was the one, that he was here to cleanse humanity of its sins and give us all a fresh start, but the Jews prevented a nice happy ending which is why centuries after those golden days all alive with religious sentiment, happy endings are so adored in books and movies and tales. It is all about erasing all the bad endings.

But Protestants, Puritans, Lutheran, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Muslims, etc… they don’t, any of them, question the Old Testament, they merely move themselves forward from it, the Jews are the foundation of all. And since they are the foundation they do not have to compete with anyone, it is hard to become a Jew, you can dip yourself in a pool of water or embrace your fellow Christians and you are born again, Jehovah’s Witnesses will have you even if you just come to meetings once every couple of months, but to get into the Jewish faith you not only have to have faith, you’ve got to want to go back to school and accomplish some serious ritual learning. The State of Israel is not that big, the Jews don’t really want more Jews, they want more of the same Jews that they have now and more of the same, but converts are unnecessary and suspect. Intermarriage is discouraged merely to retain the values and the culture fostered by Jewishness. And, putting aside my genuine Jewish monotheistic plot, in a world that has largely been trying to accuse the Jews of every major world conspiracy, salvation is left to the pure retention and volume of the existing faithful.

Archbishop Domenico and Cardinal-Priest-me were not in a position to question the existence of the Jewish God, we owed our good titles to such a deity, but we were angry and oh so very angry, especially the good Archbishop, with the Jews. We were upset at the Jews because they demanded an apologia for our unofficial, “look the other way” policy during World War II.” Granted our Catholic souls were less that forthcoming in praying against the injustices perpetrated by Mussolini and Hitler, but why ought the Jews hold a grudge against our Church so much as to coerce upon our Pope a disgraceful admission of guilt and sorrow when they, they had Crossed our Christ!! Archbishop Domenico and Cardinal-priest me were already very angry at the Jews for what they had done to our Christ, and yet we had reconciled those differences and found it in our hearts, not so much to forgive, as not to demand an apology for their actions. And yet, here they were demanding from our beloved Pope apologia.

The pressures the modern world perpetrated on our faith were numerous and often difficult to surmount, we were traditionalists, we believed in our hearts and souls that a Church is forever, that is to say that it does not change its ways just because the times change and the people change, we believed in our hearts and with every blessing that we embellished upon the souls that came our way that we were not a Church ruled by nationalist fads and economics but a Church of Christ, a religion that had to remain true to its origins and to its blessings which had proven themselves with an inquisitorial seal. There is no such thing as a Church that evolves! A Church founded upon truth and right principles never ages or adapts, it is humane and good by its very nature, it rules the human heart through its benevolence and not through common takings and doings.

They cloned a sheep in England read the headline. They had managed to make a clone of another living mammal. At about the same time and not far from it, the Scientists, another group that you can’t get angry at easily, specially since they believe they have higher truths than us men of the cloth, although their formulas are largely the accomplishment of faith, but don’t bet you can reason that with then, but these folks mad at our Church just because of a few incidents with Galileo, in our defense largely overblown, they too were holding a grudge, we called it the Galilean Grudge, and thus scientists all over the world spend their days and nights trying to prove evolution and knowledge above faith and miracle and from every angle they attacked and finally kicked the faith out of the schools, where it can no longer be taught, unless disguised in comparative reasoning. The Galilean Grudge brought the fanatics from the camp of reason to torch our Churches and children with enlightenment. Succor! Succor! But when you are a church as old as we are you don’t cry pain, you abstain, you pray, you merit god with his will and crown yourself with observance of the candles, one for baby Jesus, one for the Virgin Mary, and fallen wax for Galileo.

What the damn scientists forget is that if it wasn’t for our Church, for our need to print bibles and from our love of knowledge there would be no Science. It was the Jesuits and Monks that invented Academia, there has yet to be rightful credit done for all the schooling that our blessed Church instigated, urged and commanded. Even the Americas owe their discovery to our bladed seal. But I am not here to dwell on botanical matters, there is plenty of fuel for my angers elsewhere, now I just want to say that the final blow for the Archbishop and Cardinal-priest me came when the damn scientists declared that the Shroud of Turin was false! That was the ultimate humiliating blow of all.

Oh, they did not just declare that it was false, that is not how those guys work, what they do is they say that the evidence makes it a rag from an era that is not near enough the time of the crucifixion to be associated with Christ. And they don’t really say that, what they say is that the carbon dating done of the fibers removed from our holy Shroud count to merely 1260 to 1390 years, ancient enough to be worthy of auction at Sotheby’s, but not old enough to be buried with our Christ’s. And then, they get even more bludgeoningly precise about it, carbon clocks have eons of margin for error but they are archeologically precise, and the more new and improved whims of carbon dating age the Shroud merely at seven-hundred years or so! Again, not enough old to have been buried with our Christ. And these scientist fellows don’t even applaud themselves for short dating our Shroud, instead they dwell on the advancement of their owe technology, marveling at how precise and sophisticated the entire purifying process of carbon dating has become; we and our faith a side note to the footprint of technological progress. Amazing, they immediately acquire more rational purity, more empirical faith, and more belief in the whitecoat scientific process, and all done at a cost to our faith, it cost them nothing. I tell you coldly that this is all a hoax created by the Galilean Grudge. Galileo a man that had to create a telescope to see stars because he could not feel angels.

Archbishop Domenico and I were sipping our afternoon tea, as was our habit between responding to requests from the Vatican or attending births and deaths of prominence, or mastering the art of sermons that had not changed for hundreds upon hundreds of years. When the news front line hit the nerve of our religiosity “The Shroud of Turin a fake!” “Christ be damned,” I cried aloud “forgive my Lord the expression.” That headline was enough for the Archbishop and I to put our tea aside. Tradition had been broken.

We moved silently through the rose garden, watching clumsy bees rough landing on the red hearts of Roses, and we felt what the Roses felt with their petals falling off, a body that can no longer support its limbs, fallen wings and flowing honeyed amber. We walked silently, I following the Archbishop with strides of solemnity, the Spring singing bluebirds and canaries outside irrelevant, we entered the Cathedral. Always my favorite aspect of our religiosity, the cathedral, every architectural creation is merely a subtract of our cathedrals, we have created and magnified every geometry soul angles of adornment crest our architectural magnificence; from the majesty of our cathedrals you can deduce every other structure, every word of god and every human deed. We went down to the basement, into a mild room where lay the secret documents that the Archbishop had hidden from me while impressing me with their future importance. A blue ring of spherical eminence laid on the table, probably his size, we sat. I suspected that we were about to begin our favorite game of chess, only this time we would both be playing with black, to end the scourge of Galileo and his gang of whitecoats!

Yellow cavernous candles blistering away their death, his steady hands unfolded the documents, one after the next, a mastery of words and intellect, every word I read was a sculpture of its master, all handwritten in Latin, and marveling with meaning. After an hour of reading all under his gallant sentinel, his hands grasping calm from each other, his eyes dizzying with alertness, spiraling everywhere with certitude, he had forgotten to shave the night before, he was a meticulous man, he had neglected it, Archbishop Domenico had crossed the Rubicon. Without drink, bathed in silence, I let the documents lay on the table and my head searched everywhere for the indecent justifications that they would require if they were ever to make sense to me. We had reached the point of our chess game that decides if we are worthy of the match, if there are going to be wrestling gut strategies, or if one of us is not up to the brilliant task and all ends with victims of a Pyrrhic victory. The candles, in our stillness faded from forgetting us, we outlasted the night in silence, exuberance reached me by morning I realized that the master had thought it all throughout, well enough indeed, there was no risk to it that wasn’t worth taking! He was right in his plan, he was working for the truth of the Church that we both loved and adored and had worshiped more than our own temples, I got up from my chair, he did same and seeing my eagle eyes, he spread his arms and we embraced. He walked towards his office I went into the Cathedral chamber to kneel before my Christ.

Our Conciliabula was a silent disgrace to the church, we had decided to bypass Sacra Rota and the Pope on these matters of the Church. We had decided to save the Church regardless of the whims of our papal master, him whom God had crowned above all others on this earth. But popes are not infallible, plenty have displayed carelessness in their duties, one could depose a pope, we were not after that, we merely wanted our Church of purity and sacrifice to survive above the Churches of convenient economics. We wanted faith and miracle to prevail.

The following week after making ridiculous excuses over matters of the Church I announced that I would be going to England. I caught a night flight, always preferring the discomfort of trying to sleep over the Atlantic ocean than having to search for islands or ships. Flying would never be a comfortable experience, we were never flown first class, difficult to justify to our flock, many of whom did fly first class. Occasionally I was offered free upgrades which my body desperately wanted me to accept, but I would reject them with admonishing kindness. Admonishing kindness is when you make the giver feel like they were wrong in offering and wrong in having that which they were offering.

I arrived at Gatwick, England’s second largest airport, an immense fabrication of modernity, impressive to a Cardinal-priest like myself that had abstained from all technological advancement. I still wrote my letters with pen and paper, I liked receiving physical letters, opening the envelop, unfolding its contents, touching what my many correspondents had touched, not so much reading their writing as reading their handwriting. That was magical. Computers they were strange beasts that just seem to require so much in-between you and I, so many things in-between before they would communicate my sentiments and longings. The Archbishop had a computer, he always marveled about its trappings, always tried to convince me to accept one, but I was scared of those things, I don’t mind admitting it, there, I was very scared. And that is what I felt here in this place scared, scared at all the buzzing, everything here seemed electric and dashing fast, and moving; me, I liked my rose garden, my soil, my grass, my earth, my bees, my Colombian chocolate con queso defrosting the mornings.

I went to an Inn very near the airport, hosted by an impressively proper couple, the wife had very large breasts, and it seemed to me that she wanted me to touch them, and it also appeared that her husband was aware of her desires, and hesitantly agreed to them. I considered that they owned an Inn with fetish intents; perhaps there was a secret dungeon underneath, well hidden by the airplane noise, all within the wonderful English pretense to civility and antiqueness. But I was far from my home, not about to explore the treacherous fantasies of others, unlike most people which actually feel freer while in a far off land, I actually locked myself up deep inside, I went into a catacomb, I was very much beyond the outer world. Besides I was on a mission, that to me meant more than any shenanigans could offer.

Having been unable to coerce sleep over the turbulent Atlantic, I slept the entire day, occasionally waking up reciting obscure Latin prayers that I had thought forgotten. I was not fearful, I was simply trying to cope with all the stress that my mission had burdened me with. I deliberately did an hour of prayer, and then, having only sipped tea in 24 hours, the next morning I joined the other Inn guests for a delicious tea and buttery croissant breakfast. One guest was a skeptical lawyer from America who seemed all too interested in the trappings of our Church, only to counter my every response with witty criticisms which I found bothersome. Two ladies from Paris, very charmed by the lawyer, overly dressed and perfumed, one of them wearing two very large diamond rings, where one would have been sufficient, made no impression.

I took a taxi to a prearranged destination, it was in a large warehouse district, I entered through the back shipping area where huge lories would back up to relive their heavy loads. A man was waiting for me, he recognized me instantly, I was, after all, wearing my vestment, because of the nature of my mission I had considered wearing a suit, but to me, though my activities were unknown to the church hierarchy they were to me official church matters of the highest order and, therefore, to be carried out with dignity.

Our man in England was in his fifties, gray hair, husky build, he had a charlatan’s demeanor, which he carried very convincingly. It was charming to listen to everything he had to say, that is until he got to the point that he wanted to make. For instance he was an expert on many matters, among his many accomplishments, which Dr. Solomon made me aware off within the first ten minutes of our meeting, he had in a mere decade discovered and mastered some Lymphatic gutter so as to keep the body in a “dry state” so that it would be able to heal itself from atrocious ills in days hours and minutes. He said to me, “baby falls into a septic tank, for over ten minutes, parents pull him out, take him to the hospital, the doctors say he has irreparable brain damage and will never fully recover. Mother calls me I tell her what to do, baby is alive and well and there is no evidence of brain damage.” He goes on… “diabetes, cancer, heart disease, the body can reverse repair itself, all you have to do is do what I tell you to do.” What he wants you to do is a lot like what the Mormons want you to do… “…give up coffee, alcohol, cigarettes and breathe deeply so that you can increase the oxygen supply to your cells which needed so that the sodium potassium electric engine can power your cells into high energy.” But the doctors, and not just doctors, but also Chiropractors don’t want you to know about Lymphatic cleansing and healing because if you cure yourself they would be out of business, “no one else is doing what I am doing, and they have threatened me with death…“ After listening to the incessant auto pilot affirmations of his incredible accomplishments that were yet to meet with their success, I wondered if the Archbishop had chosen the right Englishmen for the job; but I always knew that Archbishop Domenico was no fool, he knew everything he was doing extremely well, he would not risk it by hiring the wrong constituency. Nuts were great allies.

I kept on trying to interrupt him so that we could get to the matters that interested me, but I soon gave up and just let him rant on until he had convinced me that everything he had said was true. Then he ask me the question he needed to ask: “Well Father, do you have the DNA?” I tried not to act insulted, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small black case and surrendered it to Dr Solomon. First thing he did was kiss it, big fat lips plastered with saliva on our holy possession, I kept calm. He said “Now we will prove them all wrong, they will not doubt our Christ, they will not be able to doubt our Christ!” His eyes were lit with fire passion… “Now we have the guidance to the Arc; those that will not listen to us will be oxygen starved and will spontaneously combust.” This, of course, had all to do with his theory that if you starve your body of oxygen you burn up, hell is all inside of you.

I left Dr Solomon to his duties, which, like any fanatic he would guard and pursue zealously. I shall not suffer your curiosity any longer, the Scientists that had done so much to destroy our faith, the very scientists that had dated our Shroud a fake, had also Isolated DNA from blood found in the holy fiber. We were now giving Dr Solomon, a man that had already grown and cloned many horrible things in secret, we had now given him the Holiest DNA on the planet, Christ’s DNA. His mission was to clone Christ twice.

You see how what might try to destroy you can also bring you miracles. The scientist were out to destroy our faith but now with their cloning abilities, and while trying to destroy the sacred holiness of our Shroud they had stumbled upon the blood of Christ and the Archbishop had secretly acquired a sample. And now we would be able to clone Christ and prove the Shroud of Turin and the New Testament both genuine, prove the Jews wrong, and prove that the Catholic Church was the mother church and the only true representative of our Lord God!

Archbishop Domenico and I had decided on cloning two Christs from the DNA as a safety measure, there were a lot unknowns in our endeavor, we were not taking any chances. Upon my return the Archbishop was marvelously delighted with how well my mission had gone, he felt exuberant within the possibilities, we set ourselves to work on the task of addressing the holy clones.

Our first and most solid assumption was that the cloned Christs, plural, already aware of our resurrection scheme, would basically guide us once we had them among us. Our mission was guided by their providence, god was aware of our actions and had conjured them, we therefore made the assumption that upon facing the resurrected Christs we would merely offer ourselves and our devotion to their wills.

But I had made a good point which was based on the life that Christ had lived before the crucifixion. There were many actions that Christ committed that seemed lacking that all knowing guidance of a divine being. He knew all of the ills that were to befall him and his flock and he did nothing to prevent them. He could have, for instance, swayed Judas against the betrayal, he could have converted the Roman guards, they could not have been that far from conversion if they nailed him: King of the Jews. Every joke, for the laugh, has the truth behind it. Anyway my assumptions, which were well taken by the Archbishop, was that Jesus Christ had a lot of innocent and naïve tendencies, tendencies which I suspected were caused by his mortal apparition, the carnal causes limitations, for Jesus to walk among us, that is for Jesus to make himself visible to us, for Jesus to be understood by us, a god is incomprehensible, it is illogical, irrational, it is impossible to relate to the impossibility of god, so when God sent his son to us, so as to speak to us within the constrains of all of our human limitations, he had to impose those limitations upon him, hence the cause of his misfortunes; the apparition of Christ tried to reason the faith with us, he was sent on an impossible mission, God knew his son would fail, still God wanted his son to obtain for humanity the impossible. Archbishop Domenico and Cardinal-Priest me, were going to offer cloned Jesus one and two, the guidance and support that they had not in Roman times.

There were other problems which also came to mind, cloning was a new science, neither the Archbishop nor I had much faith in science or in Dr. Solomon, everything could go wrong with both, and science and scientists allow themselves to err as a matter of evolution, they believe that they are fallible but in the long term infallible, every fatal error in their calculations is a gain for knowledge and loss for ignorance, anywhere else when you are proven wrong you are dead, scientists are ever self correcting and therefore unimpeachable.

Fearing that, and knowing ourselves to be holy naïve on any and all scientific matters, we decided to develop a series of tests to ensure that the cloning process was indeed successful. For instance, suppose that the cloning process merely reproduced the son of the Virgin Mary and Joseph and not the Holy Spirit of Christ. This would not serve us well, nor would it spiritually guide us well, we would basically be stuck with a couple of carpenters whose ability to make furniture would do us no good. We needed a mortal Christ like the original with the Holy Ghost inside of him, anything else would be useless. With that most pertinent matter in mind we developed a test to determine if the faith had been cloned or not.

The incessant preparations to all the unknowables were demanding and tiresome but we were alive with our act, we were about to accomplish the incredible. Dr. Solomon kept feeding us reports of his progress, much good in all and we were very excited, oh very excited. We even took to risking reverence by uttering a few sanctimonious jokes, all just to temper the absolute severity which our actions carried either way. We accomplished very little rest, consumed a lot of tea and became brothers of the spirits. When you walk in the darkness of our being, when you feel the holiness in every movement, in your palms, in your blood, when the sunset brings tears to your eyes, when you bless a child and born in him Christ, the sanctity of every instant bathes you in blessings; you end rejoicing with everything, the woman dying a cancerous victim, is beautiful in her pain, she closes her eyes to see her new essence, the suffering poor in some reckless comfort of desperation, with eyes that claim no knowledge of perdition, precious with their meager satisfactions, I have bathed in all those moments, I have found joy in the sadness.

The phone rang, and rang, and rang endlessly one morning, we were unable to reach it because we were in the garden dialoguing our preparations. How we would break the news to the Pope? How long before we could go public with the modern resurrection? How would we protect Christ? We had access to a monastery in Spain which seemed easy enough. The phone kept ringing, part of us felt that most of our plans were unnecessary, The Holy Clones would perhaps dictate from inception, and of course we expected to surrender to the whims of the Pope after being properly admonished and forgiven for executing our actions without his blessings. The Archbishop finally asked me to check the messages, which I hurriedly did. It was a beautiful Spring day, I love walking on grass, moist grass, I love the feeling it sends off tingles through the bottoms of my feet.

There were 13 messages, they were all from the good doctor, “Call me!” “Call me I have good news!” “Hurry up I am having problems!” “Bloody call me! call me!” He was happy and molested and angry. Each call seemed to encompass an entirely different event transpiring on that Island they call England. I could have returned the call after the first message, but I listened to all of them, you have to let the moments happen. I calmly dialed his number, it did not even finished ringing, he must have been sweating next to the phone. His voice frantic and exhausted. “I did it! I did it.!” Just like a scientist not to think of the world at large, it was his accomplishment, if anyone had done anything here it was Archbishop Domenico, but he would not be so foolish to claim credit for any of this, only God created miracles. Dr. Solomon believed that miracles were the product of lack of knowledge, he would say “Its only a miracle if you don’t know.” I asked him to calm down and tell me if he had the children with him and if they were well. In that cold and matter of fact language of his came the response: “One died in the incubator, not my fault everything was right, but the oxygen compressor failed and I did not have a back up, I told Dominico” irreverently, “…that I needed more funds, backups are mandatory when the experiment is this crucial…” I interrupted, “Doctor, doctor please what about the other!” “He is fine, sleeping like a baby Jesus.” My heart stopped, I placed my fingers to my lips, I held my breath, through the window I could see Archbishop Domenico in the Pergola writing calmly, my severe contemplation of the moment halted by the screaming doctor, “Hey are you there? What is going on!” I recovered myself, responding “Doctor this is very good news, you have done well for our faith and for our god!” “Yes! Yes! I bloody well have done it but right this time!” “Care well for yourself doctor, we will be there by morning, and “god is with you.”” Clung.

I couldn’t care less about the grass now, or the Spring day, I raced the distance to the Archbishop, and knelt before him with immense tears in my eyes, and told him of the happenings. We both hastened to the altar and drank holy water, then we freshened our faces and hands with it, took our suitcases that had long ago been packed for this miraculous moment and dashed to the airport. We were in England by early morning.

Doctor Solomon welcomed us with pride, he was full of himself, we walked into the heavily instrumented laboratory and there before us lay our Baby Jesus. Archbishop Domenico knelt before him, blessed the incubator, and I followed appropriately, we sprinkled holy water on the incubating holy shrine, and more holy water around the room and on the exterior and interior of the door.

Not until we left the room did we dare to speak. The Archbishop first, “Where are the remains of the other Baby Jesus?” The doctor with his hands in his whitecoat pockets, adumbrated his shoulders and said “I flushed them down the toilet.” Both the Archbishop and I turned towards each other and speaking not words but with iced eyes spoke cold necessities. The doctor sensed something was wrong and immediately acted to defend himself, “It was dead. There was no Christ there, I made sure there was no breathing or heart murmurs, I made sure of that!” I responded to comfort the man, “Yes Doctor Solomon, he was indeed clinically dead, you did no wrong.” To which he quivered, “Yes, yes, he was clinically dead.” Only, when he repeated my words they flooded his mind with hideous doubts.

I would have to stay in England to monitor the good Doctor, incidentally, at the same Inn that had hosted my first visit. Familiarity, it was about nurturing familiarity. Two years transpired and we witnessed miracle after miracle. In those two years the miracle child Jesus grew to the age of twenty. Doctor Solomon discovered that his cells were showing the aged discrepancies of being centuries old. This was strange, his rapid growth must have been an accelerated way for the cells to reach their actual preprogrammed maturity. While Christ had died in his thirties, his DNA on the Shroud had not ceased aging through the centuries, it was almost as if time could not be stopped at the cellular level by a mere mortal death. The doctor was very puzzled by all these strange happenings, wondering if the age of our Christ would end by equaling the years of our Gregorian calendar. We of the cloth did not doubt it. More over neither the Archbishop nor I believed that Doctor Solomon’s science had had anything to do with this virgin death. Of course we said nothing of this, we just let the Lord work his strange miracles.

The Jesus of twenty years did not speak a word, he looked every bit a Jesus but not a word was spoken by him. We did not teach him anything, in his holy presence we would merely pray, ours was not the knowledge of what to do or what to preach, we had to let him be. I read the New Testament and prayed aloud only to keep myself in his presence with the utmost holiness and reverence, he would address us when he was ready to speak.

On a Tuesday morning I was sitting at the Doctor’s desk, when I stumbled into a note with a phone number which looked curious to me, I sensed that there was something wrong with it, the numerological order was screaming for my attention, I dialed the number and received the cold shock of reaching the London Times news desk. I did not have time to contact the Archbishop, I went to the Doctors room and demanded to know what he was up to! He told me that he had merely played with the idea, that he had not spoken to anyone, but that soon it would be time to tell the world of his accomplishments, he fancied himself a Nobel prize, and a good laugh against all of those that had doubted his greatness. I permitted his gloating knowing that once asleep he would never again wake up. The killer injection had been preordained by our plan, the doctor’s actions had merely accelerated the inevitable.

Protecting Christ was my paramount mission, we were not going to let this Christ get crucified, this time he had protection, not a bad branch of apostles that were willing to let him go to his death. We were meek and loving but we were not about letting the world kill our Christ! There maybe faithful among you that will question the integrity and sanctity of our actions; let you remember that God has killed to correct wrongs! Let you beware that our God is not always a forgiving God; Our God is not a God that shies from enforcing his will! He is a God that is prepared to attack to perdition the evils that befall his creations! Our church had for too long been docile to the wills of the material world, the Archbishop and Cardinal-priest me understood this beyond all doubt, it is a sin to be so weak of faith as not to act with the severity that the times may demand from a spiritual soul.

The Archbishop and I accelerated our plans, he mailed the necessary fake passports and travel reservations to get us out of the England that had long ago divorced our church and denounced it and created their own earthly temple commanded with cannon seals uttered by a mere monarch. Perhaps the cause for their condemnation to puritanical hard work and bad food. Ironic and telling that a place that had abandoned the Catholic faith and bragged a large community of atheists would serve as the new Jerusalem. Praise be to thee Father.

For reasons of security and because I was not sure how Christ would take to flying in a modern airplane, I decided to take the train underneath the national moat to arrive in France. Once there we rented an automobile, of great discomfort to me because I was always in the habit of using public transport, but our situation called for as little public exposure as possible. Christ remained quiet through out our journey, only bothering to make gestures while he ate his bread and water. It was not my idea what he ought eat, I offered him everything from steak to those horrific and tasteless Shepherd’s pies, he only opted for the bread and water, not even butter would get his attention. I attributed such behavior to a preference for familiarity. For instance, he seemed to want to try fish, he would stare at it longer than any other food, but still not consume it, I finally gave up and just made sure he got plenty of bread. He seemed as healthy as any twenty-eight year old ought be. There was so much that in the end we just trusted would be his choosing and his instinct, we had faith in him.

The journey to Spain was majestic, forgetting the recklessness of the drivers, where my heart was constantly pulsating with never ending madness, but the vista, specially crossing the Pyrenees glorious, glorious. We made it to our secret monastery, which unfortunately must still remain nameless so as to avoid Papal wrath. I had dressed Christ in a suit for our journey, he looked like a music producer but near the monastery I changed him into a tunic, he didn’t really seem to care what he was wearing, it did not change his movements or his character any. When we walked into the premises I flashed false Vatican papers that granted me absolute secrecy and clandestine emperor rule of the place. We were to be left alone, and not a word to be uttered about our existence or goings. So much as a murmur would excommunicate the mouth that dared to utter it!

Impervious Christ and I resumed our silent existence, we would take walks in the surrounding mountains much I think to both our delight. By using the doctor’s formula I calculated his age and contacted the Archbishop when he turned thirty. The Archbishop flew in the week before Easter. He asked me what I felt around him, and I said that I was not sure but that I felt his spirit growing, that I felt he was close to speaking to us, that I thought Jesus knew everything though he manifested no particular expressions. Archbishop asked me to leave them alone, which I dutifully did, anyway I was being kind and helping the Monks with the preparations for Easter; it was really nice to work towards something which I secretly knew had more meaning with each advancing day, and more it was a joy to be doing Church work again, three years with Christ were an experience in isolation, it was good to work with the community, to hear the good deeds being done, the good people praying, to smell the incense, to touch the holy water blessed by another, I only waited with awe for the moment where our Jesus would bless me and forgive me for all of my sins. The golden number moment I sensed was soon nearer, the following week would be Easter Friday and I felt this would have monumental significance. More my engorging joy as I worked overtly for the ceremonies hidden with my secret sacred pleasures. Amen.

Easter Friday arrived and Christ and Archbishop Domenico had said nothing, I was getting ready for the celebrations of the day, when the Archbishop interrupted me and asked me to come with him. “He spoke.”

I walked into the room that viewed the mountain ranges with prominence, and there was Jesus sitting calmly, unfinished bread at his side, he nodded his head to welcome me in, it was a sign that he was allowing me to be before him, I kneeled before him, and he motioned me to sit next to the Archbishop, both of us across from him. Then he said to me, not addressing Archbishop Domenico, but just directing himself to me and his eyes at me, gentle and sweet movements accompanied his essence, the spirit of Christ did not need testing, just the calm with which his serene presence filled me spoke Christ our Lord was before me, I did not even need faith to believe in him, I had immense faith, but in this instance before our Jesus it was irrelevant! His holy words, “You are a good soul, all your sins will be forgiven, you will walk on the earth much longer and much with no rest in your soul, but your sins are no longer your sins, you are a free soul.” Saying no more to me he kissed my forehead.

Then he turned to address the Archbishop, “You have deadly sin in your heart, you have talents all gifts from me, which you have used to accomplish unforgivable things, you have dared to rule where you are not king, you have given prayer to destroy your opponents, Galileo is my son as much as you are, the Mormons and the Jews are my children too, there is only one me and I am everything and in everything since nothing is outside of me. There aren’t any trilogies, the cloth imprinted with this image is not my cloth nor my image, I have no image. Christ was my son, as all are my children, but he was not the Messiah. The Shroud of Turin is a fake and Jesus, a lost but gentle soul. He was no less or more than you whom are also my son. It is not time yet for the Messiah that will come to represent me, it is not time yet, it may never be the time for that. You are a sinner in my eyes, you have worked for the darkness; I require no protection or vindication from earthly matters, the Pope is not a bad man, he is a holy man, he does not mean badly, he wants to comfort those that will follow him, and in so doing what matter that Jesus was a false prophet, that the New Testament and the Catholic faith is mostly a folly of human ingenuity, what matter that? But you come to try to prove your faith above those that are closer to my truth than thou have ever been; you come to make divisions and to foster destruction of entire faiths; and yet thee has nothing better to offer them but your plots which merely make everyone more human and more fallible. You want the truth, I have told you the truth. That very faith that you have striven to prove right can only be proven false! False! There is your truth. You are Damned!”

Astounded I saw Archbishop writhing in anger then surprising me by wildly rushing God with a phur-bu in hand, and God just stood there, indifferent, indifferent to the Archbishop’s strange reactions. But Archbishop Domenico could not remain indifferent to the truth, he droppeth the phur-bu and walked out; escaped the Church and flew to Puta Madre to end his condemned existence in full awareness of God. God disappeared from our lives as if he had never been there, I collected the phur-bur and tossed it through the window over the cliff.

I am writing this from our times, the times that you and I live in, the coincidence of the simultaneous and inexplicable nature of the magnificence of my existence as Cardinal-priest, is explained by the axiom of the universe that everything must exist! The universe hates nonexistence, and with valid justification, the universe doesn’t just want you to exist it wants you to exist in every being and in every aspect of yourself. I have laid out a memory that is literally transpiring at this very moment of existence in a parallel earth within the constraints of another dimension. In this life I am not a Cardinal-priest, currently I am not even a catholic, I am an atheist, some lives call for that. In this life I am a customer service worker for a cool Internet company, wear whatever you like, wine and beer every Friday, video games and corny fun, stock options for the janitors, in the new hip way to work. I am cattle-bussed to work every morning, I plug my brain into a phone-headset, and I type in orders for teddy bears for people that have too much love to give, hot dog making kits for aspirants to the perfect barbecue, golf games that you plug into your computer and swing away from the comfort of your living-room, no caddy fees, all and everything mostly costing $19.95 plus shipping and padded handling. Most of the time things go right here, that is mostly good, our company theme seems to be: “If only we can get everyone in the world to give us one dollar.” Most of our customers, highly unaware of the plot are satisfied with their purchases, many call just to talk to me, me, their very own customer service worker. But being in customer service I get the calls mostly from those that are not satisfied, I don’t know why they are not satisfied but it seems to be because their order was lost in the mail or because there are people in Israel that are buying an American made software program to trace their family roots, and it is in English and not in Hebrew or mandatory French. And the root of the root get angry at that, or because the import duties are twice the price of the software. I try to explain that the duties are not charged by us but by their governments, hence the reason we do not quote them, but this doesn’t appease them any; or maybe it is because the package got lost or stolen, packages just don’t get lost, but we use the term. They scream at me, accusing me of incompetence, they accuse our honestly capitalist company of fraudulent intent; I fancy myself by thinking that they just paid that $19.95 hoping that they could scream at me. I get a half an hour for lunch, I eat fast and try not to get to comfortable with myself, and then I plug in again, to listen to these $19.95 human beings that are irate because they had to wait for an hour on the phone to get through to me so that they could find out why their $19.95 order has not shipped yet.

The day that the Archbishop revealed his magnificent plan to me, I entered our beautiful Cathedral chamber and knelt before my Christ to plead, not for guidance in our plan, I never suspected that he would agree with it, I merely begged him not to make my punishment painful. God, unfortunately, has no concept of pain.