Boy Crucified (9 page)

The nun offered a suspicious frown and made us sit in the small lobby area while she disappeared through a set of dark doors. She returned with another nun, this one dressed a bit differently, as if to signify her status.

“This is Mother Superior Mary Helena,” the first nun said.

“Lt. Thomas Noel,” I said, nodding to her, knowing she would not want to shake my hand. “My partner, Daniel Qo.”

She led us to a small conference room, asking the porter to bring coffee.

“How may I assist you?” Mother Helena asked, taking a seat.

“I’m not sure,” I said, uncertain as to how to formulate the question exactly. “I suppose I need to know about traditional Catholics, traditional Catholic groups.”

“And why is that?” she asked.

“I’m investigating a murder.”

“Are you investigating us?”

“Not at all,” I said. “We’re investigating a murder, and we have reason to believe that the victim was involved with a Catholic cult, or a strange Catholic group that he met over the Internet. He was fifteen when he ran away to join them. He was seventeen when he died, under what could only be described as suspicious circumstances.”

“The boy who was crucified? The one they’ve been talking about in the newspaper?”

I glanced at her, frowning.

“You’re not at liberty to say?” she said. “I understand.”

“I’m trying to figure out who this group was,” I replied, “and where it’s located, but before I can do that, I need to get a handle on this traditional Catholicism business.”

She smiled, as if she understood the point exactly. “Are you Catholic, Lt. Noel?”

“I was,” I said, a bit evasively. I heard Daniel snort.

“I just want to make sure you’re not investigating us, or that we’re not under some sort of suspicion.”

“No, you’re not,” I said. “I’m just doing research.”

“Good. We don’t want any trouble with the police department. We have enough troubles as it is.”

“Such as?” I asked.

“Nothing that would interest you, I’m sure.” She sat back in her chair and gave me a good long look. “To answer your question, I guess we’d have to start with Vatican Council II. Now I could sit here all day talking about what happened in the Church, but I suspect you want the basics, so I’ll try to just summarize it. If I lose you, let me know.”

I nodded.

“Vatican Council II,” she said grandly, offering a smile tinged with bitterness and speaking as though she were college professor about to embark on a lecture for eager students, “was a complete disaster. It took place in the 1960s. It introduced a lot of changes, like switching the language of the mass from Latin to the vernacular. For hundreds and hundreds of years, the Catholic mass was always in Latin, and it was the same everywhere you went, all throughout the world. Now suddenly, with Vatican II and its liturgical reforms, we had mass in English, mass in French, mass in Swahili, mass in the language of the people. It was a profound change. When you’ve grown up attending the Latin mass, and when the Latin mass is all you’ve ever known, to go to church one Sunday and find that the mass is now being said in English, well, it was hugely disorienting for a lot of people. The Church called this the ‘New Mass’, the ‘Novus Ordo’, which is Latin for the ‘new order’. It was all a bit strange, and a lot of people were confused by it, and didn’t like it, and didn’t want to attend it. Even the sound of it—the New Order—was unpleasant, as if the old order was being completely swept away.”

The porter returned with a tray bearing coffee, which she served without comment.

“And it wasn’t just the language,” Mother Helena went on. “The whole mass was changed. The priest used to stand at the altar, offering the sacrifice of the mass to Almighty God, with his back to the people. Suddenly, the priests were ripping out the altars and putting in tables in the middle of the sanctuary and facing the people during the mass. They got rid of the communion rails, the statues of the saints, the crucifixes, and in their place they put up silly-looking banners and newfangled art that everyone hated. They threw out the old, traditional hymns and brought in people with guitars, standing in the sanctuary and singing folk songs. Or they had clown masses, or rock masses, or dance masses—it was just a disaster. When people go to Church, they want something quiet, reverential, respectful. They don’t want clowns in the sanctuary, and they don’t want to have to sit and listen to a rock band singing “Jesus is Just Alright With Me
”
, not on a Sunday morning.”

I could see her point.

“Now, of course, things settled down after a while, although there were many stories of liturgical abuses. Some priests, for example, instead of giving communion to each person, would just stand in the front of the church and throw the hosts at the people, and you had to try to catch one or pick one up off the floor. They did all sorts of crazy stuff, but the bottom line was that a lot of people didn’t like it. My parents were really shaken. They couldn’t understand what had happened, or why the Church was doing this, why it was forcing people to sit through all this nonsense.”

“The way you describe it,” I said, “it does sound a bit off-putting.”

“Well, I should point out that some people liked it. They liked the guitars and the new songs and the banners. They liked having the priest face them when he said mass. They liked having everything in English. They wanted to have fun when they went to mass. They didn’t want everything to be so solemn and serious.”

She paused, eying me across the table. “Have I lost you yet?”

I shook my head.

I glanced at Daniel. His eyes told me he was completely lost, but he put on a brave face.

“In addition to that whole business with the mass,” she said, “there were a lot of other changes. Nuns suddenly stopped wearing their habits, priests took off their Roman collars, religious brothers started wearing lay clothes and living in apartments by themselves. Everything was revised. The catechism, the mass, the Code of Canon Law, the lists of saints. Everything was changed. The priests in the pulpit no longer talked about the Blessed Virgin or saying the rosary or engaging in all the traditional devotions like novenas and pilgrimages. Suddenly we had the religion of man being preached from the pulpit—the ‘social Gospel’. To heck with the rosary, let’s go feed some homeless people!
Jesus Christ Superstar
! All of that business. All sorts of saints were dropped from the calendar, the feast days switched around, their statues removed from churches.

“Even in the area of doctrine, things had been changed. Catholics, for example, no longer talk about purgatory. They cast doubt on the virgin birth. They have no problem with contraception or divorce or homosexuality—it’s like a free-for-all now, you can just do what you want. All of the traditional teachings, especially about sexuality, are now ignored. If you want to be a faggot, go ahead.”

I did my best not to cringe. “So, in other words, there were a lot of changes in the Church introduced by Vatican II, which people didn’t like?”

“That’s it, exactly. One of those people was Archbishop Lefebvre, a bishop from France, who actually attended some of the sessions of Vatican II. When he began to read the documents being produced by the Council, he was a bit dismayed, especially by the one called the
Declaration on Religious Liberty
, which gave everyone in the world the right to believe whatever their conscience told them. Now it might seem like a small matter, but when you think about it, you soon realize that it’s not a small matter at all. It directly contradicts what the Church has taught for centuries and centuries—that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church. We believe that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, established the Catholic Church as a means of salvation for all men, and in order to be saved, men must become members of this Church that Jesus himself established. The Church has always made an exception for those who are invincibly ignorant, those who would have no way of knowing that the Catholic Church was the only true church, such as natives living in the jungles of South America or something. But everyone else was expected to either acknowledge the position of the Catholic Church, or run the risk of eternal damnation for trying to seek salvation outside the Church that Jesus had established.

“This is a very basic, fundamental point of Catholicism that is backed up with document after document and pope after pope, a teaching that has always been at the heart of Catholicism, that it is the only true church, and there is no other way to be saved than membership in the Church. So, at Vatican II, you have a document being produced and signed by the bishops and the pope himself that says everyone has the right to believe whatever they want. Religious liberty! That document was simply shocking.”

“So these traditionalist groups,” I asked, “where are they located?”

“Archbishop Lefebvre’s group is by far the largest. We have seminaries, convents, schools and churches all over the world. We’re known as the SSPX, which stands for Society of St. Pius X. There are many other groups, though. They are basically divided into those who believe we have a valid pope, and those who don’t. We belong to the former. We respect the pope, and we believe that he is a valid pope, and as long as his instructions and teachings are in line with what the Church has always traditionally taught, we have no problem with him. But when he asks us to do things that we know are wrong, we have to refuse.”

“Things like what?” I asked, intrigued.

“Like attending the New Mass,” Mother Helena answered. “We refuse to attend the New Mass because we believe it could pose a danger to us, spiritually.”

“Why would it do that?”

“Because it no longer represents what it was meant to, the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Now it’s more like the Last Supper, a meal, a gathering presided over by the president of the assembly, and all of that. The prayers of the New Mass, as well as the whole atmosphere, encourage a sort of feel-good piety. There’s a lot of emphasis on how God is a God of love, but never a God of justice. There’s a lot of emphasis on feeding the homeless, but never on going to confession or saying the rosary. It’s the whole Gospel of Man thing. I mean, it’s not much different than going to a Protestant church. But Catholics are not Protestants.”

“So these two main groups—the first believes the pope is valid?”

“The second group is the sedevacantists, from the Latin phrase
sede vacante
, which means ‘the chair is empty.’ The chair of St. Peter, the seat of the papacy, is empty, in other words. These are the fringe groups, the extremists. They believe that Pius XII was the last true pope, and all the others from John XXIII onwards have been false popes. They do not acknowledge the authority of the Vatican or the pope at all, and they operate independently. A lot of them are
very
cultlike in their behavior. Secretive, authoritarian, very exclusive. Most of these groups believe they are the only true Catholics and all the rest of us are going to hell.”

“Is that right?” I asked.

“That’s what the parents said,” Daniel pointed out quietly. “They talked about ‘true Catholics’.”

“Most of these groups are run by a single bishop,” she said, “who received his consecration from questionable sources. There are several groups like this, and we encourage people to stay away from them. Some have ties to questionable groups like white supremacists, or anti-Semites, or hate groups, or neo-Nazis. I’ve heard many sad stories about these people.”

“Is it possible that some of these groups are here in Missouri, or close by?” Daniel asked.

“Of course,” she said. “They’re all over the place.”

“How could we find them?” he pressed.

“You’d have to do a search on the Internet. Try looking for sedevacantists. You could also look up some of their names, like the CMRI, the SSPV, Bishop Schuckardt. You could also try looking for their so-called popes, like Pius XIII.”

“Pius XIII?” I was flabbergasted. Pius XII was the last pope to carry that name.

“Don’t be surprised,” she said, smiling. “The traditionalist movement has produced all sorts of popes and quacks and who knows what. I think Pius XIII is one of the more famous. He was a traditionalist priest for many years, and he finally decided to hold a ‘conclave’ so that his followers could elect a ‘pope’. A bit of a joke. He’s got his own Web site. He decides who’s Catholic, who isn’t. Quite a pompous little man. But he’s just one of many. You could also check into Pope Michael. He lives next door in Kansas.”

I had heard enough, though doubtless she could go on and on. If I had to, I would come back to her at some point in the future, but for now my brain was struggling to put all these pieces into some semblance of order.

“What does this have to do with that boy?” she asked. “I’m just curious.”

“He seems to have gotten himself mixed up with one of these groups.” I did not elaborate any further.

“Well,” she said, giving me a friendly, almost motherly look, “partly I’m concerned about you. Some of these groups are known to stockpile weapons. They can be very dangerous. I guess I would have to caution you about poking your nose around too much in their business. I mean, not that you shouldn’t do your job, but you should be careful because you don’t really know what you might be getting yourself into. I’m thinking about Waco and groups like that.”

Point taken.

“Appreciate the advice,” I said, putting my pen and paper away.

“Do you go to Mass?” she asked, standing up.

“Sometimes,” I lied.

“And you, Mr. Qo?” she asked.

“I’m Chinese,” he said, as if that excused him.

“Well, gentlemen, you’re always welcome to come here,” she said. “Have you ever been to the Latin mass?”

“A long time ago,” I said.

“It’s still the same,” she said. “You’re always welcome. It’s at 10:00 a.m. Sunday morning.”

I suspected I would not be welcomed if she knew I was an ex-priest and one of those Catholics who no longer cared about the Church’s teachings on sexuality, but I merely smiled.

XI