Organized religion provides rich fodder for fiction. Every week we read in the new about some church or preacher who’s fallen of the rails so far, it registers on the Richter scale. Consider that Florida preacher with a congregation of about three, who burned a Q’ran and was unrepentant while deaths mounted in Afghanistan riots. Or the Colorado mega church preacher who railed against homosexuals while heading off to Denver for trysts with gay prostitutes.
Of course, the Catholic Church has to top the list. St. Peter’s Square looks like a bull’s eye from the air. It must be a natural reaction, trying to hide your sins under that skirt. Actually, it isn’t all that surprising, considering their view of sin. If a priest says your sins are forgiven, they’re gone, right? If a pedophile priest confesses, the sin is gone. Are the police more powerful than God? Certainly not.
While the Church makes an easy target, it’s individuals and their sins that most interest me as a writer. Institutions may be big and powerful, but they are essentially soulless. That is as true for corporations as it is for churches.
In Safety Margin, it isn’t the Catholic Church that’s the villain, but a fictional rogue priest, Father Nolan, and the equally fictional Archbishop of Detroit, Cardinal Clement Cleary. Their sin isn’t as egregious as pedophilia, but serial adultery. Father Nolan entices a string of young pretty parish housewives into his rectory (I’ll leave that one alone, thank you).
When Frank presents the archbishop with damning photos showing Frank’s wife Priscilla among the victims, it’s money that’s at stake along with the Church’s reputation. Father Nolan is the spiritual equivalent of a Rainmaker. His huge parish, Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes, has many generous donors, and his television show is equally lucrative.
Frank responds to the rebuff by getting some of the pictures published, earning the archbishop’s eternal enmity as the price of Nolan’s resignation. Since Frank has a few murders under his belt, he’s not exactly begging for forgiveness, but he does want to marry Lucy Firenze in the church, and Frank’s divorce doesn’t quite measure up in the eyes of the church. No annulment, no church wedding.
The Catholic Church isn’t the only one under my microscope. Over the centuries, many wacky beliefs have emerged to satisfy the egos and lusts of powerful men. Nolan’s Center of the Universe is a flimsy excuse for public orgies under the fig leaf of Freedom of Religion.
Despite the opportunity for gratuitous sex, I restrain myself. The only thing the reader walks away with is Priscilla’s AIDS, but you’ll have to wait for book four to find out about that.
Religion proves a fertile source for texture in fiction. Catholic rituals like Requiem masses reside easily alongside charismatic prayer circles, prophesy and exorcisms. Been there, done that. Scared the hell out of me.
Organized religion has been a boon to society, providing moral codes and frightening sanctions that have moderated human behavior for millennia. But religion has also provided a platform for power. Men have hijacked belief as a mechanism to vault them to the highest levels of authority. They have swept up hordes of widow’s mites to keep themselves in grandeur, a grandeur that persists to this day. Many of the men who have gravitated toward those circles of power haven’t had a clue about the nurturing principles that underlay most belief systems. Women, who naturally espouse those values, have been systematically excluded from exercising those gifts.
If religious leaders feel the puny sting of my outrageous insults, too bad. Over the millennia, they’ve more than earned a little punishment.
They may have felt free to forgive themselves, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us forgive them.
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