The Three Sisters (24 page)

“Even South American countries allow conjugal visits,” commented Regina. “Did you see if they’d let Sister
Carla visit?”

“Be realistic, Regina. Aren’t going to let a penguin on a
military base.”

“Why not? I’ve seen worse on this base. If you can get the Supreme Court to put us on trial, certainly you can get me a few minutes with my own personal penguin. Will you try, just for me?” asked Regina, throwing herself and her charms upon Victor who gladly accepted her
seductive entreaties.

“OK, see what I can do, but no guarantees. By the way, where are the new plans for
amusement park?”

“Right here, Victor,” said Coito, handing him the newest additions for the project. “The Spanish Mission is all laid out for you there. Of course, you’ll have to get some architects or engineers to work out all the nitty-gritty details, but the basics are detailed for you. But listen, you’d better pay us for all this when we
get out.”

“’Course I will. Can’t pay you while you’re in jail. Couldn’t use the money anyway. Be happy I can get you the things I do.
All’s Well That
Ends Well
?”

“Right here,” said Theodora. “I’m sure glad you sent that typewriter over here. Sitting in this cell writing everything out made me feel like I was a scribe in the
middle ages.”

“Got your stuff ready, Regina?” Victor asked of the three
scholarly sisters.

“Yes, here are the three stories we wrote as well. Coito wrote a story about St. Nicholas, Theodora wrote one about the House of Theophylactus from the Tenth Century, and I wrote a little story
about Christmas.”

“Listen girls, gotta get going now. Got a lot to do yet today. Lot of people to talk to. I’ll be back later this week. Sit tight, and K,” Victor advised Coito who prided herself on her atheistic optimism. “Try and be a bit more optimistic. Turning into a
real killjoy.”

Coito met Victor’s expectations and grew angry at this insult. “Bye,” said Victor stepping out of the cell just as Coito threw a book at him. It sailed through the cell bars and hit the opposite wall, but missed Victor. One of the guards guarding picked the book up, set it back inside the cell, and once again
fell silent.

CHAPTER X

So bald das Gelt in
Kasten klingt,

Die Seele aus den
Fegfeuer springt.

–Tetzel
the Monk

hough Victor had promised to do his best to get the three sisters some time off from their confinement at the air force base, he might have failed had not a new acquaintance of his devised the means by which the three cell-bound sisters were to escape their silent guards guarding. It was one Father Novak, an enterprising and entrepreneurial priest who had sworn to use his economic know-how to save the Catholic Church from bankruptcy, whose initiative provided the three with a break from their enforced incarceration. But how a priest was able to gain such an important influence over the three atheists’ lives is a rather
complicated story.

Father Novak had been concerned about the financial status of the Catholic Church since he had first entered the priesthood some twenty years before. At that time, he worked with New York’s archbishop, and while he was managing the archbishopric’s finances, he discovered what dire shape the Church’s accounts were in. But more important than this, during that period Father Novak found out how much he enjoyed managing the Church’s money, and how much he could contribute to Peter’s Church by making that his life’s work. Whereas some men had resolved to feed the poor, tend lepers, live in the desert, or preach to birds, Father Novak took upon himself a task which no man had over considered bearing for centuries: making the
Church solvent.

Thenceforward, Father Novak devoted his life to balancing the Papal books. On every ecclesiastical issue he encountered, he tried to show his superiors the financial side of each question—how to minimize costs and maximize returns. One issue which Father Novak felt particularly strongly about was celibacy, which he supported, not because of what the Lateran Councils or Council of Trent had to say against Nicolaitism, but because Father Novak knew the Church could barely afford to support its priests as it was. If the Church were to allow women and children to go on the dole, the result would be
financial ruin.

Father Novak’s greatest fear was that the Church’s shaky financial condition would hinder God’s work. Consequently, he warned his superiors of the predicament which the Catholic Church faced and its ineluctable consequences. If the Church lacked the money to go about its appointed mission, it would no longer be able to serve its parishioners as God would have it do.

The Church had to run itself like a corporation, Father Novak told everyone, and if it wanted to avoid financial ruin, it would have to choose between three alternatives: (
1
) it could provide fewer services and cut costs; (
2
) it could demand more for its services in voluntary contributions; or (
3
) it could more actively participate in the capitalist marketplace to earn profits which would pay the Church’s expenses. Father Novak favored the last alternative, and to back up his choice, he reminded others that the medieval Church had recognized the material world as a necessary counterpart to the spiritual world. Now it was time to unite the two for the greater glory
of God.

The Catholic hierarchy considered Father Novak’s alternatives, but never made any decisions. Suffering from hardening of the arteries, the Church was adverse to any dramatic changes in its operations, and even after Vatican II had been drafted, the Church was no more likely to take the initiative to solve its financial problems than it had ever been. Seeing that the Church’s financial position was growing worse, Father Novak pressed his demands further, only to be transferred to a parish where he could cause no
more problems.

Since then, Father Novak had watched the Church’s revenues fall steadily despite the popularity of the ubiquitous bingo games. As revenues declined, the Church started to offer fewer services to its parishioners even though Father Novak had forewarned the hierarchy what a drastic mistake this would be. In the meantime, the Pentecostals and other evangelicals were expanding, not only in the United States, but even down in Central America where Protestantism had failed to plant its seeds
until then.

If the Church cut back on its community involvement, parishioners (especially those who worked and had money) would find alternatives to the Church for occupying their time and disposing of their income. The number of people with money who attended Mass would decline further, decreasing revenues even more, and bringing about a vicious circle of fewer services and falling revenues. Despite his many admonitions to members of the Catholic hierarchy, few listened to Father Novak because they did not like what
they heard.

Though Father Novak was always being criticized for his ideas, usually by jealous clergy within the hierarchy, he saw nothing wrong with making the Church more businesslike. After all, had not Pope Clement VIII been a bank clerk at one time? Had not Celestius V sold blank bulls to anyone who had the money to buy them? And had not the Church made Celestius V a saint for his capitalistic initiative? Certainly, these were signs from God that money and religion, if combined in the right manner, could work harmoniously.

In the many arguments Father Novak had with his brothers in Christ, he tried to prove to them that Catholicism and Capitalism were in fact, “the two cutting edges of the two-edged sword of Faith,” despite Weber’s asseverations in favor of another sect. As he had told Cardinal Wojtyla back in
1976
, “The Church has a bullish attitude on souls, so why not have a bullish attitude
on finances?”

But words were not enough, and to provide an intellectual and spiritual basis for his ideas, Father Novak ferreted out and memorized numerous verses from the Bible and other sources to prove the incontrovertible truth of his beliefs. Father Novak had studied the Bible many times to find out what God had written about Capitalism. A plaque on his wall quoted his favorite verse in the Bible, Ecclesiastes
10
:
19
(“A feast is made for laughter and wine maketh merry, but money answereth all things.”) which was written by Solomon, one of the wisest, and according to Billy Sunday, one of the richest men who had ever lived. His most quoted verses after the Ecclesiastes selection above were found in Matthew
24
:
14
-
30
, and the final verse of that passage (“And cast ye the unprofitable servant into utter darkness: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”) could be found on the letterhead of all his stationary. These verses, he maintained, proved that Christ advocated a capitalist
Catholic Church.

Some parts of the Bible troubled him. Verses such as I Samuel
30
:
24
(“As his part is that goeth down to the battle, so shall his part be that tarrieth by the stuff: they shall part alike.”) and Leviticus
25
:
35
-
37
which disallowed usury seemed inconsistent with the verses quoted above; however, these were the innocent words of a child compared to the verses Father Novak dared not even mention in the infamous Chapter
13
(the unlucky number of Jesus’s disciples) of the Book of Wisdom: “Do not… associate with the iron kettle....A rich man will exploit you if you can be of use to him, but if you are in need, he will forsake you.” Why would God have included such a Marxist verse in the Bible? he often wondered. Father Novak’s defense against these verses was that they applied to Old Testament times, but not to the Christian era. After all, Christians had tried communal living in the First Century, and it had failed. The anti-Capitalist verses had been in the Old Testament and Apocrypha, so they did not carry as much weight as the Matthew quotation. Christ had brought the Good News of Capitalism along with the Good News
of Christianity.

The problem with the relationship between Catholicism and Capitalism lay not in the Bible, but in the Church’s theological past. St. Thomas Aquinas and other Catholic thinkers had had more interest in asceticism than in economics, and this disinterest in monetary matters had set the tone for the Church’s relationship to Capitalism ever since to
its detriment.

Father Novak believed that the Church’s theological intransigence on Capitalism in the fifteenth century had split the Christian Church in two. Since Calvin’s time, the Protestants had been accomplished entrepreneurs who now had centuries of business experience to profit from. After considering these facts, Father Novak concluded that if the Catholics were ever to catch up with the Protestants, a Catholic crusade for Capitalism would have to
be initiated.

To begin this crusade, Father Novak concentrated on spreading his ideas to other Catholics. He published several articles in journals to show that Catholicism and Capitalism had shared an intimate history with one another despite St. Thomas Aquinas and his minions. One of his best-known articles was “The Inquisition as a Release for Capitalistic Initiative in the Middle Ages.” The thesis of this paper was that many of the inquisitors made huge profits in the Middle Ages from both the quick and the dead. This money was obtained by confiscating the property of heretics (or their descendants if the accused were dead) in recompense for their mortal and venial sins against God. All earthly goods belonged to God, so it followed that all property belonged to God’s servants once individuals had forsaken the Creator of the Universe. Father Novak demonstrated that a
nouveau riche
arose during the Middle Ages as a result of the Inquisition and that the inquisitors had been so successful in their efforts to make money that heresy was almost completely extirpated from the European continent by the
1300
s. Father Novak readily disowned the excesses of some inquisitors, but said that these excesses were irrelevant to the point he was trying
to make.

Father Novak pointed out that since the Church did not find a new means of channeling the initiative of its followers to productive occupations once heresy had been removed, its members asserted their entrepreneurial abilities by selling indulgences or by finding other ways of using the Church to make money. Before this, the Church had used monetary initiatives to discourage heresy; now these people were using the Church for no means other than enriching themselves. Capitalism and Christianity no longer worked together, but against one another. This blatant exploitation combined with the fourteenth century’s cynicism to permanently sully the Church’s reputation had ultimately led to
the Reformation.

In a later article, Father Novak showed that the Church failed to use Capitalism as the Protestants had, and the Church’s power and reputation declined as the Protestants increased their economic strength. The nexus of this trend came in the sixteenth century when, in effect, the Catholic Church became a collection agency. All historians point out the state’s triumph over the Church, but few mention the Capitalists’ triumph. Instead of using the sixteenth century’s economic revolution to its own advantage, the Church sat idly by and was relegated to the role of collecting debts for moneylenders.

Anyone who could not pay back a loan could be excommunicated for a fee. In some cases, individuals (or whole families) were under a dozen excommunications at once. Over one hundred excommunications were sometimes read before mass (reading the excommunications often took longer than mass), and at one point a diocese in France had over forty thousand people under excommunication for not paying their debts. Until a creditor was paid off, the debtor could receive no absolution. If he died, he would be buried in unconsecrated ground until the debt was paid by a friend or a relative. Only then would the body be exhumed and interred in holy ground. Father Novak concluded that these abuses and the moneylenders’ power over church officials came about because the Church had excluded entrepreneurs from its ranks, and the Church was subjugated to the needs of capitalists and politicians because it no longer had the economic ability to exercise
its willpower.

Father Novak’s message in these articles was clear: the Church’s failure to heed the demands of Capitalism during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance had split Christianity in two. Catholicism was facing a similar crisis today, and unless the Catholic Church escaped the confines of its past, a disaster worse than the Reformation could befall it in the near future. If the Catholic Church were to survive the next two thousand years, it would have to modernize
or die.

Father Novak first received some attention among fellow Catholics when he published a study of the economics of the Bible wherein he used the meager resources available to him to put together
An Economic History of the Old and New Testaments
. The only problem with this work was that few non-specialists read it, but when he published an economics text which used stories from the Bible and
The Lives of the Saints
as well as diverse and sundry graphs to illustrate economic principles, his fortune was made. If Catholic Children could be taught the principles of economics, he thought, a new generation of Catholic entrepreneurs could be raised to overwhelm the Protestants. Naturally, Father Novak wrote this in the form of a Catechism and called it
A Capitalist Catechism
for Catholics
.