Robert Blair Kaiser's novel CARDINAL MAHONY

This novel begins with the transformation of a fictionalized American cardinal after he realizes he has conducted himself more like the chief executive officer of a big business rather than as a pastor whose life reflects Christ’s teachings to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, care for the sick, etc. At the outset, many readers might feel they could predict the outcome before finishing the novel: the prelate would be treated like a pariah by his fellow bishops and quietly removed from his post, with a successor appointed who understands the foremost rule of today’s Catholic bishops is to fall in lockstep behind the pope. But the novel has unexpected twists and turns.

Approximately one-quarter through the book, the author, a former journalist who covered the Vatican II council for TIME magazine, introduced a number of thought-provoking ideas to enhance the laity’s participation in all aspects of the church. As the much beloved good Pope John XXIII once said, “The Catholic Church is its people,” as distinguished from its hierarchy. In the novel, the priest shortage leads one church in California administered by a nun to have communion services in lieu of a mass. But the nun in this story does something relatively unique: she invites the small congregation to join her in saying the eucharistic prayer in unison out loud.

When word of these communion services reaches the local bishop and eventually the Vatican, all the conservatives are horrified that this upstart nun is democratizing the mass and letting all the congregation join in feeling they play a role in consecrating bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. But a participant at the communion service describes it this way. “First thing I’d say, we don’t call them Masses. Second thing, these are the most devout, solemn liturgies I have ever seen. When we say the words (of the eucharistic prayer), we say them in the kind of wonder-filled tones we use when we’re reading our nieces and nephews their bedtime stories.” Nevertheless the Vatican and America’s conservative bishops get all in a tizzy over the very thought of people saying the same words used by the priest at mass.

The typical Catholic mass in America involves a priest giving a too-long homily and then making up for lost time by racing through the shortest eucharistic prayer for consecration. Because of this time constraint, the fourth eucharistic prayer, which is the longest of the four prayers available for consecration, is seldom used. Yet Eucharistic Prayer IV contains the most beautiful words of all: “Father, you so loved the world that in the fullness of time you sent your only Son to be our Savior. He was conceived through the power of the Holy Spirit, and born of the Virgin Mary, a man like us in all things but sin. To the poor he proclaimed the good news of salvation, to prisoners, freedom, and to those in sorrow, joy. In fulfillment of your will he gave himself up to death; but by rising from the dead, he destroyed death and restored life. And that we might live no longer for ourselves but for him, he sent the Holy Spirit from you, Father, as his first gift to those who believe, to complete his work on earth and bring us the fullness of grace.”

Why NOT let the laity -- the congregation -- say these beautiful words out loud during mass? For too long, the conservatives running the Church have tried to maintain the pre-Vatican II notion that the clergy dispense God’s graces and the laity’s job is to seek passively these ministerial graces from clergy – in a process ultimately controlled by the Vatican. Yet, in 1965 towards the end of the Vatican II council, Pope Paul VI noted that the passive nature of the laity had changed. Outside of mass, Vatican II sought to codify and recognize the laity had spiritual gifts equal to (if not greater than) the spiritual gifts of the clergy.

How welcome indeed then are the scenes depicted in CARDINAL MAHONY, in which the Church in California, and eventually across the country, rallies around the renegade nun, forces the conservative hierarchy to back down, and demands a greater say in the administration of the church and the accountability of its bishops. The novel explains the concept of an autochthonous church – which is 100% Catholic and loyal to the pope, yet retains for itself certain decision-making power. As Kaiser explains, autochthony does not mean autonomy; it means “home grown.”

According to Kaiser, as of 2007, the Vatican recognizes twenty-one autochthonous churches inside the Catholic Church. These churches include the Melkites in Lebanon, the Maronites, and an Eastern European branch that has maintained married Catholic priests from its first existence. In fact, the Roman Catholic Church in Africa and Latin America today already has “home grown” elements in the prevalence of priests with unofficial companions. “It's an open secret that many Roman Catholic priests -- especially in African and Latin American nations -- have taken common-law wives,” wrote Don Lattin in a nationally circulated religious article for the San Francisco Chronicle in 1994.

Reading CARDINAL MAHONY will cause readers to reexamine their faith and what they have been taught about the church since childhood catechism classes. Whether it is greater accountability of diocesan finances or censorship of dissenting views by the Catholic press, genuine reforms are still needed worldwide in the Roman Catholic Church. Hundreds of millions of Catholics left the church during the long reign of Pope John Paul II, because they were spiritually unfed. Similarly, the results of polling on religion in America released in late February 2008 by the Pew Foundation showed Roman Catholics were more likely than any other denomination to abandon their faith.

The Roman Catholic Church depicted in CARDINAL MAHONY is so hopeful and inspiring that it comes as a let down when the book is finished, and the reader has to return to reality. I recommend all progressive Catholics read this book, request your local public libraries add it to their collections, and use the book’s themes to discuss whether readers want to play a more active role in the life of the Church.

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