Boy Crucified by Jerome Wilde

Author:Jerome Wilde [Wilde, Jerome]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781623806361
Google: Y7pzjirkW5YC
Amazon: B00DCLMHPK
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2013-06-10T12:00:00+00:00

V

ST. KONRAD’S was located at the end of a dirt road on a heavily-wooded hill about two miles outside Chillicothe. It had once been a Benedictine monastery. After Vatican II, most of the monks had abandoned their vocations and the property was sold to a traditionalist group led by a man named Bishop James, who styled himself as the only valid Roman Catholic bishop left on the face of the planet.

Such a claim was breath-taking, a Big Lie, one of the biggest I’d ever encountered.

“Why do people believe this nonsense?” Daniel asked as we drove down the dirt road leading to St. Konrad’s, following Grubbs and his men.

“There’s no accounting for what people believe,” I replied. “Anyone who’s ever picked up a book on comparative religion could tell you that. People believe what they want to believe, and no amount of facts are going to get in the way. In fact, when it comes to religion, the more fact-free, the better, or sometimes I think.”

“But to call yourselves the only true Catholics in the entire world? Surely people can see through that.”

“Apparently not. Not if it suits their needs.”

“How does it suit their needs?” he asked.

“When it comes to religion, we have a funny habit of believing things that make us feel better about ourselves.”

“What do you mean?”

“Heaven,” I said, “is a good example. When someone dies, we want to believe they went to a better place. We want to deny their death, deny its finality. We want to pretend that life goes on, in some other way, in some nice place like heaven. It’s very self-serving.”

“So what’s the payoff for believing you’re the only true Catholics?”

“That’s the oldest sin of all. Pride. Spiritual pride. Believing that you’re better than others. Believing that you’re enlightened, you’re smart, you’re in the know, and everyone else is stumbling about blindly in the darkness. The old us-versus-them. My group is better than your group. My people, my nation, my country, my religion, my gender, my sexual orientation. Old as sin. And it’s a Big Lie. The bigger the lie, the easier it is to believe it.”

“But what does it mean to be a true Catholic? As opposed to what? A false Catholic?”

“Exactly. They’re true, everyone else is false. They’re saved, everyone else is damned. They’re right, everyone else is wrong. They’re special, they’re privileged, they’re in the know—everyone else has been deceived. Waco, Jamestown—it’s all the same story.”

“That’s why they assigned this case to you, isn’t it? Because it’s about religion.”

“You’re sharp as a tack, Mr. Qo.”

We arrived at the gates to St. Konrad’s and parked behind the Chillicothe police cruisers.

The gates were rather large, and there was a guardhouse next to them. A monk sat inside. He eyed us suspiciously.

Grubbs showed him the search warrant for Earl Whitehead, aka Brother Boniface.

“You want to arrest one of our brothers?” the monk asked, incredulous.

“He’s wanted in connection with the murder of a seventeen-year-old boy in Kansas City,” I said. “Could you open the gates,

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