The Clowns of God Read Online Free PDF Page A

images are vivid but essentially banal. They could have been culled from any good science fiction film. He has cerebrated them many times before. Now he daydreams them. When he wakes he is back in the garden. It’s a common phenomenon.”
    “But he believes it is a supernatural intervention.”
    “He says he does.”
    “What the hell do you mean?”
    “I mean,” said Anneliese Meissner flatly, “he could be lying!”
    “No! It’s impossible! I know this man. We’re as close as brothers.”
    “An unfortunate analogy,” said Anneliese Meissner mildly.
    “Sibling relationships can be infernally complicated. Simmer down, Carl! You wanted a professional opinion: you’re getting it. At least take time to examine a reasonable hypothesis.”
    “This one is pure fantasy!”
    “Is it? You’re an historian. Think back. How many convenient miracles can you name? How many most timely revelations? Every sect in the world has to provide them for its devotees. The Mormons have Joseph Smith and his fabulous golden plates; the Reverend Sun Myung Moon made himself the Lord of the Second Advent, even Jesus bowed down to worship him. So suppose, Carl just suppose! your Gregory XVII decided that this was crisis time for the institution and that the moment was ripe for some new manifestation of Divine involvement.”
    “Then he was taking a hell of a gamble.”
    “And he lost it. Might he not now be seeking to recover something out of the wreckage, and using you to do it?”
    “It’s a monstrous idea!”
    “Not to me. Why are you choking on it? I’ll tell you.
    Because, though you like to believe you’re a liberal thinker, you’re still a member of the Roman Catholic family. For your own sake you have to protect the mythos. I noticed you didn’t wince when I mentioned the Mormons and the Moonies. Come on, my friend! Where’s your mind?”
    “It seems I’ve mislaid it.” Carl Mendelius was grim.
    “If you take my advice, you’ll drop the whole affair.”
    “Why?”
    “You’re a scholar with an international reputation. You want no truck with madness or folk-magic.”
    “Jean Marie is my friend. I owe him at least an honest enquiry.”
    “Then you’ll need a Beisitzer an assessor to help you weigh the evidence.”
    “How would you like the job, Anneliese? It might give you some new clinical insights.”
    He said it as a joke to take the sting out of their discussion.
    The joke fell flat.
    Anneliese weighed the proposition for a long moment and then announced firmly: “Very well. I’ll do it. It’ll be a new experience to play inquisitor to a Pope. But, dear colleague,” she reached out and laid her big hand on his wrist, “I’m much more interested in keeping you honest!”
    When his last lecture was over, late in the afternoon, Carl Mendelius walked down to the river and sat a long time, watching the stately passage of swans on the grey water.
    Anneliese Meissner had left him deeply disturbed. She had challenged not only his relationship with Jean Marie Barette, but his integrity as a scholar, his moral stance as a seeker after truth. She had probed shrewdly at the weakest point in his intellectual armour: his inclination to make more tender judgments about his own religious family than about others.
    For all his sceptic bent, he was still God-haunted, conditioned to the Pavlovian reflexes of his Jesuit past. He would rather conform his findings as an historian with orthodox tradition than deal bluntly with the contradictions between the two. He preferred the comfort of a familiar hearth to the solitude of the innovator. So far, he had not betrayed himself.
    He could still look in the mirror and respect the man he saw.
    But the danger was there, like a small prickling lust, ready to take fire at the right moment with the right woman.
    In the case of Jean Marie Barette, the danger of self betrayal could be mortal. The issue was clear and he could not gloss or hedge it. There were three possibilities,