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The Algorithm: Ch. 2, Busted
This is the second chapter in a sci-fi Catholic series I am doing. At this link you can read the first chapter. Hope you enjoy it.
Fr. Noah entered feebly into the pod with Fr. Stricktor, and the vehicle pulled from the curb into the traffic racing past them.
Noah searched Fr. Stricktor’s thin, pale face for some indication of what the bishop meant by this abrupt interruption, but the priest’s demeanor was as placid as a windless lake. Fr. Sticktor looked down expressionless at the other passing pods beneath them as they crossed over a bridge.
“Did he tell you why I needed to come?” Noah asked.
Stricktor continued looking out and absentmindedly spoke without turning in the slightest.
“No.”
“It seems strange, doesn’t it? To cut Mass like that? Almost sacrilegious.”
Fr. Stricktor finally looked at Noah. His face was slightly contorted over this conversation being forced on him.
“He didn’t tell me. You must have done something horrible, though. I’d say you were in for a suspension.”
He spoke these words like a man sharing the news of a sports team he wasn’t even mildly interested in.
Fr. Noah slightly slumped in his seat. To hear someone else say what he felt was coming suddenly made it feel real.
The pod pulled up to the small home of Bishop Frater, Fr. Noah’s boss. The two men got out and entered the front door.
The Bishop saw them from his office and motioned for them to come in.
“Thank you Fr. Stricktor! I appreciate you picking up our good priest.”
Stricktor walked out without speaking and closed the door behind him.
“Take a seat!” Frater said, motioning with his hands. “Please!”
Bishop Frater was a big, jolly man. He was at least 6 ft 4 in., but he didn’t seem so tall with the round belly that fell over his belt.
Frater and Noah had known each other as far back as Noah’s seminary days. Frater had been his Systematic Theology teacher, and when he became bishop, he remembered Noah with fondness and specifically requested that he come into his jurisdiction.
“Beer? Wine?” Frater asked.
“Uh, beer? I guess?”
Frater pulled out a bottle from the fridge, opened it and passed it to Noah.
“Can I ask why I am here?”
Frater grabbed a bottle for himself and sat at his desk.
“How is your brother?” he said.
Noah sat up a bit in his chair.
“He’s all right I haven’t seen him in a few months. Been busy with the parish.”
Frater looked sadly at Noah. “You should see him more often.”
“Bishop Frater, I am sorry to be so forward, but you pulled me out in the middle of Mass. Can I just know what the problem is?”
Frater took a deep breath and looked at his bottle. Then he looked straight into Noah’s eyes.
“Your homilies have been getting rather… edgy. I have told you repeatedly that there is a protocol we must follow, from the Vatican itself, about what we say and how we say it.”
“Was I off on some point of theology?”
“No… not technically…”
Noah spoke more quickly. “I know that what I say doesn’t suit everyone, but I have never spoken anything against the teaching of the Magisterium or any governing body or person.”
“I know I know I know.” The bishop spoke as though he was pleading with Noah. “But you know how it is! This isn’t the church of our grandparents. We have to reach people in different ways.”
“Of course, I’ve never denied that.”
“And yet you do! How many times have I told you? Run your sermons through the Algorithm. Follow the Algorithm. It’s not that difficult.”
“I tried. I really tried. Every time I do it spits out this insipid garbage about hope and peace and puppies and flowers. I mean, geez, what are we here for if that’s all we’re supposed to say?”
“That is what is keeping people in the pews, Noah.” Frater sat up straight and raised his right finger as he spoke. “In the prudential judgment of Mother Church, while not denying the truth of Tradition, we must do the task of our times.”
Noah laid his chin in his hand and looked wearily at Frater. “I never, in a million years, thought my crazy Theology teacher would be repeating that slogan.”
“Please, Owen, just do what the leadership is asking you to do. Fulfill your vow of obedience.”
“I am being stripped of all the reasons I became a priest!”
The bishop softened. He looked heartbroken at Fr. Noah.
“I know…. I know….” the Bishop said.
Frater got up and walked around his desk to Noah. He put his large hand on his shoulder.
“You were meant to be a priest, but not for this time.”
Frater looked on his brother priest like a father does his son. His heart was heavy for him.
“Noah, I am relieving you of your duties. You will be honorably laicized.”
Noah looked up at Bishop Frater, eyes wide and horrified.
“What? What are you doing?”
“The pope gave me permission to make the decision as I saw fit, and I believe this is what is best for you.”
“But we have no priests! I’m young! I’m not walking away from this!”
“Again, again, I know. But Noah, if you stay in your vocation, the way it is now, you will accomplish nothing you became a priest to accomplish.”
Noah was breathless. “Look, I’ll run my words through the Algorithm. I get it. I need to change.”
“No, you don’t. That’s the problem. It’s not you that needs to change…..”
Bishop Frater walked back around to his desk and sat down again. He muttered to himself. “Maybe I just don’t want you to change….”
He leaned on his desk.
“You have always been my favorite. I hope you come back often for a beer.”
Noah had the feeling of a man just knocked to the ground. He pulled himself out of the chair and shook the Bishop’s hand. He walked out of the office, out of the building, and out into the wide, wide world.
©2021 Catholic Anonymous
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The Algorithm – Ch. 1 – Fr. Noah’s Last Homily
This is the first chapter of a story that has been bumping around in my head for months. It’s something in the genre of Catholic Sci-Fi (is that a thing?) about a priest, artificial intelligence, free will and other things. It’s set in the future.
I have never written a story as long is this one, and as you will see in the first chapter, it’s not kid-friendly, so there’s your warning.
I’m going chapter by chapter, posting it here. If you are of the mind to, please let me know what you like and don’t like about it. I would really, really appreciate any insight.
CHAPTER 1 – The Final Homily
In the barren sanctuary, all that Fr. Noah did echoed louder than normal. His steps click-clacked on the marble floor. You could hear his gentle breathing into the mic on his vestments. And when he opened the book for the Gospel reading, the pages fluttered like the sound of birds in that hollow space.
“A reading from the book of Matthew. Glory to you, O Lord,” he said quietly.
After reading the passage, he stood for a moment, staring out at the empty pews. His words had been carefully written out along the guidelines of the USCCB: not offensive, always with a story, two bland jokes, and an inspirational quote at the end. And of course, every word, phrase and sentence were run through the Algorithm.
His stomach turned as he looked over the text he had composed. He folded the paper and tucked it into the Bible in front of him. And from the preacher’s podium, he spoke the last homily he would ever preach.
“Utopia. That is what we are living in.
We know this because the government told us so thirty years ago. AI, the Algorithm, solved our wars, solved our hunger, solved every problem we ever had.
So now, we bow to it. We turn to it for every need, every desire, every lust. There are so many stories we could tell of how the world has become a better place for everyone.
Well, I have my own story. A mother and her five year old son lived next door to a very wicked man. (I think I am still allowed, as a priest, to use that adjective, “wicked.”) We know he was wicked because he ordered a bot made to look and sound exactly like the mother’s child, and every day they could hear the wails and shrieks of the bot coming through the walls from his house.
The bot’s voice sounded just like her son. Its cries sounded just like her son. Often, the mother would mistake those gasps and yells for her own child. She would come running into his bedroom to see that he was still there, and when she found him playing quietly with his toys, she would walk back to the kitchen mumbling anxiously.
She called the authorities about it, but they could do nothing. After all, what crime was the man committing? No real child was hurt.
So she put in double pane windows to keep the sound out, and she had some peace for a time.
Till one day, she went to her son’s room to get him for dinner, and he wasn’t there. She looked everywhere, frantically. Finally, she ran outside and heard those same shrieks coming from next door, only there was something different about them, something too familiar.
She ran to the front door and started pounding on it. For five agonizing minutes, she screamed and yelled at the man inside. He never answered, but the police came – not to stop him, but to stop her.
After explaining everything, they knocked on the door to sort everything out. The little boy, barely able to move, limped to his mother.
The man went to court, but he was let off. No one could prove that he knew it was not the actual boy. The bruises didn’t come till after it happened, and the bot was terribly convincing.
The man couldn’t live with the guilt he had, though. When everything was done, he buried his bot in his backyard and then killed himself.
That is my story of utopia: a suffering mother, a suffering child, and the suffering wicked.
So here’s your inspirational quote for the day, taken from our reading this morning: what comes out of a man defiles him.”
When he finished, a lone, single clapping sound came from the side. Fr. Noah looked around to see where it came from and saw a man, smiling, in nice clothes, seated in the side of the sanctuary. After clapping, the man stood up and quietly left.
No sooner had he left than a priest burst through the back door and walked briskly right down the middle aisle to the front of the church.
In a frustrated, strained voice, he said, “Come with me, Fr. Noah.”
“I’m in the middle of Mass.”
“The Bishop wants to see you now.“
“Can’t I fin-“
“No!”
Fr. Noah went to the sacristy, changed out of his vestments, and got into a car with his fellow priest.
He knew the Bishop would not be happy.
©2021 Catholic Anonymous
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Wrestling with God
Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.
Genesis 32:24 (NRSCVE)
Chapter 1 – The Timid Wrestler
On their first date, David was like a stone. He was nervous, you had to give him that. Five years of the book “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” will do that to a man.
Hannah knew pretty quickly he was not her type. Through high school and college the guys she dated fit nicely into the wild, stupid, and fun categories. David mostly sat quietly, and when he spoke, it revolved around some topic in the Bible. She was fine with religion, but goodness, not that much.
Still, she went on a couple more dates with him. She’d been with enough guys to know first impressions are not everything. And after another and then another, his steady and attentive eyes, his soft voice, and yes, even his listening silence began to wear her down. It didn’t hurt that he would open the car door for her which, according to her mother, she should have taken offense at. “Like you can’t open your own damn door!” her mother would say, mumbling something after that about the patriarchy while sipping her Merlot.
Before long, Hannah found herself telling him way too much. Bit by bit, she wondered if wild, stupid and fun were really what she wanted.
But to be fair, there was something wild about David, and it was his faith. The guy went entirely beyond the boundaries of a normal, private interest in God to an almost fanatical obsession with him. He believed the whole Catholic thing: church every Sunday, refusing to hold her hand, saying “Let’s pray about this” whenever she told him about some knot in her life and referring to Mary as “Our Lady”. The only other time she heard that was when friend Alejandra was making fun of her grandparents.
Whether she wanted it or not, though, his faith began igniting her own. She remembered going to Mass when she slept over at Alejandra’s home in elementary school. Sure, she wasn’t crazy about religion, but her memories were warm ones – the light coming through the stained glass, the smell of the incense, the congregation singing and chanting like one great being. When she visited again with David, it all came flooding back.
A year later, he did what she somehow could never imagine happening. He proposed to her. Hannah was never one to see beyond the current week, and here was her boyfriend asking her if she could see herself spending the rest of her life with him!
She knew, theoretically that this had to happen. This relationship was going somewhere or it wasn’t. It certainly was not fair to string him along if she could not stomach joining him where he was. But was she ready for this? Could she say to him, “Your people will be my people, your God will be my God”? David’s smile faded a bit when she didn’t say yes but didn’t say no.
She knew she had to talk to someone first. So on a bright spring afternoon, she sat on a bench at Wiggin Park and waited for him. They would sort this out one on one.
When he came, he stood standing in the sun for a moment.
“Hello Hannah,” he said.
“Hello, God,” said Hannah.
Read the rest at this link…
The Original Silent Night vs. the Vatican’s 2020 Nativity
With not an ounce of admiration or affection, Fred and Pete sat looking at the Vatican’s 2020 Nativity scene.
“I have no clue what to do with this,” said Fred.
“Nor I,” said Pete.
“What were they thinking? Another faux pas for Papa Franco.”
“Faux pas? Is that all this is?” said Pete. “How about a middle finger from the Holy Father to all of us Latin-loving, conservative Catholics still faithful to the church? 2020 was trash, and he tops it off with 1960’s garbage in the middle of Rome. Goodness, at the Vatican, you would think beauty and reverence would reign on Christmas, of all times.”
“I know!” retorted Fred.
“I can think of a thousand Nativity Scenes that would have been better than this one. I can’t enter into the spirit of the Christmas season at all with this. There is a rich history of Nativities that they completely disregard.”
“Yes, I think of Caravaggio, von Honthorst, or even Giotto. Those are closer to the truth and beauty of Christmas.”
“Yeah. Get this, though: can you imagine if we could actually go back and see the original Christmas? Wouldn’t that be amazing? I mean, how moving would that be? To see the actual Mary and Joseph with baby Jesus. That would be a spiritual experience, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, that would be amazing! To kneel at the manger of the sleeping child. To see Mary’s glowing face looking in adoration at him. Joseph nearby. What a scene. If only.”
The Original Silent Night
No sooner had these words passed Fred’s lips than the angel Gabriel appeared before the two of them in a flowing white robe.
“Be not afraid, Pete and Fred.” said Gabriel. “I bring you tidings of good news. God, in this Christmas season, has granted your request.”
The friends looked at each other, confused and wondering if the other saw what they saw. As they pondered these words, Gabriel continued.
“You shall both go back roughly 2000 years to the very night the Savior was born. None shall be able to see you.”
The two dedicated Catholic men giggled a little with excitement. How would this change them? How would it transform their lives forever? They could only guess.
Instantly, they found themselves in a field. They saw a few clay homes, and then, off in the distance, a small fire lit in what looked like an enormous cave.
“Do you think that’s it?” said Fred.
“I don’t know,” said Pete. “Isn’t it supposed to be a stable?”
“Yes, but, well… I don’t see anything else around.
“We might as well check it out.”
The two trudged stiffly through the mud. It had just rained, and their shoes slipped a bit as they made their way.
Finally, they got to the cave, and though it looked nothing like the wooden stables they always saw depicted, there indeed were a man, woman and child with animals.
“This must be it,” said Pete.
In the Stable
Yet, it was not the scene they had envisioned in their minds. Mary was sprawled out on the hay, mouth open and drooling. Her feet were caked with mud. Joseph was snoring behind a bail of hay.
Baby Jesus was sleeping, but just then a cow came up and licked his face, at which point the child woke up and started crying.
Mary briefly half-opened her eyes, only to close them again and fall back asleep as the child continued to cry.
“We should do something. Jesus is crying!” Fred exclaimed. But soon, they realized they could do nothing. When Fred tried to pick up the child, his hands went through him. They could only spectate.
The crying went on for a few minutes as the couple, exhausted, slept on.
Pete began to get more and more uncomfortable. This was not what he had been hoping for. On the contrary, the longer he was there, the more frustrated he became with, of all people, the Virgin Mother.
“When will she wake up?” Pete wondered. This went on for a good half hour until some visitors came.
Fred could smell them before he saw them or even heard them. They were the shepherds in the story who had received the message from the angels about the newborn.
The men walked up to the child, their dumb, simple faces staring at the crying baby. They looked as confused about what to do as Pete and Fred did. Then the dirtiest one came, picked up the child and tried holding him.
Joseph woke up to all the commotion and instinctively thought the shepherds were trying to take the baby. He started yelling at them, at which point Mary woke up and began taking the child quickly from the shepherd’s arms.
“What is happening?” cried Pete.
The arguing went on for a few minutes before the shepherds could finally convince Joseph that they didn’t want to steal baby Jesus, but he still looked warily at them. Mary began to feed him, and the child finally started calming down.
Finding the Meaning
Fred and Pete had no idea what to do with all of this. They both found themselves on the one hand frustrated that the reality in front of them did not at all coincide with the 2000 year history of fine art they had in their heads. On the other hand, they began feeling a twinge of guilt for expecting it to.
The plain fact that slowly manifested in their minds was that the first Christmas appeared to have nothing of the Christmas spirit in it. They had to stretch their imagination to connect what they were seeing to some moral lesson or deeper understanding of God.
Instead, they sat irritated at everyone there.
Minutes went by as nothing happened. Everyone began to ease a bit, and Joseph began talking carpentry with the shepherds and the shepherds began talking sheep-herding with Joseph. Mary, after feeding the baby, put him in the manger and fell back asleep again somewhere deeper in the cave. No one was looking at, or even cared to look at, baby Jesus who was now sleeping contentedly.
“Do they not see the Son of God in front of them?” Pete said. “This is the holiest night of all nights!”
A sinking feeling came over Fred and Pete. The two men looked at each other and realized they were thinking the same thing. The real Nativity filled their souls with about as much awe and wonder as the Nativity scene they had left at the Vatican.
“I have to look hard at this in front of us to find some deeper lesson,” Fred said gently.
“But the lesson is there,” said Pete. “That is still Jesus. That is still Mary and Joseph. All of it means the same thing.”
In an instant, they found themselves back at their bench, looking at the cylindrical Mary and Jesus with the astronaut and lit mountain line.
And as best they could, despite the difficulty, they tried to find the deeper meaning in it all.
©2020 Catholic Anonymous
A Very Important Man
On Monday, the very important man woke up and pulled himself out of his oversized bed. He showered, dressed, and grabbed a bagel and some coffee before briskly walking to the elevator that took him down from his penthouse to the very busy city below.
His chauffeur took him across town to the building named after another very important man. He let him off to meet with other very important men about the fifth business he would almost certainly sell to them. After making pleasant comments to each other about the weather and latest sports game, they got down to discussing what they were there for and the very important man sold his latest project for billions.
On Tuesday, the very important man woke up to work on what was his passion This he would not sell but would spend his life developing. It had the potential to reshape society for a generation. He smiled all day as he made phone calls, sent emails, worked through coding issues, and did all the other things a very important man would do to make his dream come true. He did not know that one day it would come true.
On Wednesday, the very important man went down to the city’s food bank. He volunteered there and also donated large sums of money, practically feeding the city’s poor on his own with the enormous amount he gave. His generosity allowed families to thrive that would not have been able to. Children were able to go to school with full stomachs. Parents were given more wiggle room in between jobs. The city’s poor would not have been able to survive a month without his help.
On Thursday, he took the day off and spent it with his family. His children adored him, and he did not know that the minutes he spent with them were putting a firm foundation beneath their feet, and their children’s feet, and their children’s children. They were learning from him in ways he did not realize, but it was real just the same.
On Friday, however, his pace grew slower. At the end of this work week, he decided to pray. He walked down to the Cathedral in the middle of a loud and busy street. He walked into the abrupt silence of the space and knelt before the Eucharist.
A few pews ahead of him was a monk reading from his prayer book. Behind him was a sister running through the Rosary. To his right, the pew over, was an old lady mumbling silent words. And to his far left sat a migrant worker, eyes closed tightly and speaking something in Spanish he could not understand.
He folded his hands and quietly began his prayer, “Our Father…. Thy will be done….”
At the words of these few gathered there, the spiritual world began to shake. Very important angels began dashing from one place to another, busy with their very important work. Souls began bursting forth from their agonizing state of purging pain into the eternal freedom of heaven. In that moment and outside of it, in time thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of years into the future, blessings that would never fade or be taken away began raining down on the entire world. The future was being transformed.
Does that seem surprising? It shouldn’t. After all, he was a very important man.
©2021 Catholic Anonymous
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