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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK202 Jack Fritscherone was to be the first one to knock me senseless, and it would have been more pure than impure. %u201cI went to Confession two months ago,%u201d she said, %u201cand I asked the priest a question and told him my opinions about marriage and sex. He asked me what I%u2019d been reading. I told him de Chardin.%u201d%u201cYou read Teilhard de Chardin?%u201d I was amazed.%u201cShut up, Ryan,%u201d Lock said.%u201cAnything you can read I can read,%u201d she said. %u201cAnyway, do you know what this Father Abortionado said to me? %u2018My daughter,%u2019 he called me%u2014imagine!%u2013%u2018we should be wary of the pride that makes us attempt intellectual pursuits beyond our capacity. De Chardin,%u2019 he was telling me off, %u2018tries impossibly to marry biblical doctrine to theories of evolution. We must leave theological speculation to the experts and be content with the simple definitions of Holy Mother Church.%u2019 I gagged, really gagged. I wanted to say, oh, you stupid, stupid old fool, wasn%u2019t Holy Mother Church ever a girl? I haven%u2019t been to Confession since. I%u2019ll go again. But I haven%u2019t been since.%u201d%u201cHe was probably one of the older clergy,%u201d Cyril Prosper said. %u201cSome of them don%u2019t understand the new Church too well.%u201d%u201cThey better,%u201d Big Edie said. %u201cThey bloody well better. Christamighty. I won%u2019t, I won%u2019t be part of their scapular-kissing, medal-jangling crowd. And you! Kid! What%u2019s the matter with you? You%u2019re young. What%u2019s going on? How do they do it? How do they do it to you? How do you do it? Is it some course they teach you here? How do you learn to go around reducing ordinary good people to gibbering idiots? Why do you do it?%u201dI was quiet before her because she sounded somehow right and I knew she was more right than kooky, though vocationally I was unable to agree with her. But she was right, crazy right. Next to us, all around on every side, on this very Alice-in-Wonderland lawn, the power play was happening. The Bishop had shooed the black-cassocked faculty out among the colorful crowd to play their roles as priests. Visitors, grown and successful men, disintegrated into the masks of what they were in high school when confronted by clergy in authority. The visitors shuffled, looking at their shoes, laughing at anything or ready to, because good Catholics always laughed at priests%u2019 jokes. I wondered what they really thought.%u201cAnd sex!%u201d She raised her voice. Several faces panned politely shocked and amused toward us. %u201cIf the clergy knew anything about sex. There%u2019s such a gap between you and we marrieds...%u201d%u201c...us marrieds.%u201d I found myself editing her.%u201cRyan!%u201d Cyril Prosper called my name.