The Last Templar - Страница 60

Reilly was more than happy to dive straight in. "I just want the truth."

Brugnone leaned forward, his large square hands pressed flat against each other. "I'm afraid the truth is as you fear it." After a quiet moment, he pushed himself out of his chair and took a few heavy paces to the French windows. He stared out, squinting against the harsh midday glare. "Nine men . . . nine devils. They showed up in Jerusalem, and Baldwin gave them everything they wanted, thinking they were on our side, thinking they were there to help us spread our message." He chortled, a sound that in other circumstances might have been mistaken for a laugh, but which Reilly knew was an outward expression of a very painful thought. His voice lowered to a guttural grumble. "He was a fool to believe them."

"What did they find?"

Brugnone took a breath, a kind of inward sigh, and turned to face Reilly. "A journal. A very detailed and personal journal, a gospel of sorts. The writings of a carpenter named Jeshua of Nazareth." He paused, fixing Reilly with a piercing gaze before adding, "the writings . . . of et man.'"

Reilly felt the air leave his lungs. "Just a man?"

Brugnone nodded his head somberly, his big shoulders suddenly sagging as though an impossible weight was upon them. "According to his own gospel, Jeshua of Nazareth—Jesus—was not the Son of God."

The words ricocheted around Reilly's mind for what seemed like an eternity before plummeting to the pit of his stomach like a ton of bricks. He lifted his hands, making a vaguely all-encompassing gesture. "And all this . . . ?"

"All this," Brugnone exclaimed, "is the best that man, that mere, mortal, frightened man, could come up with. It was all created with the most noble of intentions. This you must believe. What would you have done? What would you have us do now? For almost two thousand years, we've been entrusted with these beliefs that were so important to the men who began the Church, and which we continue to believe in. Anything that could have undermined these beliefs had to be suppressed. There was no other choice, because we could not abandon our people, not before and certainly not now. Today, it would be even more catastrophic to say to them that it is all . . . " He struggled with the words, unable to complete the sentence.

"A massive deception?" Reilly concluded tersely.

"But is it really? What is faith, after all, but a belief in something for which there doesn't need to be any proof, a belief in an ideal. And it's been a very worthy ideal for people to believe in. We need to believe in something. We all need faith."

Faith.

Reilly struggled to grasp the ramifications of what Cardinal Brugnone was saying. In his case, it was faith that had helped him, at a very young age, to deal witJi the devastating loss of his father. It was faith that had guided him throughout his adult life. And now, of all places, here at the very heart of the Roman Catholic Church, he was being told that it was all one big sham.

"We also need honesty," Reilly countered angrily. "We need truth."

"But above all, man needs his faith, now more than ever," Brugnone insisted forcefully, "and what we have is far better than having no faith at all."

"Faith in a resurrection that never happened?" Reilly fired back. "Faith in a heaven that doesn't exist?"

"Believe me, Agent Reilly, many decent men have struggled with this over the years, and all come to the same conclusion: that it must be preserved. The alternative is too horrific to contemplate."

"But we're not talking about His words and His teachings. We're just talking about His miracles and His resurrection."

Brugnone's tone was unflinching. "Christianity wasn't built on the notion of a wise man's preachings. It was built on something far more resonant—the words of the Son of God. The Resurrection isn't just a miracle—it's the very foundation of the Church. Take that away and it all collapses. Think of the words of Saint Paul in First Corinthians: 'And if Christ has not risen, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is also in vain.' "

"The founders of the Church—they chose those words," Reilly fumed. "The whole point about religion is to help us try and understand what we're doing here, isn't it? How can we even begin to understand that if we start with a false premise? This lie has warped every single aspect of our lives."

Brugnone exhaled deeply and nodded in quiet agreement. "Maybe it has. Maybe, if it had all started now and not two thousand years ago, things could have been handled differently. But it isn't starting now. It already exists, it's been handed down to us and we must preserve it; to do otherwise would destroy us—and, I fear, deal a devastating blow to our fragile world." His eyes were no longer focused on Reilly, but on something far away, something that seemed almost physically painful to him. "We've been on the defensive ever since we started. I suppose it's natural, given our position, but it's becoming more and more difficult . . . modern science and philosophy don't exactly encourage faith. And we're partly to blame. Ever since the early Church was effectively hijacked by Constantine and his political acumen, there have been far too many schisms and disputes. Too much doctrinal nitpicking, too many fraudsters and degenerates running around, too much greed. Jesus's original message has been perverted by egotists and bigots, it's been undermined by petty internal rivalries and intransigent fundamentalists. And we're still making mistakes that aren't helping our cause. Avoiding the real issues facing the people out there. Tolerating shameful abuses, horrible acts against the most innocent, even conspiring to cover them up. We've been very slow at coming to terms with our rapidly changing world, and now, at a time when we're particularly vulnerable, it's all threatened again, just as it was nine hundred years ago. Only now, this edifice that we've built is greater than anyone dreamed it would become, and its fall would be simply catastrophic.

"Maybe if we were starting the Church today, with the true story of Jeshua of Nazareth," Brugnone added, "maybe we could do it differently. Maybe we could avoid all the confusing dogma and just do it simply. Look at Islam. They got away with it, barely seven hundred years after the crucifixion.

A man came along and said, 'There is no god but God, and I am his prophet.' Not the Messiah, not the Son of God; no Father or Holy Spirit, no confusing Trinity—just a messenger of God. That was it. And it was enough. The simplicity of his message caught on like wildfire. His followers almost took over the world in less than a hundred years, and it pains me to think that right now, in this day and age, it's the world's fastest-growing religion . . . although they've been even slower than us at coming to terms with the realities and the needs of our modern times, and that will inevitably cause them problems down the road as well. But we have been very slow, slow and arrogant. . . and now we're paying for it, just when our people need us the most.

"Because they do," he continued. "They need us, they need something. Look at the anxiety around you, the anger, the greed, the corruption infecting the world from the very top down. Look at the moral vacuum, the spiritual hunger, the lack of values. The world grows more fatalistic, cynical, more disillusioned every day. Man has become more apathetic, uncaring, and selfish than ever. We steal and kill on an unprecedented scale. Corporate scandals run into billions of dollars. Wars are waged for no reason, millions are killed in genocides. Science may have allowed us to get rid of diseases like smallpox, but it has more than made up for it by devastating our planet and turning us into impatient, isolated, violent creatures. The lucky ones among us may live longer, but are our lives any more fulfilled or peaceful? Is the world really any more civilized than it was two thousand years ago?

"Hundreds of years ago, we didn't know better. People could barely read and write. Today, in our so-called enlightened age, what excuse do we have for such abysmal behavior? Man's mind, his intellect, may have progressed, but I fear his soul has been left behind—and, I would even argue, regressed. Man has demonstrated time and again that he is a savage beast at heart, and, even with the Church telling us we're accountable to a greater power, we still manage to behave atrociously.

Imagine what it would be like without the Church. But it's obvious that we're losing our ability to inspire. We're not there for the people, the Church is just not there for them anymore. Even worse, we're being used as an excuse for wars and bloodshed. We're spiraling toward a terrifying spiritual crisis, Agent Reilly. This discovery could not be happening at a worse time."

Brugnone fell silent and looked across the room at Reilly.

"Maybe it's inevitable, then," Reilly offered in a resigned, subdued voice. "Maybe it's a story that's run its course."

"Perhaps the Church is dying a slow death," Brugnone agreed. "After all, all religions wither away and die at some point, and ours has lasted longer than most. But a sudden revelation like this . . .

Despite its failings, the Church is still a huge part of people's lives. Millions out there rely on their faith to get them through their daily existence. It still manages to provide solace, even to its lapsed members in their times of need. And ultimately, faith provides us all with something that's crucial to our very existence: it helps us overcome our primal fear of death and the dread of what may lie beyond the grave. Without their faith in a risen Christ, millions of souls would simply be cast adrift.