The New Pope
By Robert Murray Davis
The new pope is a man named
Schwartz. This is confusing. He is not a priest. He is not even a Catholic.
He says all that to the representatives of the College of Cardinals
who come to inform him of his election.
Actually, his words are, "I thought 'Candid Camera' isn't on any
more." Then, "Holy Father? Holy shit! How do I get out of
this?"
He can't, of course. But he keeps asking how this could happen. So does
everybody else. Finally an expert on the history of the Papacy says
that "the Holy Spirit brings an element of uncertainty into the
process." This is not considered satisfactory, but it is enough
like the old discussion-ending "It's a mystery" that the officials
shut up, though the laity continues to grumble.
The transition is more than usually difficult. The new pope doesn't
make it easier. He complains about everything. Like his papal name.
"What's wrong with Schwartz?" he keeps saying. "If I'm
infallible"--he understands that part well enough--"how come
I can't keep calling myself that?"
A Jesuit answers that, as Schwartz, he isn't infallible. Infallibility
comes with his papal name.
The new pope can see the fallacy, but he admires the tactics. "All
right, then," he says, "I'll be Pope Claude I."
There is a furor of protest. The members of the Curia argue that each
pope chooses a name as a way of defining his goals.
Fine, the new pope says. "I always liked that actor, Claude Rains.
Especially in Casablanca."
Video cassette players all over Vatican City light up. Resistance is
mixed with confusion.
The new pope threatens to call himself Adolf. Claude receives wide if
not unanimous approval.
The second big problem is the papal residence. Claude refuses to live
in Italy because, he says, you can't get good barbecue.
"Look," Claude says, "if all I have has to do is be infallible,
I can do that anywhere." Besides, he argues, popes have had summer
residences for centuries. In Italy, sure--but that was before communications
improved.
He wants to move the whole operation to Fort Worth.
The merchants of Rome threaten to take to the streets.
Claude finally agrees to use Vatican City as a mail drop because he
can't face the prospect of filling out all those change of address forms.
Besides, the stamps bring in a lot of money.
But he insists on spending at least half the year in the U.S.
It is either agree or put out a contract on him, and that is really
unprecedented. The Italian cardinals aren't sure that the Mafia will
take it, and they hate to do business outside the family.
Some are tempted when Claude orders L'Osservatore Romano to carry "Doonesbury."
Even more are tempted when he starts announcing policy on American talk
shows.
It isn't so much where he says it as what he says. Oprah asks about
the issue of married priests. "Hey," Claude says.
"Think about what other popes knew about marriage. I mean, they
had to listen to a lot of confessions before they got to the top. And
what did they hear? Husbands and wives cheating. Men slapping their
wives and kids around. Arguing about money. Who needs that? So maybe
they thought they were doing themselves a favor. But I never had to
listen to all that. Maybe it's time to think about
it some more."
Oprah makes sympathetic noises and takes questions from the audience.
Sure he's been married, Claude says. That's why he doesn't think it's
such a big deal.
Next day forty-three women call the National Enquirer claiming to be
the former Mrs. Schwartz, three with lawyers suing to re-negotiate alimony.
The College of Cardinals votes in secret to have a committee of senior
members talk to their connections.
The former Mrs. Schwartz is discovered in a lesbian collective in Mississippi.
She is neatly dressed, which is a great disappointment to the tabloid
press.
"Yeah," she says at the press conference televised all over
the world, "I was married to him for seventeen years. He was ok,
for a man. Who would have thought he'd turn up as head of that male
hierarchy?"
She refuses to comment on his performance in bed.
Eighty-seven other women offer testimony, not all of which can be refuted.
Claude's advisers urge him to deny the charges or a least say "No
comment." In an interview with Mike Wallace, he says, "Hey,
I was single a long time. I met some nice ladies."
The old Italian cardinals refuse to put the Poles in touch
with their connections.
Claude examines the books and expresses grave concern. "This operation
is in the toilet," he says. "I have to think about this."
He goes on retreat at a Club Med, taking with him a Jesuit, a Dominican,
and the CEO of a Madison Avenue advertising agency.
Forty days later, he turns up at the Vatican, tanned and rested. The
Dominican looks exhausted and worried. The Jesuit is imperturbable.
The ad executive is practically floating.
Claude calls a meeting. "Infomercials," he says. "Franchising."
He has a chart of the gross from the last pope's visit to North America.
"As far as I can tell, almost nobody paid any attention to what
he said," Claude argues, "but almost everybody bought something.
So we push the image."
A branch of the Vatican opens in Fort Worth. Claude's agency takes over
time slots from discredited televangelists.
The Texas Baptist Convention protests but does not want a turf war.
Bubba vs. Guido? Too big a point spread.
The Vatican post office is selling Claude I stamps as fast as they come
off the printing press. Commemorative plate companies and the Franklin
Mint engage in a bidding war over the rights to Claude's likeness. His
hair, nail clippings, and left-over barbecued rib bones outsell Elvis
relics. The futures market on his body parts is off the scale.
The Baptist Men's fellowship of Wichita Falls boos Claude at a Dallas
Cowboys game and is pelted with debris.
Claude is asked to bless the Houston Oilers. He replies that God is
not partisan and that it would be presumptuous to put even Divine Omnipotence
to that kind of test.
Claude announces that the church will establish theme casinos in Monte
Carlo, Las Vegas, Hong Kong, Venice, Budapest, and, if the Missouri
legislature will let him, in Branson. Local interests protest but do
not want a turf war. They discover that when Claude comes to bless the
new facilities, everyone does record business.
Claude seems bored. He stops travelling, begins to read books from the
Fort Worth branch of the Vatican library. He is seen going to mass at
Virgin of Guadalupe church in the barrio.
A rumor that he is taking instructions in the Catholic faith sends the
futures market on his body parts into a three hundred point drop before
trading can be suspended.
Every canon lawyer in Italy has a fat retainer to look for a way to
remove Claude from office.
Claude gives an address to the United Nations.
He begins casually. Everyone wanted to know why he chose the name Claude,
he says. Even he didn't believe in the reason he gave. It just seemed
like a good idea at the time.
But now he has figured it out. "The guy Claude Rains played in
Casablanca didn't look so good for a while. But in the end he turned
out to be on the right side. And I hope that I do too."
Then he announces, ex cathedra, the church's commitment to ordaining
women and allowing priests to marry. Term limits for the College of
Cardinals are imposed. All current cardinals are relieved of their duties.
The media will announce the list of new appointments at the conclusion
of his speech.
Most of the delegates listen politely.
Claude urges taxation of church property of every church in all countries.
Before the delegates can react, he imposes a term limit on the papacy,
effective immediately, and resigns.
He heads out the door ahead of the wave of ecumenical outrage and goes
into hiding.
After a great deal of futile searching for loopholes by every canon
lawyer in the world, Claude's reforms go into effect. The new College
of Cardinals elects a Ugandan parish priest. He chooses the name Claude
II. He resists considerable pressure to begin proceedings to canonize
Claude I on the grounds that he is alive and, Claude II hopes, well.
© 1996 copyright
Robert M. Davis
About the writer. . .
Robert Murray Davis,
professor of English at the University of Oklahoma,
has published numerous books and articles on modern English and
American fiction, most recently Playing Cowboys: Low Culture
and High Art in the Western (Oklahoma, 1992) and, forthcoming
in 1997, the Penguin Twentieth Century Classics edition of Evelyn
Waugh's
A Handful of Dust.
In the mid-1980s, Davis began writing poetry and creative non-fiction
and has published poems in a volume, Outside the Lines (Cow
Hill, 1990), and in poetry magazines from Nova Scotia to Los Angeles
and Florida to Idaho and two books of creative non-fiction, Mid-Lands:
A Family Album (Georgia, 1992) and A Lower-Middle-Class Education
(Oklahoma, 1996) and has completed a third volume, Levels of
Incompetence.
Davis is currently working on a novel and is in the process of completing
a collection of informal essays and another volume of poetry.
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