The Miracle of the Images. Welby Thomas Cox, Jr.

perfectly for Aldo as it most often did. He had completed all his chores for the day and come home to clean up and get prepared for his evening guest. Rita McCann had kept an eye on the roast, adding water periodically and then placing the vegetables into the huge roasting pot. They would be tender and ready for the six o'clock meal.

      Mrs McCann had also cleaned two of the guest rooms. Vacuuming, dusting, changing the beds, washing the windows and placing fresh flowers in vases besides the night stand. Aldo was quite pleased with the work and told Mrs McCann how much he appreciated the extra work while giving her a twenty dollar bill for her effort.

      The priest arrived in Father Francis's Buick right on schedule as the angelus sounded from the automated bells Aldo had rigged near the barn. He enjoyed the bells, which rang three times each day...announcing the call to the meals.

      Father Francis introduced Aldo to Monsignor Voght and then to Father Dalton. Voght was a big man over six feet five inches tall and weighing in excess of two hundred fifty pounds without being obese. Dalton was willowy...tall and slim he was fresh out of Divinity College at the Vatican. A special college for a select few chosen to serve the Pope in the communities from which they have come.

      Aldo welcomed the men into his home. He was proud of its simplicity and the smell of dinner encouraged the entourage to move closer toward the kitchen. Aldo had started a fire in the large fireplace. It was now October 26 and although the days were pleasant, the evenings began to get a slight nip in the air as the sun set. So the fire felt good as well as setting a warm mood for the men.

      Aldo offered a glass of wine or sherry. All accepted the home made wine from apple, peach and grape which was placed on the living room table in large cruets for the men to serve themselves. After they had poured the wine and drank to the fellowship, Aldo excused himself and attended to the last details of getting the dinner on the table including mashing the potatoes, which was a specialty of the house with this meal, which also included wonderfully light and rich mushroom gravy, enriched by wine.

      The men were invited to the dinning room and seated around the table as though they were family Monsignor Voght said the grace and all filled their plates with the roast, which was so tender it fell to the touch of the fork. All the men ate in silence, not because they had nothing to say but because the meal was simply so tasty and a welcome change from the restaurant fare to which they had become accustomed.

      By the second helping, the men began to slow down the ritual of shoveling the food into opened mouths long enough to pass the pleasantries of the day.

      "How was the trip from Rome?" Aldo asked.

      "Very pleasant indeed." The Monsignor said in response to Aldo.

      "We. were able to come direct on Delta from Rome into the Cincinnati airport which as you know is located in Kentucky."

      The men laughed at the suggestion that Kentucky wasn't good enough to own up to its largest airport but had been forced to label it with the Ohio Queen city name.

      "What about the meals at the Vatican?" Aldo asked.

      "Well the meals do not approach this magnificent feast Aldo, but for us poor priest they are a useful respect from the labors of the day. An opportunity for the community to get together, to pray and to enjoy the fellowship of those we love and admire." Father Tim said.

      "Of course no one will believe this feast so we may have to kidnap you Aldo in order to prove that all meals do not have to include pasta and bread." The Monsignor said.

      "Monsignor has your summer reading list included the DaVinci Code'..." Aldo asked.

      "Another Jewish Money-changer...a huckster...say or do anything to discredit Christianity...the real God. This book Aldo is a waste of time, a Hollywood extravaganza at the expense of the deeply faithful. It begins with a historically faulty portrait of the Last Supper, the great DaVinci creation, which never took place.

      "How do you mean Monsignor...we have all seen the masterpiece?" Aldo asked.

      "Yes...we have seen the masterpiece of the creative genius of Leonardo DaVinci but Aldo, you of all people should know that there is a thing called Artistic License, which permits the artist to paint whatever he or she wants to interpret, in their unique way and call it history...those of us who have spent our lives dedicated to the historical truth, know that Brown's interpretation of the design of the Last Supper is faulty...a lie because the historical evidence is implicit that Jews reclined while celebrating a meal. There was no table...they were on the floor on pillows and low floor hugging sofas." The Monsignor said.

      "Well, perhaps the design was inappropriate and, as you say Leonardo took certain license but it seems to me that that does not change the original premise of Brown's research that Christ was not a homosexual but was in fact married to Mary Magdelyn and fathered her child." Aldo said.

      "We are certain that Christ was A-sexual and hence his call to priest to be celibate...to not be 'in the body' but 'of the body' of Christ. Certainly Christ loved Mary Magdelyn but it was in the same way that he loved James or Peter or Thomas the doubter." He said.

      "The second premise of Brown falls equally hard in the face of hard evidence to the contrary. It is true that the Knights Templar was the foundation of the Priory of Scion since the Crusades, but it is widely known and accepted that the historical record of the Priory of Scion was systematically defrauded by a Frenchman in the mid-twentieth century seeking to include his own family in the heritage of the Priory, and it was this man who began this entire treatise over the church's effort to exclude women from rightful places in the history of the Catholic Church, including the false story that Christ was married to Mary Magdelyn and fathered a female child who was in the line of succession to the Priory of Scion, the true and rightful heirs to the leadership of the church. The very idea that women were systematically ostracized from the church is categorically challenged by the faithful in the form of the good Sisters who have faithfully served the church and the Holy Father.

      "But Monsignor...where are the Sisters now...in the age of Aquarius they slipped away, they tired of the promise that they would have a more defined role in the leadership of the church and more importantly as participants in the parish...as priest. They tired at the lack of oversight toward the homosexuals and abusers among the priest...and they tired at the cover up and cost caused by these recalcitrant and immoral priest.

      "Again Aldo...your premise is that the good Sisters were turned away by the church...the fact is the young women of the late sixties were turned off by religion in general...they were as promiscuous and godless as was those young men who infiltrated the seminaries as a place for homosexual contact among fellow seminarians. Agreed that the church was lax in the selectivity process, but let us not forget that many of the young men who might have aspired to the priesthood were being drafted and sent to Vietnam. Therefore the pickings were slim and the church did not do enough to create a climate for religious callings among other nationalities for missionaries from the Africans, the Brazilians, from Venezuela to come and serve the needs of the flock in the United States. That was the failure of the Catholic Church...some of us recognized it, but most were young seminarians like myself and we had no pulpit from which to speak out.

      "Finally Aldo...the most egregious part of the Brown book...I could forgive the rest as the Artistic License, but it was, and is, the basic premise of the book that the Catholic Church set out in a premeditated, calculated methodology to murder and destroy the last remnants of the Priory of the Scion. That the Holy Father could and would be a party to a criminal act and act of murder, a felony is, at its heart, so sacrilegious that I believe that it borders on malicious intent to defame and should be defended in every court in the land. Adjudicated to the point that twelve good men and women...the chosen twelve should be given the opportunity to hear the side of the Church vs. Brown and it is my belief that those twelve good folks would return a verdict in favor of the Catholic Church to preclude Brown from ever spending a dime of the millions that he will make from this malicious piece of trash." The Monsignor concluded taking one last drink of the home made wine.

      "It seems to me that the Church definitely has an action, but they won't do anything about it...the potential for loss is so great that it may in fact doom the church forever." Aldo said.