"Yeah," he said, and sighed again. "But that's not going to last, especially if the next pontiff isn't a Neanderthal like the current one."
"Nice way to talk about the Big Boss," I said. "Not that I'm disagreeing."
"The Big Boss is the Lord, my friend," Duvall said. "He's the CEO and Chairman of the Board. His Holiness is more like the corporation's president. Presidents come and go – only the Big Boss, as you call him, is eternal."
"So you think the Church is likely to change its position on supes?"
"Yes, inevitably. How soon depends on who the next pope is, but there's already a lot of sentiment in the College of Cardinals that Paul VI's condemnation of supernaturals was shortsighted, as so many of his views were."
"How about you, Father?" I asked him. "What's your view of supernaturals?"
"My view is that we are all God's creatures, and thus worthy of His love. If God did not want vampires, for instance, to exist, then they wouldn't."
"But that's not an opinion shared by the Church of the True Cross, I take it."
"Hell, no. Those guys would like nothing more than the return of the Inquisition – but with them in charge, of course. They'd be burning vampires and werewolves left and right."
"And witches, too?" I asked quietly.
"Yes, witches, of course." He stopped and looked at me for a second or two. "That's what this is about, isn't it? Those poor women who have been burned alive in the last few weeks."
"That's part of what it's about," I said. "But there may be more going on than that – a lot more."
"I wish I could say that I'm surprised," Duvall said grimly.
"How did these True Cross guys get started, anyway? I tried to look up the Wikipedia article on them, but it's been taken down."
"That's because the True Cross propagandists keep trying to rewrite it to conform to their own cracked version of history."
Duvall steepled his fingertips and looked at them for a few seconds. "OK, you know how the Puritans came over here and settled New England because the old England just wasn't holy enough for them?"
"John Winthrop and all those guys."
"Right – and the logical conclusion of the Puritans' extreme self-righteousness was the Salem witch trials of 1692, in which, uh–"
"Twenty," I said.
"Yes, twenty innocent people were executed. You know your history," Duvall said.
"That's the kind of history I'm supposed to know, just like I know that something like twelve other people were executed for witchcraft around New England, years before Salem."
"Not many people know about those," Duvall said, nodding his approval. "But it all goes to show the lengths fanatics will go in order to preserve their power."
"You're saying the Church of the True Cross is like the Puritans?"
"In some respects, yes. Their church was founded in 1994, when a group of people broke with the Society of St Pius X, which was founded by Marcel Lefebvre, himself a defrocked archbishop and heretic."
"He was the guy who thought the Second Vatican Council was a Commie plot to take over the world, right?"
"Something like that," Duvall said. "He came out of the tradition of right-wing French Catholicism, and there's nobody more reactionary than that crowd."
"Except for the Church of the True Cross," I said.
"You got it. They decided that Lefebvre and the Society were too accommodating, because they weren't calling for John XXIII to be lynched after the reforms that brought us out of the Middle Ages. All Lefebvre did was put on his boogie shoes and leave Mother Church. But that wasn't enough for 'Bishop' James Navarra – he wanted a more militant posture. So he split, and took a bunch of the Society's members with him."
"How big a bunch?" I asked.
"Seventy or eighty, something like that."
"I take it they've grown some since those days."
"Oh, sure," Duvall said, "although they refuse to release any membership numbers. In terms of people who regularly attend his services here in Scranton, maybe a couple of hundred. That doesn't count the curiosity-seekers who go once and are so turned off that they never go back. And there are a number of people from outside the area who send him money, although how much is between him and the IRS."
"Some folks will send money to anybody," I said.
"Sad, but true – but here's the ironic thing: Navarra and company don't even need it."
"Why the hell not?" I asked.
"Because he's got a sugar daddy – a rich nitwit who's been bankrolling the Church for years."
"Anybody I might have heard of?"
"Probably not," Duvall said. "But I bet you've heard of one of his kids. The guy's name is Patton Wilson. He's got six kids, one of whom is Matt Wilson."
"Mister Kiss-Kiss-Bang-Bang? The movie star?"
"The very same. Although I don't think Matt talks much about his dad in public – he's probably too embarrassed."
"Is that the source of Dad's money – his movie star kid?"
"Not at all," Duvall said. "Dad's filthy rich all on his own. Used to own a chain of newspapers in the Midwest, I understand."
"Used to?"
"Far as I know. He cashed in and sold all the papers years ago, or so they say."
"I wonder," I said. "So Dad's a true believer, is he?"
"Hard-core, all the way. Some say he's even more extreme than Bishop Navarra, although I figure that the good bishop is exactly as extreme as Patton Wilson wants him to be."
"It's like that, huh?"
"I believe so," Duvall said. "Wilson pulls the strings, and Navarra dances as required."
"You said these guys are dangerous? Why? There's no shortage of religious nuts around."
"Most religious nuts don't have millions of dollars to play with," Duvall said. "And Navarra preaches a gospel of hate, pure and simple. He's like Hitler, in the 1920s – except Navarra wears a clerical collar, to which he is not entitled. And I'm no longer sure that he's all talk and no action."