As the tall, thin American neared his destination, he remembered the way the former Jesuit had leaned across the table of the small Arlington, Virginia, bar and said quietly, “You’ll be meeting with the Assessor. He is powerful, very powerful; some say he will be the next Pope. Do what he says, do it for the sake of your life and your career if not for your faith.”

The American mounted the steps to the building and noted that all the windows were covered by ornate—and very serious—wrought-iron grillwork. He pressed the doorbell. From within came a shuffling.

As he waited, the American remembered the rest of the former Jesuit’s briefing. Most cases heard by the Assessor and the other judges never get beyond the walls of the Vatican, but when the veil of total secrecy is parted a bit, the public usually sees the persecution of church theologians—such as Hans Kung, when he questioned the doctrine of papal infallibility. Kung pointed out, among other things, that the infallibility doctrine had no biblical basis and had not existed before 1870. The CDF’s punishment of Kung illustrated that—loyal to its Holy Inquisition roots—the suppression of truth is a virtue in pursuit of Church orthodoxy.

In a published decree, approved by the Pope, the CDF stated unequivocally that “the freedom of the act of faith cannot justify a right to dissent.”

An eye appeared at an old fashioned peephole in the door. The American focused on the eye and gave it a smile. The eye quickly disappeared.

For the Catholic Church, questioning dogma even in the pursuit of religious truth had, until recently, been a sin punishable by death. One of the CDF’s most active sub-departments is the Pontifical Bible Commission, which is charged with doing whatever is necessary to protect the church’s official dogmas from attacks—truthful or otherwise. In this regard it is charged with repressing, destroying, or hiding in the Vatican Archives historical documents or objects that would cast doubt on the official interpretation of Scripture or theology.

The door opened.

The American stopped breathing when he found before him the Assessor himself in ordinary street clothes instead of the scarlet of the Cardinal that he was. Two large men, obviously bodyguards, loomed behind him.

“Thanks for coming,” the Assessor said, extending his hand. Cardinal Neils Braun, former Archbishop of Vienna, head of the Papal Secretariat for Non-Believers and Assessor for the CDF, was a formidable man. He was very tall, sturdy, with a photogenic chiseled face that looked hewn straight from the Austrian mountains he loved so much. He had the moves and phenomenal wiry strength found only in successful rock climbers who prefer not to use ropes, pitons, or other mechanical devices. He would turn sixty on Christmas Day and he intended to spend the time alone, hiking in the hills near his Innsbruck home or tackling a new face of rock that no one had ever scaled.

“Welcome,” Braun said again with the graciousness of a man who knows of and enjoys the effect he has on ordinary people.