“Hitler, the KGB, the kill-an-abortionist-for-Jesus groups, violent animal rights activists—religious fanatics and political terrorists are all brothers under the skin,” Morgen said. “The differences among them are trivial. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a Zhirinovsky or anyone else. If not him, then some other tyrant. We must not allow a tyrant to again use the truth to tie the moral hands of the church.” Morgen’s words were steeled with the strength of his convictions.

“But how can you do that without throwing the church into turmoil?” Seth asked. “The Christian churches, in whatever guise, are all based on a belief in Christ as the Messiah. Aren’t you in a position of destroying the church’s unity if you make public the existence of another Messiah? One whose existence could be proven without doubt? Especially a woman? Wouldn’t some people abandon their own religions to worship this new Messiah? Think of the antagonism between the new believers and the old. I mean, the violence in Ireland is over differences in how to worship the same Messiah. The split would be as bad as …” He stopped to collect his thoughts.

“As bad as the differences between Islam and Christianity,” Zoe said.

“Exactly,” Ridgeway agreed.

Morgen looked at them quietly with eyes that told them that he had considered their arguments for decades.

“You’re talking like the Vatican leadership,” he said finally. “That’s the same line of reasoning Constantine and his handpicked Pope used to kill Sophia and her followers in the first place. The church has always been in danger—from Romans, Huns and Visigoths, ambitious kings, fascists, Nazis, and from those ambitious to run it—and that will always be so. I firmly believe that.” He paused, and when he spoke his voice was lower, steadier, surer: “But God is never endangered, especially not by the truth.

“Don’t you see that it was a lie that created this situation in the first place? Constantine and the church bureaucracy were more concerned with the bureaucratic survival of the institution than they were about the faith and souls of the believers. So when they killed Sophia and covered up the truth in pursuit of preserving their own power, they sowed the seeds of destruction that are coming to flower now. And when you tell one lie, you later have to tell another lie and another and another until you’ve plastered the truth so far away that the pattern of lies destroys faith all by itself. Because of this every Pope has born false witness against the most important articles of faith, but they have had no choice but to defend the orthodoxy with more lies and false witness. Those who have tried to break with this shameful tradition have met untimely deaths.”

Morgen leaned forward, his eyes bright with commitment. “But what we have to worry about is the spiritual faith of the people, not the church. What is important is not the survival of one of the world’s oldest surviving bureaucracies and its petty human strivings and failures, but the inner religious faith of those the church is supposed to serve. Whom the people worship is not nearly so important as that they worship. Believing is important, whether it’s in Buddha, Christ, Muhammad, Vishnu, or the gods that carry the sun across the sky every day.”