Pius Writing

Over the years on this blog, I've talked a lot about how A Pius Man came about, and I've muttered about some of my research on it. I've talked about the characters, and their biographies, and their progress from being a biography to being a real person I play with in my head.

I don't think I've ever mentioned my thought process behind the evolution of the novel.

You see, once upon a time, I considered writing a murder mystery in the Vatican. I made the head of security an Irish redhead who had family with the IRA. I was going to murder a bishop or a Cardinal or something like that. I had a Hispanic Pope named Hector (I don't recall the Papal name), and a few other loose elements kicking around. I may have had a whole page of notes.

Obviously, when I started on A Pius Man, that project went the way of the dodo.

However, one thing that stuck was it was going to be a mystery. I wanted everyone to be under suspicion. I wanted everyone to look dark and sinister, and let the reader decide who to trust, and when they could be trusted. I wanted to cheat, like Agatha Christie, and make even the investigators look like they could be in on the plot.

I wanted it look, at first glance, like every other knock off of that idiot that shall not be named.

Not that anyone would know who that is.

**COUGH** **COUGH**

Basically, I wanted it to look like X. Because, hey, if it looks like X, X is a proven formula. X is harmless. X is status quo.

A Pius Man is at once both subversive and superversive. Superversive in content, but I totally intend to subvert the status quo of X stories.

Obviously, as the first 4-5 chapters are released, you're going to have to tell me how much I managed to make A Pius Man look like the stories we've all come to know and loathe, before the story kicks into high gear and becomes a knock-down drag-out thriller.

And of course, as I've mentioned before on this blog, it spiraled. Mostly because one son of a bitch just wouldn't die.

Again, what I intend may not be what you see, but then again, I'm the idiot who thought that Honor at Stake was a light, fluffy throwaway book. So I'm not the best judge of character.

But you are. Tell me what you think when you read it.

So, look interesting enough yet? Just click here, and you can preorder it directly from the publisher at deep discounts. A dollar for the e-book half off for the paperback..

And, if you've done that....

The Dragon Awards are open and ready for nominations, and I have a list of suggestions you might want to take a look at. If you already  have a good idea of what you want, just click here to go and vote for them. The instructions are right there.

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Truth in History

One of the major problems with finding truth in history is that history is screwed up by politics.  In fact, it's screwed up by politics at both ends of the spectrum of history -- when the sources happen, and when the history is written.

The best example of contemporaneous politics screwing up history is the case of Richard III. Our biggest sources on Richard come from two people: Thomas More and Shakespeare. Both of them wrote about Richard while living under the descendants of the man who defeated Richard. It is only recently that anyone has suggested that Richard III wasn't the pure evil hunchback of London.

Current politics, of course, is the more obvious perpetrator against truth in history. For example, the myth that "white people have never suffered oppression" ... Oh? Really? So, all of that "No Irish need apply" crap in the late 1800s was meant for, who? Hispanics? Please. The last 150 years of history have been all about oppression. At some point, somebody had been oppressed by somebody else.

But yes, modern political agendas are probably the major problem when it comes to getting to truth. As I said yesterday, politics is probably the true root of all evil. Politics equals power, after all.

The easiest example is Dan Brown, who screwed up all of Roman Catholic history, neopagan history, and anything else that didn't match his screwed up, f**ked up agenda. Seriously, he managed to make Newton excommunicated by the Catholic Church "for the theory of gravity" .... Does anyone have a problem with that? Anyone? Aside from the fact that Newton stole parts of his theories from Catholics?  The answer is: NEWTON WAS ANGLICAN! NOT CATHOLIC.

You want other examples? Look at Inherit the Wind, a play, and later two movies, a fictionalized version of the Scopes Monkey Trial. And by fictional, I mean full fantasy. The real Scopes was a teacher using an interesting textbook with a peculiar outlook on evolution -- which suggests sterilizing hillbillies, rednecks, and other degenerates. So ... yeah, charming, huh? Can you imagine why a bunch of religious folks in the Bible belt would find this somewhat objectionable? And yet Inherit the Wind makes it look like the poor innocent teacher is being sucked into a bad situation by ignorant redneck Bible thumpers.

Yeah, charming, isn't it? But modern politics dictates that the red necks are the enemy of Progress! And Progress! is everything. And evangelicals are backwards! They're all the same! They! Are! Too! Stupid! To! Live!

And screw! You! And your blanket! Generalizations!!!!

.... Okay, it doesn't work quite as well as I had in my head. But I'm writing this at an odd hour.

My point is obvious: politics will screw up almost any study of history. The politics of the day will screw up how things are reported, and modern politics will screw up how they're summarized to you, the reader. Usually, "the victors write the history" isn't an excuse, as there are generally no permanent victors -- though in the case of Richard III, he seems well and truly shafted by history.

The usual excuse for idiots like Dan Brown and others of his ilk is that "but we need the changes for the drama."

If anyone, and I mean anyone, tells you that history has been sacrificed for narrative purposes and drama? They're lazy bastards who haven't done enough research into the subject matter. Trust me, I'm a historian. If you think "This story is boring, I need to change things to spice it up," screw you. I'm a history, I know when I'm being lied to. And trust me, that is the surest way to piss me off.

Politics is the enemy of Truth. As God is the Way, the TRUTH, and the Light, I have no problem concluding that politics is the enemy of God Himself.

The Dragon Awards are open and ready for nominations, and I have a list of suggestions you might want to take a look at. If you already  have a good idea of what you want, just click here to go and vote for them immediately. The instructions are right there.

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The Politics of the Damned

I think we should talk.

Yeah, that's never a good sign.

I generally don't do politics on my blog. Okay, I haven't until recently with the Sad Puppies (click tab above for more details), but this week, I need to cover something. And it shouldn't offend you, because if it would, I'm reasonably certain you wouldn't even be reading this blog. You'll see in a minute.

But I have to ask. When did life become an evil? Don't leave just yet, because this has actually become a thing, and I'm seeing it more and more as time goes on. Life is not worth living and people are not worth allowing to live.  I'm not talking about a John Ringo novel where the stupid are eaten / blown up / killed in various horrific ways. No, that's a straight up Darwin Award.  I'm talking about a general contempt for life and living human beings.

Don't believe me? In 1998, there was a book called Rainbow Six. I'm going to spoil the book and the video game based off of it because it's 17 years old now, if you haven't read it yet, what are you waiting for? The bad guys in that novel were eco-terrorists who figured that the world would be just fine without human beings, and if the terrorists were the only human beings left alive to inherit the Earth, then the Earth would be just perfectly fine.

Our heroes couldn't arrest these sickos, so they invaded, took them outside of their modern compound in the midst of the rainforest, stripped them all naked, blew up the compound and said "Fine. You wanted nature. You got nature. The nearest town is a week thataway. Good luck."

Fast forward to 2013, and He That Shall Not Be Named wrote a book called Inferno that Dante would be offended by. The good ending for the novel was that 1/3 of the planet had been sterilized, and, "Oh well, the bad guys have a point. There really are too many people on the planet."

Uh huh. Yeah. You read that right. The bad guy was right. It would be too much trouble to fix it, and there are too many people anyway, so screw all of them.

Shattering Dan Brown

A while back, I was on a radio show where the topic was "shattering the narrative." It was political in nature, but it basically took stories that "everyone" knows to be true, and then rips them to shreds.

I hate narratives. Odd, I know, for an author of fiction, but I hate narrative in everyday life. There's a difference between "tell me a story" -- be it fiction or not -- and "this MUST BE TRUE because it sounds right." It's like Dan Brown. His works are fill with such historical inaccuracies and patent lies that the historian inside me has a banner moment ... a Bruce Banner moment.

But Brown's work ticks off all the right boxes -- devout Catholics are evil. Religion hates science. Religion is backwards and stupid and The Truth Will Defeat Religion. And somehow, the truth looks like a twisted version of Wiccan that even my ex the Wiccan wanted to kill Dan Brown for.

Let's ignore that Da Vinci worked for the church an awful lot. Let's ignore that most scientific advancements were backed by churches. Let's ignore that nuns were the first CEOs of large corporations. Let's ignore that the Catholic church couldn't have excommunicated Newton for his theory of gravity, because Newton was British and Anglican, not Catholic. In fact, let's ignore every last minute of recorded history, because hey, Dan Brown fits the narrative.

Sigh.

Here's a funny fact for you: Tom Clancy murdered Dan Brown before Brown was popular. Don't believe me? In Tom Clancy's book Rainbow 6, his heroes went up against a ban of eco-terrorists who wanted to wipe out all human life on Earth in order to save the planet, and the adorable widdle animals, etc. By the end of the book, well, things end badly for them.

In Dan Brown's latest schlock fest, Inferno, SPOILERS, the "good ending" is to wipe out one third of the planet. Because that's what's best for everyone. Because of overpopulation and the environment, don't you know?

If one looks at my pet issue, Pope Pius XII, you see much the same thing. Pius XII has been known as "Hitler's Pope" ever since the book of the same name came out in the late 90s. The story was simple: Pope Pius XII, the Pope of World War II, either did nothing to save Jews from the Holocaust / inspired the Holocaust / was responsible for the Holocaust. The version depends on how deeply psychotic you wish to go. The depressing part about it is that there is so much of a preponderance of evidence to the contrary, I made three books out of it.

But this ... all of this ... is what ideology does, and what makes it different from a philosophy.

A good philosophy takes data, and will mold around the data, incorporating it into the philosophical system. It's like Thomas Aquinas, where philosophers like Peter Kreeft and the late Ralph McInerny used current science and effortlessly plugged it into natural law.

Ideology will take the facts, then warp, twist, and shape them so that they fit the ideology. It's like the New York Times: All the News that fits the tint. Truth doesn't matter, just the story. And it doesn't matter who it hurts.

But narratives are allowed to exist because the people who spout them are accepted by a certain class of people, who have largely existed within their own echo chambers.

It's a sad day when I can find more truth in a John Ringo science fiction novel about cannibalistic alien mongol hordes than I can in a news article some days.

Vlog: reviewing Dan Brown.

You've probably read my review of the Da Vinci Code, if you're a long time fan of the blog. If you're not, well, this will be entirely new to you. There's additional content at the end, by the way. Just for fun.

FREE BOOKS! FREE BOOKS! (did I mention free books?)

Yes, every Friday this month, you can get A Pius Man, A Holy Thriller, written by me, Declan Finn, for free, on your Kindle. 

It has history. It has explosions. It has death, doom, destruction, love, faith, and an armored SUV rolling down the Spanish steps, and the most kick ass pontiff since Julius III (who was almost more warlord than religious figure).

You can take your Dan Brown, your limp and lame killer-albino-monk assassins, and throw them to the bottom of the Marianas trench.  A Pius Man has everything short of an RPG shooting through St. Peter's, and that's because I'm saving it for the next book.

However, in the event that you do take the book for your Kindle, would you kindly leave a review on Amazon.com? Preferably a 5-star review?

For those of my long time readers who are confused by this particular message, and why this sounds so manic, I'm at the point of a media blitz where I'm the one who's blitzed.

I may be posting a special vlog tomorrow.  I'll let you know.

The Article You Knew Was Coming: The Da Vinci Code, A Personal Opinion.

I should probably start with a disclaimer: You do not have to hate Dan Brown, any of his works, or any of the movies based off of his books, in order to enjoy A Pius Man. Promise. You'll see why.

My family has been big on reading since my father was twelve. I read The Once and Future King when I was in sixth grade—for personal pleasure. My freshman year of high school had my English professor confused when I finished off one Tom Clancy novel a week. And I mean the big ones that could be used for door stoppers.

So, when I started in on The Da Vinci Code, I figured it would be yet another book. You can sell me practically anything as long it's a well-designed, good story. I could not care any less about saving the whales, but I enjoyed Star Trek IV anyway. I don't think the CIA is the source of all evil, but I liked the film The Long Kiss Goodnight, since it was entertaining—and since the primary villain was a bureaucrat. From what I had gathered about the premise of Dan Brown's work, I was certain that I could take it or leave it, and I had been assured that it was a rip-roaring good time.

So, in that vein, I was given The Da Vinci Code, I was told to ignore the bad history, enjoy it for what it was …And what was it?

The pretentious, petty, pedantic prattling was one thing. And my God, can that man lecture. Having survived grad school, I've been to boring seminars before, but they at least had the good manners to provide me with free food and coffee. I skipped pages and pages of lecture, and bad history, and “My God sir, what fantasy world did you get that history FROM?”

And the content … I have had friends of mine look at his Gaia-ish, pseudo-feminist look at sex and spirituality. My Wiccan ex considered recreating the Wiccer Man, with Dan Brown in the center before they set it, and him, on fire.

And you thought Christians were the only ones who had problems with his views.

However: that isn't a problem for me. I've read Clive Cussler books that went on, endlessly, about fictionalized history that, in some cases, only tangentially touched on the main plot. And I've read everything Cussler's written, and enjoyed about 90% of his body of work. I could skim history lectures, I could skip them. I'm fairly good at knowing when to ignore large parts of dreck in books without having it affect the story. And I have experience sleeping through lectures.

So, if I wasn't massive offended by the main premise and the history, or enraged, or having a (Bruce) Banner moment, why didn't I enjoy it as much as everyone else had?

There's this phrase in writing fiction that's called the suspension of disbelief …{more below the break}

Casting Call: A Pius Man, the Movie, 2011 Edition

After I started making a video for Scott Murphy (see below), where I used myself as a model, I was asked about starring in any particular film based off of the novel ....

To start with, that would be a great big no.

No. No.  And Hell No.

Which, of course, leads to the question: who would one get for the film, should it ever make it past the book production stage?

I tried to answer this question last year.  Since then, other people have come to my attention that might be better suited for some of these parts....

Assuming, of course, I don't make it into a video game.

However, as I said last time .... I guess the first question would be who could be cut from the film first.

Science and Religion … Stupid Catholics.

Every time I hear that all of religion is against science, I just sigh.

They want to cite Galileo. You can read about him in my evolution article. Short version: Considering that he found himself on trial by insulting the Pope, he was lucky, and merely put under house arrest. The charges basically amounted to being a jerk without a license … I should note that Richard Dawkins has such a license. He's British.

Well, I'm Catholic. I think I'm part of the only religion that has it's own observatory. Two of them. One of them is parked outside the Pope's summer home of Castel Gandalfo. We also have a very odd blessing … in 1924, the Church has a blessing for a seismograph.

My church is weird.

Then they whine: evolution!!!  I reply: the Church gave it its "blessing" in 1926 -- meaning that if it is true, that's merely the mechanism of God's action, and it's perfectly okay for Catholics to believe in it.

The major cry about religion being against science amounts to a cry of “Oh, what about embryonic stem cells. Waaaahhhh!!!!!” The short version on embryonic stem cells is that they have been portrayed as a potential miracle cure for practically everything from cancer to paraplegia, and the evil religious people are against it, because all religious people are against science, and progress, etc.

The stated position of most religions I've kept up on has been “Can we have a scientific advancement that doesn't involve killing infants in utero? Thanks.”

However.... Considering that, in 2007, Kyoto University researcher Shinya Yamanaka has already been able to transform skin cells into any other type of cell, I don't think stems cells are really relevant, do you? (Nature, June 6, 2007).

But, what do I know? I'm only the stupid Catholic. Richard Dawkins says that all religious people are stupid, and Dawkins is an educated man.

Let's go through a brief history of scientific research. However, I have a little list … actually, it's a long, long list, and a good chunk of them are here.

I think I'll cover the big names to start with. Below the break

A Writing Rant: Cliches you may have never noticed.

I suspect that this, at the end of the day, qualifies as a rant. But it's a rant about writing, so I think this makes for an acceptable blog post. Comment if you think it doesn't.

*******

I live in a family of readers. We tend to write TV episodes as we watch them on television. Obviously, we record everything, otherwise we'd never hear a word. Sometimes, the writers out-think us, sometimes we like our endings better than the ones on the screen. And then, sometimes, we catch only an image, and we sigh, and we know exactly where everything starts to go downhill...

Have you ever wandered into a TV show, and without knowing anything of the story thus far, a mere thirty seconds can tell you more than you wanted to know? In fact, you know so much from that brief glance, you can, without any hesitation, write the entire episode?

This is pretty much how it goes in our house whenever we see almost any Christian clergyman on television. If it's some sort of religious figure, he's the murderer / pederast / psycho / bad guy. In fact, if there's a guest star who shows up as a priest, the only way my family is surprised is if the priest is not guilty of something. Also, if there's a choice between an old-fashioned, grouchy priest, and a hip, young good-looking priest filled with charisma, we know whodunit—the old guy, because killers are never charismatic, are they?

Now, unless someone can correct me, this rule only applies to some variety of Christian group, but, more often than not, it's a Catholic priest. Even on the television show 24, where Muslims terrorists were involved (literally) every other season for the first six years, no Imams were involved. I have never seen a Rabbi involved in a crime anywhere on television.

Under the heading of “these and other stupid things,” there are some interesting facts.

What Do You Mean There's Philosophy in A Pius Man?

I'm a simple fellow. Simpleminded, at times. Which is why there are a lot of people who know me and say, “I can't really believe you have a degree in philosophy. You don't spout out gibberish about how the table isn't a table..”

Hegel never looked
this good.

I understand that. I do, really. Try to read Hegel, and you get stuff about consciousness-- which is the key turning point of his entire philosophy-- and you basically get gibberish, since his terms are undefined. (If you are a science fiction fan, look up Minbari theology on Babylon 5, Hegel is the same babble, only without the reincarnation bit). Read Descartes, who basically said that you had to look at every little thing with a highly skeptical eye, and start with what you know for absolute certainty, concluding that the only thing you can ever really know for certain is that “I exist,” the rest is negotiable. (Popularly known as “I think therefore I am.” Does not cover instances of drivers during rush hour, who obviously don't think, but are real enough to get you killed.)

I'm sorry, Mr. Descartes, I'm slow and stupid. If I get hit in the head with a rock, I'm going to think that the rock is real. And that someone threw it at me. And that I will have to hurt someone.

Which is why I am a Thomist.

At which point the audience asks, “A what now?”

From Comic books readers and Scifi fans, to James Patterson and back. Why anyone can enjoy a Pius Man

[Author's note: this was originally going to be a note on Marketing. It didn't turn out that way.]


What do you call a book chock full of hundred year old conspiracies, dangerous priests, psychotic mercenaries, operatives trained to kill practically from birth, international political intrigue, a terrorist plot, and a wide ranging collection of protagonists the likes of which the world hasn't seen since the team that took out Dracula?


You call it A Pius Man.

Now, who should read it? On the face of it, it seems like yet another in a long line of bad Da Vinci Code ripoffs that have come out in legion since Dan Brown's super-hyped novel hit the scene an interminable amount of time ago. However, while my book has conspiracies and religion, that's more or less where the similarities end. There will be no puzzles, the French will not be a threat, and no one will spend dozens of pages finding their way out of an art museum.

That said, there are some people who just don't read thrillers. Understandable, it's a term so generic you can toss a net over a whole host of authors... some of whom probably should have a net thrown over them anyway, just to be safe. However, when a field is as vast as the comic-bookish feel of Clive Cussler's NUMA novels, to the theoretical science of James Rollins, to a Barry Eisler novel, half of which takes place in the head of his protagonist, assassin John Rain. It's almost as diverse a group as public Catholic figures—as Oscar Wilde used to say: Here Comes Everybody. Can't call it a historical thriller, because then it will be mistaken for a period peace like the Sharpe's novels of Bernard Cornwell—I wouldn't mind having his audience, but they might feel gypped to find it set in the 21st century.

So, who the hell should read this book?


Comic book fans: My first agent drew parallels between the team of protagonists and the Justice League—possibly since this is the most international team since the original Dracula. One character has already been compared to Deadpool—of the comic, not the film. Throw in adversaries who seem preternaturally strong, fast, and trained... well, it's not like fighting the Hordes of Hydra, but my villain isn't exactly the Red Skull. Some are as serious as a police procedural, and some might as well have wanted to be Doc Savage when they grew up. One of them even works with “Middle Earth's Most Wanted Elven Assassin,” and no, I'm not kidding.


Science Fiction fans—who will hopefully forgive me for calling it “SciFi” above: Key pieces of this story involve NLW technology. Or, in standard English, non-lethal weaponry. Microwave cannons that emit plasma beams, tazer beam weapons, gases, explosives; if it's been mentioned, or appeared in a semi-realistic video game, it's probably in there. Throw in the laser-keyboards and the microwave microphones, you can outfit a small Sharper Image store.


Spy fans: International intrigue? Got it. Shadowy figures? Check. Conspiracy theories? At least five of them, and three are right. We also have: the obligatory evil Cardinal; a pale, silver haired priest with commando training (not to be confused with an albino, of course); the Jesuits, the Opus Dei, and the Knights Templar all show up, just so I can play with some of the old cliches


Readers of history: Yes, A Pius Man actually has historical facts. Literally, they happened. This is a book where the history presented in its pages can be footnoted. I know this because the original draft had footnotes. It was suggested that I take them out... however, I still have the bibliography in the back.


People who like intelligent destruction: There's an assassination on page two, an explosion on page three, a wrecked car by page seven, and a mercenary with a resume that reads like scripts of the A-Team. We'll ignore the shootout on the Spanish Steps in the armored SUV. Death, property damage, and utter ruination are always good for an audience. It worked for four Die Hard films.


Political folk: As much as I loathe to admit it, there's politics in this novel. It goes to motivation for the various and sundry parties. Besides: how do you negotiate being a Catholic—universal—Church? Unlike being a superpower, like the United States, you can't pick and choose who you associate with just because they're valuable to you. If that were the case, I wouldn't have a friend whose uncle is a missionary in China. And what happens when you put an African Pope who's to the right of Attila the Hun into the middle of this particular hurricane?

At the end of the day, the only people who should probably NOT read A Pius Man are those who expect a novel by way of Mitchner, or Clavell. Half of the book is filled with thoughtful, drawn out characters who are trying to think their way through the problem at hand. The other half of the book is filled with various and sundry creative ways to lay waste to large parts of Rome—from shooting up the Spanish Steps to trashing Leonardo Da Vinci airport.

Oh, and there's a love story in there, too.

And this is just the first book. Book two is the fallout, and countermoves by those bad guys who survive book one. Book three is where I recreate the Battle of Thermopylae.... if the 300 had possessed remote-detonated landmines.


Anyway, if you or any of your friends might enjoy anything listed above, you might want to join the fan page, or invite them to tag along. Or both.

How A Pius Man Came to be: An essay in five parts

How A Pius Man came to be: Part 1

I read a book once....

Anyone who knows me is aware that this isn't new.

However, it was written by an author who I had just gotten into. I was a history major, it was a history book written by someone who taught philosophy and wrote novels on occasion. It was on Pope Pius XII and his history during the holocaust—essentially: what did he do, what did he know, and when did he know it.

The interesting thing is that it was less of a researched book and more like a composite collection of primary documents. The major source was from a book written in the 1960s from an Israeli Diplomat to the Vatican, who had also fought in World War II with the British. The second collection of sources were from contemporary newspapers. Most specifically, the New York Times.

Okay. Interesting book.

Two months later, I started a graduate course called the History of Total War. The term paper was supposed to be about the events of a major conflict.... Hmm, let's work on Pius XII. I read one book, time to work on another.

And it was insane.

The primary material all pointed to one, glaring and obvious conclusion. Everything written from the 1940s-1960s pointed in one direction. Testimony from Jews in the camps, in Rome, in positions of power within the global community, the newspapers, the books by journalists, the books by diplomats in Rome, even statements and documents from the Nazi hierarchy pointed one way and one way only.

Then we hit the 1960s, and everything from the previous twenty years was chucked down the memory hole so fast, you would have thought Rod Serling had put it as a twist to a Twilight Zone episode.

Since then, we've had a “debate.” One side believes that Pope Pius XII either: did nothing about the Holocaust; said nothing about the Holocaust; or was actively responsible for the Holocaust. On the other side, you have folks who think Pius XII was a saint, spoke out against the Holocaust, acted against it, was a grand spymaster. In the middle—and there are few in the middle—refer to him as “cautious and prudent.”

Along the way, I came across authors who were not historians. I've come across people who had used proven forgeries from criminals convicted for the forgeries used as “evidence” in this debate. I've even come across historians who had done jail time for publishing their lies. And I've come across some deliberate liars: for example, one idiot said that “X person should have done Y thing”... but cited articles where it was STATED that X did Y, making the author either brain dead or a liar.

One of the most interesting things about this is why I refer to it as a “debate,” in quotes. One side of this conflict doesn't acknowledge the other. One side will take the opposition's statements and theories, vivisect them with a scalpel, the end result looking like shredded wheat, and the second side acts as though there are no alternate theories, interpretations or evidence.

And some of these people are hilarious. Both sides have biases. Cynthia Ozick, for example, is an eighty year old Jew who thought that nuns would kidnap and convert her when she was young, and her opinion hasn't changed much. St. Margherita Marcchione is a Catholic nun. John Cornwell hates his father, his seminary, his country, jumped over the wall of the priesthood in Britain (for which he has my sympathy), and more or less hates Church theology, the entire hierarchy, and possibly every Catholic. James Carroll wants the Catholic church to become the Unitarians. Though there is one lawyer from Missouri with a degree in history—I'm not sure where his bias comes in.

Anyway, by the time I was finished reading both sides, I thought it was fairly clear who was right. Hell, I had enough primary documents to work on that alone. I left motivations alone, because I wasn't going to break out my Ouija board and try to have a séance with a dead pope to ask him what he was feeling or thinking at the time. These are the actual events; to the best of our knowledge, this is what happened, and this is how the people reacted to it AT THE TIME.

For example, Mit Brennender Sorge, a papal encyclical condemning Fascism, released by Pope Pius XI, was unequivocally pointed at the Nazis. How do we know this? Well, check the title. Most encyclicals are written in Latin. This was written in German, not Italian, not Spanish. No one was going to mess with the translation when it hit Germany's borders. It had to be smuggled into the country after it had been banned from the press. When the Hitler Youth beat up parishioners coming out of church, attacked priests, went after Catholic groups, and banned the encyclical all together, one can possibly conclude that the Nazis took it personally.

The average reader is probably looking at the above paragraph and thinking “this guy needed a masters degree for that sort of thing? Duh.” The average reader would be right. No, I wasn't going for high intellectual value. Much of the paper was a plain, simple, narrative telling of events, and many of the conclusions were as “duh” worthy as the above paragraph.

Anyway....

I won't tell you the name of the book that started this whole mess. But after I finished the paper, it was good night and good luck. End of Fall semester.

Then came some of the other books. Novels where the history was so bad, it was painful to read. “What sort of idiot thinks Churchill was a Catholic?”

Or “An entire convent of nuns commit mass murder, and can keep their mouths shut with that secret for sixty years? What?”

And there was The Da Vinci Code. Yes, you know I had to get there. That anyone was getting their history from it was... interesting.

It had been a theory of my family for years that we are better informed by our fiction reading than by our news media.

Tom Clancy had airplanes running into buildings in the early 1990s.

David Hagberg sent his protagonist assassin after Osama bin Laden before anyone considered bombing him.

Dale Brown, in 1990, came up with unmanned aerial drones armed with missiles—twelve years before predator drones armed with Hellfire missiles started wiping out terrorists.

But people were getting their history from fiction? And they were getting it from a man who wanted to be a songwriter when he grew up, took one art history course, and whose major was in literature. Huh.

Did that inspire me on a rampaging crusade? Sadly, no. Didn't care. It was an odd little book, and even ignoring the “history,” I didn't find it entertaining. In fact, I prefer James Rollins as far as historical puzzles go—he gives me some grounding in why he's saying what he's saying. Simply, Dan Brown just wasn't fun for me. My problem, no one else's.

Then I read a completely different novel, also using historical events as a background to the primary action. Premise... nothing new, really. Evil Nazi Catholic church, blah blah, snore. Okay, so what? Big deal.... But, hmm, wait, I know that character's name. It's historical. I know that name too. Hmm....

Skip to the back of the book to read the author's note, which collected the works used to create that novel. I had normally assumed that this author had read one side of the argument, and wrote another evil Catholic church story based on that. But, no, I had read these books. All of them. He had done his homework, and had completely and utterly come to the wrong conclusion, directly contradicting details that both sides agreed on, then saying it was true. I could take it if he had just said “I'm writing fiction, not commenting on a historical debate.” But he took a side and lied about facts that everyone agreed on.

Dominoes fell in my brain. People not only read this crap, they believed this crap. Most readers would have almost no intellectual background to separate the wheat from the chaff (seriously, how many people have history degrees focusing on the religious and cultural activities of Europe in World War II?)

My reaction was somewhere akin to the quote of the eminent physician and research scientist, Doctor Bruce Banner. Hulk smash.

Fine. Simple. Easy. Two could play at this game. If people got their history from entertainment, I would take up the strangest project ever imagined. I would write a thriller that was (a) thrilling, (b) factually accurate about the Catholic Church in the Holocaust.

Now how the HELL was I going to do that?

That's covered in part two.