Naughts and Crosses

By Mayo Mohs

Catholics

by BRIAN MOORE

107 pages. Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

$4.95.

The time is some uncertain date in the 1990s, and the sign of the cross has become an anachronism. A Third and Fourth Vatican Council have come and gone. The Vatican, now thoroughly embroiled in a highly ecumenical superchurch, dutifully processes assignments through World Ecumen Council headquarters in Amsterdam. Priests skitter about the world in gray-green denim fatigues, carrying musette bags and spreading a gospel of social revolution. The father general of an old monastic order called the Albanesians is preparing to preside over the first phases of a new ecumenical breakthrough: dialogue with the Buddhists.

Meanwhile, in Ireland, a score or so of monks dwell in an ancient monastery, living as if Vaticans II, III and IV had never occurred. They celebrate the ancient rite of Benediction. They believe that the Holy Mass is indeed a sacrifice, and what's more, they offer it in the forbidden language of Latin. They hear confessions in private, rather than granting the mass public absolutions that have become de rigueur. These bizarre rituals become an international cause celebre. Jumbo jets fly in from the States with fervid pilgrims hot for worship in the old way. Television crews arrive to broadcast the phenomenon to the world.

Rome uneasily dispatches a zealous young priest to correct the situation. He is a tough-minded, chillingly efficient young man named James Kinsella, who has been schooled in ecumenical diplomacy and trained in the dubious art of using power to revolutionary ends. Presenting the superchurch's problem to the old abbot, a man named Tomas O'Malley, Kinsella assures him smoothly that it is not a matter of heresy --merely one of creating "a uniform posture."

The contest between Kinsella and the abbot is the heart of Brian Moore's ironic but compassionate story, and it is at least part of the book's insistent fascination that Moore teases the reader for a while before the resolution becomes clear--or even explicable. If a Moore fan remembers the central crisis of the author's fine 1955 novel, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, he may have a hint of an explanation, for the spiritual crisis of Judith Hearne and the faith of Abbot Tomas are similar.

For them both, the way to faith lies through the terror of no faith, and the only miracle is prayer.

MayoMohs

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