3A06: Sweeny and Pope Kirol I

Give me back the Berlin wall Give me Stalin and St. Paul Give me Christ Or give me Hiroshima Destroy another fetus now We don't like children anyhow I've seen the future, baby It is murder —Leonard Cohen, “The Future”

As to your selecting the name “Kirol” that was just to preserve you from a little numerological trap.    

Advanced Lafferty.

In my last Three Armageddons of Enniscorthy Sweeny post, I called the book one of Lafferty’s most Catholic works because the bloodshed of Armageddon III is tied to his support for the pro-life movement. But it also has a few Catholic deep cuts that non-Catholics might miss. The most important of these centers on Enniscorthy Sweeny’s mental struggle with the man he persuades to take the papal name Kirol I. Unlike Harold Standpipe, the fictional black president elected when Ennis is a boy, I think Kirol is just a real historical figure going by another name: Pius XI. His successor, elected in 1939, takes the name Pius XI, making him the historical, controversial Pius XII. I want to work through what Lafferty is doing here.

Let’s start with the choice of a papal name. After accepting his election, a new pope is asked by the dean of the College of Cardinals, or the senior cardinal presiding, “By what name do you wish to be called?” He chooses, usually in honor of a saint or an earlier pope, though he may choose a name no pope has used. The master of papal liturgical celebrations records his acceptance and chosen name, with two masters of ceremonies as witnesses. The cardinal protodeacon then announces the election and name from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica. This is where Sweeny intervenes.

My theory is that he does so because of the Fátima prophecy. Between May and October 1917, the Virgin Mary appeared to three Portuguese shepherd children, Lúcia dos Santos and Francisco and Jacinta Marto.

The Catholic Church (believe it or not) tries to fight unworthy credulity. In this case, the bishop of Leiria investigated the Fátima apparitions and approved of them as being worthy of belief in 1930. In the Church, one can choose to believe or not, though I have never met a practicing Catholic who did not believe in Fátima. The prophecy bears on how most Catholics understand the 20th century, addressing the salvation of souls and the fate of nations: repentance, prayer, and reparation, according to the prophecy, can avert the catastrophes sin brings. These ideas also run through 3A and help explain the importance of Kirol I.

The prophecy comes from the second part of the Fátima secret, recorded in Lúcia’s memoirs in 1941. Mary says that the First World War will end, but “if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the Pontificate of Pius XI.” She warns that Russia will spread its errors, that the Church will suffer persecution, and that nations will be destroyed. Mary calls for Russia’s consecration to her Immaculate Heart and for Communions of reparation on the first Saturdays. The warning about catastrophe is thus conditional, as it is in 3A: repentance can avert the suffering.

There is a difficulty here, though I think it is only apparent. Pius XI died on February 10, 1939, but the Second World War in Europe is conventionally dated from Germany’s invasion of Poland on September 1. Some Catholic accounts therefore locate the war’s beginnings in earlier aggression, including Hitler’s annexation of Austria in March 1938. Lúcia herself took this view: when asked about the discrepancy, she replied, “The annexation of Austria gave occasion for the war.”

This might seem trivial, but it seems hardwired into the work's meaning. The rosary itself gives some sense of Fátima’s place in ordinary Catholic life. Mary asked the children to pray it daily for peace and the end of the war. She identified herself as Our Lady of the Rosary. Fátima gives Catholics the prayer beginning “O my Jesus, forgive us our sins,” now commonly said after each decade. It asks for deliverance from hell and the salvation of souls. These are also the stakes of Lafferty’s operatic history.

Now back to Kirol I. The book puts his election in 1922, the year Achille Ratti became Pius XI. The encyclicals then lock down that this pope is the same historical man: Lafferty assigns Kirol Quadragesimo anno in 1931 and Mit brennender Sorge and Divini Redemptoris in 1937, both published in those years as works of the historical Pius XI. Kirol has Ratti’s place in the succession, and the papacy issues the same Magisterial teaching. From this, we can conclude that he is just Ratti under the name Sweeny has forced upon him. Why that name? Probably because of the Marian connection Sweeny is trying to avoid, and because St. Cyril, the doctor of the church, developed the concept of theotokos.

Sweeny tells Kirol that he forced this choice through a “mind wrestle” to protect him from “a little numerological trap.” On my reading, the trap lies in the ordinal XI. Had Ratti chosen Pius, he would have become the eleventh pope of that name, the pope whose pontificate Fátima associates with another war. By making him Kirol I, Sweeny removes Ratti from that danger. The changed name becomes another of Sweeny’s hammers, another of his attempts to delay catastrophe, and, ultimately, what catches up with him when people light the hollow tree and he dies in a literal holocaust.

In 1939, the book’s next pope becomes Pius XI. He is Eugenio Pacelli, Pius XII, and the encyclicals support this again: he issues “On the Mystical Body” in 1943, the same year Pacelli issued Mystici corporis Christi. Sweeny postpones Pius XI's appearance until the year the historical Second World War began. In the book’s chronology, however, 1939 does bring Armageddon II. But in Ennis’s reality-adjusted timeline, Hitler didn't usher the real war, WWII, into existence because he succeeded as a painter, with his painting The Brown Danube hanging in Munich’s Alte Pinakothek in 1925.

Here is the most important thing. Sweeny claims to have protected Kirol, but given the logic of the work, it seems God protected him in the same way God does not protect the office of the U.S. Presidency. Sweeny is far from certain he caused his election. This is why he is so taken aback by Kirol’s words:

But you raise up before me the ghost of something else, the ghost of doubtful principalities and Chronologies. For you write these words:“You are the boy to whom I owe it all, my rise and my position, the highest in the world. You are the boy who is destined to bring about the rise and fall of many in Terra Extensa. ”I read that, and then I felt your hand on my head, your big, man’s hand on my little, boy’s head. Blessed man, do you understand what it is that you have written? Do you comprehend at all the meaning of the words that you have set down? It is tall insanity, and yet it’s an insanity that I have encountered several other times. Let me tell you about one of those other times: When I was seven years old, a large and pleasant and famous black man came to our house. He put his big hand on my head and he said: “This is the boy to whom I owe it all, my rise and my position, the highest position in the world. This boy is destined for the rise and fall of many in wide America.” “The rise and fall of many in wide America” is what he said, and “The rise and fall of many in the wide world” is what you said. I pray that I am destined for the rise of very many and for the fall of very few. The big black man who came to our house and put his hand on my head was Harold Standpipe, the President of the United States. And I remember the startled thoughts that bounded like jumped rabbits through my mind when he said those words and put his hand on my head. “How does he know that I’m the one who did it,” I thought. “How could he even begin to guess?” And they are the same jumped-rabbit thoughts that dodge through my mind when I read your letter that I have just received: “How does he know that I was the one who did it? How could he guess?” Well, how could you have guessed? But I am not sure at all that I was responsible for your attaining your highest position in the world. That you selected the name of “Kirol” instead of “Pius,” yes, I was responsible for that. I had quite a mind wrestle with you to force you to that. But I am not sure that I did bring you, the man, to your high position. As to your selecting the name “Kirol” that was just to preserve you from a little numerological trap.

The papal election years listed in the book follow the historical sequence through Paul VI in 1963, despite the altered names and crazy mucking about with the American presidents. I read that continuity as a sign of the limits of Sweeny’s power. He can wrestle with a pope over his name, but the name Pius XI still enters the succession. Whether he has delayed the catastrophe or just changed the terms of its arrival is a major part of the book’s question about Providence. At the end of the book, the Fátima prophecy happens on steroids: if it is a remix of Mad Sweeney, it is also a fantasy about Catholic prophecy. Missing either dimension will hinder understanding of what is going on. Lafferty's readers seem to have missed both points. Sweeny can play with certain aspects of history, but with others he wears an iron collar. We can't put faces on Presidents Standpipe, Fourhorses, and McWhortle, but we can on the book's Kirol I and Pius XI:

Kirol 1

PIux XI