A Church in Crisis [Religious RP] [OOC]

[Austria and Bavaria]

A Church in Crisis

A Second Vatican Council RP


"And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." - Matthew 16:18

IC Thread

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On 25 January 1959, Pope John XXIII less than three months after his election in October 1958, announced his intention to convene the Second Vatican Council. This came as a great shock to many in the church, as there had been little public or private discussion of the idea. The Second Vatican Council, which would begin on 11 October 1962, would later prove to be among the most pivotal events in the history of the Catholic Church.

Events, however, are nothing without those who make them. In this RP, you will be playing the role of either one of the bishops taking part in the council, as one of the Periti who advise the bishops and cardinals, or as one of the observers sent by the Orthodox or Protestant Churches. You shall be among those that shall shape the future of the Catholic Church, for good or for ill.

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Rules

1. Be sensible about what you do IRP. Even if your character is a far-left modernist heretic, he isn't going to start spouting his opinions on the Council floor. Your characters should use a good degree of nuance in explaining their theological positions.

2. The Pope will be controlled by the OP and Co-OPs, primarily as a keep the RP under control and prevent any unnecessary deviation from Church Dogma.

3. The Church will not be changing any established Dogma. However, the modernists can get the council to issue vaugue statements on dogmatic issues, and can loosen church discipline.

4. For the purposes of this RP, the Catholic Church is to be regarded as the true Church.

5. Respect your fellow players.

6. Players are not required to be RL Catholics, but they should have some understanding of basic Catholic teaching, or at very least familiarize themselves with the Church prior to joining the RP.

7. This RP will involve a great deal of writing, so be prepared for it.

8 Applications are expected to be detailed.

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Overview

The primary aim of the RP is to get the council to support your theological viewpoint, insofar as you are able. Not all players will have to write long statements, but I do expect good RP. There will be players would will need to collaborate to write the various constitutions and declarations. Excessive radicalism of either Left or Right will result in Papal Intervention.


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Characters

His Holiness, Pope John XXIII
- Supreme Pontiff -
OP and Co-OPs


His Eminence, Alfredo Ottaviani
- Cardinal Protodeacon, Secretary of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office -
The Greater Aryan Race


His Eminence, Francis Cardinal Winoc, O.P.
- Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Sacraments -
Austria and Bavaria


His Eminence, Benjamin Cardinal Ryan, S.J., M.M.
- Archbishop of Kunming (in exile); Superior General of Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers -
Reverend Norv


His Eminence, Franz Cardinal König
- Archbishop of Vienna -
The Greater Aryan Race


His Excellency, Youhanna Sayah
- Archbishop of of the Syriac Maronite Church of Antioch -
Czervenika


His Excellency, Joseph Baumann
- Archbishop of Munich and Freising -
Camelone


His Excellency, Endre Nemes
- Bishop of Pecs -
Apostolic Hungary


His Excellency, Pierre Devalier
- Bishop of Galveston -
Dinake


Sister Olivia Booker, Th.D., R.S.C.J.
- Peritus -
Reverend Norv


His Eminence, Akakios Anargyros
- Metropolitan Bishop of Thessaloniki, and Orthodox Observer -
Danceria


Rabbi Moses ben Abraham
- Jewish Observer -
Menassa

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Application:

Code: Select all

[b][u]Name:[/u][/b]
[b][u]Year of Birth:[/u][/b]
[b][u]Place of Birth:[/u][/b]
[b][u]Ethnicity:[/u][/b]
[b][u]Nationality:[/u][/b]
[b][u]Appearance:[/u][/b]
[b][u]Personality:[/u][/b]
[b][u]Rank/Position:[/u][/b]
[b][u]Theological Views:[/u][/b]
[b][u]Biography:[/u][/b]


[Apostolic Hungary]

Tag. Will app for Hungarian Bishop.

[Camaalbakrius]

Tag

[The Greater Aryan Race]

Are we only allowed to RP as actual historical participants of Vatican II or do we have more leeway in character creation? Otherwise, tagged.

[Austria and Bavaria]

Are we only allowed to RP as actual historical participants of Vatican II or do we have more leeway in character creation? Otherwise, tagged.

We are free to make custom characters.

[Austria and Bavaria]

Application format updated.

[The Greater Rhine Nation]

Tag

[Camelone]

A definite tag here.

[Austria and Bavaria]

Does anyone know of players who are leftist or left-leaning who would be interested? From what I know of our players, this is going to be more like the Council of Trent: Round Two.

Not that I don't want that, but I would like a bit of opposition.

[The Greater Aryan Race]

Are we only allowed to RP as actual historical participants of Vatican II or do we have more leeway in character creation? Otherwise, tagged.

We are free to make custom characters.

Duly noted, my app will be up soon.

[Austria and Bavaria]

Name: Francis Cardinal Winoc, O.P.
Year of Birth: 1899
Place of Birth: Vannes, Brittany, France.
Ethnicity: Breton
Nationality: French
Appearance:

Personality: Loyal, Devout, Quarrelsome, Ill-Tempered, Eloquent, Impatient, Fiesty, Compassionate.
Rank/Position: Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Sacraments
Theological Views: Cardinal Winoc is well-known as being strongly and outspokenly Traditionalist, but he is open to an orthodox reform of the Church. He is extremely hostile to Communism.
Biography: Francis Winoc was born in the town of Vannes, Brittany, to a Breton peasant family. Francis' family was devoutly Catholic, and his grandfather had fought in the Chouannerie against the French Revolution, narrowly escaping death at the hands of the revolution. As a child, Francis was an altar boy at the local parish, and discerned a vocation to the priesthood at an early age. He entered the Pontifical French Seminary at age 21. Upon ordination, he sent home as a an assistant pastor in his home town of Vannes. However, in 1927, he was sent to the French Mandate of Lebanon to serve as a school teacher, a post he held for the next 9 years. Shortly after his return to France, he became the secretary to Archbishop of Rennes, and being made a Monsignor in 1937. Following the German Invasion of France, and the creation of the Vichy French State, Monsignor Winoc became an outspoken critic of both the Vichy French Regime, and of Nazi Germany. Because of his attacks on Nazism and on the Vichy French, and also because of his giving aid and shelter to French Resistance fighters, he was arrested in 1943 and eventually sent to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp in 1944; an experience he barely survived. Following the war, he was appointed as Bishop of Saint-Brieuc, serving in that post from 1947-1956. Bishop Winoc mad a name for himself as a staunchly orthodox and traditionalist leader, and quickly became one of the most outspoken opponents of modernism in France. In 1956 Bishop Winoc was made a Cardinal and appointed as the Prefect of the Congregation for the Sacraments by Pope Pius XII.

[Czervenika]

Tag for interest, even though I'm not Catholic .

[Menassa]

Name:Rabbi Moses ben Abraham
Year of Birth: 1920
Place of Birth: Kansas City Missouri
Ethnicity: Jewish (?) Caucasian
Nationality: American
Appearance: Moses ben Abraham
Personality: Reserved (especially given his situation) being raised as the 'religious one' and even the only 'Jewish one' among all his friends. In addition he is very frank about what he believes and will never skirt around issues, he sees this sort of 'political/religious correctness' as a detriment to understanding and a direct opponent of any sort of truth.
Rank/Position: Rabbi with ordination to serve as a Judge on a Rabbincal court.
Theological Views: HIs views are mostly in line with mainstream Orthodox Judaism.
Biography: Born to Orthodox parents in Missouri, Moses's father was the Rabbi of a very small congregation in a small town outside of Kansas city. The congregation was not Orthodox but Moses's father remained Orthodox and raised his family that way regardless as was common of certain Orthodox Rabbis to do at the time. Moses went through the regular public schooling system of the state of Missouri up until High School when his parents sent him to New York to attend a theological seminary.

From the young age of 14 Abraham was alone in New York as he pursued his religious lifestyle with his peers in the seminary. While many went on to careers Moses decided that he would continue in his father's footsteps, he married and received Rabbincal ordination. Even though he had a family, he never ended up returning to Kansas City, even upon the death of his parents he remained in New York with his wife and two small children.

As to how a Rabbi would make it at the second Vatican council, when he was in Rabbincal Seminary he was always the person who his fellow colleagues would go for if they were looking about information regarding 'other religions' he prided himself on being very well versed in matters that didn't pertain directly to the standard education that most Rabbis received. It would just so happen that the head of his Rabbinical Seminary was friends with a bishop of the local Diocese, and when the head of the seminary heard about this second Vatican council he thought to ask if the seminary could send an observer, moreso, if all of Judaism could send an observer since it didn't seem like any other Orthodox Jews cared that much.

The Bishop, thought it an odd request but, seeing some value in the notion, he agreed to it, upon which the leader of the seminary phoned Moses and asked him if he would like to observe this Vatican council. Moses, having no other prospects, his rejection of communal politics would not allow him to serve on the pulpit, decided that it would at the very least be an interesting experience.

[Reverend Norv]

This is the sort of wonderfully original idea we really need more of on NS. App incoming.

[Czervenika]

I'm still trying to decide whether to play one of the Catholic participants or an Orthodox observer. Perhaps one of the participants since we need them to actually have a RP. I'll certainly try my best to represent Catholicism fairly and accurately, despite not being part of the faith myself.

[Austria and Bavaria]

This is the sort of wonderfully original idea we really need more of on NS. App incoming.

Thanks!

[Austria and Bavaria]

I'm still trying to decide whether to play one of the Catholic participants or an Orthodox observer. Perhaps one of the participants since we need them to actually have a RP. I'll certainly try my best to represent Catholicism fairly and accurately, despite not being part of the faith myself.

What about being a Bishop from one of the Uniate Churches? Eastern Traditions, but in Communion with Rome.

[The Greater Aryan Race]

Name: Franz König
Year of Birth: 3 August 1905
Place of Birth: Sankt Pölten, Lower Austria, Austria-Hungary
Ethnicity: Austrian
Nationality: Austrian
Appearance:

Personality: By nature, a compassionate and understanding individual, Franz König also inspires confidence which is tempered with his own personal sense of justice. However, his quiet and oftentimes introspective demeanour makes him more prone to compromises and he has a tendency to refrain from openly challenging and defying established authority in certain cases in order to maintain the unity of the Catholic Church.
Rank/Position: Cardinal-Priest, Archbishop of Vienna
Theological Views: A liberal Catholic for the most part, Cardinal König is a longtime advocate of church reforms while remaining supportive of peaceful co-existence with Communism, a rarity for most clerics in the 1950s and 1960s. König is also a committed supporter of ecumenism.
Biography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Konig

[Lavan Tiri]

This looks cool. Consider yourself tagged.

[Reverend Norv]

One American reformist Jesuit missionary, coming right up.

Name: Benjamin Cardinal Ryan, S.J., M.M.

Year of Birth: 1907

Place of Birth: Bontoc, Mountain Province, Phillippines

Ethnicity: A true American mutt, Benjamin is roughly half Irish, a quarter French (originally Huguenot), and a quarter Ashkenazi Jewish. This diverse ethnic background has deeply shaped his perspective on ecumenical issues.

Nationality: American, though he has spent most of his life outside the USA.

Appearance:

Benjamin Ryan is a short, wiry man. He has steel-grey hair cropped close to his head, and skin tanned to a dark golden-brown by the tropical sun. Benjamin is clean-shaven. His face is handsome, chiseled, with a stubborn jaw and his mother's hooked "Jewish" nose. Crows' feet mark the corners of his eyes; the eyes themselves are a steely grey-blue. A fitness fanatic, Benjamin has none of the softness that so often comes with celibacy and advancing age: he is lean, hard-muscled, and his movements are fast and precise and athletic. He looks as much like a well-preserved military officer as he does like a prince of the Church.

Although Benjamin wears cardinal's vestments for official functions, he never looks comfortable in them. Outside formal events, it is much more common to see him in a grey tweed suit and hunting boots, with a black clergy shirt and wooden pectoral cross as the only signs of his rank. He lost his right arm from the elbow during Mao's crackdown on Catholicism, and he always wears one arm of his cassock or suit-jacket neatly folded back and pinned up to the shoulder.

Personality:

The most basic feature of Benjamin Ryan's character is explosive, barely controlled passion. He is bursting at the seams with emotional energy. This is a man who takes everything seriously, a man who cares profoundly about everyone and everything. Small things have big effects on him. A beautiful sunset can exalt him to religious bliss; a harsh word can spark furious anger. There is no intellectual distance in his approach to the world.

This passionate nature exists in constant tension with Benjamin's self-discipline. For most of his life, Benjamin has channeled his own intensity into an uncompromising drive to excel. The man has an immense capacity for work: he latches on to a problem and works at it tirelessly until it is solved. He drives himself hard. He is intensely competitive. He is fluent in nearly a dozen languages. He is smart, but expects himself to be smarter than he actually is. He can be obsessive: he finds it hard to compromise, and impossible to give up. He blames himself for things beyond his control. This is one reason why Benjamin spends so much of his free time in exercise: after miles of running, the pent-up energy within him is spent enough for Benjamin to be able to think objectively at last.

When it is directed outward rather than inward, Benjamin's emotional intensity manifests itself not in the drive to excel but in immense compassion. Benjamin is as gentle with others as he is hard on himself. His capacity for service is as vast as his capacity for work: he is a loyal friend, a loving mentor, a good shepherd. He always has time for other people. He is a good listener. He cares about others in a deep, unfeigned way. He falls in love very easily. He has a distinctively American affection for underdogs. He does not hold himself above others; he does not value neutrality; he picks sides. To Benjamin, these passions tend to be more powerful than any doctrine; he has a habit of involving the Church directly in politics, and he broke his vow of celibacy for years as a missionary in China.

When Benjamin's passions boil over, they express themselves in words. Despite all of his obsessive studying, Benjamin Ryan is still not one of the greatest theologians of his generation - but he is one of the greatest preachers. His eloquence is emotional, not intellectual; it communicates experience, not concepts. With plain words and raw emotion, Benjamin can lift his listeners beyond the limits of their own lives and make them understand another experience. His preaching, in this sense, is much closer to the style of a Protestant revivalist than it is to the style of a Catholic theologian; Benjamin deals in hearts and souls, not in abstract ideas.

Benjamin developed this style over a lifetime of missionary work. Such work requires pragmatism rather than purity, and political engagement rather than ivory-tower theorizing. Benjamin is far more widely experienced than most bishops; he has talked his way out of a cannibal ambush in the northern Philippines, stormed Iwo Jima as a Marine chaplain, and fled across the Himalayas pursued by Chinese communists. Life has taught him to put little stock by abstract dogma, and a great deal of stock in how people actually behave in the real world. These experiences, together with Benjamin's own background (which includes Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish family members), has given him an unusually instinctive comfort with ecumenism. In general, Benjamin judges actions, and leaves it to God to judge beliefs. And if life has taught him that dreams about perfect worlds are pointless, it has also taught him that kindness does not end at the boundaries of the Church.

In many ways, this makes Benjamin an odd choice for the cardinalate - and if he had not been a perfect anti-Communist symbol, he probably would never have held this dignity. He has spent his life in jungle churches unadorned by gold, preaching in vestments woven by local women on backstrap looms. The grandeur of the Vatican makes him deeply uncomfortable, because he feels that the Church's resources are better used elsewhere - and because he knows that he himself does not deserve to be exalted in this way. Benjamin understands his own flaws, and his own sins. His celibacy is decidedly uneven. He is a high-functioning alcoholic. He sleeps, and dreams of burning churches and the bloody rock on Mount Suribachi.

In this pit of pain, Benjamin cries out to God - and God answers. Religion is not habit for Benjamin. Faith is not theoretical. Benjamin's faith is his lifeline to stability, purpose, maybe even sanity. Far more than any personal discipline, it is prayer that keeps Benjamin grounded. He keeps up a constant internal dialogue with God: doubting, begging, ranting, thanking. He feels that the hand of God is on him; that his steps are guided; that there is a reason why he has lived to see this day. And so it is this very personal faith that has brought Benjamin to the Vatican in the autumn of 1962.

Rank/Position: Cardinal Archbishop of Kunming (exiled); Superior General of Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers

Theological Views:

Benjamin Ryan stubbornly describes himself as a theological pragmatist; everyone else tends to think of him as a liberal or a modernist. His basic belief is that the Church must reflect the fact that it is made up of human beings, who are limited and diverse and sinful and fallible. It is uncompassionate and unchristian - not to mention self-defeating - to make impossible demands of the flock. Therefore, Benjamin supports making worship more accessible to the laity - above all through services in the vernacular - and he supports greater allowance for local cultures, and greater acceptance of divorce and birth control. Such reforms, Benjamin believes, are vital if the Church is to have a future.

Moreover, Benjamin believes that, in practice, the loyalty of the laity must be earned rather than commanded. This means that the Church must become more involved in political and economic life: it must take a stand on the side of the oppressed, or it will forever lose its moral legitimacy, and therefore the loyalty of ordinary people. Like many Jesuits, Benjamin believes strongly in an activist Catholicism that prioritizes real-world issues over doctrinal fine print.

Ecumenism is a major personal issue for Benjamin, who feels strongly that the Church's approach to other faiths and denominations should come from a position of pragmatic cooperation and Christ-like humility rather than from an assumption of superiority. He is particularly keen to mend fences with Protestant churches in order to cooperate on political and missionary issues, and he is determined to move the Church closer to repentance for its age-old sins against the Jews.

Finally, Benjamin has amorphous and unexpressed personal views that probably constitute heresy. He is deeply dubious about clerical celibacy; he cannot think of a reason why eros and agape should not be as compatible for the clergy as they clearly are for the laity. He tries to keep his own vow, but he has not always succeeded, and his doubts have grown with time. He is angry with the way the Church uses its resources, and skeptical of whether dog-eat-dog curia politics really represent the same God whom he feels so strongly within himself. These feelings are more doubts than doctrines, and Benjamin mentions them only to his confessor. But they are very real, and they shape many of Benjamin's more public positions.

Biography:

Benjamin Ryan was born into an eclectic family, even by American standards. Callum Ryan was a second-generation Irish-American, a military engineer with a mind like a steel trap. Esther LeClair, Benjamin's mother, was the daughter of a Russian Jewish immigrant girl and the scion of a long line of Protestant (originally Huguenot) businessmen. From this mixed background came Benjamin: a Jew by matrilineal descent, raised as a Catholic, with a Calvinist grandfather to boot.

Two years before Benjamin was born, his parents married - with the blessing of Esther's parents but against the wishes of Callum's kin. A week later, Callum was sent to build railways in the Philippines. He brought his young wife with him, and so Benjamin was born in Bontoc, a tiny trading post high in the mountains of the northern Philippines, surrounded by almost uncontacted tribes. An army surgeon and a local shaman presided at his birth.

For much of his childhood, Benjamin was mostly homeschooled. He learned to read and write from his mother, and his father taught him math and science. His parents brought a steamer trunk of books, and so Benjamin learned history and philosophy and art from battered copies of Gibbon and Plato and Ruskin. Benjamin learned other things, too: how to fish, and swim, and run, and fight, and speak Tagalog and Spanish and Ilokano. He learned not to go up into the hills when the young Bontocs were out headhunting for their initiation. He learned how to judge the ripeness of breadfruit and durian and rambutan, and how to butcher a pig.

As Benjamin grew older, two local American missionaries - one Catholic, one Baptist - began to play a larger role in his education. Benjamin thought of himself as a Catholic - his father was Catholic, after all, and so were most of his local friends - but he admired Pastor Blake as well. The Baptist was a great preacher, and while Father Clark taught Benjamin politics and theology, it was from Pastor Blake that Benjamin learned to preach. That skill at words and emotion would blossom over the years, and soon Benjamin realized that he had a natural talent. When he spoke in public, he felt uplifted, exalted; he felt God's pleasure.

But although both missionaries subtly encouraged Benjamin to pursue ordination, the young man was too in love with the world to leave it. Small but strong and handsome, he was a favorite of the local girls, and ended up in fistfights with plenty of fathers and older brothers. The lad was young and fierce and lusty and had big dreams. He planned to join the army like his father, and at the age of eighteen he left Bontoc to do exactly that.

He made it eight miles out of the town before he was surrounded by local men his age wielding spears. Young Bontocs, in order to achieve manhood, had to leave their villages and return with the head of a foe. Benjamin had stumbled onto a headhunting expedition. Certain that he was about to die, the young man promised to devote his life to God if the Almighty would spare him. And then Benjamin began to preach in Ilokano, speaking of grace and mercy and forgiveness, and the good news that made all killing superfluous, world without end, Amen.

And it worked. Miraculously, the tribesmen left Benjamin in peace. And the young man went on his way - but instead of joining the army, he went to Georgetown Seminary, to pursue education as a Catholic priest.

Though Benjamin paid his debt to God, he was not happy about it. He didn't like Georgetown. He didn't like America. He didn't even much like the Catholic Church, now that he saw more of it than just one man. He enjoyed his studies, and did well, and the rigorous logic and independent-mindedness of the Georgetown Jesuits filled Benjamin with admiration. But the notion of spending the rest of his life caring for fat people in a fat country under the supervision of a fat bishop made Benjamin feel sick to his stomach.

Then Benjamin met a man who would change his life. James Anthony Walsh was the Superior General of the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers - the head of the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America. He told Benjamin that he would be wasted as a parish priest; that the world needed Benjamin in places like Bontoc, places where the Good News had never been heard, places where children could be taught to read and the sick could be healed and real work could be done.

And so Benjamin Ryan left Georgetown as a priest, a Jesuit, and a Maryknoller missionary. But that year was 1929, and the onslaught of the Great Depression meant that there was suddenly too much work to be done in America for Benjamin to leave the nation. The young priest spent the next four years running an urban missionary project in Baltimore. As factories and dockyards closed, Benjamin ran a soup kitchen and a homeless shelter and a clothing bank, and he preached in an abandoned warehouse of hope and faith and endurance, and of better times to come. And in the process, Benjamin learned to love his country not for its strength, but for its weakness: for the way that, even in the midst of great suffering, Americans came together to help one another.

In 1933, Benjamin returned to the Philippines as a missionary for the Maryknoll Society. Assigned to a remote village, he was initially ineffective; then, he began preaching against an American rubber company that was buying up local tribal land. Though Benjamin was unable to prevent his parish's displacement, he succeeded in winning the trust and admiration of the local people, who soon filled the bamboo pews for mass and whose children flocked to Benjamin's classes.

Benjamin's success attracted both the approval of Maryknoll and the ire of the authorities, so the missionary was reassigned again - this time to Yunnan Province, in southern China, along the Burmese border in the foothills of the Himalayas. The region was being torn apart by conflict between various Shan and Chinese warlords, with the local Catholic church caught in the middle. Benjamin spent the next eight years trying to run a school, fund a medical clinic, and preside at four different churches scattered across the jungle-covered mountains, all while fending off three warlord armies with bribes or homilies or political maneuvering. He also fell in love with a brilliant, beautiful Shan schoolteacher, and after agonizing for years, he broke his vow of chastity; the two carried on a secret affair for five years, and Benjamin saw his son born.

At the start of 1942, Benjamin's lover and child died in a typhoid epidemic; a week later, the news of Pearl Harbor reached Yunnan. Exhausted and heartbroken and on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Benjamin asked the Archbishop of Kunming for permission to return to America as a military chaplain. His request was granted, and Benjamin left China, intending never to return. He spent the next three years as a chaplain to the Third Marine Division on Bougainville, Guam, and Iwo Jima. Unarmed, following the Marines into action, kneeling beside them under enemy fire to deliver the last rites, Benjamin rediscovered a sense of purpose. As the bullets blazed around him, he felt God's hand upon him, and knew that the path he had chosen years ago in the jungles of the Philippines was the right one.

Benjamin left the war with three medals, a head full of nightmares about Mount Suribachi, an addiction to whiskey, and a new determination. The Maryknoll Society sent Benjamin back to Yunnan after he resigned his chaplaincy, and the priest took up his old duties with vigor. He was now one of the most experienced missionaries in southern China, and in 1948, he was appointed Coadjutor Archbishop of Kunming; the archbishop, an aging Frenchman, needed administrative help and wanted Benjamin to be his successor. In 1950, the old man retired, and Benjamin became Archbishop of Kunming himself.

By then, the Chinese Civil War was drawing to its close. The Communist juggernaut swept across the mountains of Yunnan, bringing war to every village, burning churches right and left. As coadjutor and then archbishop, Benjamin worked frantically to evacuate civilians, house refugees, and negotiate with Chinese commanders for the survival of the Church. He lived on the move, traveling from village to village, all thought of doctrine lost in the effort to preserve his community.

And in the end, it was all for naught. In 1952, Mao ordered the destruction of the Catholic Church in China. Benjamin's cathedral in Kunming was stormed by the PLA. The archbishop himself was bayonetted through the arm; the wound later became gangrenous, and the arm had to be amputated. Benjamin fled the cathedral, pursued by the army. On foot, with a group of cathedral canons and dedicated laypeople, he set off across the Himalayas to safety in India.

Six months later, he emerged alive from that trek and found himself a global celebrity. Benjamin was a perfect, versatile figurehead for the global anticommunist movement. For Americans, he stood as a symbol of American resilience to Red tyranny. For the Vatican, he embodied the church embattled by godless Marxism. Bewildered, Benjamin found himself addressing Congress about the evils of religious persecution in China. In 1954, Pius XII made Benjamin a cardinal.

But in spite of all of this, Benjamin did not have a job. He was the primate of an archdiocese that no longer existed. And so it was with immense relief and gratitude that he learned in 1955 that the Maryknoll Society had chosen him as its next Superior General. In this capacity, Benjamin has spent the last seven years traveling around the world, organizing missionary work by American Catholics, fundraising for schools and medical clinics, preaching at seminaries and in tiny bamboo churches. He has emerged as a strong voice for political engagement and pragmatic reform, and a less reliable anti-Communist figurehead than either the Vatican or the Eisenhower administration would ideally have liked. And it is for this reason that Benjamin Ryan has come to the Vatican now, to have his say in deciding the future of the Church.

[Menassa]

[...]a Jew by matrilineal descent,[...]

This'll be fun.

[Czervenika]

I'm still trying to decide whether to play one of the Catholic participants or an Orthodox observer. Perhaps one of the participants since we need them to actually have a RP. I'll certainly try my best to represent Catholicism fairly and accurately, despite not being part of the faith myself.

What about being a Bishop from one of the Uniate Churches? Eastern Traditions, but in Communion with Rome.

Hmm...maybe I'll do that. A Ukrainian Catholic or something.

[Austria and Bavaria]

Name: Franz König
Year of Birth: 3 August 1905
Place of Birth: Sankt Pölten, Lower Austria, Austria-Hungary
Ethnicity: Austrian
Nationality: Austrian
Appearance:

(Image)

Personality: By nature, a compassionate and understanding individual, Franz König also inspires confidence which is tempered with his own personal sense of justice. However, his quiet and oftentimes introspective demeanour makes him more prone to compromises and he has a tendency to refrain from openly challenging and defying established authority in certain cases in order to maintain the unity of the Catholic Church.
Rank/Position: Cardinal-Priest, Archbishop of Vienna
Theological Views: A liberal Catholic for the most part, Cardinal König is a longtime advocate of church reforms while remaining supportive of peaceful co-existence with Communism, a rarity for most clerics in the 1950s and 1960s. König is also a committed supporter of ecumenism.
Biography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Konig

Accepted.

One American reformist Jesuit missionary, coming right up.

Name: Benjamin Cardinal Ryan, S.J., M.M.

Year of Birth: 1907

Place of Birth: Bontoc, Mountain Province, Phillippines

Ethnicity: A true American mutt, Benjamin is roughly half Irish, a quarter French (originally Huguenot), and a quarter Ashkenazi Jewish. This diverse ethnic background has deeply shaped his perspective on ecumenical issues.

Nationality: American, though he has spent most of his life outside the USA.

Appearance:

Benjamin Ryan is a short, wiry man. He has steel-grey hair cropped close to his head, and skin tanned to a dark golden-brown by the tropical sun. Benjamin is clean-shaven. His face is handsome, chiseled, with a stubborn jaw and his mother's hooked "Jewish" nose. Crows' feet mark the corners of his eyes; the eyes themselves are a steely grey-blue. A fitness fanatic, Benjamin has none of the softness that so often comes with celibacy and advancing age: he is lean, hard-muscled, and his movements are fast and precise and athletic. He looks as much like a well-preserved military officer as he does like a prince of the Church.

Although Benjamin wears cardinal's vestments for official functions, he never looks comfortable in them. Outside formal events, it is much more common to see him in a grey tweed suit and hunting boots, with a black clergy shirt and wooden pectoral cross as the only signs of his rank. He lost his right arm from the elbow during Mao's crackdown on Catholicism, and he always wears one arm of his cassock or suit-jacket neatly folded back and pinned up to the shoulder.

Personality:

The most basic feature of Benjamin Ryan's character is explosive, barely controlled passion. He is bursting at the seams with emotional energy. This is a man who takes everything seriously, a man who cares profoundly about everyone and everything. Small things have big effects on him. A beautiful sunset can exalt him to religious bliss; a harsh word can spark furious anger. There is no intellectual distance in his approach to the world.

This passionate nature exists in constant tension with Benjamin's self-discipline. For most of his life, Benjamin has channeled his own intensity into an uncompromising drive to excel. The man has an immense capacity for work: he latches on to a problem and works at it tirelessly until it is solved. He drives himself hard. He is intensely competitive. He is fluent in nearly a dozen languages. He is smart, but expects himself to be smarter than he actually is. He can be obsessive: he finds it hard to compromise, and impossible to give up. He blames himself for things beyond his control. This is one reason why Benjamin spends so much of his free time in exercise: after miles of running, the pent-up energy within him is spent enough for Benjamin to be able to think objectively at last.

When it is directed outward rather than inward, Benjamin's emotional intensity manifests itself not in the drive to excel but in immense compassion. Benjamin is as gentle with others as he is hard on himself. His capacity for service is as vast as his capacity for work: he is a loyal friend, a loving mentor, a good shepherd. He always has time for other people. He is a good listener. He cares about others in a deep, unfeigned way. He falls in love very easily. He has a distinctively American affection for underdogs. He does not hold himself above others; he does not value neutrality; he picks sides. To Benjamin, these passions tend to be more powerful than any doctrine; he has a habit of involving the Church directly in politics, and he broke his vow of celibacy for years as a missionary in China.

When Benjamin's passions boil over, they express themselves in words. Despite all of his obsessive studying, Benjamin Ryan is still not one of the greatest theologians of his generation - but he is one of the greatest preachers. His eloquence is emotional, not intellectual; it communicates experience, not concepts. With plain words and raw emotion, Benjamin can lift his listeners beyond the limits of their own lives and make them understand another experience. His preaching, in this sense, is much closer to the style of a Protestant revivalist than it is to the style of a Catholic theologian; Benjamin deals in hearts and souls, not in abstract ideas.

Benjamin developed this style over a lifetime of missionary work. Such work requires pragmatism rather than purity, and political engagement rather than ivory-tower theorizing. Benjamin is far more widely experienced than most bishops; he has talked his way out of a cannibal ambush in the northern Philippines, stormed Iwo Jima as a Marine chaplain, and fled across the Himalayas pursued by Chinese communists. Life has taught him to put little stock by abstract dogma, and a great deal of stock in how people actually behave in the real world. These experiences, together with Benjamin's own background (which includes Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish family members), has given him an unusually instinctive comfort with ecumenism. In general, Benjamin judges actions, and leaves it to God to judge beliefs. And if life has taught him that dreams about perfect worlds are pointless, it has also taught him that kindness does not end at the boundaries of the Church.

In many ways, this makes Benjamin an odd choice for the cardinalate - and if he had not been a perfect anti-Communist symbol, he probably would never have held this dignity. He has spent his life in jungle churches unadorned by gold, preaching in vestments woven by local women on backstrap looms. The grandeur of the Vatican makes him deeply uncomfortable, because he feels that the Church's resources are better used elsewhere - and because he knows that he himself does not deserve to be exalted in this way. Benjamin understands his own flaws, and his own sins. His celibacy is decidedly uneven. He is a high-functioning alcoholic. He sleeps, and dreams of burning churches and the bloody rock on Mount Suribachi.

In this pit of pain, Benjamin cries out to God - and God answers. Religion is not habit for Benjamin. Faith is not theoretical. Benjamin's faith is his lifeline to stability, purpose, maybe even sanity. Far more than any personal discipline, it is prayer that keeps Benjamin grounded. He keeps up a constant internal dialogue with God: doubting, begging, ranting, thanking. He feels that the hand of God is on him; that his steps are guided; that there is a reason why he has lived to see this day. And so it is this very personal faith that has brought Benjamin to the Vatican in the autumn of 1962.

Rank/Position: Cardinal Archbishop of Kunming (exiled); Superior General of Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers

Theological Views:

Benjamin Ryan stubbornly describes himself as a theological pragmatist; everyone else tends to think of him as a liberal or a modernist. His basic belief is that the Church must reflect the fact that it is made up of human beings, who are limited and diverse and sinful and fallible. It is uncompassionate and unchristian - not to mention self-defeating - to make impossible demands of the flock. Therefore, Benjamin supports making worship more accessible to the laity - above all through services in the vernacular - and he supports greater allowance for local cultures, and greater acceptance of divorce and birth control. Such reforms, Benjamin believes, are vital if the Church is to have a future.

Moreover, Benjamin believes that, in practice, the loyalty of the laity must be earned rather than commanded. This means that the Church must become more involved in political and economic life: it must take a stand on the side of the oppressed, or it will forever lose its moral legitimacy, and therefore the loyalty of ordinary people. Like many Jesuits, Benjamin believes strongly in an activist Catholicism that prioritizes real-world issues over doctrinal fine print.

Ecumenism is a major personal issue for Benjamin, who feels strongly that the Church's approach to other faiths and denominations should come from a position of pragmatic cooperation and Christ-like humility rather than from an assumption of superiority. He is particularly keen to mend fences with Protestant churches in order to cooperate on political and missionary issues, and he is determined to move the Church closer to repentance for its age-old sins against the Jews.

Finally, Benjamin has amorphous and unexpressed personal views that probably constitute heresy. He is deeply dubious about clerical celibacy; he cannot think of a reason why eros and agape should not be as compatible for the clergy as they clearly are for the laity. He tries to keep his own vow, but he has not always succeeded, and his doubts have grown with time. He is angry with the way the Church uses its resources, and skeptical of whether dog-eat-dog curia politics really represent the same God whom he feels so strongly within himself. These feelings are more doubts than doctrines, and Benjamin mentions them only to his confessor. But they are very real, and they shape many of Benjamin's more public positions.

Biography:

Benjamin Ryan was born into an eclectic family, even by American standards. Callum Ryan was a second-generation Irish-American, a military engineer with a mind like a steel trap. Esther LeClair, Benjamin's mother, was the daughter of a Russian Jewish immigrant girl and the scion of a long line of Protestant (originally Huguenot) businessmen. From this mixed background came Benjamin: a Jew by matrilineal descent, raised as a Catholic, with a Calvinist grandfather to boot.

Two years before Benjamin was born, his parents married - with the blessing of Esther's parents but against the wishes of Callum's kin. A week later, Callum was sent to build railways in the Philippines. He brought his young wife with him, and so Benjamin was born in Bontoc, a tiny trading post high in the mountains of the northern Philippines, surrounded by almost uncontacted tribes. An army surgeon and a local shaman presided at his birth.

For much of his childhood, Benjamin was mostly homeschooled. He learned to read and write from his mother, and his father taught him math and science. His parents brought a steamer trunk of books, and so Benjamin learned history and philosophy and art from battered copies of Gibbon and Plato and Ruskin. Benjamin learned other things, too: how to fish, and swim, and run, and fight, and speak Tagalog and Spanish and Ilokano. He learned not to go up into the hills when the young Bontocs were out headhunting for their initiation. He learned how to judge the ripeness of breadfruit and durian and rambutan, and how to butcher a pig.

As Benjamin grew older, two local American missionaries - one Catholic, one Baptist - began to play a larger role in his education. Benjamin thought of himself as a Catholic - his father was Catholic, after all, and so were most of his local friends - but he admired Pastor Blake as well. The Baptist was a great preacher, and while Father Clark taught Benjamin politics and theology, it was from Pastor Blake that Benjamin learned to preach. That skill at words and emotion would blossom over the years, and soon Benjamin realized that he had a natural talent. When he spoke in public, he felt uplifted, exalted; he felt God's pleasure.

But although both missionaries subtly encouraged Benjamin to pursue ordination, the young man was too in love with the world to leave it. Small but strong and handsome, he was a favorite of the local girls, and ended up in fistfights with plenty of fathers and older brothers. The lad was young and fierce and lusty and had big dreams. He planned to join the army like his father, and at the age of eighteen he left Bontoc to do exactly that.

He made it eight miles out of the town before he was surrounded by local men his age wielding spears. Young Bontocs, in order to achieve manhood, had to leave their villages and return with the head of a foe. Benjamin had stumbled onto a headhunting expedition. Certain that he was about to die, the young man promised to devote his life to God if the Almighty would spare him. And then Benjamin began to preach in Ilokano, speaking of grace and mercy and forgiveness, and the good news that made all killing superfluous, world without end, Amen.

And it worked. Miraculously, the tribesmen left Benjamin in peace. And the young man went on his way - but instead of joining the army, he went to Georgetown Seminary, to pursue education as a Catholic priest.

Though Benjamin paid his debt to God, he was not happy about it. He didn't like Georgetown. He didn't like America. He didn't even much like the Catholic Church, now that he saw more of it than just one man. He enjoyed his studies, and did well, and the rigorous logic and independent-mindedness of the Georgetown Jesuits filled Benjamin with admiration. But the notion of spending the rest of his life caring for fat people in a fat country under the supervision of a fat bishop made Benjamin feel sick to his stomach.

Then Benjamin met a man who would change his life. James Anthony Walsh was the Superior General of the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers - the head of the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America. He told Benjamin that he would be wasted as a parish priest; that the world needed Benjamin in places like Bontoc, places where the Good News had never been heard, places where children could be taught to read and the sick could be healed and real work could be done.

And so Benjamin Ryan left Georgetown as a priest, a Jesuit, and a Maryknoller missionary. But that year was 1929, and the onslaught of the Great Depression meant that there was suddenly too much work to be done in America for Benjamin to leave the nation. The young priest spent the next four years running an urban missionary project in Baltimore. As factories and dockyards closed, Benjamin ran a soup kitchen and a homeless shelter and a clothing bank, and he preached in an abandoned warehouse of hope and faith and endurance, and of better times to come. And in the process, Benjamin learned to love his country not for its strength, but for its weakness: for the way that, even in the midst of great suffering, Americans came together to help one another.

In 1933, Benjamin returned to the Philippines as a missionary for the Maryknoll Society. Assigned to a remote village, he was initially ineffective; then, he began preaching against an American rubber company that was buying up local tribal land. Though Benjamin was unable to prevent his parish's displacement, he succeeded in winning the trust and admiration of the local people, who soon filled the bamboo pews for mass and whose children flocked to Benjamin's classes.

Benjamin's success attracted both the approval of Maryknoll and the ire of the authorities, so the missionary was reassigned again - this time to Yunnan Province, in southern China, along the Burmese border in the foothills of the Himalayas. The region was being torn apart by conflict between various Shan and Chinese warlords, with the local Catholic church caught in the middle. Benjamin spent the next eight years trying to run a school, fund a medical clinic, and preside at four different churches scattered across the jungle-covered mountains, all while fending off three warlord armies with bribes or homilies or political maneuvering. He also fell in love with a brilliant, beautiful Shan schoolteacher, and after agonizing for years, he broke his vow of chastity; the two carried on a secret affair for five years, and Benjamin saw his son born.

At the start of 1942, Benjamin's lover and child died in a typhoid epidemic; a week later, the news of Pearl Harbor reached Yunnan. Exhausted and heartbroken and on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Benjamin asked the Archbishop of Kunming for permission to return to America as a military chaplain. His request was granted, and Benjamin left China, intending never to return. He spent the next three years as a chaplain to the Third Marine Division on Bougainville, Guam, and Iwo Jima. Unarmed, following the Marines into action, kneeling beside them under enemy fire to deliver the last rites, Benjamin rediscovered a sense of purpose. As the bullets blazed around him, he felt God's hand upon him, and knew that the path he had chosen years ago in the jungles of the Philippines was the right one.

Benjamin left the war with three medals, a head full of nightmares about Mount Suribachi, an addiction to whiskey, and a new determination. The Maryknoll Society sent Benjamin back to Yunnan after he resigned his chaplaincy, and the priest took up his old duties with vigor. He was now one of the most experienced missionaries in southern China, and in 1948, he was appointed Coadjutor Archbishop of Kunming; the archbishop, an aging Frenchman, needed administrative help and wanted Benjamin to be his successor. In 1950, the old man retired, and Benjamin became Archbishop of Kunming himself.

By then, the Chinese Civil War was drawing to its close. The Communist juggernaut swept across the mountains of Yunnan, bringing war to every village, burning churches right and left. As coadjutor and then archbishop, Benjamin worked frantically to evacuate civilians, house refugees, and negotiate with Chinese commanders for the survival of the Church. He lived on the move, traveling from village to village, all thought of doctrine lost in the effort to preserve his community.

And in the end, it was all for naught. In 1952, Mao ordered the destruction of the Catholic Church in China. Benjamin's cathedral in Kunming was stormed by the PLA. The archbishop himself was bayonetted through the arm; the wound later became gangrenous, and the arm had to be amputated. Benjamin fled the cathedral, pursued by the army. On foot, with a group of cathedral canons and dedicated laypeople, he set off across the Himalayas to safety in India.

Six months later, he emerged alive from that trek and found himself a global celebrity. Benjamin was a perfect, versatile figurehead for the global anticommunist movement. For Americans, he stood as a symbol of American resilience to Red tyranny. For the Vatican, he embodied the church embattled by godless Marxism. Bewildered, Benjamin found himself addressing Congress about the evils of religious persecution in China. In 1954, Pius XII made Benjamin a cardinal.

But in spite of all of this, Benjamin did not have a job. He was the primate of an archdiocese that no longer existed. And so it was with immense relief and gratitude that he learned in 1955 that the Maryknoll Society had chosen him as its next Superior General. In this capacity, Benjamin has spent the last seven years traveling around the world, organizing missionary work by American Catholics, fundraising for schools and medical clinics, preaching at seminaries and in tiny bamboo churches. He has emerged as a strong voice for political engagement and pragmatic reform, and a less reliable anti-Communist figurehead than either the Vatican or the Eisenhower administration would ideally have liked. And it is for this reason that Benjamin Ryan has come to the Vatican now, to have his say in deciding the future of the Church.

Accepted.

[Reverend Norv]

It might be worth advertising this over on the Christian Discussion Thread. I bet some people who don't ordinarily RP would get a kick out of this concept.

[Austria and Bavaria]

It might be worth advertising this over on the Christian Discussion Thread. I bet some people who don't ordinarily RP would get a kick out of this concept.

Sounds like a good idea.