[LonePaladin]

Please read this in its entirety before responding. I can cite references if needed, but it might take me some time.

In preparing a new campaign, I was looking over the timeline on the Sixth World Wiki (via dumpshock), and saw something that just doesn't fit. Apparently, several older sourcebooks introduced some future history regarding the Catholic Church, and how they handled the emergence of metahumanity and magic.

Here's everything the timeline has to say about the Church:

• 2010: In Vatican City, Pope John Paul III dies suddenly of the VITAS plague. He is succeeded by archconservative Cardinal Vitali who takes the name John Paul IV. (Shadows of Europe)
• 1 Jan 2011: In Vatican City, during the traditional New Year's Message from St. Peter's Square, Pope John-Paul IV denounces metahumans as abominations in the eyes of God. (Tír na nÓg)
• 2012: In the Czech Republic, Czech Catholics, responding to the Pope's denouncement of metahumans, rise up against the Vatican. (Shadows of Europe)
• 2012: In France, the FCC opposes Pope John-Paul IV's declaration against metahumans, creating a permanent rift between the FCC and the Vatican. (Shadows of Europe)
• Mar 2012: In Vatican City, a Papal Bull is issued confirming Pope John Paul IV's position against metahumans and further denouncing all things magical as "unholy and ungodly by their very nature." (Shadows of Europe)
• 2013: In Vatican City, Pope John Paul IV dies in his sleep. He is replaced by a moderate Brazillian cardinal who takes the name John XXV. Despite this change in power, several Irish Catholic bishops who had refused to accept John Paul IV's denouncement of metahumans, break from the Catholic church and instead go to the Church of Ireland, a small splinter church. (Tír na nÓg)
• 2023: In Fatima, Portugal, during a visit by Pope John XXV, a new apparition of the Virgin Mary appears before thousands of witnesses. This event reinforces the Pope's declaration against metahumans and further pushes the Portuguese Catholic community into a conservative mindset. (Shadows of Europe)
• 2024: Pope John XXV issues 'In Imago Dei' encyclical: Metahumans have souls and are capable of salvation. Magical abilities are not inherently evil. Spirits are manifestations of nature (gray area).
• 2036: Open war in Italy is only avoided when Pope John XXV negotiates a settlement between the corporations and the sindaci (mayors). The cities of Genoa, Milan and Turin are written off as a catastrophe zone and renamed the Special Administrative Zone of Genoa-Milan-Turin (GeMiTo). (Shadows of Europe)
• 2042: In the Papal States, Italian Confederation, Pope John XXV declares that women may now be appointed priests in the Catholic Church. (Shadows of Europe)

I don't know if there are any other Catholics here, but there are a couple things here that don't sound right.

First is the original denunciation of metahumans in 2011. This sort of thing just wouldn't happen -- the Vatican simply wouldn't make an announcement like this without a LOT of deliberation, and the Church is extremely conservative about this. (To give an example, they spent a long time on the question "If a human were cloned, what's its status?" They decided that, while they don't approve of cloning, the beings that result would still have souls.) If this were a personal opinion of the Pope, it would have been left out of the New Year's Day message. It's one of those thorny issues that would start with a "wait and see" attitude. It would probably take a decade or longer for them to reach a consensus on this.

Next is the 2023 visitation of the apparition of the Virgin Mary. This, quite simply, makes no sense at all. I'm assuming that this apparition is visual and had a spoken message -- it doesn't really say. If it DID have a message, it would've been picked over with a fine-toothed comb before being taken as as canon. (And what if this apparition was actually just an unstable Catholic magician creating an illusion?)

The very next year, the Pope issues an encyclical reversing the entire denunciation. Right after having it 'reinforced' by the Virgin Mary. Wait, what? (Now, this particular item is really the only thing on the list that fits with how the Church operates. It's about the right time-frame for them to have discussed the issue, and it also meshes with the Church's stance. They've always held that people have the same status -- spiritually -- regardless of race or status.) The Church also investigates these sort of things very thoroughly; a Marian apparition in Green Bay, WI, was only recently ruled as 'worthy of belief'; it happened 150 years ago.

One more really big sticking point. 2042, when the Pope declares that women can be priests. Not gonna happen. This is one of those things that's always been in the rules, and Pope John Paul II issued a letter, "Ordinatio Sacerdotalis", in 1995 that basically says that the Church simply does not have the authority to change this rule, ever.

Okay, so I'm likely filtering this through a bunch of people who know next to nothing about the Catholic Church. That's okay; I'm not here to try to convert people or whatever, just to try to clear up some things. This isn't intended to start some sort of flame-war, I just think that the references dropped in the cited sourcebooks (especially Shadows of Europe) were written by someone who didn't have a clear understanding of the Church.

Here's an idea that might make the stuff that John Paul IV did. What if his denunciation was simply a personal opinion, rather than an official statement? It wouldn't be the first time a Pope has had something blown way out of proportion. If something turns up that falls outside the issues the Church has dealt with, they take a VERY long time debating it before they make any official proclamations.

The apparition could have simply been an illusion created by a magician to try to reinforce the denunciation; maybe a local priest or monk was able to detect the deception, which would have triggered the Church coming to the conclusion that magic can be used for good or evil.

Regarding the "women as priests" issue: What if this were changed? What if, instead, they declared that metahumans are eligible for priesthood and religious vocations? This would sound more like something they'd do, and the time-frame (18 years from 'you have a soul' to 'you can help us out') sounds about right.

Some interesting things that might be worth working on for something later:

• What if some of the saints turned out to be metahuman? Say, Saint Christopher being a troll? The same thing could be done with the saints who are currently lying in state -- the sort where their bodies are on display, and not decomposing. (Yes, that sounds really weird. It happens. Creeps me out.) What if these bodies changed during the Awakening?
• The Church has a strong tradition of healing miracles, and magic includes some pretty powerful healing spells. What if it turned out that some of the more recent saints -- like St. Pio of Pietrelcina (aka Padre Pio) -- were pre-Awakening spellcasters?
• Saint Isidore of Seville is the unoffical patron saint of the Internet (mainly because he hand-wrote a 20-volume encyclopedia). What if they made it official? Even better, how about a monastic order of white-hat hackers? Or a monastic order that focuses on exorcisms, dispatching troublesome spirits, and thwarting corrupted spellcasters?

[FastJack]

Edit: By the way, welcome to the forums, LP!

First off, I'm an NPC (Non-Practicing Catholic), so if I get some stuff wrong, let me know.

I've always assumed the Pope's New Year Message wasn't a declaration of the church's views, but more like the Pope's "State of the Union", i.e. his personal thoughts as the head of the Catholic Church, so it wasn't an official stance by the church, but many Catholics would follow it as imitation of the head of their faith.

I like the idea of the apparition as being the work of a loyal priest that had not realized he had awakened. As they were investigating it, they came across this fervent believer and had to make the choice of accepting magic as a tool or defrocking and denouncing this obedient subject and they chose the former.

Finally, in regards to the "women as priests", even the "Ordinatio Sacerdotalis" can be changed. Since it was issued by the Pope, the church can always rule that it was reversible due to human fallibility.

Some big reversals of the Catholic church's position (of which, some are bigger than women as priests):

Usury

When: About the 16th century

Original rule: Lend freely, hoping nothing thereby, the Bible teaches. Interpreted literally, this prohibition against profiting on loans played a major role in the creation of the European credit markets during the Middle Ages. Bankers had to devise methods of profiting from moneylending without directly charging interest.

How it changed: The rule simply faded away as European capitalism developed during the Renaissance. The charging of interest forms the basis of the modern financial system, so economic history might have turned out quite differently had the rule stayed in place. The Islamic banking system, where usury is still prohibited, gives a pretty good picture of how finance might have worked without interest.

Slavery

When: The mid- to late-19th century

Original rule: No less an authority than St. Augustine said that Jesus Christ did not make men free from being slaves. As late at 1860, the church taught that it was not a sin to own another human being so long as the slave was treated humanely.

How it changed: The church never really took a firm stance against slavery until the practice was already largely banished in the Western world. Pope Gregory XVI was the first to criticize slavery in 1839, though he left a good deal of room for interpretation. It wasnt until Leo XIII, the first 20th-century pope, that the church took a firm stance against slavery as a moral outrage. Today, the Catholic Church is at the forefront of efforts to eliminate modern slavery.

Vatican II

When: 1962-1965

Original rule: Traditionally, Catholic Mass was celebrated in the original Latin, with priests facing away from congregants. More generally, the institutions of the church maintained a level of distance from both followers and the modern world as a whole.

How it changed: Few events in church history have done more to change the way Catholicism is lived by its followers than the Second Vatican Council. In addition to allowing Mass to be celebrated in local languages, the church undertook a number of initiatives including the promotion of lay ministries, greater dialogue with other faiths, and more decentralization of authority to dioceses.

Capital Punishment

When: 1995

Original rule: The church was not traditionally opposed to the death penalty for particularly egregious crimes. Catholic theologians, including Thomas Aquinas, wrote vigorous defenses of its use. Some popes even issued death sentences themselves in their capacity as civil rulers.

How it changed: Support for the death penalty had waned in the church over the years, but it wasnt until John Paul IIs 1995 encyclical that the Vaticans opposition was stated explicitly. He wrote that although the death penalty was permissible in extreme cases when society was at risk, improvements in the modern judicial system made such cases practically nonexistent. Benedict XVI, the current pontiff, is a vocal critic of the death penalty and even publicly opposed its use on Saddam Hussein.

Limbo

When: 2007

Original rule: In traditional Catholic theology, limbo is the halfway point between heaven and hell where the unbaptized, including infants, go after death. Even though they had committed no sins, such people had not been cleansed of the original sin through baptism.

How it changed: Limbo was never a particularly popular concept with parishioners, and modern priests rarely discussed it. In 2004, John Paul II formed a commission to come up with a more coherent and enlightened way of describing what happens to infants who die. In 2007, Benedict signed a report recommending the concept be dropped. Instead of going to limbo, unbaptized babies would enjoy eternal happiness after death, but would not achieve communion with God.

[Fizzygoo]

First off, I'm not Catholic but the History half of my double major was focused on Origins: Civilizations & Religions. So my modern Catholicism isn't up to snuff, I'm definitely interested in the topic enough to throw my 2¥ in

Point 1. I agree with FastJack that the declaration would have been a Papal statement, surpassing/circumventing any cardinal discussion/deliberations and that with the Pope being God's representative...it would have had great effect so that over the next decade the rest of the church could/would follow the party line

I couldn't find the 1-Jan-2011 entry in Tir Na nOg (pages 27-30 is where I looked). But there is the Irish Times excerpt about the Papal "decree" dated 17-Sept-2011 (Tir Na nOg pg 29). Regardless, anyone making a blanket statement about "malformed" infants in the first year that they appear would register, at least to me, as off their rocker. Given the lag between when UGEs start being born to when the Pope comes out against them (no later than the 17th of Sept 2011) does not include the emergence of the first dragon nor the magical escape of Howling Coyote (the first major semi-public display of magic other than the Samhain celebration in Mass. that I can recall) this would mean either the Pope had some fore-knowledge of what UGE was or he was really and truly suffering from some kind of mental illness (maybe not mental illness, maybe a deep seated fear of the mentally disabled, at the very least a deep seated irrational bias). Given the choices...this opens up the idea of the Catholic church holding information on the pre-5th-world and gives GMs something to play with...or just attribute to an odd/eccentric Pope over-reacting to UGE in the first year.

(Also note: The 1-Jan decree (that I can't find) severely contradicts SWA entry that UGE first start being born on the 13th of Jan (SWA pg 20). This either means; it's an error on the author/publisher's part or is further evidence that the Church has access to hidden knowledge and jumped the gun...in-game the latter is more fun to consider ).

Point 2. So here, with the lack of information, we can only go on what happened. Apparition appears. Reinforces the Pope's earlier stance. Next year does a complete 180. So to rationalize it (meaning make sense out of it, but in no way knowing if it's correct assumption or not) one could say Apparition appears. Pope reinforces his stance. Apparition is pissed and later, in secret, convinces the Pope of his error. Is this correct? Who knows. Does it fit with the events...sure. One is free to rationalize it as it fits the campaign. Though surely there would be after effects of Portuguese Catholics angry/upset/worried with the Pope's 180. But apparition as an awakened priest pulling an illusion instead of a free spirit manifesting...sure...until the Vatican records are released (or obtained by Shadowrunners)...who knows

Point 3. Women becoming priests...eh...who knows. (see FastJack's list of reversals). 40+ years from now, who can say which way the Church will go, I mean hey...babies are no longer in Limbo...changing the metaphysical state of souls seems a little more difficult than opening up the other half of H. sapiens to give communion. 

[Crimsondude]

Peter Taylor was responsible for most if not all of the Church info in SoE. and pretty much every reference to the Church in the early and midde of last decade. That said if you look at some references to the Vigilia and Templars then yes the Pope would probably have been retconned to have had foreknowledge.

To everything else as much as I had my disagreements with him on just about everything I will defend him and the game creators who introduced the whole new years message and Imago Dei etc. and say: Writer Fiat.

Anyway I seem to recall he defended himself on Dumpshock when SoE came out. His handle there is Synner if you want to search by user name.

[FutureBoy]

If I did want to stage a run against the Vatican, what sort of security do you think they'd have?

[Bradd]

In terms of device security, they'd probably use rating 3 (public) for tourist attractions, rating 4 (restricted) for most archives, rating 5 (military) for stuff relating to the pope and cardinals, and rating 6 (financial) for the hardcore secrets.

[Fizzygoo]

Yeah, I agree with Bradd. Though I would probably go with "slightly paranoid security" and bump up the tourist stuff to 4.

They use the Pontifical Swiss Guard, made up from ex(?)-Swiss Army with special agreement from Switzerland. They carry small arms and halberds (I'd use laser crescent axe with modified reach). There's about 130 guards in Vatican City. Bump up anything off the tourist paths with sentry guns, drones, hidden surveillance systems, and then there's the magic...with the uber library of the ancient world that the Catholic Church has access too, I'd go with very good magical security, top notch. With deep coffers comes the best security one can buy, train, and raise from birth for loyalty. In my opinion, Vatican City would be one of the most difficult places to make a run against in the Sixth World; it's 110 acres with 800 population (today) where most everyone would know everyone else and anyone "different" off the tourist paths would be immediately flagged. Not saying it couldn't be done...but it would be epic.

[Outsider]

If I did want to stage a run against the Vatican, what sort of security do you think they'd have?

The Swiss. They have the Swiss.

[Frostriese]

"The Vatican" is a real, actual country again in the Sixth World. I mean, technically it already is in the present, but lets not kid ourselves, heh. But in Shadowrun, the Papal States exist again, and cover most of Central Italy. And the Vatican is the centre of it. Its the government seat of a country. So, security - true military, if they're paranoid. In any case a similar security as any government seat or parliament building in Europe. Plus most likely way better magic. Certainly not only the picturesque Swiss Guards anymore.

[Crimsondude]

I'm pretty sure that the ones the public usually encounter will be wearing the Michaelangelo jumpsuits for a while -- at least until the next one comes along.

Now the funny thing about the SG and this Pope is that he is pretty g-d liberal, and the Swiss ... Aren't.

[Frostriese]

I'm pretty sure that the ones the public usually encounter will be wearing the Michaelangelo jumpsuits for a while -- at least until the next one comes along.

Well, yeah, but the public, ceremonial guards really wont be the problem in any serious action against the place.

Now the funny thing about the SG and this Pope is that he is pretty g-d liberal, and the Swiss ... Aren't.

Heh. True. Hadnt thought about that...

[Juxtamon]

First of all, applause for this topic.  Chewy and awesome.

Secondly, "monastic order of white-hat hackers" sparks something in my head.  Now I must create!

Thirdly, this thread is RIFE, I say RIFE with material for conspiracy and interesting investigation in-game.  Small chunks of agreed-upon facts with lots of gaps, and variability in interpretation.  The spirit that appeared...free spirit?  Benevolent?  Trickster that just couldn't help itself?  Illusion?  The turnaround on metas and magic.  The obvious questions about the died-in-his-sleep Pope, and the circumstances that led to that.

There are tons of runs in the making, here, even if it's an archival-history recovery of What Happened.

Yay.

[SpiderWord]

If I did want to stage a run against the Vatican, what sort of security do you think they'd have?

At the moment the Vatican has this kind of security:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Guard

Don't be fooled by the retro look Actually they have decent technologies.

[Sichr]

Well as a fencer I would advise you not to underestimate the Swiss Guard. They are not just ceremonial, they have AAA training in melee and I would suppose them to be well trained with a gun. In SR, 95 of them would be Initiated adepts. With perfect Tactics training and the Morale most of runners should only dream about...
As for Matrix security...well..they do have Jezuits, don`t they. I remember that I read about them something in Aztlan SB, and they looked like whole bunch of perfectly trained hackers...
And for Magic...they do have not just the most ancient library on the planet (except dragon memory crystals), they have a Holy SPIRIT as well

[Sichr]

Makes me wander...
There was a Catholic church order...st. Felix`s, that have been very active first time Shedim come to the awakened world, and they posses a rite to protect dead bodies from Shedim...and they posses this rite even before Shedim enter...