Read Hellboy: On Earth as It Is in Hell for Free Online Page B

tipping motion. Ranzi looked as though he didn't dare refuse. Didn't pour, just gave it to him thermos and all. Hellboy guzzled straight from its mouth and nearly swooned. Have to find out where he got this and see if the person wanted a job in the States.
    "Resistance to change isn't an automatic virtue," Burke said. "Forget about the Inquisition, episodes like that. Those are easy criticisms, and just as easy to distance ourselves from, because they were centuries ago. No, let's look at our own lifetime. In Ireland, the Church ran a network of what were called the Magdalene Asylums. Basically, slave labor prisons where families would send young women for perceived moral infractions. Like getting pregnant out of wedlock. Or being too interesting to the boys. Terrible places, physically and morally appalling...the ruin of countless lives. And the last of them wasn't closed until earlier this year."
    "I'm not saying the Church shouldn't change, ever. Just playing the Devil's advocate." Hellboy looked at the other smoker, who looked to be the youngest of the lot, and who'd been hanging back the farthest the whole time and showed no inclination to step any closer. "Hey. You knew I had to sooner or later."
    "If the Church is to survive the coming century as anything more than a folk religion and a museum relic, change is essential. Especially throughout Europe, where people have very long memories of its history of intellectual repression, and still see us as a force for irrationality," the monsignor said. "That's finally being admitted, and in unexpected places, too. Many prominent cardinals. They see what's happening and they know it can't continue. Not everyone is comfortable with the way I choose to put it, but we're rotting from the inside. In America, even non-Catholics can see the obvious...that we're not adequately replacing the priests we lose to retirement and death, and as a result, parishes are being consolidated and churches are closing. Plus we're just now starting to see the tip of another coming iceberg: lawsuits against the Church caused by a few priests who couldn't keep their hands off children, and bishops who were too cowardly to do anything other than shuffle the offenders off to other parishes and hope they'd stop. The only places the Church is really growing right now are Latin America and Africa."
    "And that's not where the money is," Hellboy said.
    Burke looked as though blood had been drawn. But he didn't refute it. "Nobody can say how much longer His Holiness will remain in office. But only a hopeful few can see many more years ahead of him. When that throne is vacant again, and the next conclave is convened to choose a successor, there's a very good chance that the more progressive factions within the Church will prevail. And set the stage for the most comprehensive set of modernizations since John the Twenty-Third called the Second Vatican Council more than thirty years ago."
    Whether the monsignor knew it or not, and there was no reason he should've, it was the right thing to say. Of the five popes who'd held the office during Hellboy's lifetime, John XXIII was the one he'd always wished he could have met. Down to earth, with the easy touch of a parish priest, and downright impish at times--a pope as imagined by the lighter side of Charles Dickens. Somebody had once asked the man how many people worked in the Vatican. About half of them was his answer. You had to love a guy like that.
    "Assuming your side maneuvers into position," Hellboy said, "what then? What's up your sleeve?"
    "Nothing radical. There are certain hot-button issues that we still would never touch, and those should be obvious. But, for starters, more defensible positions on birth control. And permitting priests to marry. There's no reason they shouldn't, other than tradition. It wasn't a mandate until halfway through the Church's existence, and even then it was a power play...more to do with property and potential heirs than moral